A recent National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast put the lie
to the Big Lie that protests in the wake of police killings of black citizens
in Ferguson, Cleveland, Baltimore, New York and elsewhere have led to a
significant uptick in violence against police across the country. The reasoning
is a bit absurd. It goes like this: all the negative publicity regarding police
activities has led to a decline in respect and fear of the police throughout
the country. The protests have in a sense given permission for an “open season”
on cops, according to this line of reasoning. Police departments around the
country have joined right-wing politicians in bemoaning the so-called slaughter
of cops instigated by the protesters, liberal politicians and the news media.
The argument doesn’t work, of course, unless there really
has been a significant increase in violence against police, and as
NPR has demonstrated, no such increase has occurred unless you put
blinders on your eyes and ignore all but one set of statistics, the comparison
between the number of police officers murdered in 2014 and 2013. It is true
that cop killings surged from 27 in 2013 to 51 in 2014, but 2013 was the safest
year for the police across the United States since the government started
keeping records of these things. There
were just as many cop killings in 2012 as in 2014, and far fewer in both those
years than 2011. As Seth Stoughton, a former
police officer and an assistant law professor at the University of South
Carolina, points out, the rate of cop killings has gone down dramatically in
every decade since the 1970s and now stands at less than 40% of the 1975 total.
The statistics just do not support the assertion that cop
killings are on the rise. With the facts gone, how can anyone blame protest
movements for something that isn’t even happening?
Those making the false case that protest causes violence
typically aver that the protests are an overreaction to a “few bad apples.” I
would love to believe the “few bad apples” argument, because that makes the
problem easy—just get rid of the bad actors in police departments, as
right-wingers want to get rid of bad teachers.
But the “bad apple” excuse doesn’t wash once we examine the
facts, all of which suggest that the protest against minority killings is
helping to change how America and American police departments think about institutional
racism. For example, in most cases, the “bad apples” receive no punishment for
killing minorities. They are exonerated by friendly district attorneys and
those few who go to trial often get off scot free. The wholesale absolution of
police officers who use violence in situations in which none is required is
changing, with some now getting charged, but only since the protests started.
The “bad apple” excuse melts away for anyone who views the
types of advertising that many police departments now place to attract new
officers. The ads focus on how cool it is to be part of a SWAT team incursion
and to use the sophisticated armament supplied over the past 30 years by the
Department of Defense. These advertisements are certainly appropriate for the
military, which has a need to attract individuals prone to violence and
attracted to killing. But the job of the police is not to fight a foreign army,
but to protect the citizens. Police officers do not walk among the enemy, as
soldiers often do. By advertising to
attract soldiers, not police officers, police departments over the past decade
or so have filled their ranks with potential “bad apples.”
The Department of Justice is finding racial bias in the
administration of justice in municipalities all over the country. The racial
bias extends from stopping suspects, through arrests, treatment while
incarcerated, likelihood of being tried and harshness in punishment. In all
these areas, minorities get the short end of the stick almost everywhere—stops,
arrests, inappropriate violence, formal charges, convictions, bail, fines,
incarceration rate and years. The various investigations launched by DOJ and
others virtually always result from a high-visibility incident such as the
shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson or Freddie Gray in Baltimore.
In other words, what the protests have done is to embarrass
white America into admitting that minorities are frequently the subject of
violent mistreatment by police across the country and into taking some baby
steps to do something about it.
But we need to do more. In fact, the entire criminal justice
system needs an overhaul, and that’s why organizations such as “Black Lives
Matter” are absolutely essential.
Many of the protests against unnecessary police violence
against African-Americans loosely affiliate with the unstructured “Black Lives
Matter” movement, which began after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmermann,
who murdered Trayvon Martin. Thus it
makes perfect sense that the right-wing would go after “Black Lives Matter.” They
do it in two ways.
First is the direct attack: Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly
are among the right-wingers who labeled “Black Lives Matter” a hate group,
which is like calling Mother Teresa a sadist. I mean, really? These folks are
trying to protect their community, and in particular their male children, and
that sounds like love to me. The pursuit of justice never involves hate.
The second attack against “Black Lives Matter” is the
insidious slogan “All Lives Matter,” perhaps the most code-loaded phrase since
“Support Our Troops” graced bumper stickers as soon as the disastrous war in
Iraq began in 2003. I used to yell at the many cars sporting the “Support Our
Troops” regalia, “Yes, support them by bringing them home.” It pissed me off
because I knew—and so did everyone else—that what the slogan really meant was
“support the war, because if you don’t, you’re not
supporting our soldiers, and that’s treason.”
In a similar way, the slogan “All Lives Matter” carries substantial
meaning beyond the words. Let’s imagine if “All Lives Matter” came first and
was not a reaction to “Black Lives Matter.” My response might be, “Of course,
all lives matter. Let’s make sure of it.”
But it didn’t come first. “All Lives Matter” is a reaction
by people who don’t ‘like “Black Lives Matter.” The people who sing out “All
Lives Matter” typically either blindly support the police or are used to
speaking in racial code to conceal their virulent racism. When they say “All
Lives Matter” as a rejoinder to “Black Lives Matter,” it can only have one of
two possible meanings: 1) Black lives are already being taken care of since all
lives are being taken care of, which is a whitewash, since we know that in the
criminal justice system, black lives don’t matter; OR 2) They don’t believe
black lives matter. Both these positions are odious, the one based on a lie
that enables racism, the other naked racism.
The leaders of the “Black Lives Matter” movement have
displayed great strategic thinking to go after Bernie Sanders. None of the
Republicans are going to be receptive to being associated with the “Black Lives
Matter” program. Many do support criminal justice system reform to get people released
from prison and into our shrinking workforce, but their base would not like
them in bed with a “hate group.” I assume that Hillary Clinton is already with
the program, as she is a long-time vocal supporter of minorities (and, BTW, is
proving to be as left-wing as Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when it comes to
most social, consumer, social service issues, taxation and economic issues). If
it was to have a chance to matter after 2016, it was important for “Black Lives
Matter” to get the ear of Sanders and now it looks as if they are going to have
it. Well played.
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