The World of Make-Believe and Truth Ignored in Plain Sight

This past Halloween weekend, my students and I traveled to D.C. for the Model United Nations conference, where students from around the country had come to learn about the inner workings of the U.N.  Clad in their formal dress, equipped with research on countries’ international initiatives, and knowledge of delegate protocol, we descended upon the conference to recreate the political machinations of the world stage.

Upon arriving we realized that model UN was not the only make-believe event occurring.   An anime conference was beginning.  Amine is the Japanese cartoons of mystical warriors, talking non-human animals, and other fantastical characters. A cross sectional/generational/ racial throng of people in full garb, acted out the behavior characteristic of the cartoons.

As the weekend began, each group became engrossed in their separate worlds of mystical battles, UN protocol and position paper development.  I began to realize that the two conferences had much common: both make-believe.
While the fantasy offers a place for most people to let off steam, become something other than themselves, or just have some fun--- In speaking to some of the participants, many of them wished that this was their everyday life.  The fantasy is more appealing than the reality.
At the same time, the model UN seemed focused more on protocol, motions and language rooted in the institutionalization of western orientations of social order.  Even when we visited an actual embassy-- the answers seemed less about reality and more about canned responses.  
 
The political is fantasy.  While there are often lofty intentions, the structures, particularly the U.N.  a rooted in a racist system, founded when many nations were still colonized. Established after World War II, to end the scourge of war- most African and Asian nations were colonies, so their interests could not be represented.
 
As noted social contract philosopher, John Rawls describes- 'the formation of a society or institution begins with those at the table'.  While there have been additional covenants, such as the rights of women and indigenous rights for example- that make space for those initially excluded- the structure is still flawed and works primarily for those who were there at its beginning.  Consider those at the table of the security counsel--permanent members with veto powers Russia, U.S., the U.K., China and France. Mostly western countries hold the power.  The U.S. even spied on other nations as they met to hammer out the details of this organization. 
 
To this effect, the U.N. could have intervened in Rwanda and now Syria and the potential genocide that could be Burundi, as well as an African Migration crisis, which we hear little about. 
 
I won't drone on and on, but my experience is that there is a global hierarchy of race.  The notion that Israel is a democracy is fantasy. 
 
Sometimes I'd rather live in a world of Anime, being from St.Louis, one of the most segregated cities in the U.S.  I know that politics is bullshit and most people would like to go on believing things are going to work out somehow.  Yet, many who engage in this kind of fantasy play want a better world.  I noticed the participants of the Anime conference fit the description of people we might call nerds or geeks, who in my upbringing were often the ones bullied and excluded.
 
We have to make people get their heads out of the sand.  I see the same dynamics forming around this conference, with the hierarchies emerging, the exclusion of nations from the global south. While the goals are lofty and there is some cooperation, unless we disrupt this system by addressing global hierarchies of racism, sexism and colonialism, we are doomed to repeat the same.
 
Even the notion of a world stage is a European notion, where the lives of ordinary folks are not significant in our thoughts, because it is a game to be played.  Do we only care about the Syrians because of the realist geopolitics of Russia and Iran's influence in the region? The African migrants crisis, the disproportionate murder of Palestinians, the continued theft of land by the apartheid Israeli government and ongoing degradation of indigenous lands is not in the headlines.
 
We must base any social order on human dignity of all persons.  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, based on the Nuremberg principles resulting from the Jewish Holocaust.  The world saw the horror of white bodies killed. Yet, no real change has come  from the visuals of black and brown bodies spoiled daily. Capital is built on the destruction and usury of black and brown bodies-- prisons, weapons sold to African countries, blood diamonds, theft of native land in the U.S. and Canada (and the recent revocation of treaties for oil on native land).   There is a pattern here obscured by fantasy of international/political cooperation and rights that fail to address minorities around the world.
 
This is why Black lives must matter.  It is a declaration of attaching human dignity to the most belittled bodies and cultures on this planet. Black lives matter is a statement moral worth declaring the a demand of equal moral and ethical consideration.  It takes discrimination and history into account. Our societies deny opportunities, use brutality, violence, while forcing people without power to accept the will of the powerful.
 
If black lives matter, and since there is a global racial hierarchy, where the lives of the least, people of color and poor folks too, must be respected as dignified persons, requiring all the considerations, economic political and otherwise. 
 
Being white, because of the legacy of European colonialism, carries privilege everywhere.  The fantasy of the world stage has played itself out in the form of police violence in Ferguson, schooling inequity and segregation, lack of indigenous rights and violence against minorities throughout the world.     

As a teacher, my hope is to expose the truth of the lived experience for students, who have not learned about these communities.  We can not recreate the same structures that maintain status-quo.  We must be critical of NGO's and the non-profit system that do more harm.  Red Cross has been in the news for its practices in Haiti. 
 
There has to be global systemic change, allies and people of color have to unite to disrupt and remake the world so that human dignity and rights for the most vulnerable are respected. Otherwise its all fantasy, smoke and mirrors. And this reality does not work for most of us!

How a Pool Party can Lead to Being Face Down with White Knees in Your Back...

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Many of us watched the video in horror, where in McKinney Texas, police appeared and after being called (according to some because there were too many Blacks), without speaking to the organizers - took the the word of white residents, terrorized youth because of a disturbance at a public pool.  The widely shared video shows teenagers running and police chasing.  Police cuffed those they caught. The teenage girl who was the subject of the video repeated, “they weren’t doing anything”. Like her I also wonder why random teens were being cuffed?! According to an eye-witness, the same teenage girl dressed in a two-piece bathing suit said "By my momma, this isn’t right." The officer ordered that fourteen year old to leave and when she did not obey, the officer grabbed her by the hair, twisted her arm back and forced her to the ground. When horrified bystanders, tried to intervene, the police officer pulled out his gun, pointed and waved it around - warning off any intervention. He then returned his attention to the girl, kneeled over her, pressing into her back, while surveying others- hand ready at
 his gun.
 


Initially, I wondered if police in Mckinney had not been trained to deal with conflicts in communities.  Were they told they would be dealing with teens?
According to Cheryl Dorsey on Democracy Now;

He’s a training officer. I am concerned because we also see him on video barking orders to the junior officers, go get that mf-er. And they just followed him blindly. So I’m wondering if this isn’t a problem that is maybe systemic throughout the department. If this is your police officers are training younger officers, is this condoned? Is this behavior appropriate? I think not. How does any human respond to a young girl calling for her mother? Or did the officers see a black body that refused obey his order?


There is a clear problem in police training and not only in Mckinney, Texas.  Casebolt's behavior was tolerated as recent.  As reported, he had previous complaints and was sued for racial bias. The fact that he was even on the job and a training officer suggests that Mckninney police department were aware of the possibility and potentially complicit and responsible for his actions. 
Former police officer Dorsey argues;

  "...  as I watch officer Casebolt, what I see is a bully. I see someone that was totally out of control, that was similarly focused on every African-American youth that he encountered. And then he paid particular attention to this young woman. Why? Because she failed to follow his orders. And what we see is what I like to refer to as contempt of cop. When you don’t do what an officer says, there’s a price to pay. And we’ve seen it over and over. Generally, we’ve seen that that price is death. Thank goodness no young person lost their life in this incident, but he punished her. He sat on top of her with the full weight of his body to make a point. And it was unnecessary. It was over-the-top, outrageous, and he needs to be fired."

My experience and the experience of others like me insist that race is central to everyday encounters in the world.  I think of what Cornel West describes in Race Matters, as the absurdity of the black experience. Any venture into the world, the life of a black person is more likely to be visited with violence and even end in death. The normal rules don’t apply to you. So when the Mckinney teens were invited to the pool party to celebrate, one could reasonably expect an argument because things happen with teens. As a former high school teacher, I can say that conflict happens with teens who have raging hormones and are learning how to control their emotions.
 Yet, this, in no way justifies how police behaved.

19 year old Tatiana, one of the pool party organizers, didn’t expect the argument that began because of racial insults hurled at black teens by a white woman at the pool. But we have come to expect, because of our race, biased and brutal treatment by police and many others that we encounter .
 


I first heard about this police violence from a friend and later  saw the video which suggested  the reason for the presence of the police was: “
neighbors called police because too many black people..." 

This  reminded me of the time I spent at University of Toledo - when I went outside for a smoke break and the police approached me.  They asked who I was- I told them I was a teaching assistant.  When I asked what this was about, they told me “someone called and you looked like you did not belong”. 

As well, when Walmart customers called the police on John Crawford, while he played with a toy gun, insisting he was dangerous point to the absurdity that your (black) life is often in danger simply by being present.
 


Not to mention the fear of whites that play into the racist behavior - the absurd is always present, so when Oscar Grant in Oakland,  Jonathan Farrell in Florida and Mike Brown in Ferguson mounted what should've been an everyday venture into the world, ended in death. This not only gives me pause, but it causes me to reflect on the perception many buy into -- while ignoring the white on white violence and criminality of those communities because are they not targeted. One drug enforcement agency officer describes how he was told to avoid white neighborhoods despite high levels of the evidence of drug use and trafficking.

While these are all poignant issues- my concern goes to black personhood. That to the broader American public- who are often afraid of our very presence and are silent as our communities are occupied and often terrorized by standing armies.  When will moderate America be outraged by militarized police, whose behavior not only trounces the rights of urban dwellers, but has potential to do so to anyone, when convenient.

What Mckinney's police violence and the recent tasing of my close friend make me consider is:


1. Black lives have no meaning or importance to the broader society, despite one’s education or status in the community (not that it should matter)- as a Harvard professor who was arrested in front of his own house can attest. The lack of importance to our lives is highlighted and reinforced when the perspective of the whites were taken by the police in the pool. This is illustrated by the history of all white juries where Blacks were not allowed to serve- their word was not important and could not be trusted. The history of Texas pools point out how one community's white members voted to sell the public pools- rather than allow Blacks.  Bad behavior by Eric Casebolt,  only few hours ago to caused him to resign.

2. Every black person is simply a black body- exhibiting the same characteristics of every other black person, thus a criminal threat, dangerous and feared. The ABC experiment about racism shows implicit bias against a black male similarly dressed to a white male.

The young white male was given a pass while stealing a bike, while the black male was accosted and  had police called on him.  Even a black couple passing assumed that white man breaking the chain securing the bike was not stealing.  In Mckinney, Casebolt's rage, which was directed and arguably harsher to the black teenage girl points to an often ignored experience.

Black women often face an even harsher reality. The teenage girl in McKinney was punished and brutalized with her face forced to the ground- even though she was still wearing a swimsuit. Essentially, she was put in her place for daring to speak out/disobey the order of Casebolt. All of this took place while another unidentified white male citizen stood by, apparently protecting the Casebolt while he terrorized these teens.  The bodies of black women are not only brutalized (University of Arizona professor ), but ridiculed - see the disgusting characterizations of Serena Williams. The violence against Black women is experienced through characterizations of them as loud,  aggressive, and overly sexual. This is then compounded by the failure to recognize  their murders and violence against them, as recent black lives matter protest have highlighted.

3.  This result in the possibility that our lives can be extinguished at any moment leads me to deep existential crisis about the world, having children, the lives of my nephews, nieces, friends and students. The collective experience, of which I am included, illustrates racism affecting the very existence of the entire black community resulting in a very profound existential anxiety. When police arrive we run.

Yet, its important not to run, but continue speaking truth, nonviolently resisting violence and encouraging our white allies to educate whites about this bias against black lives, which is engrained in the structure of American society. Whiteness in the case of Mckinney, TX and many other places means violence against Blacks-- where our side of the story, our bodies and experience don't matter. We are not empathized with or considered human and this is why it is so easy to call the police or use violence against us when we are present. Our presence is in many cases not tolerated.  I believe  Jordan Davis was not only killed for playing his music too loud, but for his refusal to obey the authority of whiteness and for simply being present.

I continue to be committed to Black Lives Matter- as our lives represent the least considered in a global hierarchy where blackness is considered evil, ugly and undesirable. America has yet to admit and act against the violence, by police, that it supports through silence. As well, police often point out that they are only doing a job that the rest of America sanctions. But until the rest of society realizes that its' complicity leads to our existential crisis, for which we find our presence in question and lives threatened,  this nation can never be what it claims (a freedom loving democracy), nor can it live up to its great possibility.

What if There Were No Video of Walter Scott's Murder? Ignoring the Truth in Plain Sight

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Recently on Democracy now Chris Stewart asked, "What if there was no video?"
But what does video evidence guarantee?


Nothing... especially in the face of white supremacist ideology that suggest that People of Color's stories can't be truthful and all police actions are justified because they are protecting the welfare of citizens.

While we know about this specific incident of police violence and attempts to cover up police criminality,  video evidence does not guarantee that police perpetrators will be held responsible.

Remember the man who recorded the murder of Eric Garner?

"Ramsey Orta, is now locked up in jail after facing what he described as harassment by local police. Orta was first arrested on an unrelated gun charge the day after the Staten Island coroner declared Garner’s death to be a homicide. He was later arrested and  jailed on a drug charge. His mother, brother and wife have all been arrested too. Supporters  have accused the New York City Police Department  of targeting Orta’s family for releasing  the Garner video (1)."


Sadly, this force and targeting of Orta's family and of the North Charleston police officer who murdered Scott then planted evidence, illustrates the level of racism, abuse, and brazen criminality of the police.  Even though police were caught on video, Officer Pantaleo Eric Garner's murderer, was not indicted.  In this and many other instances how is it possible that no police are held accountable in the face of video evidence?  Kwame Opam writing for the Verge argues that the emperor is naked "...save for a klansman's hood", hearkening back to the parable about the public's refusal to see what is in plain sight.  At the same time many in our society are willfully ignorant about their own racism and racially motivated violence of the police.

Educational Philosopher, Jennifer Logue, writing about ignorance and racism suggests,

The fact that whites as a group fare better than non-whites in terms of health, wealth,   and access to educational opportunity as a result of institutionalized forms of racism remains, by and large, free from scrutiny. By documenting the violence inscribed in the certainties of common sense and legal and moral authority, Charles Mills reveals how ignorance becomes not only socially sanctioned but also operates as a strategy of power and domination.

In this sense, society plays at being ignorant to inequality. This is especially for those who benefit from the domination of others. And those who do not benefit believe they will benefit from the American dream.

Logue Continues,

 
...many whites live in what he [Mills] terms an  “invented delusional world, a racial fantasy  land,” where “misunderstanding, misrepresentation, evasion, and self-  deception are among the most pervasive mental phenomena of the past few hundred years, a cognitive and moral economy psychically required for conquest, colonization, enslavement.” These phenomena are not innocent or accidental, he stresses, but prescribed by the terms of the racial contract, which“requires a certain schedule of structured blindness and opacities in order to establish and maintain the white polity.” Thus whites are able to think of themselves as good while in fact acting in racist ways. The misrecognition of themselves as morally innocent when it comes to matters of race is supported by structuralized ignorances whites fail to recognize. Because of  white structural ignorance whites (consciously or not) largely are unable to disrupt white privilege or contribute to the creation of thriving critical communities of difference (2).

Sadly, rightfully angry protestors characterized as violent, criminalization of Blacks and Latinos, ignoring white criminality help to maintain the constructions of racial goodness for white people. This is carried out when Whites who commit crimes are characterized as good people, thusly suggesting there should be no accountability, especially if you are white and wealthy.  Remember the drunk driving rich white Texas teen who killed four pedestrians ?  He was sentenced to probation after expert psychologist witness testified he had "afluenza".

The North Charleston mayor has received a grant to buy dashboard cameras, the cameras themselves do not guarantee an end or even limitation of excessive force. St. Louis police turned off their dashcams.  Officers said While I have in the past advocated for police wearing cameras, this is only part of the solution.  There must be clear accountability for the institution of policing and every other sector of our society.  The mayor and police chief in North Charleston suggested that this is only one officer, despite the video showing another officer present as false evidence is planted.  "Hold up. Hold up, y’all. Hold up. Hold up, everybody, hold up. We’re red right now, so if you guys are worried about cameras, just wait" (3), signaling police to stop the beating beating until the cameras are off.  well, there had to have been collusion when the false report stating the victim was given mouth-to- mouth resuscitation, when Scott's dying or dead body was hand-cuffed. There was still a chance to save his life.  But that wasn't in the plans.

To say that there is only one bad cop is to deny the systemic racism that allowed the officer in North Charleston to kill Scott, plant evidence, make a false report and believe he would get away with it.

"THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY AS HELL!"

Our society has devolved into one where accountability and morality is only present when there is video evidence and sadly the recordings shown to grand jurors in the case of Eric Garner and John Crawford did not warrant any imperatives for accountability.  There are reasons for this, which are as deeply imbedded as is racism in our society.  But generally, there is less likely to be an extension of humanity to People of Color by the vast majority of Americans, because since slavery (as described by Michelle Alexander and Douglass Blackmon), Blacks have been the disproportionately targeted by law enforcement.  In our society, unlike many others, those deemed criminal are moved from their home communities, and when finished serving their time- not allowed to vote or participate in society. They are pariah. We don't wish to see them.  Yet certain kinds of criminals are allowed to roam Wall street and the board rooms of America's corporations, destroying our environment and raiding our retirements.

 
There is a serious problem of public and private morality. It starts early, when students learn to cheat in school, realizing that they won't be rewarded unless they play the game. We even saw the Air Force officers responsible for maintaining the nuclear arsenal caught in a cheating scandal.  I would argue that these officers learned cheating early on and it carried on to their professional lives. Cheating is symptomatic of a larger absence of morality.


My own university is in the midst of dealing with the fallout because of students using violent racial slurs on the campus radio. What was most disturbing was that students' comments', when responding to media focused on being careful about what they say because it might be recorded, not because of what is right and wrong.  Morality is skewed in this society, in part,  because of the racist logic of capitalism.  Capitalism is rooted in inequity and inequality.  Today a colleague sent me this quote, which reads "Capitalism requires inequality, racism enshrines it, and police violence enforces it."  If we are to follow this reasoning, the police were operating from a system of morality  devoid of any kind of ethical accountability and responsibility to others (and really only to each other) and especially Blacks who are criminalized and perceived as criminal.


The attempt to hide the racist and criminal acts by the police suggests it is only one incident and the case is exceptional.  America, if it is ever again to be considered the bastion of freedom it claims to be, must put aside its exceptionalism, take stock and responsibility for its moral and ethical failings in private and in public.  We must deal with and go beyond the corruption of policing to the corruption of government -which listens to corporations, rather than its citizens.  We must tell the truth, listen and act with others to deconstruct this leviathan of injustice. No video can save us, but if we take evidence into account, put our bias aside, maybe we can begin to value each life, regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, body type and other ways people identify themselves.  Its not enough to say that we value life, we must act in ways that go beyond talk and we don't need a video to tell us that.

by David Ragland


1. Democracy now April 9, 2015
2. Logue, J. (2013). “Sanctioned Curricular Ignorance as a Challenge to Critical Communities.” 
    in Philosophical Studies in Education, Vol. 44.
3. http://www.infowars.com/video-cops-turn-off-camera-before-beating-man/ 



Calling Out the Silent Culture of Racism and Other Forms of Discrimination and Violence at Bucknell and American Campuses

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When racial bias occurs it is customary to suggest that such practices are out of the norm... something only done by an individual out of touch with prevailing social values.  To suggest that racial bias in language and act is, in part, structurally violent- connects racism with sexism and homophobia, leading to actual violence because threats are ignored, kept undercover and behavior is allowed to continue.
 
What Oklahoma University Sigma Alpha Epsilon and now Bucknell University's  recent bias suggests is, that bigoted and racist language and incidents are widespread in American higher educational institutions and a normal part of this society’s culture. 

On March 20, 2015 three Bucknell students on the campus radio station during the "Happy Time show" made racial slurs. The following is from an account released by John Bravman, Bucknell University President.

Student 1: “Niggers” 

Student 2: “Black people should be dead.” 

Student 3: “Lynch ‘em!”

Those three students have been expelled as of Monday March 30, 2015. According to sources close to the University administration their fraternity[s] have revoked their memberships.


Initially Bucknell officials were hesitant to release the details, according to PennLive.com

"We will not perpetuate racist and violent comments by sharing the audio or recapitulating the language used," Hirsch said.  "Doing so would only give greater exposure to messages that are hurtful and antithetical to our institutional values."

The Sunbury Daily Item recently reported, according to Andy Hirsch University spokesperson, that student disc jockeys on the campus radio station used “… language involved a racial slur, racially motivated violence.”

This line of thinking ignores how silence is complicity, reinforcing and silencing others who are harmed by such language and threats.   


University officials responded a week after the incident because it was only brought to their attention after an inmate at Lewisburg Prison, who was listening, wrote a letter of complaint.  

Initially the students who made racial slurs were suspended last Thursday, but were seen on campus during the unofficial festivities of house party weekend.  Last year, Bravman cancelled house party weekend because of the dangerous levels of drinking and according to faculty and students, violent culture surrounding fraternities parties.  Apparently after cancelling, Bravman and his family received death threats.  For me this shows the level of privilege -- over what many would consider, just another weekend of drinking. 

So prior to the start of parties,  messages went out to students to be careful, but in light of these comments, violent frat culture and responses from many white students who thought the campus DJs were 'nice guys', who shouldn't have been suspended.  

This past Friday, a meeting was called to address concerns, but students reported they they felt unheard as university officials were defensive.  The language coming from university officials in PennLive and Sunbury Daily Items seemed to focus on the university reputation, not the safety of students of color.

This was not the first incident of racial bias on campus.   Students of Color often report drive by racist slurs, drunken hate speech, recent highly problematic comments by Bucknell football coach surrounding Ray Rice’s domestic abuse, as well as the December YikYak threat of violence in during a week of campus demonstration protesting the non-indictments of Darren Wilson.

On one hand, the surfacing of these slurs is within the context of racism, police brutality and the black lives matter movement, for which many students on campus are closely involved.  But as stated earlier, this happens all the time at Bucknell.
  
A few years back, a Black student at Bucknell was sent racist facebook messages  from another (white) Bucknell student.  The university acted swiftly to protect itself and its interests.  Within a 24 hour period, Public Safety determined that the white student was a victim of hacking - that his entire Facebook account had been taken over - pictures changed to show racist photos - and that the messages that were sent had not come from him.  (Never mind that his user domain was "I Hate Negro" or something very similar.)  The university then sent out a campus alert to warn of computers being hacked.

There seems to be a culture of this language and behavior on Bucknell's campus. This past fall, Bucknell Football Coach Susan used racially coded language discussing Ray Ray- who he recruited to Rutgers.


“Ray was a street kid,” he said. “A lot of that stayed with him.”  Coach Susan continued “With these kids it just seems that the street always comes back to them.”

Even more disturbing, especially in light of the disturbing trends of sexual assault on campus, Susan suggested that the assault by Rice would not have occurred.   “(Former Rutgers players) Jason and Devin McCourty hold a charity event in the winter every year,” said Susan. “And all the former Rutgers alumni that play in the NFL were there, except for Ray. He was in Atlantic City.

Susan went on to say “In this day and age cameras are everywhere and if you do something like that there will be video of it or a record of it” … suggesting that behaviors should be above board because of cameras.
 
 This is especially troubling since Bucknell students are often from higher socio-economic communities and will take of post as business leaders throughout the US.  Looking deeper, this campus has a troubling record of sexual assaults which are closer to one in three, more than the national average of one in four women.   According to the Bucknellian “The 2013 extrapolated number showed that 34 percent had experienced attempted rape or rape.”   There is a culture of racism and violence against women at Bucknell and Universities across America.
 
In this time of increased racial climate, transparency and authentic work toward hearing peoples voices is even more important.  This is why Bravman’s most recent email to the campus is extremely important and a good sign.

While this is a good start, this must be the beginning of decisive action that challenge the racism, sexism and violence that many on Bucknell's campus experience. This morning, one faculty member suggested that we seriously consider the elimination of the fraternity system on campus.  As those who made racial slurs were members of fraternities and women often report being assaulted at frat parties.  And I'm not anti-frat, as I'm a member of Alpha Phi Alpha.

We cannot let ourselves fall into the patterns that suggest that such incidents are only isolated. 


The vitriolic and hateful language of Bucknell student DJs are, unlike Bravman perspective “not who we are”, but it is exactly who Bucknell is, as Professor Sue Ellen Henry wrote in a Facebook post and letter to her students.


To suggest this is only a few people is to ignore the perspective of students are hurt and in fear at a time they should be enjoying their college experience.  The racism is who this and other campuses are…  If there is continued silence and focus on the reputation of the university as opposed to the well-being of students, nothing will change.


What are students learning? What kind of world will this be if we fail to challenge the brazen racism of privileged students, who are assumed good because of their socio-economic background?
 
At a time when American institutions lack so much democratic transparency and racial conflict is abound, educational institutions, public and private- should be leading by example.  If our liberal arts colleges and public schools cannot educate its students to be anti-racist critically reflective citizens, participants in democratic society, or even provide a safe place free from violence or the threat of violence - we are doomed…

by David Ragland

Today is the International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims...

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On this important 'International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims...'  It is important to point out the truth concerning violence, its acceptable usage,  and who is violently targeted in our society.  On such a day, I think it important that I share a few thoughts on what I see as truth.  

Militarized Policing in Ferguson

While the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice have awakened the eyes of many to police violence, recent news and our experience tells us that this is only the tip of the iceberg.  This interactive map points out that between 2000 and 2014 approximately 4,285 people were killed by police.  This year we have seen more men, women and children of color gunned down by police.  What is not often discussed is that while police are explicitly responsible for such egregious violence, structural racism--which thrives on economic injustice is violent and police are allowed to use violence directly and unquestioningly against our communities because a strong and vocal part of the majority believe, profit from and help paint Black and Brown folk as criminal.

Ask yourself if you benefit from criminalization of people of color?  Does your portfolio have investments in for-profit-prisons, weapons manufacturers, military contractors, polluters, large banks that were guilty of predatory lending, etc...?  Where do you bank at?  Do you shop at Walmart? Walmart costs the US taxpayers more in closing local businesses (reducing the tax base) and essentially forcing low wage earning employees into public assistance. Do you know that many products like Sabra Hummus benefits the illegal occupation of Palestine? How are you complicit?

Policing in communities of color has become indistinguishable from the occupying military armies.  The internal logic of policing/military is that without their force, society would quickly devolve into chaos.  For many, more police equal safer communities and that violence wielded is appropriate in every conflict encountered. For instance, why would armed officers be appropriate for citizens with disabilities or mental illness?  Does the presence of an armed officer escalate these conflicts?  As described by Jesse Singal, the militarization of police can increase violence. Our tax dollars support this kind of policing abroad and domestically. Even worse, police target People of Color for minor infractions, often supporting large portions of municipal budgets from policing that often, according to recent reports, fails to prevent and even ignores real crime.  The approach of police throughout the US, has become increasingly militarized, broaching the question of legality.

Just wondering, isn't it unconstitutional to have standing armies in our American cities?       

The problem continues to be that there aren't enough meaningful employment opportunities for the vast majority of Americans and people around the world. As well, the ONE PERCENT was bailed out after 2008 market crash, instead of citizens badly in need of assistance and a kind of 'workers project' toward full employment.  Even more, both Bush's and Obama's administrations failed to hold parties criminally liable or responsible.   The subprime scandal  decimated black communities.  The crash affected my family's North St. Louis neighborhood (leaving many vacant houses, increased crime, broken families), my parents retirement, my employment at the time, and many experienced even more disenfranchisement.  I believe measures, such as the confiscation of corporate property and profiteer's ill-gotten profits, must be left on the table to restore confidence and respond to such disregard for the public good. Instead the executives contract guaranteeing exorbitant bonuses are considered sacrosanct while pensioners in Detroit recently saw their retirement contracts raided. 

How can the competitive-predatory nature of capitalism foster or even be associated with democracy?  The problem is that the rich keep getting richer at our expense and those standing armies in our cities protect the 1% and that wealth is made on the backs of ordinary Americans.  Yet, many ordinary Americans vote in ways that uphold laws like Citizens United, which treat corporations as individuals- even though these 'individuals'/ corporations have yet to face the crimes for which they are responsible.  Americans have bought into the myth that they too can and have the right to have more than others. 

Because resources are scarce, to have more is not sustainable. Even more, the consumption and greed that underlies capitalism is closely connected to criminality and poverty, since there has to be winners and losers.  

             What some will do to win... 

Recently UC Berkeley study points out that wealthy people are more likely to break the rules, which includes theft, lying, cheating... etc.  When the core values of a society revolve around the musings of insider traders who declare 'greed is good', there are serious moral implications and we all should be asking who we are and who do we want to be? Many who claim affinity to the philosophy of Adam Smith conveniently avoid his conclusion that a society with consumptive behaviors and values will implode upon itself.

So at the core of America is an existential anxiety or fear of loosing what can easily be lost.  Money and material goods, as many of experienced in 2008, can disappear.  What we see in the broader society is acceptance of a criminalized class,  the 'losers' or 'scapegoats' who threaten property through theft or otherwise. The police are empowered by the broader society to use violence in protection this fear of our scapegoats, insecurity that is reassured through greed, selfishness, the right to have more than others and for the protection and theft of what belongs to all people-- i.e. clean and healthy environment, free drinking water and breathable air and land from which human life might be sustained.   Black and Brown lives are imprisoned, as one police pointed out to me, to do what you liberal people don't want to do.

Does the overpopulating of prisons with Brown and Black people decrease crime? According to Juan Thompson and the study by the Brennan Center for Justice, it doesn't.  Essentially Black and Brown folk in the U.S., are criminalized and demonized by the media because it serves the need to exclude some from the moral community. In that exclusion, we have been denied the G.I. Bill, mortgages-that built much of the wealth in America, equitable justice, which alludes us even when evidence shows that Black and Brown people are brutalized in the light of day (Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Martese Johnson  of UVA and others).   This view of People of Color is rooted in the foundation of American society, and it justifies, for many, this violent and inhumane treatment by police.
     
We need complete systems change and what the Truth-Telling weekend March 13-15 pointed out was, how police violence is only part of the context of broader economic, political and moral inequality that people of color face daily.  Even more, Pastor Cori Bush, Dr. Fania Davis, Mohammed El Naiem, Mahder Etuma, Kristin Famula, Dr. Tony Jenkins, Dr. Benard Lafayette, Dr. Imani Scott, Reverend Sekou, Reverend Stoneking and others pointed out during the weekend that there is need for Truth-Telling and Truth-Seeking toward structural transformation, so that some kind of reconciliation is possible. 

Truth and Reconciliation involves the documentation of our experiences to have a record of this vast history of abuse, systematic and structural racism and racists acts against people of color in the US, so that we can learn from it, write our own history, open the eyes of all Americans to demand change of ourselves and hold accountable the institutions that benefit from our oppression. But, we must hear, listen and act on these truths first.  Speak your truth, upload a video to thetruthtellingproject.org. Your voice is needed to guide us toward change. 

Which side are you on? 

by David Ragland