“Guns And The Thug Life”: There Was Only One Thug In That Convenience Store Parking Lot, And It Wasn’t Jordan Davis
On Saturday night, the jury in the case of Michael Dunn rendered a strange verdict, convicting Dunn of attempting to murder the three teens who survived the hail of fire he sent at their car, but deadlocking on the charge of murdering the one he succeeded in killing. We may never know what went on in the jury room, but if nothing else, Dunn will not be driving into any more parking lots and getting into any more arguments that end in death, at least not for some time.
This case is, of course about race, which we’ll get to in a moment. But it’s also about—to use a word that crops up repeatedly in Michael Dunn’s written comments—a culture. It’s a culture where manhood must continually be proven, where every disagreement is a test of strength, and where in the end, your fellow human beings are only waiting to kill you, so you’d better draw first.
This was the culture of violence that Michael Dunn carried with him to the convenience store, the one that ended the life of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. It was Dunn’s manic hyper-vigilance, his fear, and the .45 he carried with him that brought death to the parking lot.
Dunn’s defense was built on his belief that he saw something that looked like the barrel of a shotgun (or maybe a pipe) emerge from the window of the car holding the teenagers with whom he was arguing about their music, though no shots came from their car and the police never found any gun. Unlike many people, I have no trouble believing that, for an instant at least, Dunn really did think he saw a gun. I also suspect that he realized afterward that there was no gun, which would explain why he never mentioned it to his fiancée.
What we do know is that when he encountered those black teens, Michael Dunn was sure he was facing down a group of dangerous criminals who might well try to kill him at any moment. We don’t have to wonder whether Dunn is a racist, because his own words make it pretty clear. The letters he wrote to family and friends while awaiting trial are full of statements describing black people as violent criminals who hate whites. “I’m not really prejudiced against race, but I have no use for certain cultures,” he wrote. “This gangster rap, ghetto-talking thug ‘culture’ that certain segments of society flock to is intolerable.” He wrote to a family member, “I just got off the phone with you and we were talking about how racist the blacks are up here. The more time I am exposed to these people the more prejudiced against them I become. I suppose the white folks who live here are pretty much anti-black, at least the ones who have been exposed to them.” And from another letter: “Remember when your mom was robbed? At gunpoint? Black thug.”
So when Dunn arrived at the store and heard that loud rap music, what it meant to him was clear: These are dangerous thugs. After all, they’re young and black, and they’ve got that awful rap music playing, right? And once he began to argue with them, you can bet that he was on high alert, ready to draw his weapon. Think about the last time you got into an argument. Your heart rate accelerated, the adrenaline started pumping, you entered into a state of heightened agitation and awareness. This physiological reaction was bred into us by millions of years of evolution, the fight-or-flight response to danger that ensured the survival of our ancestors.
The 7-11 is not the savanna, but Michael Dunn plainly believed he was a water buffalo surrounded by hyenas. So this time, he would be the predator. He grabbed his gun, exited his car, got down on one knee, and began to fire. And then he kept on firing, ten shots in all, even as the car drove away to escape him.
Just like the case of Curtis Reeves, the Florida man who shot and killed a man who irritated him by texting in a movie theater during the previews, the argument began over the most mundane thing, but ended in death. Michael Dunn couldn’t abide that loud rap music. Curtis Reeves got popcorn thrown at him, and threw back a bullet.
In a reasonable world—or in most countries other than ours—arguments like those would end with someone muttering “Jerk!” under his breath, then getting back to what he meant to be doing beforehand. An hour later, he’d think of the perfect retort that would have put that guy in his place. But in the world gun advocates have made, the result isn’t frustration or resentment, but death.
In his letters, Michael Dunn refers to black men, again and again, as “thugs.” But there was only one thug in that convenience store parking lot, one person who was ready to unleash violence at a moment’s notice, one man whose regard for human life had departed him somewhere along the course of his days. That thug wasn’t the 17-yead-old black kid. It was the 47-year-old white guy holding the gun.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 17, 2014
“Clarence Thomas’ ‘Sadness’ On Race”: How Things Have Changed, The Views Of “My Grandfather’s Other Son”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech in South Florida yesterday, where the jurist, one of only two African Americans to ever serve on the high court, reflected on racial issues.
“My sadness is that we are probably today more race and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,” Thomas said during a chapel service hosted by the nondenominational Christian university [Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach].
“Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them – left them out.
“That’s a part of the deal,” he added.
At a minimum, the Justice’s comments appear to be at odds with his 2007 autobiography, which paint a different picture of Thomas’ youth. Yesterday, Thomas said race was “rarely” an issue growing up in Savannah,” but as Adam Serwer noted, Thomas wrote several years ago that as a kid in Savannah, “No matter how curious you might be about the way white people lived, you didn’t go where you didn’t belong. That was a recipe for jail, or worse.”
Thomas even said he left his seminary in 1968 after feeling “a constant state of controlled anxiety” over being a racial minority.
That said, Thomas’ broader point about Americans being more conscious of racial issues may be true, though it’s not entirely clear why he, or anyone else, would consider this a discouraging development.
Jamelle Bouie’s take rings true.
Let’s say that Americans are more sensitive about race (and gender, and sexuality) than they were in the 1960s. This is a good thing. If blacks in Jim Crow Georgia were willing to answer to “boy” and shrug at “ni**er,” it’s because they risked danger with any other reaction.
But that’s changed. We’ve made progress. And now blacks, as well as other minorities and women, feel entitled to public respect in a way that wasn’t true in the 1960s. In turn, there’s a public recognition that we should be sensitive to the concerns of these groups. This isn’t a setback – it’s progress.
Jon Chait added:
Maybe the reason race came up rarely is that the racial situation in 1960s Georgia was extremely terrible.
For instance, for the first 14 years of Thomas’s life, Georgia had zero African-Americans in its state legislature. Majority-black Terrell had a total of five registered black voters – possibly because African-Americans were so satisfied with their treatment that they didn’t see any reason to vote, or possibly because civil-rights activists in Georgia tended to get assassinated.
So maybe “reluctance to bring up racial issues” is not, in fact, the best measure of a society’s racial health.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, February 12, 2014
“Racial Fears, Gun Fantasies, And Another Dead Teenager”: Real Action Hero’s, Standing Between America And Disaster
Among the arguments I’ve made about the troubling aspects of American gun culture is the way so many gun owners have in their heads a dangerous fantasy about what the world is like and what role they play in that world. The people I’m talking about, the ones who think it’s terribly important that they be able to bring their firearms into any store or coffee shop or church they might visit, believe that every moment of every day in every place they go is nothing more than a violent situation just waiting to happen. Will they be there to stop a mass shooting at the Safeway? Will they be walking down the street and come upon a group of heavily armed thieves taking down an armored truck? Will they encounter an al-Qaeda strike team at the Starbucks, and this 50-year-old insurance salesman with a concealed carry license will be the only thing that stands between America and disaster? They sure seem to think so.
Is that all gun owners? Of course not. It’s not even most gun owners. But it’s lots of them, and I think it comes through in the case of Michael Dunn, the Florida (of course) man who got into an argument with some teenagers outside a convenience store over the teens’ loud music, and ended the argument by firing 10 shots into their car, killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis. This case includes some rather remarkable statements about black people from Michael Dunn, which we’ll get to in a moment. But I think it’s the way race and the gun owner’s fantasy come together that produced this tragedy.
The basic facts are that Dunn and his fiancée pulled into a convenience store, where she went inside and he stayed outside. Dunn then got into an argument with four teenagers in another car over the volume of the music they were playing; the argument escalated, and eventually Dunn took out his gun and fired ten shots, killing Jordan Davis, one of the teens. Dunn claims that he saw a shotgun, or maybe a pipe, emerge from the teens’ car, so he had no choice but to defend himself. No such gun or pipe was ever found. That part of his story was also contradicted by his fiancée, who testified that afterward he said nothing to her about them having a gun. Dunn also says that Davis got out of the car and approached him, but that part of his story was contradicted by the medical examiner, who testified that Davis’s wounds were not consistent with someone who was standing up, but rather appeared to have been sustained while he was sitting in the car.
I can’t say with certainty what happened that day. As a liberal, is my bias to believe the gun-toting white adult was at fault and not the dead black teenager? Yes it is. But there are some good reasons to think that when Dunn got into an argument with a bunch of black kids over their music (“rap crap,” as he called it during his testimony yesterday), he was particularly inclined to assume they’d try to kill him at any moment, because that’s how those people are. While in jail awaiting trial, Dunn wrote letters to his family that said, among other things, “It’s spooky how racist everyone is up here and how biased toward blacks the courts are. This jail is full of blacks and they all act like thugs.” When he says “racist” in that letter, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking about bias against black people. He also wrote, “This may sound a bit radical but if more people would arm themselves and kill these **** idiots when they’re threatening you, eventually they may take the hint and change their behavior.”
That doesn’t sound like a man who’s “crazy with grief,” as he testified he was over the shooting. But it gets worse. On a web site set up by Dunn’s supporters, the defendant writes this:
I am sorry for the tragic outcome of that night in Jacksonville and the loss of Davis’ son [sic]. But I would offer that, rather than rail against the “Stand Your Ground” laws, people take a look at the violence and lifestyle that the “Gangsta Rap” music and the ‘”thug life” promote. The jails are chock full of young black men – and so are the cemeteries. Gun laws have nothing to do with it. The violent sub-cultures that so many young men become enthralled with are destroying an entire generation. Root cause analysis says to correct the behavior. The black community needs to do a better job of selling worthwhile role models. Most importantly, young men need to know that they are not just risking jail time when they threaten the lives of others… they’re risking their very own lives.
Just to repeat, this is something Michael Dunn himself wrote. How is it possible to read that as anything other than, “That n***er had it coming”?
There was another detail of his testimony yesterday that stuck out to me. This is from the New York Times report:
As the Durango backed up quickly to elude the gunfire, Mr. Dunn stepped out of his own car, dropped to one knee and fired more volleys to thwart any ‘blind fire,’ or wild, random shooting out the car window, he said.
At that point, he said, his mind was on his fiancée, Rhonda Rouer, who was about to walk out of the convenience store. ‘I did it in my panicked state,’ he said, of the later volleys. ‘I was worried about the blind firing situation, where they would shoot over their heads, whatever, and hit me, or hit me and Rhonda.’
So the car is pulling away to elude his gunfire, and Dunn immediately considers the “blind fire” scenario, just like he’s read about in his gun magazines (or somewhere, anyway). He drops to a stable firing stance, then pumps shot after shot into the car. He saved the day—he’s not a 47-year-old software engineer, he’s a real action hero!
Gun owners argue that carrying a weapon makes you less likely to escalate a confrontation, since you know it could turn deadly. And I’m sure that for many of them, that’s true. But for others, after spending all that time at the range, after all the fantasizing about the day when they get to act out the things they’ve seen on screen, when a confrontation happens, instead of doing the things smart people do to make violence less likely, they think Bring it on. I’m ready. So when you get into an argument with some black kids about loud music, you’re sure that at any moment there’s going to be an exchange of fire, because those thugs probably brought a shotgun down to the convenience store, and you’d better fire first. Some guy won’t stop texting during the previews of a movie, and gets pissed when you tell him to stop? Better have your hand on your weapon just in case, and when he throws popcorn at you, you shoot him in the chest. That’s what a man has to do.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 12, 2014
“Targeted Demobilization Of Minority Voters”: The Most Disgraceful Practice In American Politics Today
It’s called “targeted demobilization of minority voters.” The phrase comes from Perspectives on Politics, a leading journal published by the American Political Science Association. December’s issue includes a sobering article by Keith G. Bentele and Erin E. O’Brien titled, “Jim Crow 2.0? Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies.” The abstract tells the basic story:
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in state legislation likely to reduce access for some voters, including photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements, registration restrictions, absentee ballot voting restrictions, and reductions in early voting. Political operatives often ascribe malicious motives when their opponents either endorse or oppose such legislation. In an effort to bring empirical clarity and epistemological standards to what has been a deeply-charged, partisan, and frequently anecdotal debate, we use multiple specialized regression approaches to examine factors associated with both the proposal and adoption of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006-2011. Our results indicate that proposal and passage are highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs. These findings are consistent with a scenario in which the targeted demobilization of minority voters and African Americans is a central driver of recent legislative developments…. [emphasis added]
Bentele and O’Brien’s statistical analysis of 2006-2011 data makes plain what was already pretty obvious. Republican governors and legislatures have sought to hinder minority turnout for partisan purposes. States were especially likely to pass restrictive voting laws if Republicans were politically dominant, but where the state observed rising minority turnout or where the state was becoming more competitive in the national presidential race. Variables that capture the strategic value to Republicans of minority voter suppression are more powerful predictors of restrictive voting legislation than is actual incidence of voter fraud.
This is the most disgraceful and toxic practice in American political life. It’s out there. It’s blatant. I keep waiting for decent conservatives to speak out against this stuff. Now that would be a Sister Souldjah moment worth watching. So far, no takers.
Memories of these efforts will darken the Republican Party’s reputation for many years. It certainly should.
By: Harold Pollack, Ten Miles Square, The Washington Monthly, December 30, 2013
“The GOP’s Insane Race Strategy”: A Monstrous Injustice, Shoulder-To-Shoulder With The Worst Villains In American History
Over at TMS today, Harold Pollack highlights a stark paper from Perspectives on Politics. The Republican shameful record on minority voting during the 2012 election was a common story on the left. But after closer study, the results are in, and they aren’t pretty:
Our results indicate that proposal and passage are highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs. These findings are consistent with a scenario in which the targeted demobilization of minority voters and African Americans is a central driver of recent legislative developments.
Harold unpacks the study:
Bentele and O’Brien’s statistical analysis of 2006-2011 data makes plain what was already pretty obvious. Republican governors and legislatures have sought to hinder minority turnout for partisan purposes. States were especially likely to pass restrictive voting laws if Republicans were politically dominant, but where the state observed rising minority turnout or where the state was becoming more competitive in the national presidential race. Variables that capture the strategic value to Republicans of minority voter suppression are more powerful predictors of restrictive voting legislation than is actual incidence of voter fraud.
And sure, as Harold says, this is utterly disgraceful. But perhaps the most baffling aspect about this kind of behavior is that it doesn’t even work anymore. The GOP lost in 2012. Trying to systematically disenfranchise people along racial lines is a monstrous injustice that puts you shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the worst villains in American history. But if it doesn’t even work—and in fact inspires a larger overreaction, as seems to be the case, what is the point?
I think, as Josh Marshall suggested awhile ago putting this phenomenon in historical context, that these are longstanding political habits the downsides of which have only recently come into focus, as the country becomes steadily less white:
Does this mean the GOP is ‘racist’? No. At least not in its entirety. But it benefited mightily from it. What it means is that our politics is significantly framed around the politics of race and, on balance, it’s been a winning issue for the GOP for the 40 or 50 odd years since white Southerners moved into the Republican party and created a powerful electoral anchor for the party. They raised their sails to the winds of racial animosity and it worked in spades. For decades, you got more white votes pushing this brand of politics than you lost in minority votes. It was a good political bargain. But as the racial composition of the electorate changed, we reached a tipping, one that became visible in sharp relief in 2012.
It’s hard to know from the outside just what combination of wishful thinking, epistemic closure, belief in fake voter fraud, etc., motivates this kind of behavior. But it has to be true that the actual party operatives designing and pushing through these measures which are so obviously aimed at minority citizens know exactly what they’re doing. Here’s hoping that in the future, they’re cynical enough to know that strategy has run its course.
By: Ryan Cooper, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 30, 2013
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