June – September 2020
My dear grandchildren,
In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, the Nation is now convulsed by the egregiously unjust death of a black man by an officer in the Minneapolis Police department. Many, but not all, grieved the loss of George Floyd – which is the man’s name – in this case. There have been many other names in my lifetime. Since 2012 alone, 17 unarmed African Americans have died by gunfire, or in suspicious circumstances while in police custody.
Perhaps this explains why, every day, for nearly three weeks, people formed in the streets, in more cities than you can count, to express how unsettled they feel about the circumstances of George Floyd’s death. In most cases, the demonstrations were loud but peaceful. In a few cases, during the early days, rioting and destruction of other people’s property occurred. In Portland, Oregon the protesting, coupled with some criminal behavior, has gone on for close to one hundred says without interruption.
Then on August 23rd, things got even uglier with the shooting of another African man named Jacob Blake, in the back, seven times, by a Kenosha, Wis. police officer. The video showing this shooting is truly hard to comprehend.
Without hardly a pause, most of the Nation reflexively joined sides with regard to how each of us wanted to discuss the circumstances attached to George Floyd’s death. Some felt that the focus should be on the criminal behavior associated with the protests – continuing to some degree into September. Others felt that the right to protest is integral to the lifeblood of The Republic and must be protected, despite the spillover arising from small numbers of petty criminals and agitators.
It doesn’t seem like there is a lot of room for movement from these two poles, at least from what can be learned from cable TV. This is the world we now seem to live in – pick your side and stop communicating. It was not always so. And, it is not healthy.
In fact, I think it is easy and intellectually lazy to select your position, scream about what happened, make sweeping and nonspecific demands, and then return to your normal life – until the next time. During my life, there has always been a next time. We have a big problem here and it seems to have systemic characteristics. Let’s not bury this pain. Let’s put it to work in a constructive and meaningful dialogue.
I want to spend some time thinking with you about race, inequality, and aloofness; and what it represents. I want to offer you a perspective developed over 70+ years of living with the issue of racial discrimination which might help you frame your own questions. As always, in the last analysis, you are responsible for the answers.
You older kids will understand what I am trying to say. You younger kids will find some rough patches because this is a very adult writing. But, here’s the problem. I cannot wait until you get older because I may not be around. So, I invite you to read and enjoy what you can, get help from your parents and then set it aside and read again in a couple of years.
How my voice developed
Why should you care about how my voice developed? Why not just dive into the issue?
Well, you have noticed that there is a lot of disagreement on the issue that racial prejudice sits at the center of encounters between black people and police officers. What is going on here? Do cops feel that black people do not have the same rights as white people? Are there white cops who simply disdain black people, and perhaps all people of color? Do many cops of all races feel more threatened by black men than by others, making such encounters extremely volatile, especially when push back occurs? Are black men more likely to resent the command and control motif of an American cop?
I think it is important that you understand how race has played out in America. Certainly, during my lifetime, the playing field has rarely been level for all people. Yes, as Warren Buffett has said many times, you won the lottery by being born in America. This is especially true if you were born a white male. The playing field was as level as it gets in life, though certainly not perfectly level.
As a white male, I have repeatedly felt the success and failures of intense competition. This, even though white males have pretty much controlled the country, if not most of the world, during much of my life. If you were not a member of the white male tribe you had to fight even harder to compete. Worse, sometimes you were not even allowed to play the game.
If you were black and distinctively different from a white male, the playing field was really tilted against you. All of my white contemporaries knew this, unless they were blind.
But it was even worse because there was also a history of great animosity against black people from too many white people. The roots for this are found in American slavery. But passive discrimination against blacks has existed throughout all American society. In the Southern States, it was absolutely explicit.
Hard core, active discrimination was easy to distinguish from acceptable behavior and I would offer that during my life the vast majority of white people would not have labeled themselves as anti-black. But passive discrimination, the casual acceptance of an uneven playing field for blacks, the demurring to the idea that things are just the way they are, has perhaps been even more damaging, even more unfair than explicit racial discrimination, partially because it is harder to fight.
Passive discrimination is accepted as a way of life if one ignores the reality of white preference. Some black people protest that even black congressional leaders, in their political actions, seem to embrace the idea that they are inferior.
I find the term white supremist very offensive to me personally and I associate it with people whose values I fully reject. But it is important for you to recognize that white preference, whether implied or passive, is described by many black people as white supremacy.
When I was growing up, I lived in a white society which generally accepted the more difficult conditions faced by black people; but also, by Mexicans in California, first generation immigrants everywhere, poorer people, and other groups. In this regard, black people did not especially stand out, perhaps because they were disproportionately poor.
As a child growing up, my mother had live-in help. During my youth, these people were always women, and they were Negroes. (The Black Power Movement in the late 60’s ushered in the new term Black for Negroes; and in 1988 a third term, African American, with an ethnic emphasis rather than a racial one, became popular.) The waiters and caddies at my parent’s Country Club were generally Negroes. As a child you do not think much about this. It simply was the way things were. (In later years, my mother’s live-in help were Latina women, and the waiters at LACC were Latin men, as the “Negro” moved further up the economic ladder.)
80 years after the Civil War, America starts to confront injustice
The roles and rights of American black people changed very little during the first 80 years after the civil war. During my lifetime, which started in 1942, progress accelerated to where it stands today – much better but far from complete. And even then, blacks had to battle for every inch of improvement. This history is at the center of every issue I want to describe in this essay so let us spend a little time thinking about it.
Change began with the inclusivity of black soldiers into the US Military during WW II and the eventual legal elimination of racial discrimination in the military by President Truman, in 1948, with executive order 9981. It continued during the Eisenhower Presidency with the first steps to enforce Federal Laws against racial discrimination in schools in 1957, specifically in Little Rock, Arkansas, defending a decision of the Supreme Court which was actively resisted by the Southern States. The Civil Rights Movement followed and grew into a mighty force during the late 1950’s. Martin Luther King’s arrest in Birmingham wasn’t until 1963. A Civil Rights bill was drafted, and Jack Kennedy’s assassination probably enabled Lyndon Johnson to get the votes in Congress to pass it. I was only 22 years old.
These actions defined a legal construct for behavior. But it would take years and years of attention, better education, other laws and essentially a changing of the guard – my parent’s generation to yours, which is three generations – before the goals of these legal steps might claim widespread adoption. The fact is, your generation needs to finish the job.
You are growing up or have grown up and now live in a much more multi-racial world than did I. In fact, I think it would be hard for you to even imagine the difference.
A little revisionist history
When I was growing up, I got the impression that Robert E. Lee was the greatest general of the Civil War – who just happened to be on the losing side. I thought the war was fought over the issue of State’s Rights, that slavery in the South was a terrible reality, and that the southern states were more or less the victims of that war. I grew up with a focus on the period of reconstruction, the early post war years, and learned how meanly the North treated the South during this period.
The immensely popular 1939 movie “Gone with the Wind”, which I saw in 1956, played to this theme and celebrated the romance of the South. It also vilified the Union Army general William Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea as a disproportionately evil act of war. (War is evil. Sherman’s march was just war. Throughout the war, both the Confederate and Union armies destroyed everything in their paths that they couldn’t use or consume so that the enemy would not have these resources.)
I got the impression that the real tragedy of Lincoln’s assassination was the loss of his sympathetic leadership during the years of reconstruction – sympathy for the defeated white southerners, not Negroes. This is what I was taught: in school, out of school, in movies, in books, by implication, in conversations, because I certainly did not figure this out for myself.
This narrative which played down the importance of slavery at the center of the American Civil War made it much easier for the average white guy to accept the Negro race as an underclass. When I grew up, that was all I knew. Negroes were housekeepers, waiters, taxi drivers, blue collar workers, certain areas of music, and increasingly professional athletes. Consider this: Negroes were not part of the University of Alabama’s all white football team until an integrated 1970 USC football team clobbered Alabama. I remember this game as if it were yesterday. This gave Bear Bryant, the legendary Alabama coach, the evidence he had needed for years to convince both the school and political elite of Alabama that they must recruit top Negro players if they wanted to continue as a top program.
So, as an older adult, I had to undo these beliefs developed during my formative years and rewrite the script that was put into my brain. In fact, the War was entirely about slavery, a very small minority of southern landowners controlled the southern economy and slavery, and these oligarchs dragged the South into the civil war. Only a negligible fraction of the 95,000 Confederate combat deaths and the more than 165,000 other Confederate deaths, ever owned slaves. Robert E. Lee was fighting for these institutions and the preservation of wealth; and slavery was an entirely evil practice. The Southern States were in fact traitors to the United States. The generals who were trained at West Point and joined the Confederacy were traitors to their oath.
Ulysses S. Grant, the greatest Northern General and former US President (1869-1877), wrote in his memoir, which I read only recently, that the South captured control of the narrative after the war. George Orwell wrote in “1984” that he who controls the past, controls the future. As it turned out, the Southern leaders ended up controlling the past.
Lincoln was consistent about his terms for ending the Civil War: slavery must be eliminated, and the Southern States must rejoin the Union. In effect, Grant says that Lincoln offered the South almost a blank paper to write the rest of the terms. Lincoln’s detailed views were never known. Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The surrender agreement dealt only with the terms for ending active military conflict, though Lincoln’s minimum demands, as written above, were well known to Southern commanders and political leaders, and were implicitly agreed to.
Lincoln died six days later. The War was not over. The South did not have a centralized military command. Lee commanded the Army of Virginia. There was still one major army group operating under General Joseph Johnson, the Confederate Forces on the Western Front. These forces finally surrendered to General William Sherman on April 26, 1865, fourteen days after Lincoln was assassinated.
Andrew Johnson became President and initially he was highly antagonistic to the South. Johnson was a Southern US Senator who had remained loyal to the United States. But quickly thereafter he became sympathetic and favored very lenient treatment of the South. In the end, hard core Republicans asserted power and demanded a far harsher treatment of the Southern States during reconstruction. But these were complicated times. There was a lot more Northern sympathy for the Southern cause, even during the war, than most remember. And while Johnson was impeached by the Republican House, he was not convicted, and served out his term.
During this period, many Southern political leaders took seats in the US Congress. In the end, the White Southern men who started a war to defend evil and then took over control of the historical narrative afterwards, got off pretty easy. The “colored” were no longer slaves, no longer owned by white people; but after everything settled down, within a couple of years, the rights of Black Americans were barely elevated above the rights of slaves. The climb to equality was going to take much of the next 150 years, and still not be perfectly equal to all other groups.
In general, our Western view of history is linear, and the line generally slopes upwards — things keep getting better, certainly in the medium to long term. But in the case of post-Civil War reconstruction things turned around big time. When we think about Reconstruction, we need to note that things for black people went backwards for a very long time, arguably for around 80 years. Hell, President Woodrow Wilson even resegregated the Civil Service. So, it wasn’t just that the South captured the narrative, as Grant so powerfully describes; but that the river of progress was turned back upon itself — and for a long time. Realizing that for Black Americans it isn’t always “onwards and upwards” is a powerful lesson.
Reading Grant’s memoirs explained so many things to me that I had never before understood. Frankly, it was the first time I ever felt sympathy for removing statues of confederate generals. Shamefully, and I do mean shamefully, I had never really thought about it. Now it seems obvious. Why would you have statues to honor people who betrayed the Country, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The Civil War was not a quaint, romantic affair. 620,000 people died during the civil war and a recent study published in the NY Times has raised that number to 750,000. 58% of those who died fought for the preservation of the Union.
The people who led the South were fighting to protect the institution of slavery. In the United States and throughout most of the Western Hemisphere, the enslaved population were people (later called Negroes or Blacks), captured and transported from Africa. Moreover, the secessionists were also fighting to cut off from the United States many large territories which were acquired through blood and treasure during the years between the Country’s birth and 1860, for example, the Louisiana Purchase and Texas.
I suppose some of my contemporaries learned the true narrative of the Civil War in school – that is, had it truly drilled into their head that the war was about the utter immorality of slavery, that this immorality had lasting effects, and that these immoral attitudes were not confined to the South. But I sure did not – not in eight years of grammar school, four years of high school, nor four years at USC.
Back to my story
Let’s go back to the start. I grew up in a dominantly white environment. Full stop! I was taught the “N” word when I was six years old. By the way, I was taught other nasty words about other races, religions – especially Jews – and ethnic groups, including the Irish – my clan on my mother’s side. There was a slur word for about everyone. There were nasty jokes about most groups. Still are. This did not make it right, you understand. It made it normal.
Funny thing about white kids, most of us loved black artists, especially singers. Rock and Roll was built on the top of black music. At the age of 13, you do not think very much about the inconsistencies in your society. You are just living in it.
My direct introduction to race probably occurred at the age of 14, during my freshman year in high school. I thoughtlessly insulted another 14-year-old sitting next to me on a school bus. He challenged me to get off the bus, and then smacked me in the jaw before I knew he was seriously upset. I literally stood there with my mouth open, as a priest intervened. I didn’t understand what had happened. I did not fight back and then fell into a funk for the next day or so feeling like I had acted as a coward.
Later I learned this guy was as street trained as I was naïve and protected. One of my first really smart decisions had been not to fight back. He would have wiped the floor with me. His name was John Floyd and he happened to be a black 14-year-old boy from South Central LA. In time, the incident was forgotten. I cannot say we became best friends.
During my high school years, I interacted with black people in my day to day life. My high school, Loyola High, was located in a mixed-race neighborhood, which was a new experience for me, near Vermont and Pico Blvd about ten minutes from USC. But there were only a handful of black students, most of them friends of mine, on sports teams. Sports is the ultimate meritocracy. The better man runs harder or runs faster. My view of race was through a tiny prism – how I felt about a person.
My first realization of race as a wider issue occurred many years later, 1964, the summer immediately after I graduated from USC. While I knew black kids at USC, teammates on the track team, a person in a class here and there, I got through four years of college without any adult conversations about racial issues. I did not think much about it. No doubt, my tiny white person tribe regarded black people as from another tribe. I did not grow up with any black kids. None of my fraternity brothers were black.
But that alone did not specifically breed inequality or unfairness in me. Hey, when I wasn’t running track, SCUBA diving or deeply into my studies, I was into my guitar, playing folk songs and blues, and even writing songs. I studied guitar under a guy named Dave Cohen at the Ashgrove on Melrose in LA and even once sang at a Hootenanny at the Troubadour, around 1963. Black people owned the Blues.
But there surely was a felt difference on both sides. Moreover, you could not escape the reality that many adults saw race as a defining characteristic in how you treated other people and were very discriminatory in how they treated black people. But I was just trying to get through college and was far more interested in international relations than race relations. I do not remember having a deep conversation on this subject while an undergrad.
Then, a very close older friend of mine asked me to be a counselor at an interracial summer program LA County used to run for high school seniors called “Anytown USA.” It turned out that this week spent at Idyllwild, up on a mountain outside LA, was all about race relations. It changed my perspective. The professional teachers up there were great. The minister was Deacon Dan Towler, a black man, who in his younger years had been a star fullback for the LA Rams. I was an avid Rams fan. I knew about Deacon Dan.
I was thrust into a dialogue which was very foreign to me, but which deeply moved me. I helped guide and participated in dozens of hours of mixed-race discussions with high school seniors. I felt strange new emotions as I stood with large groups and sang “we shall overcome” and understood, for the first time, this civil rights folk anthem of the 60’s. It was really intense, and it was all new to me.
However, as I think about it now, it is impossible for an upscale white person to understand the significance of this anthem for black people. A black friend told me, “It’s like singing ‘Ain’t Nothing You Can Do’ by Bobby Blue Bland. It’s like trying to understand why ‘My Boon Companion’, ends up being ‘My Ace Boon Coon’, when spoken on the street. They mean the same thing, but context is everything.” (Truthfully, I am not hip enough to even know these songs. Maybe that’s the point.)
Five months later, having installed myself at the Maxwell Graduate School at Syracuse University, two of my graduate roommates and I spent an evening with our white landlord – I think his name was Mr. Jenks – and he invited us to listen to the entire “I have a dream” speech made by Martin Luther King at the Lincoln memorial five months earlier. I kind of knew who King was, and I might have been aware that there was a march on Washington, but that was about it. If you have not heard this address from start to finish, let me stress that it is a necessary part of your education. It made an impression on me. I was growing in awareness.
(No doubt King’s speech was one of the greatest speeches in history. However, were it not delivered with the cadence of a Black Baptist Preacher it might have fallen flat. My African American friend notes that “the entire civil rights movement is about this cadence. We shall overcome is so intertwined in the culture.”)
Like so many other 22-year-old people of my time, reaching for learning in graduate school, I read Michael Harrington’s classic account of American poverty, “The Other America”, which was my first real introduction to poverty in America.
My studies were focused on the management of international agencies, particularly those executing US foreign policy. As part of that, I spent the year 1965 in Pakistan, working for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). I lived in Lahore, a city in the north, in the Indus Basin. I traveled extensively throughout the Country. Then, on August 21, 1965, India attacked Pakistan about 30 miles from where I lived, and these two antagonists were at war once again. The war ragged very visibly, fifteen miles from my house, for about three weeks. An estimated 8000 people died. They fought the largest tank battle since WW II. Then, the USA and USSR intervened, and a cease fire occurred.
Later, I secured a temporary assignment to USAID, Thailand, and it was there that I had the experience I want to share with you. The Vietnam War was under way and I was visiting US air bases in Northeast Thailand, Udorn and Ubon, where F-4 Phantom jets were departing to bomb North Vietnam. It was unreal.
I took a hotel room north of Udorn in a town called Nong Khai, a few miles down the Mekong River and on the other side from Vientiane, the capital of Laos, in Northeast Thailand. I was told that the night before a coup d’état had changed the government of Laos.
This tiny room had a TV and I had it turned on. A very ordinary ad came on the screen. A man was describing the wonderful attributes of some kind of product. Suddenly I noticed something very unfamiliar. The actor was black. That January day, in 1966, in a foreign country, on the fringe of the Vietnam War, was the first time I had ever seen a black male acting in a TV ad.
My friend, Edgar Brown, said this: “On my block in Compton, around 7 PM on February 19, 1962, no one could be seen on the street. The reason was because Sammy Davis, Jr. was appearing on the Rifleman, a popular TV program. No one, in my household, and perhaps in my neighborhood had ever seen a Black man in a major television episode.”
More than two years later, after completing my master’s degree at Syracuse in International Public Administration, I decided to stay at Syracuse and start working on a doctorate in Economics. It was the Fall, 1966. I needed a job. I turned down an easy job and went to work for the Crusade for Opportunity, which was the local operation for what was known as the “Poverty Program,” a major Federal Government initiative of that time. The Syracuse operation was run by a black man, James Tillman, Jr., and majority staffed with black people.
I got caught up in the middle of a pollical squabble which had nothing to do with me and was about to lose my job. I sought out advice from Mr. Tillman and spent a Sunday afternoon, at his home, engaged in a wide-ranging discussion which helped me figure out how to save myself. He was the first black male authority figure I had ever encountered. He gave me some clues, I followed them, and I got transferred from a white woman boss to a black male boss, and all was well after that.
I left Syracuse in early 1967 and enrolled at UCLA to continue my studies in economics. I turned down a cash fellowship to take a paying job with a research institute which was doing some interesting work on an advanced budget and planning methodology called PPBS which I had studied at Syracuse. For shorthand, it was called Program Budgeting and the RAND Corporation, the original think tank, based in Santa Monica, California, had installed it into the US Defense Department during the Kennedy Administration. This led to my introduction to the world of law enforcement and specifically, policing in America.
I started working with a cop in the Los Angeles Police department, a Deputy Chief of Planning named Ed Davis, who became my friend, and who later became Chief of Police for LAPD. The goal was to help the LAPD install program budgeting. This year of engagement was also my exposure to police work.
A year or so later, during the summer of 1968, I found myself riding in the back seat of New York Police Department (NYPD) patrol cars on Friday nights with a companion from the RAND Corporation, observing how cops actually worked. I was recruited to become part of a RAND team, hired by NY Mayor John Lindsey, to help implement Program Budgeting into the NYPD, and other agencies. One of my RAND colleagues suggested that I might want to understand what police experienced and he invited me on these patrol rides. This was two months after the race riots, which followed the assassination of Dr. King, hit New York City pretty hard. Parts of the City, for example, the 72nd police precinct in Brownsville, Brooklyn, looked pretty grim. We patrolled that area.
We saw the good and the bad. I walked the streets with a great cop one night, a man who left his car to interact with the community, probably somewhere in Harlem. All the people we talked with were black people. His actions were very rare and seemed appreciated. Now they call that Community Policing.
On another night, my RAND friend Joel and I raced behind two cops running up the stairs of a tenement house, guns drawn, because of a family dispute call – in those days, the most dangerous call a cop could answer. That summer we were introduced to the Tactical Patrol Force, the TPF, which defined the evening’s effectiveness by the number of arrests they made. That wasn’t particularly cool, even then. That was part of the bad.
One night I was assigned to ride with some cops who worked out of a precinct in Harlem, located around 126th St, a predominantly black neighborhood, and I hailed a cab at about 5:30 in the evening, in full sun light. I got in the cab and tersely told the driver, a white man, where I wanted to go. He stopped the cab and said he couldn’t go there. I pushed back hard. He said, I have a family and I am afraid to go there. I got out of the cab and found another.
That night I ended the ride early, at about 1:00 am, somewhere on a main street in Harlem, around 142nd Street. There wasn’t much going on and I had things to do (Normally, we went back to the precinct and hailed a return cab from there.) I asked the officers to just drop me off on the corner. They hesitated but I told the cops I was fine, just take off.
Within a matter of minutes, a cab pulled up, and as if I were a seasoned New Yorker, I lunged for the back door and my hand and another hand grabbed the door at the same time. The white visitor to Harlem and the Black man looked at each other. Quickly, I said “Let’s share it.” The smile secured the agreement. We were both heading to the upper West Side. We talked casually for a moment and made a quick connection. Then he said, “Jack, it is strange to see you up here.” I had to think twice to get what he meant. I told him why I had been in the area because I did not want him to think I was disrespecting his community. Thus, began for me the intersection of policing and race.
That summer I read “the Auto-Biography of Malcom X.” I guess, influenced by my naïve white guy perspective, I regarded him as a Black Muslim thug. To my credit, though, I did pick up the book. My perspective was turned upside down. It was a remarkably insightful read and left me with a lasting life impression. His assassination occurred six weeks before that of Martin Luther King, by a Black Muslim ideologue. The Black Community suffered two horrible losses in about three weeks.
During the next few years I also provided consulting services to smaller police departments, but also to the California State Correctional System, one time at a low security containment facility.
I completed my doctoral degree in Public Administration from USC in May 1971. By the time I entered active military duty in the fall of 1971, starting my branch school at Ft Belvoir as a First Lieutenant, at the age of 29, my expertise was in two subjects: law enforcement and Program Budgeting. I was never to revisit those two subjects again.
Beyond that time, I have lived out my life with beliefs that were formed through these experiences and hundreds of others a bit too normal to be worthy of comment, with one exception. I owe to Eugene Washington, the excellent columnists for the Washington Post, my first real insight into the fears that black parents have about the dangers their children experience from the local police force. It was an in-depth discussion which took place on Morning Joe, an early morning TV political discussion program. It introduced me to “the talk”. This was only two years ago.
But, here’s the hard fact. You would never want me to be your model for color blind race relations. I have too many scars. I had to try to wipe clean so much of what I had learned from my community, sometimes thoughts that were deeply ingrained, a script that had been developed in my brain since childhood. Starting in that summer of 1964, I had to figure out a new script and then transcribe it to my scarred brain tissue.
There were many white people more empathetic and intelligent on race than me. But there were also many white people who did not grow. I evolved. (Of course, there were also very bad people who are not worth the time to comment.) You are hearing a lot about systemic racism. I have just described what it might look like.
Now, I want to comment on the present state of affairs.
George Floyd’s death was a terrible injustice. Recognizing this is not the real problem. Common decency would lead you to this conclusion, and common decency isn’t actually owned by either side. I don’t think there is any disagreement in the Country about this among emotionally well people.
The importance of thorough, non-compromised jurisprudence.
But, video or not, we have a process in this country for determining whether a crime has been committed. That process is now under way and it is not morally correct to pre-judge the outcome, even when it seems obvious. Trust the process! The same process should apply to the two white guys, racing from a store during the riot in Santa Monica, jumping on two motorcycles, carrying a stolen surfboard under each shoulder. Race relations had nothing to do with their behavior.
If there is an exceptional character to the United States it is the US Constitution, the basis of both our system of laws and our aspirations. In my life experience, many non-Americans recognize this more than do some Americans. Americans take it for granted. Stomp on the US Constitution and you stomp on that which makes the United States exceptional.
But, to dig deeper, a black friend of mine also noted that all Americans have not always been treated equally under our constitution. He suggested that we review the Dred Scott decision. In 1857, the Supreme Court justices ruled that the Constitution did not assume black people were equal citizens of the United States. The Constitution, along with the interpretation and enforcement of all laws depends on the people that are given the power of interpretation. Even today, it can be a challenge for a black person to get the exact level of fairness from the judicial system that is rendered to white person, in similar circumstances.
Listening: It goes both ways
It is absolutely true that American law enforcement needs to “listen” to all communities, and especially the communities of the less advantaged which are disproportionately communities of color. Throughout my lifetime, these communities were disproportionately comprised of Black Americans. The police need to understand at a gut level what is understood by about every black American as their lived experience, namely, for a teenage black kid, an encounter with police can go very badly. Black parents are telling white parents, “our children are way too frequently in harm’s way, and you don’t understand.”
And the situation is equally bad for black adults. Tim Scott, a US Republican Senator, said on TV recently that in his 18 years on the Hill he has been stopped by police over 20 times for extremely minor incidents – a busted taillight, making a lane change without using the clicker, etc.
What we have here is a clear example of systemic racism as defined by one serious group:
Racism is what makes us see the “other” with suspicion or to attribute negative characteristics to an entire group of people. This evil manifests itself in our individual thoughts, and also in the workings of our society itself.
We are a people of tribes
For many of us, our brains have been wired with instinctive discrimination. The assignment of a set of characteristics on one group by another is not confined to whites with respect to blacks. It is also blacks with respect to whites, brown with respect to blacks and whites, Christians with respect to Jews, Jews and Muslims with respect to Christians, people who live in New York with respect to people who live in Arizona, college graduates with respect to high school graduates, men with respect to women in positions of authority, and so forth. Systemic discrimination or racism is very tribal.
The US Constitution
The formation of the United States was no easy task. Because instinctive human values cannot be trusted, because people gravitate toward power over others, because normal people put their own self-interests before others, our Founders chose to build a new Country around a set of values and principles that could push back on human instincts. They framed The Declaration of Independence in 1776 around these values, fought the British between 1775-1783, a dominant world power, and so agitated the British that they quit. The War for Independence had been won. Then the real work began.
Madison, Hamilton and Jay went to work articulating the dimensions of these principles in 85 essays called the Federalist Papers, which they wrote in 1787-88. Meanwhile, 55 delegates from the 13 colonies assembled and created a first draft of the US Constitution which was completed in 1787. You need to know, and give some thought to the fact, that 22 of these 55 delegates were slave owners.
It took them another year to get the votes for ratification. It was an extremely tough negotiation. Trade-offs and compromises made it happen. The constitution was put into operation in 1789, the year George Washington took office.
Even then they were not done. A condition for ratification was an agreement on a set of amendments to the Constitution that we call the Bill of Rights, to be taken up by the first Congress. Madison, one of the writers of the Federalist essays, drafted the Bill of Rights.
A group of people had agreed to found and develop a society of people bound by a set of laws that explicitly pushed back on human instincts. All people were created equal. All people were to be given an even shot. All people were to be free. Each person’s self-interest was to be protected by a set of laws. The laws would dictate fairness.
The Founders were men. Men dominated the contemporary world in 1789. Women did not have equal rights. The Founders were white because white males dominated Europe, the ancestral home of origin for most of the Founders. They had the power. So, while they wrote of “we the people”, they probably didn’t realize what a profound agreement they were making. Yes, an existential inconsistency existed, which was the practice of slavery. It is also the case that universal voting rights were not part of the new Country. Women’s rights were pretty much the same as they were in Europe, certainly not equal to men.
The truly amazing thing about the US Constitution is that a group of white males created a pact that would limit the breadth of their personal power. In doing so, they installed a living breathing set of laws that would increasingly be generalized across all humans, all races, and all religions and diminish the power of white males. Their imperfections as human beings were quite average. But at this moment in history they stepped up and did something truly extraordinary.
My reading of history tells me that the Founders were particularly aware that slavery had no place in a Country intending to live by these rules. But the 33 delegates who did not own slaves knew that they did not have the votes to form a Country free of slavery. The majority who led the process knew that this was going to be a two-step process. The end of slavery in a united states must come later. They also thought that when that happened it might need to be solved in blood, according to some historians. The Civil War proved them right.
Within the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson writes…” We hold…. all men are created equal”, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights the Founders set a very high hurdle rate for human behavior and fairness, standards not present anywhere. We are all still trying to live up to that standard.
For many black people today, these statements do not solve a continuing problem, which is the belief, encoded into the hearts and minds of many white people, that they are fundamentally superior.
As a black friend said to me, “I understand inaction from whites on this question because for a white person there is no upside to the extension of equality for all.
“I do not blame white people for this belief. How could they think any other way? From the moment they exit the birth canal the programming begins, and does not cease, until their last breath is taken.
“Conversely, this belief is also held by Blacks. Because, from the moment they exit the birth canal, the programming begins. And, it is unceasing. This inferiority complex (this complex of inferiority) is both understandable and lamentable.
“These belief systems permeate our society.”
It is important to understand that this is about power. White males did not invent and do not own discrimination. But, during my lifetime, white males in the United States continued to enjoy a power advantage over other tribes. Such power is not given up easily.
Not much changed for black Americans until the middle of the 20th Century, when American leaders of all races came to realize that we needed to further spell out the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and other amendments because our people were not getting it. So, in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, as I wrote above. And then an amendment to that act focusing on fair housing. And then a Voting Rights Act and at least three amendments to that Act. And many more such pieces of legislation. But even today we have groups working hard to suppress the ability of other groups to vote. People are very tribal.
Slavery
The ancestral history of Black Americans is unique among all races and religions who came to the United States. I am not an expert on this subject. I write as an informed lay person. But I believe black history is different. Their ancestors were kidnapped from their native land, bound in chains, thrown onto ships with unspeakable living conditions, and hauled off to America. (One of the requirements for this was the active involvement of black African men from rival black tribes. Slavery, after all, was an ancient practice.) Those who survived the trip were enslaved, incarcerated victims for the rest of their lives. Their descendants had no rights.
The first kidnapped men from Africa hit the shore of the New World about 400 years ago. The first area to legalize slavery in the Colonies was New England, in 1641. The State of Massachusetts was also the first state in the US to ban slavery, in 1781. By 1865, almost eight generations of Black people had lived under slavery in the South.
By the start of the Civil War there were about 4.0 million enslaved blacks in the South out of 12 million Southerners. That is, one-third of the population was slaves. In general, this group had been systematically made deficient in every factor that affects the ability of a tribe to advance in a society: family structure, health, diet, job training and literacy. This kind of multigenerational systemic discrimination against a specific group did not happen to poor white people who came to America. This did not happen to Spanish immigrants. Or Mexicans. Or the Irish, Or Jews. Or the Chinese. Or Italians. Or anybody else.
Yes, all immigrant groups have faced big challenges in getting assimilated into America and getting their shot. So, when I was growing up it was pretty tough being a Mexican in Los Angeles. Now Latinos are the largest population group in LA County and leaders in politics. My sense is that it seems to take a generation or two for different tribes to develop enough collective force to get a fair shot. But there is a huge difference between being an immigrant and being a slave.
Tribalism is not just about racial groups or religious groups. If your group is unique in any way it may have tribal characteristics. Tribes collect power. Tribes use power both to protect themselves and to expand their base of power. These days, the term Wall Street describes a tribe as much as a street.
I have written these words in relationship to a specific moment to make the case that this is complicated and if you seek out the simple answers you will probably contribute very little to solving the problem.
What about the Police?
The brains of police officers have tribal wiring just like everyone else. I would think that the major wiring is that of a cop because increasingly police officers are people of many races and also women as well as men. But, of course, any individual cop is going to have his or her own wiring derived from their own communities and life experience.
It is not easy to be a cop, especially a frontline cop. Since the Vietnam War, our society better understands PTSD as it relates to combat soldiers. But we don’t generally assign that symptom across police and probably should. (We know from books and film that too many active and retired cops “eat their guns”. In 2019, 228 current or retired cops committed suicide.) Perhaps the PTSD factor needs to be brought into the discussion.
Who should be a cop?
One thing is sure. We want to keep certain people out of our police departments: racists, the mentally ill, people with deep insecurities, people with anger management issues, and people with deficient education, especially those with a very narrow world view. Standards and processes of recruiting need to be thoroughly examined.
We need to understand what the market demands in terms of salary and benefits to recruit from a body of people that excludes those with the personal characteristics listed above. Like so much of life, money is part of the problem.
We need to know a lot more than we do about what really happens when a police officer pulls his weapon and fires it. Police Departments monitor firearm discharges, but the processes vary considerably among different departments.
We need to find the funding to support a rigorous analysis of this problem by a research group such as RAND to find out the root causes underlying the killing of any person, of any race, at the hands of a police officer. Is a bad police officer at the center of the cause? Was deficient training, weak policies, or failure to reinforce policies a root cause? Did racial profiling or any other kind of profiling compromise sound policing policy and contribute to the incident?
Systemic Racism
For many black people, it is easy to understand systemic racism because, to their thinking, “it does not exist for any group in America other than black people.” Systemic discrimination no longer exists against women. Women run some of the most important companies, or divisions inside Fortune 500 firms. Jews have substantial representation in the upper echelons of banking, sports and entertainment (owner level). Even homosexuals are at the top echelons of American enterprise. All these groups, except the Jews, used the principles established in the civil rights movement to attain those positions
I think you can break open the term systemic discrimination into at least two parts. The first part is unfettered, active discrimination practiced by racists and including person’s with other deep prejudices, such as antisemitic people or men who assign limited roles to women. The second part is a kind of profiling, assigning to different groups certain behavior independent of the actual behavior of an individual. Earlier I discussed this under the label passive discrimination.
Humans profile constantly. In the moment, when confronting a circumstance, our brains access our memory banks to find something similar that can guide in an instant how we react.
During the 1960’s, when I first got involved in police work, more cops died responding to a family dispute than just about any other call. Why? Because they profiled the call. It’s a family argument. What could be the problem? This is profiling.
Profiling is another term for making an assumption unverified by facts. My drill sergeant in US Army basic training went ballistic any time a soldier said, “I assumed…” and drilled us with the ASSUME rule: when you assume “you make an ass out of you and me.”
.
According to one study, 40% of police deaths between 2010-2016 occurred on what is now called domestic violence calls. Even after 60 years, without adequate training a police officer is still likely to make assumptions, to profile, in these circumstances. For example, to assume that the woman is probably the victim. Most of the time she is. But sometimes, not. Or, to assume if the man has cuts and bruises everywhere, the woman must be at fault. But, if the man was sitting on the woman’s chest and she was fighting for every breath, the man might have scratches and bruises everywhere.
Assumptions are always a thoughtless shorthand and assuming anything about a serious conflict situation can be life threatening. Profiling – racial, sexual, economic, educational – is always a very lazy way to deal with a conflict situation, whether it is a choice to hire or promote someone or to pull a weapon on someone.
How do you diminish the tendency to profile? I think the soundest answer to this question is training – high quality training.
So, to repeat, there are bad people everywhere – in your school, your church, your business. There are true racists who define a person’s soul by the color of their skin. There are also unstable people, emotionally injured people, dangerous people, people with a dominance complex who end up in jobs everywhere, including police departments. Is it possible that too many of these kinds of people end up in police departments? This needs to be studied, answered and addressed with real changes in recruitment methods, processes, and guidelines. There is no room for people like this in our police departments.
A Cop’s World
But, let’s be honest, an encounter with police officers who have none of these characteristics can still be an abnormal threat to Black Americans – and to other people of color, and even white people. (According to a recent column in the Arizona Republic, so far this year there have been 14 unarmed black victims of a fatal police shooting. But there have also been 25 unarmed white victims.)
We need to understand a lot more than we do about why this is so, starting with the fact that police officers have deadly force strapped to their hip; and they have used that force over the past five years to fatally shoot on average about 1000 civilians annually, the vast majority of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. (Same AZ Rep column, and Washington Post data Base). It needs to be rigorously studied.
Let’s push down on this beyond our comfort factor. If you give anyone a gun, with an implicit right to use it, and a uniform, you’ve got a risk. Add to that, a culture of policing that is, too often, full of corruption, justified by low wage rates and you have magnified the problem. (Check out Don Winslow’s books “The Force” or “The Cartel” to learn about underpaid cops and corruption. Both contain facts – written as fiction.) Add to that a “tactical culture” spawned by giving PEACE officers surplus military gear post Iraq, and you can turn a good man into a situational assassin.
My impressions about systemic racism
Consider only this: frontline police work is dangerous. Police Officers live every day with a degree of danger that most people don’t ever experience. Police officers can be fearful just like the rest of us. Cops make about ten million arrests per year. Cops are often targeted by enemies of policing. In 2018, 55 police officers were killed in felonious acts and about another 50 died on the job, mostly in auto accidents.
We need to understand the world of policing from the perspective of a cop. Police Officers monitor signals of danger just like a combat soldier. We need to learn more about those signals. Some of those signals are wise, built on experience. Some are careless, built on racial profiling, and dangerous assumptions.
We also need to consider realities that contribute to the problem. Jason Riley, a black columnist for the Wall Street Journal, wrote this:
So long as blacks are committing more than half of all murders and robberies while making up only 13% of the population, and so long as almost all of their victims are their neighbors, these communities will draw the lion’s share of police attention. Defunding the police, or making it easier to prosecute officers, will only result in more lives lost in those neighborhoods that most need protecting.
From the same column in the Arizona Republic written by Heather MacDonald come these crime statistics:
In New York City in 2018, 73% of shooting victims were Black, though Black residents comprise only 24% of the City’s population. Looking at crime, African Americans between the ages of 10 and 34 die from homicide at 13 times the rate of white Americans.
Many good people may find these quotes objectionable. But the data speaks. And a lazy cop might build his beliefs around this kind of data leading to careless and truly tragic decisions, sometimes with horrible consequences.
(A caution: all numbers and statistics need to be used only to give you a sense of things because statistics on the same subject can vary significantly depending on the source. This includes all statistics and numbers used in this essay.)
We will never learn a thing if we simply start with a slogan – systemic racism – and then hang all of our concerns on that term. We need to break this down a bit further and consider two dimensions of the problem. The first, mentioned earlier, is associating people, “other” than ourselves, with group wide negative attributes. The second, acting on these beliefs by denying “the other” equal rights and opportunity within the community.
The first of these two dimensions is present within law enforcement. Crime is not proportional to racial composition. The cops are not responsible for this situation. Our society bears this burden. (We will further address society’s obligation below.) But the cops must do their jobs in the society they are given. And they are affected by that society.
This problem is complicated and nuanced or we would have solved it by now. There is also an important distinction among race acting as a factor in the execution of police work, race being a factor in the hiring and promotion of police officers, or race being a factor in our society.
A white, female columnist in the Arizona Republic, not the woman quoted above, wrote disparagingly about the Phoenix Police Chief who “gloatingly” said, reflecting on three of her cops taking a knee in front of protesters, “images like these reflect our willingness to listen and work toward solutions.”
The columnist pointed out that the Phoenix Police Department has the “deadliest record of police shootings in the Nation.” For her, a knee wasn’t enough. At the same time, the police chief, a black American woman, was sincerely seeking answers of her own. I don’t think a black American woman is condoning systemic racism on her job site, but that doesn’t mean that it is absent.
A friend of mine posted on Facebook the words of an American poet by the name of Scott Woods. This statement resonated with me as having the truth and perspective we all might find helpful:
The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one
manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So, while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.
Racism/discrimination is directed at black people, Mexicans, other Latino people, poor white people, Jews, Evangelical Christians, Mormons, poor Asians, immigrants from about any country and so forth. That is, we all come from tribes or clans, based on race, religion, social status, ethnicity, political allegiance and so forth. The ultimate tribe might be the upper 1% economically, which cuts across all of these other tribes.
The current crisis is focused on the killing of a black man by a white police officer. Or, is it focused on the killing of a black man by a police officer? Among the members of the Los Angeles Police department, 44% are Latino, 34% are white, 11.2% are black, and 9.6% are Asian. Over 100 different countries can be found among the members of the New York City Police department. (The racial composition of the Country is, more or less, 75% white and 13% black. Among ethnic groups, Hispanics, including white Hispanics, comprise about 18%.)
Poverty is such a contributing factor.
I think we also need to recognize that the economic situation within these disadvantaged neighborhoods contributes mightily to the difficulty of law enforcement. While poverty in America may not look or be experienced like poverty in India, it’s still poverty of expectations. It may not look like the poverty described by Michael Harrington 58 years ago. But it probably still feels like it.
An African American friend, who was raised in Compton, writes: “I remember when we were not economically impoverished. I remember when black men had decent jobs at General Motors in Southgate, and at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber company on Central Avenue in the heart of the Black Community. So much of the pain within the black community starts as an economic problem.
The several generations in front of you made some very serious attempts to address this problem with Federal programs that, first, backed up people who worked, such as unemployment insurance, Social Security, Disability Insurance and Medicare for older people; and, second, programs that put a floor under folks who had a hard time finding steady work, such as food stamps, Medicaid, housing, supplemental Income, Head Start, Earned Income Tax Credits, and so forth. Only Social Security existed before the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty, 1963-1968. The other programs started when my generation came to voting age. So, what is your generation going to vote into law? Are you also going to rid the country of the programs that have failed?
Some would argue that these programs didn’t fail. They just have not been allowed to work. After 200 years of slavery, Jim Crow, etc. 20 years of affirmative action and other programs is just not long enough.
The Federal Government has established anywhere from 80 to 120 different programs that reallocate resources from taxpayers to people in need. Outright cash transfers of close to $400 billion are made annually in a package of programs generally referred to as welfare. Almost $300 billion of that goes directly to families and children. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) reduces the taxes of struggling families by over $60 billion a year. Medicaid pays for one-fifth of all personal health care expenditures in the United States, affecting more than 75 million poor and lower income people, an amount close to one-half trillion dollars. In addition, there exist thousands of private charities, religious and non-religious, that spend billions and billions of dollars helping the poor. The United Way, Salvation Army, and St. Jude’s alone spend over $6 billion annually.
In effect, every year, about one trillion dollars of tax revenue is allocated to these types of programs out of a Federal Budget (2020) of $4.829 trillion. Notwithstanding white advantage, the largest percentage of non-elderly Medicaid and also programs that supplement food, such as food stamps, go to white Americans, more or less around 40%. African Americans make up, more or less, about 22% of these recipients.
No, we have not eliminated poverty. But, at the same time, much of the world Harrington described no longer exists in the United States. As I wrote above, poverty is also about impoverished expectations, especially in a consumer goods and services driven society. A single person making under $13,000 per year falls below the official poverty line. A four-person family making under $26,000 per year is under the Federal poverty guidelines. About 20% of all US households live below the poverty line. About 20% of the Federal Government Budget is dedicated to programs which fight against poverty. 22% of the Black population lives below the poverty line and 9% of whites.
The Police and Poverty
The American dream, so to speak, is way beyond the lower 20% of Americans. And that distance creates frustration, anger, despair, depression, sadness, and many other emotions. And of all the public service agencies, the one which is most likely to come into contact with a poverty-stricken citizen at an emotional breaking point is the police. This is just the way it is. And that encounter is more likely to be with a black person than a white person because Black families are 2 and ½ times more likely to be caught below the poverty line than are white families.
Police are the most likely public service agency to come into contact with citizens who are under some form of stress. When the police are called, something is going wrong. The LA Times reported that the LAPD responded to one million 911 calls last year and only 9% of those were originally thought to be reports of violence. For example, domestic disturbances are not logged initially as violent encounters, though, as we discussed, they can become so. Nor are calls relating to mental illness. Nor are traffic stops, traffic accidents, or DUIs.
So, as we look forward, maybe your generation can think more creatively and effectively about this problem. We tried, and according to many, have failed. And no matter what you accomplish, as Jesus said, the poor will be with you always. There will always be a lower 20%. The conditions confronted by the lower 20% depend, in the final analysis, on the “hearts of men.”
Perhaps we need to think much harder about why we look to the police to initially handle seemingly nonviolent calls for help. But before we jump to conclusions, we also need to acknowledge that most everyone in stress thinks first to call the police.
You need to take another look at social justice.
So, the mission is to make that lower 20% group much more dynamic, that is, to create the avenues of movement in and out of this group; and in and out of the group above that, and above that. We will know that the mission to eradicate systemic racism has made great progress when the percentage of the poor from racial groups, ethnic groups, and for that matter, about any other major tribe is, more or less, the same percentage of that group throughout our total society. Or when we have hard evidence that factors other than race are the cause.
You need to make sure that the nation’s laws are applied to all groups with perfect equality. Way too frequently, this is not the case. Too frequently, money seems to buy justice, or what is represented as justice. Unfairness is a disease of mankind. So, we need to be evaluating our judicial system on a regular basis to make it fairer, and to keep it fair.
You also need to make sure that our Nation’s tax system can meet the equity test, that is, to be preponderantly a progressive tax system, with the more well off paying disproportionately more in taxes. This is how our society has defined tax fairness for a very long time.
But today, about 36% of the Federal Government’s tax receipts, about $1.25 trillion, are collected from the payroll tax, which fails any test of progressiveness. Even worse, the upper 10 percentile pay a lower percentage of their total income to the payroll tax than do the other 90%, who all pay the same percentage of their total income into this tax. In the past, we did not have such stark inequities in our tax system. Now they occur all too frequently. (Inequities is an economic term defined by scholars of Public Finance.)
Initially, 1930’s, the payroll tax was created to fund social security and then, later, mid 1960’s, to help fund government run medical programs. It was always a fixed percentage of the income exposed to the tax. Over the years, the income level just crept up and up to expose more income to the tax. Now, for 90% of all workers, the tax is on 100% of their payroll income. It was never meant to be this way.
Fairness is defined by a progressive tax system, one which implements a value called ability to pay, where those with more wealth have more ability and, hence, more responsibility to pay for the government. Our tax system today is probably less fair than it used to be.
You need to make sure that the kids and grandkids of your generation all get an equal opportunity to an adequate education. The quickest road out of poverty is a quality education. Without it, there really isn’t a road.
And of course, we always need to make sure that our poorer families are fed, clothed, housed, and medically treated in a fair and just way. In a rich country, this is a measure of social justice.
Is there an excuse for rioting, destruction of property and other types of criminal behavior?
My African American friend writes: “There is no excuse for burning down property and looting. This is just stupid. “
But I have been told by some in your generation that this is complicated. Obviously, my generation doesn’t think so. So, let’s confront the subject.
Let us recognize first that actions have consequences. Do you agree? Or do you believe that you should be free from the consequences of your actions?
Let us recognize that in our Country the societal interest in our actions is focused on compliance with our laws. Our most important laws are aligned with The Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not destroy your neighbor’s goods. Do not injure your neighbor. These principles are inculcated into our legal system.
So, if you break these laws there will be consequences. If you break them on behalf of what you regard as a higher moral purpose, you will still suffer consequences until society catches up with your moral purpose, if it ever does.
Even when you are protesting nonviolently you may face consequences from decent law enforcement people just trying to do their jobs to maintain civil order.
And when you confront prejudice, fight for your rights, and threaten the power position of your adversaries, the consequences can be grave. John Lewis was brutally beaten as he walked across the Edmund Pettis Bridge, March 7, 1965, in Selma, Ala, protesting for Civil Rights. Decades later, even Southern Society caught up with Lewis’s beliefs and he was buried with honors earlier this week, after serving his country as a Congressman for decades.
In John Lewis’s case, the legal system broke down.
But in the first two cases, you will find yourself confronting a legal system managing a conflict as best it can because each individual may have his/her unique set of beliefs about what is important. So, the agreement, the social contract, is based on the greatest good for all of the people.
Let us also recognize that protesters may or may not be occupying the high moral ground. This all depends on where truth is present. Several weeks ago, I attended a Sunday Mass service which was stopped, and then ended, because a family of five people refused on principle to wear face covering for COVID-19 protection. The leader, a woman, came to the alter in front of everyone to attempt to read her manifesto. The priest’s demands were fixed. No mask, no Mass. She returned to the back of the church and stood defiantly against the wall, the five of them wearing no mask. The good father refused to continue the Mass on the grounds of protecting the other congregants. Everyone went home.
Let us distinguish between protests and political revolutions. Protests might cause laws to be changed, behaviors to be outlawed, and remedial actions to be taken. Revolutions change entire governments and also entire systems of government. There are enormous consequences to political revolutions. The Founders would all have been executed if they had lost the Revolutionary War.
But, do our laws, especially our criminal code, need revision?
Let’s start this discussion with a single fact. The US has +/- 700 incarcerated people per 100,000 citizens, the highest per capita rate in the world. We are also the highest in absolute numbers, with well over 2.2 million jailed people. Over half of the Countries examined in a comprehensive study have fewer than 150 per 100,000 in jail. How can this be? According to the NAACP, African Americans are incarcerated at a rate that is 5X white people.
Does the US have more crime that other modern nation states? The data are mixed and complicated. US leads the world in gun violence. But, with respect to murders per 100,000, only three US cities made a top 50 list of world cities: St Louis (9), Baltimore (11), and Detroit (34). (Mexico had nineteen cities, and Tijuana is the murder capital of the world.) In another study, which recorded countries against a crime index, The US ranked 50th. For context, Sweden ranked 52nd, France 54th, and UK 65th. I do not believe that the US has disproportionately more crime than the rest of the world.
I believe firmly that laws should be enforced. Again, the US Constitution cannot stand tall if our citizens are given the right to decide which laws should be honored. If we have bad laws, put your energy against getting them changed. Consequently, a great deal more effort needs to be put against laws that are destructive or can’t pass a cost-benefit-analysis for enforcement.
These past weeks I have been struck by the fact that few politicians discussed specific remedies to address the issues that dominated the thinking of the protesters. I think that the politicians, as they examine policing in America, cannot just focus on how laws are enforced because even good cops can get frustrated and bitter from needing to enforce bad laws. For example, passing a bill that gets people out of jail is a sound idea. A sounder idea is getting rid of laws that unnecessarily put people into jail.
Right at the top, as one of you told me, the war on drugs might serve as an example of something that has gone very wrong in both our society and with regard to law enforcement. In Portugal they decriminalized all drugs. Today, Portugal has the lowest rate of addiction in Europe and the United States. Why? The lesson of prohibition is instructive.
At the same time, there are huge moral issues at the heart of the drug problem. Drug poisoning is the leading cause of death for people under the age of 50. It is the leading cause of injury related deaths in the United States. Between 67,000 and 72,000 Americans die every year from dug poisoning. Controlled prescription drugs are responsible for most drug involved overdose deaths.
But there are also huge consumer demand issues. We have huge and murderous drug cartels in Mexico, Colombia and other parts of the world because we have huge demand for illicit drugs in the United States.
A Few Facts on Illicit Drugs
First, what are we talking about? We are focusing on powder cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana, crack cocaine, heroin, heroin/fentanyl, and oxycodone. About 64 people die every day from the misuse of these drugs. Comparatively speaking, 45 people every day commit suicide. 19 people are murdered. 40 are killed in car accidents. Prescription drugs are responsible for most drug involved overdose deaths.
Marijuana is the most commonly used illicit drug. It is also, probably, the least dangerous.
Because illicit drugs kill so many people it is recognized as a public health hazard. Governments at all levels, and of various types – law enforcement, health, public health, mental health – spend enormous amounts of money fighting against illicit drug use and its consequences. Consider:
- The Federal Budget request for Federal Agencies fighting drugs was about $30 billion in 2019.
- The drug Policy Alliance says the US spends overall well over $50 billion a year against illicit drug use and its consequences.
- Another source estimated that alcohol and drug addiction cost the US economy over $600 billion per year.
- Of the 72,000 deaths in 2017, it is estimated that about 68% of those were tied back to opioids.
- Drug deaths are the leading cause of death in adults less than 50 years old.
- The US is 5% of the world’s population, and 80% of world opioid use.
- Of the $50+ billion that taxpayers are spending to enforce drug laws, it is estimated that we are now spending more on treatment and recovery than on law enforcement and international interdiction.
We are involved in a great experiment right now with regard to de-criminalizing marijuana. In the end, will society be better off for having done this? You’ll find out. Don’t be too sure you know the answer. Wait for the data. If so, it will have been a worthwhile adjustment. Further, we need to examine options other than law enforcement for stopping/controlling/managing the use of other drugs.
You might also spend some time thinking about why so many people in the US choose to fry their brains on a regular basis, to inject some kind of artificial life booster into their system.
I will start with myself. I regularly use alcohol. I have a beer or a glass of wine every day. I like the way it makes me feel. So, I have said it. It loosens me up. It also makes me talk too much, if that is even possible.
But even with alcohol I have my concerns. Generally, I don’t drink alcohol during Lent. I do this to remind myself that it is Lent, a time to take personal stock. But I also do it to train myself that I don’t need Alcohol. Not a bad thing to do when you have family members who have become dependent on alcohol, and who have been hurt by that dependence.
Public Memorials
Let me comment on one final subject: the tearing down of statues of past heroes who, when judged by today’s standards, might not have been so heroic.
First, be careful about measuring anyone from history against your standards. Jesus said, don’t worry about the sliver in your brother’s eye; worry about the board in your eye. As a general life principle, judging others can be highly problematic.
Second, no person of great historical importance is free of sin. You don’t become great unless you leave many things unattended or inadequately thought out or acted on. The great names of history are not necessarily the great names before God.
Therefore, decisions about public memorials need to be thought out. You might start thinking about why the memorial was created. For example, during the 60’s, a highly volatile time, statues were installed at Gettysburg which portrayed the civil war struggle as being more about State’s Rights than slavery. Who pushed for these installations? Southern Politicians who were more focused on the past than the future. Who agreed? Other politicians who wanted their vote. Rather suspicious purpose, wouldn’t you say?
So, I think each case needs to be thought out very carefully, and remember, you will be measured by the way you measure others.
Honoring Confederate Military heroes seems to have been much more about placating southern political leaders – to get votes, of course – than truly honoring an individual. This would be easy for me. Remove all of the statues of Southern military commanders and Southern political leaders who were flat out traitors to the United States and who were truly defending an evil system. Sorry: Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Longstreet, Pickett, Bragg, and so forth, many of whom were trained at West Point and knew better. Put them into museums, where a proper narrative can be written about the statue, its context, and its meaning.
You might say, why not destroy them? I say, we do not want to erase these memories. We learn as much from the bad as we do from the good. Some of these people were good people who could not escape an evil script lodged into their brain. Who am I to judge?
Regarding military bases, yes, I would rename all of them and update them to modern military heroes.
What about great leaders who made great contributions but who were imperfect figures? Let’s start with Washington and Jefferson. They were born and reared in the Southern economy which depended on slavery. This is how they were wired. But, as we wrote above, at the same time, they conceived of a Nation of free people and risked their lives to make it come into being. They created the American Constitution which is at the heart of American greatness. It has been amended by a majority of the people in an open vote many times to keep it up to date with contemporary values.
So, these people gave us a start. Generally speaking, we have done a pretty good job with their model. It was an imperfect bargain. It was up to us and is up to us to maximize the opportunity we were given. It is still not perfect, and probably never will be.
There is only one statue I revere. It is that of Lincoln, in the Lincoln memorial. I revere it because I was so deeply touched by the words above the statue:
“IN THIS TEMPLE AS IN THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM HE SAVED THE UNION THE MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS ENSHRINED FOREVER.”
Think this subject out very carefully because we are all sinners. In spite of their primal needs, some people have contributed great things and these lessons must be remembered and celebrated.
The political system is the tool of change in our society. It is called Democracy. Everyone gets a vote. Majority rules. Winston Churchill, a renowned political figure in mid 20TH Century Great Britain, once said that democracy is the worst system of government imaginable, except when compared to all of the others. All of the others essentially say someone else gets to vote for you.
Regarding race, police, and societal issues, this has been a long read so what do I want you to remember
Your generation needs to really work this problem. You need to get to the root causes: what is our body of laws, our police recruitment methodology, our police training curriculum, our guidelines for use of force, and our methods for enforcement. What might be the programs and ideas that are conceptualized after months of two-way listening sessions between law enforcement and neighborhood communities of various races and economic strata. What role do societal issues play in law breaking?
Should you defund the police? I think that is a rather silly way to formulate the question. This is called destroy without replacement. On the other hand, the public sector, unlike what we call the private sector, can only be changed by the specific action of political leaders. The private sector changes quickly when people don’t want to buy the products of a business. The business disappears. But public institutions do not disappear. They need to be proactively discontinued or changed. There is no automatic adjustment mechanism as exists in a relatively capitalistic, market driven, business world.
So, in short, we probably need to examine law enforcement from top to bottom. We pretty much do policing today the way we did it 75 years ago. That’s crazy. Nothing else has remained fixed during that period of time. The mission is law enforcement. The task is to determine, after careful analysis, what are the alternative ways we can enforce the laws. Then, the task is to study these options very carefully, measure them against alternative criteria, and discover a new model.
In the final analysis:
- All people are created equal.
- The playing field must be fair and equal for all people.
- The playing field means: our laws, our economic opportunity, our educational system, our tax system and to a wider extent, our healthcare system.
- We live in an opportunity driven, competitive society. Rewards go with achievement. Hard work and discipline are our differentiators. We want the game to be fair. But we must not pick winners and losers.
- Race, tribe, ethnicity, religion should never be a factor in assigning the above principles to all people.
- Yes, systemic racism, tribalism, etc. does exist and may always exist so the laws that enforce our principles must be crystal clear and tenaciously enforced.
- With regard to following our laws, no one gets a hall pass. If you don’t like a law, work hard to get it changed, but until then, obey it.
You have a lot of work in front of you.
My generation wishes you luck.
I wish you luck.
Your grandfather
