The Links:
So, Ferguson is still under martial law. I'll make a more general comment after posting related links.
BoingBoing, of all places, has a pretty good Twitter roundup with lots of photos from a recent protest showing the police response.
Journalists have been arrested by police for, well, doing their jobs and reporting on the situation. A little bit later an Al Jazeera news crew got teargassed.
The Verge, noting the similarities between the police response here and those of the Arab Spring, worries that this is how a dystopia starts.
Glen Ford notes that in America young black men have no right to life.
Greg Howard, writing at Deadspin, thinks America is not for black people.
That last link is especially good at breaking down the recent history of state violence agains blacks. And that's what we have to remember here. This is state violence and actions by the state demand a very different set of responses than actions by individuals. Ideally, the state is supposed to be a representative and organized extension of the people. That's why we have elections. That's why we persistently support the interests of democracies around the world. So what do we do when our country routinely kills black men without cause? What conclusions can we come to?
One important lesson to come out of the Donald Sterling controversy a few months back was that America is very good about singling out and challenging racist individuals, what one writer called inelegant racists. But we are, as a nation, terrible about fixing elegant racism. That's the kind of racism we begin to see only in its effects. A good example of this would be the war on drugs disproportionately incarcerating blacks even through the proportion of drug users among blacks, hispanics, and whites are almost identical. That's elegant racism. It's elegant racism when telling white people that our criminal justice system is racist makes them more supportive of the system.
When Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, that was an individual killing an unarmed black man. The response may have been inadequate. His motivations may have been racist. But, there was a trial. Evidence was presented. All the steps were in place to put a legal check on a citizen's right to kill another person. When the verdict came back not guilty, people rightly saw that the stand-your-ground laws were flawed. That also meant a recourse was available. People could push their representatives to change the law or vote them out of office. Although, the elegant and systemic racism of our culture may mean that never happens.
But when the violence is perpetrated by the state, our options are limited. You don't elect police directly and they have much more freedom to act precisely because they are working to uphold the law. Oversight of police happens through a much more roundabout process and is filtered through multiple levels of bureaucracy, each with it's own objectives. They might vote the mayor or governor out of office and the officer in question will not see any effects. Or, the system may work. The officer may face investigation and eventually stand trial.
There's another layer here, too. After all, why are there riots and continuing protests? The state of civil rights in places like Ferguson is dismal. As a response to the crime which inevitably cohabits with concentrated poverty, police step up their tactics of social control. They limit the free movement of people around their community. They deploy surveillance systems throughout the area and make routine use of SWAT and other militarized tactics. The population becomes less of a public to police and more of an enemy to contain. The people protesting aren't just responding to the shooting of yet another unarmed black man, they are responding to the entire system of occupation and control that we, as a country, are deploying in the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
As an example, I offer the recent season finale of VICE. While I can't link the whole episode, I can put up the show synopsis and a preview of the episode.
The state stepped in to overhaul the department, introducing an experimental “Metro” security apparatus equipped with futuristic technologies like gunshot detecting, triangulation microphones and automatic license-plate readers. As similar surveillance systems are implemented across the country, VICE goes to Camden to see how these tactics are working, how residents feel about their loss of privacy and what the future of policing might be.
In an inversion of Big Brother, California has been looking into recording the police more than recording the citizens. They've placed cameras on the offices themselves and have found some interesting results: less violence and fewer complaints.
An economic look at the way we value human life, particularly how it is very heterogenous based on factors like race, class, and nationality.
A Reddit user made a map of all the places the CDC says you can't safely drink the water. Unsurprisingly, it's most of the world.
Storyline is looking at immigration again but this time through the lens of the refugees and the policy we make regarding refugees.
The Economic Policy Institute presents the Top 10 Myths about Social Security. Definitely worth bookmarking for those late night entitlement policy arguments we all get in on Facebook.
This book about genetics got published a little while back. It argued that there were genetic differences which were the basis of Western success and African failure. Not surprisingly, many people have a problem with this. I definitely view it as the latest entry in the scientific racism category. 130 geneticists signed onto an open letter condemning the author and arguing that his understanding of genetics is deeply flawed.
Randall Munroe tries to figure out the most expensive way to fill a size 11 shoebox.
No comments:
Post a Comment