“Violent Crime Is Largely Intra-Racial”: Black-On-Black Violence Demands Our Attention
Black lives matter.
That’s the powerful and relevant message that a loosely organized group of young activists have used as a clarion call to bring attention to the crisis of police violence against black citizens, usually unarmed black men. And its mere utterance is a scathing commentary on the current state of race in America, a reminder that it must be said. Shouldn’t it be obvious that black lives matter as much as white ones?
That’s true, by the way, no matter how those black lives are snuffed out, whether by powerful figures acting under the color of law, or by other black men who are angry, violent and unrestrained. The senseless loss of black life demands a response.
So let’s talk, too, about the surging rate of homicides in certain big cities around the country, including Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago, and New Orleans. The crimes are occurring mostly in poor neighborhoods, and the victims — and perpetrators — are overwhelmingly black.This is a sensitive subject, a topic rarely broached in public by prominent black political and civic figures. Perhaps that’s because ultraconservatives, especially the racial provocateurs among them, use the numbers as a bludgeon, hammering away in order to muddy the debate about police violence. They try to excuse police brutality by evoking black criminals — as if law enforcement officials should not be held to a very different standard.
Moreover, they fail to note that violent crime is largely intra-racial — that is, committed by people against their own ethnic group. In other words, whites tend to assault and kill whites, while blacks tend to assault and kill blacks. “From 1980 to 2008, 84 percent of white victims were killed by whites and 93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks,” says PolitiFact, the fact-checking organization.
In any event, the ranting of right-wing rabble-rousers is no reason to shield our eyes from the worrisome incidence of black homicides and their debilitating effect on black families and neighborhoods. In 2013, the last year for which figures were available, homicide was the leading cause of death for young black men between the ages of 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a special 2014 report, “Black Homicide Victimization in the United States,” the Violence Policy Center wrote: “Blacks in the United States are disproportionately affected by homicide. For the year 2011, blacks represented 13 percent of the nation’s population, yet accounted for 50 percent of all homicide victims.” As stunning as that statistic is, it doesn’t adequately convey the shattered lives, the broken families, the decimated neighborhoods it represents.
If homicide were a disease wiping out black people at this alarming rate, we’d be demanding research, solutions, a cure. If a foreign enemy had laid siege to poor black neighborhoods in the same way, we’d send in massive manpower to root them out. But we’ve been peculiarly passive in response to black-on-black homicides, as if there is nothing we can do, as if it’s too difficult and too controversial to tackle.
Certainly, there is controversy aplenty, starting with legitimate differences among law enforcement experts about how to tackle the problem. Indeed, there are those among law enforcement officials who insist that heavy-handed police tactics, such as New York’s “stop and frisk” policy of random searches, are a useful tool in curbing criminal activity.
That seems unlikely. If oppressive policing were the solution, a city such as Cleveland ought to be one of the safest, given its documented history of out-of-control cops. Instead, it’s one of the most dangerous, according to FBI statistics.
But well-trained and diverse police departments, staffed by officers committed to treating citizens fairly, are certainly one part of the solution. Curbing our cultural obsession with guns would help. And, undoubtedly, so would ameliorating the root causes of the frustration that breeds violent crime, including joblessness, poor educational opportunity and inadequate housing.
None of those fixes will come quickly or easily, but they won’t come at all unless we find the will to acknowledge the problem. Publicly.
Black lives, including those lost to black violence, matter.
By: Cynthia Tucker Haynes, Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, 2007; The National Memo, September 5, 2015
“Racism, Violence And The Politics Of Resentment”: It Shouldn’t Be Hard To Recognize Two Truths
We have a choice to make.
We can look at violence and racism as scourges that all of us must join together to fight. Or we can turn the issues of crime and policing into fodder for racial and political division.
In principle, it shouldn’t be hard to recognize two truths.
Too many young African Americans have been killed in confrontations with police when lethal force should not have been used. We should mourn their deaths and demand justice. Black Lives Matter turned into a social movement because there is legitimate anger over the reality that — to be very personal about it — I do not have to worry about my son being shot by the police in the way an African American parent does.
At the same time, too many of our police officers are killed while doing their jobs. According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, 1,466 men and women in law enforcement died in the line of duty over the past decade. We should mourn their deaths, appreciate the dangers they face and honor their courage.
Now I’ll admit: It’s easy for me to type these words on a computer screen. Circumstances are more complicated for those on either side of confrontations over the obligations of our police officers. Things get said (or, often, shouted) that call forth a reaction from the other side. A few demonstrators can scream vile slogans that can be used to taint a whole movement. Rage escalates.
Moreover, there are substantive disagreements over what needs to be done. Those trying to stop unjust police killings want to establish new rules and practices that many rank-and-file officers resist, arguing that the various measures could prevent them from doing their jobs. This resistance, in turn, only heightens mistrust of the police among their critics.
But politicians and, yes, even political commentators have an obligation: to try to make things better, not worse. There is always a choice between the politics of resentment and the politics of remedy. Resentment is easier.
And so it was this week that the murder of Texas Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth inspired Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to say on Monday: “Whether it’s in Ferguson or Baltimore, the response of senior officials of the president, of the attorney general, is to vilify law enforcement. That is fundamentally wrong, and it is endangering the safety and security of us all.” For good measure, the next day, Cruz condemned President Obama’s “silence” on Goforth’s murder.
The problem? For starters, Obama was not silent. He called the slain officer’s widow on Monday and issued a statement saying he had told Kathleen Goforth “that Michelle and I would keep her and her family in our prayers. I also promised that I would continue to highlight the uncommon bravery that the police show in our communities every single day. They put their lives on the line for our safety.” Obama has made statements of this sort over and over. Vilification this is not.
Over at Fox News, the campaign against Black Lives Matter has become fierce. Bill O’Reilly called the organization a “hate group” and declared: “I’m going to put them out of business.”
Let’s take five steps back. The movement for police reform was not the invention of some leftist claque. It was a response to real and genuinely tragic events. Silencing protesters won’t make anything better.
And some potential solutions don’t even make the political agenda. The easy availability of guns on U.S. streets is a threat to the police and to African Americans in our most violent neighborhoods. Why are those who seek reasonable gun regulations regularly blocked by interests far more powerful than those who demonstrate in our streets?
On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy — who himself would be fatally shot exactly two months later — said this to the Cleveland City Club:
“Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily — whether it is done in the name of the law or in defiance of the law, by one man or by a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence — whenever we tear at the fabric of our lives which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, whenever we do this, then the whole nation is degraded.”
How much more pain must we endure before we recognize that these words are still true?
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 2, 2015
“He Was Opposed To Women Having A Say In Anything”: The Ugly Views Of America’s Latest Mass Shooter
This isn’t the first time he’s targeted a movie theater. John Russell Houser, America’s latest mass shooter, had reportedly threatened violence against theaters before he opened fire in a Louisiana cinema last night, killing two others and himself.
Houser, who’s had several run-ins with the law dating back to the 1980s, allegedly once attempted to burn down the office of a lawyer representing theaters that showed pornography. Former attorney John Swearingen told NBC News on Friday that Houser had once tried to burn down his Columbus, Georgia, law office back in the 1980s.
“I represented somebody — maybe several people — he did not like, and he tried to hire someone to burn the law office,” Swearingen said.
According to the local sheriff, Houser applied in 2006 for a permit to carry a concealed weapon but was denied because he had been arrested on an arson charge. The sheriff did not say whether Houser had been convicted. In Alabama, where Houser resided “off and on” for a nearly a decade, residents are not required to apply for a permit or license to buy or own a handgun so no background could be done.
Emerging reports also indicate that Houser was a far-right activist. Houser appears to have been a fan of the Tea Party, the Westboro Baptist Church and Golden Dawn — and extreme right-wing neo-Nazi political party in Greece. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Houser attended a conference hosted by former KKK leader David Duke in 2005 and the host of a talk radio show Houser frequently called into, described the 56-year-old as a “radical Republican.”
“He was anti-abortion. The best I can recall,” former radio host Calvin Floyd told the Washington Post. “Rusty had an issue with feminine rights. He was opposed to women having a say in anything. You could talk with him a few minutes, and you would know he had a high IQ but there was a lot missing with him,” Floyd explained.
Last night, Houser stood up in a crowded screening of Amy Schumer’s comedy “Trainwreck” at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana and opened fire, killing two young women and injuring nine other people.
Local authorities have since described Houser as a “drifter,” although at one point he did wage an unsuccessful campaign for elected office. According to court documents, in 2008 Houser’s wife removed all the guns from the couple’s home citing threats he had made to family members and his history of mental illness. CNN reports Houser had been evicted from his home in March 2014 and court records show that he filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002.
“It is a shame Tim McVeigh is not going to be with us to enjoy the hilarity of turning the tables with an IRON HAND,” Houser wrote on the Golden Dawn website, referring to the far-right mastermind of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
By: Sophia Tesfaye, Salon,
“Politicians Should Be Held To A Higher Standard”: For Gun Victims, The Prayers Of Conservative Politicians Are Not Enough
After the latest mass shooting by an anti-tax, anti-government, anti-feminist arch-conservative in Lafayette, LA, the reactions from Republican politicians were as predictable as they were empty and stale. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal had the usual reaction:
Gov. @BobbyJindal: The most important thing people can do now is to pray. Watch CNNgo: http://t.co/HAhU3MmiMf.
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) July 24, 2015
Frankly, that reaction is getting more than a little tiresome no matter what one’s religious beliefs might be. When terrorists used airplanes as missiles against the United States in 2001, we didn’t just pray for the victims: we changed our entire airline security system, spent billions on a new homeland security bureaucracy, and invaded not one but two countries at gigantic cost to life and treasure. When the ebola virus threatened to break out in the United States we didn’t pray for deliverance from the plague; we went into a collective public policy and media frenzy to stop it from spreading further. When earthquakes prove our building standards are inadequate to save lives, we don’t beg the gods to avert catastrophe and pray for the victims; we spend inordinate amounts of money to retrofit so it doesn’t happen again.
On every major piece of public policy in which lives are taken needlessly, we don’t limit ourselves to empty prayers for the victims. We actually do something to stop it from happening again.
But not when it comes to gun proliferation. On that issue we are told that nothing can be done, and that all we can do is mourn and pray for the murdered and wounded, even as we watch the news every day for our next opportunity to grieve and mourn and pray again–all while sitting back and watching helplessly.
For most of us, prayer and good vibes are all we can provide. It’s not in our power to prevent the next deranged killer from gaining access to a deadly weapon of mass violence. But politicians should be held to a higher standard. They do have the power to act. For them, prayers are empty and basically meaningless compared to the power they refuse to wield to actually solve the problem.
No longer should we accept the facade of devotional compassion Bobby Jindal and his friends use to mask their indifferent obedience to the NRA and its rabid voters. If they refuse to act, their prayers don’t mean a thing.
By: David Atkins, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, July 25, 2015
“Hundreds Of Thousands Of Bad People”: Fact-Checking Bill O’Reilly’s Dumb, Hateful Lies; Fox News Propaganda Breaks New Ground
When Bill O’Reilly got his start on Fox News, he was charmingly irreverent, a moderating factor on a right-leaning news network; and I liked him for it. I was 14 years old, and would go on, in my teen years, to read one of O’Reilly’s early books, along with Christopher Hitchens’ “Letters to a Young Contrarian,” and eventually Dinesh D’Souza’s “Letters to a Young Conservative” and Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil.” I was hashing out a political identity into my 20s, and, as this awkward reading list suggests, it was complicated. It’s perhaps a shame that today’s O’Reilly is not complicated.
In the segment where O’Reilly calls Salon a “hate site,” and his program ambushes a handful of San Francisco civil servants, I was struck more by the “talking points memo” working in conjunction with O’Reilly’s monologue than with the breach of decorum or even the comparison of Salon to white-supremacist outlet Stormfront. The real danger of that O’Reilly segment isn’t so much the ambush tactics or the sensationalism as the sloppy thinking O’Reilly performs for his viewers, which gives the appearance of justifying that sensationalism.
For this reason I’ve decided to work through that O’Reilly segment, which Salon’s Scott Eric Kaufman has reported on, paying close attention to those moments when O’Reilly uses both rhetorical tricks and logical fallacies to convey a provocatively hateful message about undocumented immigrants, a message that, ironically, comes a lot closer to hate speech than the simple act of advocating on either a conservative or progressive media outlet like National Review Online or Salon.
O’Reilly kicks off the segment by addressing the “evil” of the coldblooded murder of Kate Steinle before airing a clip of an interview with Steinle’s parents, who speak of the “battle of evil and goodness.” I mentioned Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil” above because it’s a powerful critique of Manichaeism, the belief in a dualistic moral struggle of good versus evil. Manichaeism makes it easy to oversimplify conflicts and tragedies by defining actors as pure good and pure evil. This is exactly what O’Reilly will go on to do in his “talking points.” He writes, “Every sane person knows that gunning down a 32-year old woman in the street is an act of pure evil.” The memo goes on: “There are many Americans who will not act to prevent that kind of evil from taking place.”
Here we can see two important rhetorical moves designed to bring audiences to the conclusion that, despite the culpability of the evil man who murdered Steinle, we are to identify that murderous evil both with undocumented immigrants and with people who don’t agree with O’Reilly’s hard-line immigration views. O’Reilly first sets up the scenario as though it’s as simple as good people versus evil people (as opposed to, for example, a more complicated policy nexus of immigration and gun control issues). Then he swiftly aligns “the Americans who will not move to act to prevent that kind of evil from taking place” with the evil itself. In these steps O’Reilly effectively conflates the evil of coldblooded murder with the evil of some Americans who will fail to act on some measure that O’Reilly will assign as a cure for that evil.
What, then, is that measure? O’Reilly begins by blaming the media, which “does not oppose sanctuary cities,” “sanctuary city” being a term with no legal meaning that refers generally to cities that don’t spend city funds and resources to enforce certain federal immigration policies. O’Reilly claims that the “sanctuary city policy” (it’s not a coherent policy at all) “is supported by people who believe that poor illegal immigrants should not be held accountable for violating immigration law,” “folks cloaking themselves in compassion, thinking they’re being humane to the poor who want better lives.” Crucially, however, O’Reilly goes on to re-label these people “hundreds of thousands of bad people.”
Here we can see, again, O’Reilly invoking the Manichaean framework with which he started, only this time, the “evil” one isn’t simply the individual who murdered Kate Steinle, but the “hundreds of thousands” of undocumented immigrants, whom O’Reilly lumps together as “bad people.” This is the point of O’Reilly’s slippage from the evil of murder to the evil of being an undocumented immigrant, to use a negative example of one to stand in for the whole. O’Reilly completes the slippage by claiming that “it is insulting when pro-sanctuary city people equate poor immigrants with violent criminals,” going on to further conflate all undocumented immigrants with violent criminals with one phrase: he calls them “brutal undocumented people.”
From this point, O’Reilly moves onto San Francisco city supervisors, holding them up as an example of the next link in a tenuously constructed chain of evil that begins with a murderer, who, by his undocumented status, becomes a stand-in for all undocumented immigrants, and ends with the civil servants of San Francisco and the broader left, presumably the kind of people who “will not move to act to prevent that kind of evil from taking place.” O’Reilly states unequivocally that Kate Steinle “is dead because of policies that endanger the public,” conflating once again the act of murder with the refusal to support O’Reilly’s specific vision of border security. O’Reilly’s closing judgment is that “it’s a damn shame that all Americans cannot support a policy that would protect people like Kate Steinle … if you saw the heartbreaking interview with her parents last night, how could you not support tough measures against criminal illegal aliens?”
In all of this we should note three tactics of distortion. First, by framing the entire issue of Steinle’s murder as a Manichaean problem of good versus evil, O’Reilly is able to pretend for his viewers that there can only be one problem (lax immigration law), which is itself a manifestation of evil. Both gun control and wider issues of how to distribute limited city funds and resources (O’Reilly isn’t exactly a fan of higher taxes) are as significant factors in this tragedy as immigration law.
Second, O’Reilly’s entire argument relies on the fallacy of composition, which presumes that if something is true of a part of a whole, it must then be true of the whole. This is why, because an undocumented immigrant is alleged to have committed a murder, O’Reilly goes on to call all undocumented immigrants things like “bad people,” “brutal undocumented people,” “violent criminals” and “criminal illegal aliens.”
Third, O’Reilly avails himself of the fallacy of false equivalence in two ways. He equates the culpability for murder with the politically mainstream disagreement between San Francisco city officials and O’Reilly on immigration policy; and he equates sites like Salon and MediaMatters with the self-proclaimed white-supremacist outlet Stormfront, confusing yet again mainstream, partisan media outlets with neo-Nazis. A simple test to reveal the fallaciousness of the comparison would be to ask yourself how long a site like Salon or MediaMatters would exist, drawing articles from prominent policymakers, politicians, artists, academics and journalists, if any of these sites regularly proclaimed white supremacy as its reason for being.
Though it’s a little laborious to go through talking points like O’Reilly’s in this manner, it’s important to reverse-engineer them from time to time to expose what lies at the heart of the machine. In this case we find that the source of hatred isn’t a side of a mainstream political debate about immigration policy, but a desire to paint all undocumented immigrants as murderous villains, “bad people,” “brutal undocumented people” on the side of evil who threaten to put out the white light of America.
By: Aaron R. Hanlon, Salon, July 17, 2015
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