Im-Politic: An Immigration and Racism Link Deserving Much More Attention

Tags

African Americans, Chicago, CNBC, H-1B visa, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, inequality, Jim Reynolds, minorities, Norman Matloff, race relations, racism, STEM workers, tech jobs, unemployment

“H-1B” and “racial injustice” probably aren’t terms most people would believe have much to do with each other. That’s why a recent CNBC interview with a leading African American financier deserves your attention even if it is two weeks old. Because he shows not only that they’re intimately connected, but that even someone who is focusing on the link needs to think much more about how exactly it works, and what needs to be done about it.

For those who don’t follow immigration issues closely, “H-1B” is the name of the category of visa that the federal government allots business for foreigners they supposedly need to employ because their “specialty” skills can’t be found in the domestic workforce. The skills cover a wide range, but according to this organization (which loves the program) most of the visas requested by U.S. companies are for science and technology occupations, and indeed their prevalence in these fields is responsible for most of the controversy they’ve generated.

For evidence abounds that, contrary to their claims, the tech companies that seek these foreign workers so ardently aren’t using them because they’re geniuses, but because they’re cheap – and because they need to remain tied to the company that sponsored them if they have any hope of getting permanent legal residence in the United States. (My go-to source on this issue is University of California-Davis computer scientist and immigration authority Norman Matloff, whose work can be found at this terrific blog.)

As a result, H-1B opponents argue that their use undercuts American pay levels in science and technology fields, and severely undercuts the argument that gaining these skills is one of the best guarantees available to young Americans of prospering in the turbulent economy of recent decades. But the program damages the economy in a way less often noted by opponents: It guts the incentives American business might develop to invest in American workers’ skills generally, or to press government to get the country’s education act together so as to make sure that the skills they need are available domestically.

And this is where the racial injustice and related economic inequality issues come into play – along with that CNBC interview. The subject, Jim Reynolds, is an inspiring African American success story who’s long been active in civic affairs in a city with one of the nation’s biggest African American populations – his native Chicago. (See this profile.) CNBC brought him on the air on July 2 to talk about racial diversity on Wall Street.

The conversation proceeded along these lines till it was about two thirds of the way through, when Reynolds made this totally unprompted and stunning pivot. Its worth quoting in full, and came in response to a question on whether he thinks Wall Street is genuinely committed to hiring more minorities in the wake of the George Floyd killing and ensuing tsunami of nationwide calls to end racism and related economic injustices.  (I also need to present it because this point didn’t make it into the CNBC news story accompanying the interview video that’s linked above.)   

“You ask if I think this is real…. I was at an Economics Club dinner a couple of years ago…and one of the top CEOs in the city [Chicago], actually, one of the top CEOS in the country – a Fortune 100 company – spoke to the group, and what he said to the group that one of his most frustrating experiences is working with H-1B programs, and why they won’t let his company recruit more of the talent that they need in the tech space….[H]e said that in the middle of downtown Chicago, where we have African American and Hispanic youth in the city, ten minutes from where he was standing, that have…let’s call it 40, 50, 60 percent unemployment, that go to schools that don’t really…teach them this sort of thing, and I wondered why he didn’t even think about this. Sure, you can go to China, and you can go to India, and recruit that talent. And that talent – and I’ve spent a lot of time in China – that talent started getting developed in middle school When they come here, and they go to the quants on Wall Street and the quants in Silicon Valley – and they do dominate that space – they started studying this stuff like when they were eight years old, nine years old. And I’ve started thinking about and talking about and I’m working with our wonderful Mayor Lori Lightfoot about, let’s get these corporations thinking about – and this time is great – investing in these black and Hispanic schools. Now. Let’s grab our young black and Hispanic kids in middle school. Let’s have a Facebook program in the school, Microsoft program, Alphabet program, Apple program in these schools. I think that’s an opportunity.”

I couldn’t have done a better job of making the H-1B-racial injustice connection. But as I suggested above, Reynold is still missing a piece of the puzzle: The CEO he mentions, and others like him, simply aren’t going to make those investments because they don’t have to. And they don’t have to precisely because they have a cheaper alternative – and one that doesn’t require them to deal with the kinds of workforce training challenges they’ve never faced: the H-1B program.

So if Reynolds really wants to expand opportunity for disadvantaged minority youth (and other young Americans) all over the country, he’ll start pressing for the elimination of the H-1B program, and for broader immigration policies that deny businesses in all sectors the easy option of hiring low-cost foreigners – and in the process, creating even more power over workers and thereby intensifying the downward pressure they can keep exerting on their wages and benefits.

Reynolds, moreover, is in a particularly good position to lobby for these changes effectively because, as made clear in the profile linked above, his close friends include a fellow named Barack Obama – who has more than a little influence on the liberals and progressives who have emerged (along with Corporate America) as among the stubbornest opponents of immigration policies that put American workers – including of course minority workers – first.

Im-Politic: Ivy League Princeton Turns Bush League in the History Wars

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cancel culture, Christopher L. Eisgruber, Founding Fathers, history wars, Im-Politic, Ivy League, James Madison, Princeton University, race relations, racism, slavery, Washington Post, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Full disclosure: Although I graduated from Princeton University and believe that I got a great education there (for a princely sum, to be sure), for various reasons, I never felt much affinity to the place (except for the basketball and other athletics teams – long story). As a result, I’ve never given it a dime . Even so, it’s depressing to learn that for the last seven years, the school as been run by a leadership team that’s full either of guilt-driven liberals, ignoramuses, utter ditzes, or some combination of the two.

I know this because the university’s president, Christopher L Eisgruber, has just explained in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post why he persuaded Princeton’s Board of Trustee to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs.

My scorn for this move and those responsible for it has nothing to do with any doubt concerning the racist views and policies of a figure who was not only President of the United States, but president of Princeton. I’ve fully recognized Wilson as a racist here and here. Nor do I hold the former Woodrow Wilson School in any special regard. In fact, I’ve long considered “public and international affairs” as being about as legitimate a university course of study as sports communications.

Instead, I view the Wilson name removal as (to quote Eisgruber) “an excess of political correctness” precisely because he’s also expressed strong agreement with one of the few sensible notions that have emerged from America’s recent history wars – that there’s a crucial distinction between figures who are known only or mainly for supporting treasonous and racist and other odious views and policies, and those whose role in U.S. history entailed much much more. More.

In this vein, Eisgruber acknowledges explicitly that Wilson “is a far different figure than John C. Calhoun or Robert E. Lee, people whose pro-slavery commitments defined their careers and who were sometimes honored for the purpose of supporting segregation or racism.” He recognizes that many of Wilson’s achievements both at the university and in the White House can legitimately be called “genuine” and even “grand.” And he goes on to admit that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

Weirder still: As Eisgruber explains, responding in 2015 to student demands that the university “de-Wilson-ize” itself Eisgruber asked the Board to study how Princeton was presenting Wilson’s record and legacy, and the school ultimately decided to “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.”

In my view, that’s exactly the right way to handle the matter, and I’ve since urged that participants in the national debate to think harder about similarly thoughtful ways to deal with other historical figures who also deserve to be remembered as more than racists whatever flaws on the issue they demonstrated or embodied.

But Eisgruber and the Princeton board have taken the easy, and simplistic way out. Although nowadays the concept of “slippery slope” is abused way too often (because it too conveniently defines out of existence any need and ability to make intelligent choices or draw important distinctions), Princeton’s decision raises the question of why Abraham Lincoln or the Founding Fathers, with their own problematic racial records and actual slave-owning, shouldn’t be expunged from the nation’s public places as well (or from whatever private places honor them).

According to Eisgruber, he changed his mind because even with the 2015 changes, Princeton was still honoring Wilson

“without regard to, and perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.

“And that, I now believe, is precisely the problem. Princeton is part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored and turned a blind eye to racism, allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against black people.”

But of course, the university had taken specific steps to (as Eisgruber told us) “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.” So what’s changed between then and now?

Similar questions arise from Eisgruber’s associated contention that “When a university names its public policy school for a political leader, it inevitably offers the honoree as a role model for its students. However grand some of Wilson’s achievements may have been, his racism disqualifies him from that role.”

If so, however, why keep Wilson’s name on one of its residential colleges and on it’s “highest award for undergraduate alumni”? (As Eisgruber calls the Woodrow Wilson Prize. Unless that, too, has changed? Eisgruber didn’t specify.)

Finally, why have Eisgruber and the Board stopped with Wilson? The university also still honors the slave-owning (and pretty consistent slavery supporter) Founding Father and former President of the United States James Madison in at least two ways: a scholarly program called the James Madison Society, and a dining option called “Madison Society”. What the heck is so special about him? Why not kick this racist SOB’s name off the campus, too? 

Nothing could be clearer than that Eisgruber has no rational answers to these questions – and may not have even asked them. In fact, the only intellectually honest or competent sentence in his entire article is his confession that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate [Wilson’s] life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

In other words, Princeton’s decision stands as a monument – to ignorance. And you can probably throw in intellectual cowardice and faddism as well.

Im-Politic: A Case for Reparations

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African Americans, education, GI Bill, higher education, housing, Im-Politic, immigrants, inequalty, mortgages, race relations, racism, reparations, wealth gap, white privilege, World War II

Here’s a RealityChek post I never thought I’d write, leading off with two ideas I never thought I’d consider: First, I’m warming a lot toward the idea of the U.S. government paying some kind of taxpayer-funded reparations to African Americans in compensation for at least one cut-and-dried historical episode of economically costly racism. Second, a main reason is that I and my family – and millions and millions of others like us – have benefited economically, and considerably, from the white privilege reinforced by this episode.

I’m still somewhat wary of a main possible result of reparations – that payment will generate an ever growing list of demands for more payments. I also remain concerned that reparations will ease much of the moral pressure felt by white and others who oppose reparations to eliminate sources of racial economic inequality ranging from lousy and inequitably funded public schools to discriminatory mortgage practices.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that these worries reflect overly simplistic “slippery slope”-type arguments to which I’ve objected in the context of other issues. Specifically, they too easily become excuses for avoiding many necessary actions. For they imply that citizens and political leaders are devoid of the judgment needed to make the kinds of distinctions any complex community or society needs to be able to identify in order to remain even minimally functional.

More important, a little research I conducted the other day brought to my attention an instance of massive, systemic racism that took place many decades after emancipation. It came in the form of the discriminatory implementation of the GI Bill of 1944, which denied more than a million black World War II veterans vital most of the opportunities created by the law to establish a foothold in the nation’s middle class, and beyond.

If you’ll remember, opening unprecedented economic opportunity to the men and women that risked their lives to save their country and indeed the world was the whole point of the legislation. The means chosen were low-interest mortgages and equally generous loans for buying businesses and farms, and stipends to finance higher education expenses. Given the importance of homes and other assets in amassing significant amounts of wealth, and of college and many vocational degrees in generating middle-class-and-beyond income levels, the strategy made perfect sense. And it worked like a charm for most of the white veterans who used it.

Inexcusably, however, as this account makes clear, most black World War II veterans were excluded from these programs by a combination of state-level official and informal barriers to participation. Just as important, the effects of this discrimination also hobbled the economic prospects of the descendents of these African American servicemen and women. One major piece of evidence – the decades-old yawning racial wealth gap, which results largely from the long limited home-owning opportunities available to African Americans.

And here’s where the story gets personal – for me and others whose ancestors only came to the United States in the late-19^th and early 20^th centuries. It’s absolutely true that our grandparents or parents never owned slaves, overwhelmingly had no hand in maintaining systemic American racism, and largely arrived from their homelands with little more than the clothes on their backs. It’s also true that many and even most worked like the dickens to achieve their share of the American Dream, and that many were the victims of at least informal discrimination at some point in their lives.

This history was long the principal basis for my own insistence that, if any reparations were to be paid, I sure didn’t owe any.

Getting down to my case, my father, and his peers in the ranks of my relatives and friends, also came from economically modest backgrounds and generally worked like the dickens. My own father was blessed with the most powerful mind I’ve ever encountered, and owed much of his success to this brainpower as well (as did so many others of course).

He didn’t buy his first home until 1963, and so just missed the chance for GI Bill mortgage assistance. But there’s an excellent chance that, despite his intellect and other talents, he’d have never gone to college without the financial aid provided by the legislation – which enabled him to attend full-time and not have to worry about helping to pay the family bills. Certainly, my grandparents never encouraged him to continue his education beyond high school. Without college, of course, there would have been no law school (at night, on top of working full-time), and without his law degree, my own upbringing mightn’t have been so comfortable, and my own higher education opportunities might have been very different.

Again, my father was so brilliant, and so driven, that I’m sure he would have achieved considerable professional success without the GI Bill. I’m similarly confident that the same applies to any number of his peers. But it’s entirely possible that they wouldn’t overall have achieved as much success. And on the whole nowhere near as quickly. More important, their GI Bill benefits relieved or at least partly relieved my father and millions of other white veterans of having to make the kinds of often difficult choices and accept the kinds of often family-straining tradeoffs that confronted black veterans denied these benefits.

As a result, some amount of reparations based on the economic impact of GI Bill discrimination seems justified to me, along with including GI Bill beneficiaries like me as payers.

Obviously, critical details would need to be worked out, along with the question of what other kinds of reparations should be considered and paid. But the GI Bill’s history amounts to a clear instance of the federal government, and many sub-federal governments, systematically awarding to one group of Americans benefits whose effects have lasted many generations, and just as systematically excluding another class of Americans with equally valid claims. And even though subsequent veterans aid programs have been put into effect much more admirably, this clearcut discrimination, moreover, has had lasting, damaging effects.

What could be more fair and ethical than openly acknowledging this inequity, and providing compensation to the victims? And seriously discussing other cmparaable wrongs that might be at least partly righted in this way?  

Im-Politic: Are Democrats Groping Toward Race Relations Straight Talk?

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ABC News, African American women, African Americans, Amy Klobuchar, Democrats, election 2020, gender, George Floyd, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Leah Wright Riguer, police brutality, race relations, racism, This Week, vice president

I’m sure that Harvard University political scientist Leah Wright Riguer didn’t mean to voice her own bizarre elaboration of Joe Biden’s recent claim that “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

All the same, that’s awfully close to what she did in her appearance yesterday on ABC News‘ “This Week” news talk show as she struggled to explain why Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, didn’t really have to select an African American woman as his running mate in order to avoid charges of racism or racial insensitivity. In the process, she also inadvertantly revealed how confused – and how worrisomely confused – much Democratic (and by extension, much liberal and progressive) – thinking on race relations is. Strangely, however, they also can be seen as cause for some optimism.

Biden, you’ll recall, has promised to name a woman as his vice presidential choice, and due to the national furor over race relations and police brutality that’s followed the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, it’s widely assumed that he now has no choice but to choose an African American woman. The case for making such a selection, as Riguer pointed out, is also reinforced by the importance of these women to the Democratic voting base.

But then Riguer, an African American ABC News Contributor, then revealingly expressed her own befuddling take on the issue. She was asked by moderator Jonathan Karl whether “Biden should choose an African-American woman as his running mate,” and whether (white) former vice presidential (and before that, presidential) candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is correct in claiming that a black female running mate is “pretty much” locked in.

Here’s how Riguer answered:

“So, it’s not necessarily a lock, although I think what we have to consider is that the base of the Democratic Party is black women.

“And black women are really pushing for their agenda and for their issues and for their needs to be front and center on the ticket, but also have somebody in the White House, whether it be vice president, whether it be president, that is going to fight for these issues and make them tangible. And so what we are seeing is that a lot of black women and a lot of the broader party is actually saying, yes, this is a black woman’s time.

“But I think it’s also important to actually listen to what these people are saying. And what they’re saying is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a black woman. It has to be somebody who listens to black women’s issues.

“So, if there are candidates out there who happen to be black, who happen to be black women, but they’re not — they don’t have our best interests in mind, then perhaps we should be looking in a different direction.”

That final point is the key here. On the one hand, it was good to see that Riguer was clearly uncomfortable with a purist Identity Politics, African-American-Woman-Or-Bust stand. Let’s hope that all Americans can agree that when selecting a running mate a presidential candidate should be thinking first and foremost about who’s best qualified to be “a heartbeat away” from the world’s most powerful and important job. (Not that Riguer necessarily made that point.)

On the other hand, she also argued that black women who don’t “listen to black women’s issues” and “don’t have our best interests in mind” should be ruled out by the Democrats.

This argument isn’t exactly the same as Biden’s stated belief that identity can’t be defined correctly unless it’s defined in a way that’s useful for certain politicians and parties. But it’s close, and raises many more questions than it answers, especially when it’s taken down from the abstract level and used as guidance for Biden today.

It’s entirely understandable, after all, for African-American women to insist that Biden not select for the ticket an African-American Republican woman, or even a non-partisan female African American conservative. But even assuming that’s what Riguer was talking about, what have ever been the odds of that kind of decision being made? Practically zero. And that’s precisely because it’s hard to identify any African-American Democratic female politician, or other figure who’s prominently associated with Democrats (Oprah Winfrey? Former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice?) who’s not on board with how Riguer believes African American Democratic women (and she?) define “their best interests.”

At the same time, if Riguer is serious in maintaining that it’s not black female-ness as such that should determine Biden’s vice presidential pick, then why should race play any official, or even public, role at all? Those last two qualifiers are crucial, because there’s absolutely nothing new about presidential candidates choosing running mates mainly because they checked some demographic or geographical box deemed likely to help secure victory. So let’s not suddenly start standing on our high horses and insist that seeking an African American woman actively, or that naming one, would be anything close to unprecedented or is in any way improper.

But if Riguer is right in describing African-American women (and presumably many other Democrats) as prioritizing a pro-African-American woman agenda (whose definition wasn’t specified but isn’t important for our purposes here), over racial identity per se, then it’s legitimate to ask why racial (or gender or ethnic) identity should matter at all.

In fact, nothing could have been easier for intelligent, articulate people like Riguer (and Biden – or at least his handlers nowadays) to say than something on the order of “I’d like nothing better than to see (or pick) an African-American female (or any female) as a Democratic vice presidential candidate, and believe there are plenty of great choices out there. But I also believe that designating race and gender as the overriding priority would be wrong because so many other considerations are at least as important.”

But they didn’t. And I strongly suspect that the reason is that a purist Identify Politics position actually is the dominant Democratic dogma, and that in Riguer’s case specifically yesterday, she feared being read the riot act if she deviated explicitly from that party line. So she resorted to creating fantasies about plausible African-American female Democratic vice presidential hopefuls who aren’t all-in with the views of the party’s leading black female politicians.

One hopeful possibility: As suggested above, much as “hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue,” Riguer’s logical somersaults are an implicit admission that these views don’t pass the intellectual honesty test.

Another hopeful possibility – Biden’s apology for his “you ain’t black” remark. He acknowledged that “No one should have to vote for any party, based on their race or religion or background.” But as with Riguer, if this is true, and if he really believes it, and if he includes gender in his definition of “background,” then why promise to choose any kind of female as his running mate? Doesn’t the same principle apply? Shouldn’t it?

Straight talk (and thinking) on a subject as painful and important as race relations has rarely been more important in American history. These remarks by Riguer and Biden justify some optimism that Democrats are at least groping this goal. But they also make clear how far they have to go.

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Most Troubling Racial Economic Gap?

Tags

African Americans, Federal Reserve, George Floyd, inequality, personal finance, race relations, Survey of Consumer Finances, wealth, {What's Left of) Our Economy

As so widely and correctly reported in the wake of unarmed African American detainee George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis last month by a white police officer, the economic gap between black and white Americans remains way too wide despite the progress made in recent decades. In addition, research consistently shows that this inequality can be found in every indicator you can think of. (Two recent summaries can be found here and here.) 

Some recent digging, however, has convinced me that nowhere is the problem bigger or more serious than in wealth – that is, what people earn (from wages, salaries, rents, or what have you) along with what they own (homes, autos, stocks, etc.) The above-linked Washington Post article makes clear why wealth matters so much, especially over time:

“More wealth makes for more a comfortable, safer living. And, more importantly, it is passed on to the next generation. Their parents’ wealth gives many white children a boost at birth, an advantage many of their black peers lack.”

But the closer you look at the wealth figures, the more surprising they are. For although the black-white gap has consistently remained formidable in absolute term going back to at least 1989, it has witnessed some fluctuations that haven’t been trivial, and that over time at least point in the right direction.

Here’s a table containing the black-white breakdown in wealth over recent decades. The source is a study released every three years by the Federal Reserve that’s called the Survey of Consumer Finances. Unfortunately, the latest edition only takes the story through 2016. (If schedules for the previous studies hold, the next release won’t come out until the early fall.) The numbers in the left-hand and center column represent the actual dollar wealth amounts, adjusted for inflation, of the typical white and black households. In other words, it shows us the median – the figure for households exactly at the midpoint of results for all households. The right-hand column shows that ratio between these levels. The source is this collection of charts that accompanied the latest release: 

                     non-hispanic white      non-hispanic black     ratio white:black

1989:                   132.7                                7.4                           17.93:1

1992:                   116.9                              16.9                             6.92:1

1995                    120.0                              17.1                             7.02:1

1998                    141.4                              22.9                             6.17:1

2001:                   166.3                              26.3                             6.32:1

2004:                   179.3                              26.0                             6.90:1

2007:                   198.3                              24.4                             8.13:1

2010:                   144.3                              17.6                             8.20:1

2013:                   146.4                              13.6                           10.76:1

2016:                   171.0                              17.1                           10.00:1

Over the longest term, it’s clear that the racial wealth gap has narrowed significantly. Indeed, from 1989 to 2016, it shrank by a little over 44 percent. Much more discouraging – the lion’ share of this progress took place during the three years between 1989 and 1992.  Since then, it’s widened by 44.50 percent.

The relationship between this wealth gap and the economy’s ups and downs are noteworthy, too. During the 1990s economic expansion (which took place essentially between the 1992 and 2001 figures), the gap narrowed modestly – from 6.92:1 to 6.32:1. But during the so-called bubble expansion of the first decade of this century (from 2001 through 2007), it widened significantly. And it widened further during the first six years of the last, pre-CCP Virus recovery – by nearly 22 percent.

At the same time, as that expansion took hold, the 2012-2016 results show that some narrowing resumed.

Also, odd –during the Great Recession, which lasted from the end of 2007 till the middle of 2009, the racial wealth gap barely widened at all.

Finally, though, according to a chart that ran in the above-linked Washington Post piece (and that I wasn’t able to reproduce), there’s data going back to the 1950s. I haven’t looked at the figures first hand, but if the graphic is accurate, the wealth gap narrowed dramatically through the late 1970s, (though the black household wealth levels start at a shockingly low level), suffered a terrible 1980s (even though the economy overall grew nicely during the decade), recovered sharply during the 1990s (an even stronger, longer expansion), and has regressed steadily this entire century (through 2016).  Worst of all, though, the caption’s message:  virtually no progress since the late 1960s – another time of racial and other national tumoil. 

Unfortunately, the next set of Fed figures won’t shed any light on the virus’ impact on this key measure of black economic performance and progress. But Americans may learn whether the country had finally started getting back on the right track.

 

 

Making News: Podcast On-Line of National Radio Interview on Police Reform

Tags

"Defund the Police", "Disband the Police", Breitbart News Tonight, Camden, George Floyd, Making News, New Jersey, police brutality, police reform, race relations, racism, surveillance

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast of my latest national radio interview is now on-line.  Broadcast last night on “Breitbart News Tonight,” it dealt with the subject of yesterday’s post on what lessons are really being taught by Camden, New Jersey’s recent experiment in police “defunding” and “disbanding” and even “reform.”  To listen, head to this link and scroll down till you see my name.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Where Blame is Due

Tags

civil rights, Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, Hennepin County, homicide, Im-Politic, Jr., Justice Department, manslaughter, Martin Luther King, Mike Freeman, Minneapolis, Minneapolis protests, Minneapolis riots, Minnesota, murder, police killings, prosecutors, race relations, vandalism

Two sets of thoughts today about the killing of an unarmed, subdued black male crime suspect by a white Minneapolis police officer, and specifically who s to blame – for starters – for its too often violent aftermath.

>First, muddled thinking is abounding about the different categories of groups and individuals involved in this past week’s upheaval. And the problem centers on those who have acted violently.

It should be, but clearly isn’t, obvious that the arsonists and window-smashers and brick-throwers etc mustn’t simply be divided between locals and outside agitators, or between those whose anger is longstanding and genuine and those who have simply gotten caught up in mass hysteria. For if the typology used even for the violent participants isn’t valid, it’s unlikely that the country’s collective response will be constructive.

In my view, none of the violence is acceptable in the slightest – in the sense that its outbreak or continuation can be safely tolerated by any governmental authority. So I’m not completely with the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s position that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” I say “completely” because it’s crucial to look at the targets of the violence.

Specifically, rioters who attack police stations and vehicles, or government buildings, or even properties with clearly symbolic importance (e.g., a stock exchange) undoubtedly are assailing a system they consider oppressive, and that they believe prevents the peaceful attainment of their objectives (which could in principle even include bringing on anarchy).

I don’t agree with this view because I don’t accept the underlying analysis. But it’s logical. It’s coherent. And it’s principled. At the same time, it can’t be accepted, because a widespread breakdown of order would threaten essential levels of personal safety and well-being for the vast majority of Americans. Which means that these rioters (and their sympathizers) need to recognize that the authorities are justified in using any legal means needed to stop and/or prevent this violence. In other words, attack this system if you will, but don’t complain when it exercises its right to self-defense.

Rioters who attack other targets – like businesses or other sites without symbolic importance – may be motivated by genuine anger against an oppressive system. But ethically speaking, their actions are even less defensible. The best that can be said of them is that they’ve acted without the simple judgment and self-control that’s also needed for society to function satisfactorily. So that society has a legitimate interest in using any legal means necessary to stop and/or prevent their violence. And their sincerity consequently doesn’t warrant lenient treatment, either.

As for the looters – they’ve clearly lost the moral right to carry a social or racial justice warrior ID card. They’re nothing better than common thieves who deserve common thief treatment from the criminal justice system, and no sympathy whatever from their fellow citizens.

>Second, however strong my conviction that none of this week’s violence is acceptable, I can’t shake the feeling that the Minnesota state authorities made the crucial mistake by failing to indict the police officer in question, Derek Chauvin, much faster.

After all, much of violence was sparked by a belief that, despite the unmistakably incriminating video evidence, the authorities were taking much longer in arresting Chauvin than they would have taken in dealing with non-white suspects (even in more ambiguous circumstances).

And in this instance, they were absolutely right. The lion’s share of the blame here goes to Hennepin County (Minnesota) Attorney Mike Freeman, whose first instinct was to announce that “We are going to investigate it as expeditiously, as thoroughly and completely as justice demands. Sometimes that takes a little time. And we ask people to be patient.”

He continued:

“That that video [of the killing] is graphic and horrific and terrible and no person should do that. But my job in the end is to prove that he violated criminal statute. And there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge. We need to wade through all of that evidence to come to a meaningful determination and we are doing that to the best of our ability.”

But however reasonable and responsible and even necessarily fair these comments may have sounded, they were conspicuously timid to anyone with any familiarity with the criminal justice system. For there was no intrinsic need – and certainly no need in this case – for Minnesota authorities to conduct the kind of relatively protracted pre-arrest investigation of this killing that Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman described in a press conference yesterday.

After all, the video (whose authenticity no one has challenged) shows the action in question and Chauvin’s involvement undeniably. Would Freeman call for a detailed investigation if he saw a security camera recording of an unmasked thief robbing a liquor store?

Sure, there was the question of specifying the charges against Chauvin. Given the above categories of murder and manslaughter (and in some states, but not Minnesota, “negligent homicide”), that’s not a no-brainer. (On Friday, Freeman announced them to be third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.)

But not even these decisions are always or even typically based on meticulous examinations of available evidence. Prosecutors enjoy considerable discretion, and it’s common to file a more serious charge in order to create the worst-case certainty of a lesser conviction. In any event, an experienced District Attorney shouldn’t need three days to make up his or her mind. Which means that Freeman’s dithering surely, and needlessly, fed volatile, racially-tinged suspicions of the criminal justice system.

Where more careful investigation may be justified is in the second, and separate, related probe of the Floyd killing that will be conducted by the federal government. Under the U.S. Constitution, most crimes (except for those designated as federal offenses) are dealt with by the states. These include unlawful homicides like the one Chauvin allegedly committed. (Legally speaking a homicide refers to any taking of one person’s life by another person, legally permitted or not.)

The federal government’s Justice Department, however, is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights law, and on Friday, Attorney General William P. Barr ordered an investigation into whether Floyd’s killing warrants prosecution according to those statutes.

In some instances, apparently, these prosecutions can be more difficult to conduct successfully than standard criminal homicide trials. So it wasn’t completely crazy for U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald to talk about the the need to “methodically continue to gather facts” and compiling “all available information and thoroughly evaluate evidence and information obtained from witnesses.”   

At the same time, the Justice Department’s own guidelines seem to show that meeting this standard shouldn’t be especially challenging.for an indictment and even conviction in Floyd/Chauvin case given the video evidence, and in particular given the lengthy period during which Floyd clearly was in major distress at Chauvin’s hands:

“…the government must prove each of the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt: (1) that the defendant deprived a victim of a right protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, (2) that the defendant acted willfully, and (3) that the defendant was acting under color of law. A violation …is a felony if one of the following conditions is met: the defendant used, attempted to use, or threatened to use a dangerous weapon, explosive or fire; the victim suffered bodily injury; the defendant’s actions included attempted murder, kidnapping or attempted kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse or attempted aggravated sexual abuse, or the crime resulted in death. Otherwise, the violation is a misdemeanor.

“Establishing the intent behind a Constitutional violation requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the law enforcement officer knew what he/she was doing was wrong and against the law and decided to do it anyway. Therefore, even if the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an individual’s Constitutional right was violated,[the statute] requires that the government prove that the law enforcement officer intended to engage in the unlawful conduct and that he/she did so knowing that it was wrong or unlawful. See Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 101-107 (1945). Mistake, fear, misperception, or even poor judgment does not constitute willful conduct prosecutable under the statute.”

So an argument can be made that the Feds were being too scrupulous by half, too.

Law enforcement should never be influenced by politics – much less by fear that unpopular indictments or verdicts will spark civil unrest. That’s a great recipe for mob rule. And as argued above, many of the rioters weren’t going to be appeased even by the swiftest Minneapolis indictments.

But the Justice Department has officially acknowledged the “sensitive nature of the constitutional and statutory issues involved [in dealing with civil rights crimes] and the desirability of uniform application of federal law in this field….” Which means that prosecutors need to demonstrate a little situational awareness. And that there’s a strong case that this was a test that both Minnesota and federal attorneys flunked in the Floyd/Chauvin case.

Following Up: Why Many of America’s Widest Divides Aren’t What You Think

Tags

college-educated, Democrats, education, Following Up, Gallup, healthcare, inequality, minorities, non-college, opportunity, partisanship, polling, polls, race relations, Republicans, whites

“An anxious and divided nation cast its first votes,” the headline in the Washington Post moaned this morning.

As yesterday’s RealityChek post reported, though, some impressive evidence came out last week showing that the nation isn’t all that anxious, or fatally divided in the most general terms, after all. At the same time, diving into that evidence’s internals shows no shortage of divisions – only many of the dividing lines are pretty surprising.  (See the PDF linked at the bottom where it says “View complete question responses and trends.”)

For not only is the most important division by far the partisan split between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a gap that tends to be considerably wider than those between groups where divides in the last few years are supposed to have been especially and worrisomely gaping – between blacks and whites, between rich and poor, between the better educated and the less well educated.

For me, the big takeaway is that when Americans are in political moods, they get carried away by their emotions, with Republicans feeling awfully chipper about the state of the nation, and Democrats correspondingly gloomy. When they’re not preoccupied with politics, Americans seem more level-headed – and their outlooks are sunnier. But the unexpected findings scarcely stop there!

For example, let’s look at the internals of the headline satisfaction finding, which shows Americans’ feelings about the quality of their lives. A lofty 84 percent of all Americans told Gallup that they’re satisfied on this score, and 37 percent said they were “very satisfied.”

Republicans were the most satisfied Americans by a wide margin – an astonishing 96 percent called themselves satisfied, and 60 percent considered themselves “very satisfied.” The least satisfied group? Democrats. Their satisfaction levels were 77 percent satisfied and only 25 percent very satisfied.

But here’s what really grabbed my attention – and should grab yours. Keep in mind that the various groups of respondents overlap considerably (for example, both Democrats and Republicans include the wealthy and the poor, and the college-educated and the high school grads; and the both the wealthy and the poor include those identifying with both political parties).

The Democrats’ satisfaction levels were lower than those for non-whites (79 percent) and for Americans with a high school education or less (84 percent). That doesn’t sound very consistent with the notion that non-whites and those with relatively modest education levels are feeling especially downtrodden lately. But these readings definitely point to special degrees of unhappiness among Democrats. So does the fact that the “very satisfied” results for both these groups (31 percent and 34 percent, respectively) topped those for Democrats as well.

The partisan divide is even bigger, in both absolute and relative terms, for satisfaction levels regarding whether working hard can get a person ahead in America these days. In toto, 72 percent of respondents were satisfied and 43 percent were very satisfied with this situation. Non-whites’ overall satisfaction and very satisfied levels weren’t too far off those figures (71 percent and 37 percent, respectively). And the figures for those holding a high school degree at most were notably higher (77 percent and 51 percent, respectively).

But the Democrats’ results were completely in the dumps (only 47 percent and 19 percent, respectively).

Also interesting – non-whites, and Americans lacking college degrees are all more convinced than the college grads (68 percent) about the payoff of working hard, with respondents with a high school degree or less expressing the highest (77 percent) satisfaction level.

Satisfaction levels are much lower in absolute terms (43 percent overall) over the distribution of income and wealth in America – which should surprise no one. But again, those lacking a high school degree were more satisfied, and by a wide margin (49 percent), while the least satisfied (also by a wide margin) were the Democrats (21 percent).

The least educated were also more satisfied with the current rich-poor gap than college graduates (40 percent). But on this issue, non-white satisfaction levels were lower than the average (38 percent).

Gallup respondents were even less satisfied with the availability of healthcare in the United States, with only 37 percent expressing such views. Yet a familiar pattern emerges from the internals. The biggest gap was between Republicans (53 percent satisfied) and Democrats (27 percent). These also represented the highest and lowest levels of all the groups examined.

In addition, non-whites (41 percent) were more satisfied than whites the overall total (37 percent), and much more satisfied not only than the Democrats but than college grads (31 percent). The same held for Americans without high school diplomas (also 41 percent satisfied).

Finally, let’s look at a particularly explosive issue – race relations. Or at least it’s supposed to be particularly explosive. But according to the Gallup survey, there’s much more dissatisfaction than polarization – except among Democrats and Republicans.

Overall satisfaction levels are low – coming in at 36 percent. But the widest gap by far is between followers of the two parties, with 51 percent of Republican identifiers declaring themselves to be satisfied compared with only 24 percent of their Democratic counterparts. (Actually, Gallup also measured satisfaction levels according to political ideology – liberals, moderates, and conservatives. I’ve left these findings out due to the assumption because these results closely track the political parties’ results – which include independent voters. But according to this gauge, the conservative-liberal gap is somewhat wider, at 52 percent-17 percent.)

Most significantly, this partisan divide is far wider than the racial divide, with 35 percent of whites expressing satisfaction with the state of race relations and 39 percent of nonwhites so stating. Also doubtless significant: The next-least-satisfied group is college graduates, of whom only 28 percent expressed satisfaction. Further, their “very satisfied” levels (3 percent) were by far the lowest along with the Democrats’. And they were only one-third the nine percent “very satisfied” levels of non-whites.

Is the country indeed anxious?  To some extent, sure.  Is it divided?  That’s where the answer gets especially complicated.  And this complex picture indicates that, especially in this presidential campaign year, all Americans should beware of pundits and others bearing sweeping generalizations. 

Im-Politic: Mayor Pander

Tags

2020 elections, African Americans, Democrats, Im-Politic, Pete Buttigieg, race relations, racism

Just as a picture can be worth a thousand words, a simple statement can be worth a thousand (hopefully) clever leads. So I’ll just come right out and say it: A report I just came across about a truly epic effort at pandering by Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is the flat-out side-splittingly funniest thing – and unintentionally most degrading spectacle – I have seen in years and possibly decades.

You know Buttigieg. He’s the mayor of South Bend, Indiana whose career has been a model of office-seeker’s credentials harvesting – Harvard degree, Rhodes Scholarship, McKinsey & Co. consulting stint. It’s all been so calculated that it’s almost legit to wonder if being gay and serving a short tour of duty in Afghanistan has been part of the plan.

Not surprisingly, then, “Mayor Pete” has given the nation its best imitation of an obsequious student politician since Animal House’s Greg Marmalard (perhaps best known for dodging Dean Wormer’s question, “What is the worst fraternity on this campus?” with the classically base-covering, “Well that would be hard to say, sir. They’re each outstanding in their own way.”)

Except the brown-nosing that Buttigieg’s been getting best known for is shameless pandering aimed at neutralizing charges that he’s not sufficiently woke on racial issues. He’s apologized for embodying “white privilege.” He’s apologized for insisting that all lives, and not simply black lives, matter. He’s apologized for allegedly underestimating the obstacles faced by students of color. And he’s sought to take the offensive by alleging that many of the nation’s institutions are afflicted with “structural racism.”

Reasonable people can disagree about the appropriateness of these Buttigieg genuflections and positions. But only a complete stick-in-the-mud would deny that Mayor Pete’s June, 2019 effort to relate to the black community was a display of bad-boy worship (I refuse to dignify it even with a faux academic construct like “cultural appropriation”) as unwittingly humiliating and preposterous as it was hilarious.

The specifics? With his image among African Americans already sorely in need of repair, Buttigieg launched an effort at rehabilitation featuring an appearance on a cable TV show with a significant following in the black community. Since I couldn’t possibly improve on this below account of the segment and its aftermath, I’ll simply present it (along with a priceless photo – complete with Book of Mormon-like attire):

“Buttigieg was on the Showtime late night program Desus and Mero recently, appearing in a scene in which he chugs liquor from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag on the streets of the Bronx with the two co-hosts.

“‘Oh my goodness, that is good stuff!’ Buttigieg exclaimed upon taking his first swig of the bottled whiskey.

“‘Keep it low in case the cops go by,’” one of the hosts warned. “They be trippin’ at the end of the month, bro.’”

Unfortunately, though, for Mayor Pete, these ingratiation efforts seem to have gone for naught, and as the crucial Iowa Democratic caucuses approach, he’s facing allegations that his top aides essentially treated its few African American and minority campaign staffers like tokens. Maybe it’s time for him to break out a do-rag?

Im-Politic: Why The New York Times Shouldn’t be Writing the History of Slavery – or Anything Else

Tags

1619 Project, Dean Baquet, history, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media bias, race, race relations, racism, Russia, slavery, The New York Times, Trump, Trump-Russia

It’s bad enough that The New York Times all but admitted last week that its news operations lately have been driven by over-arching missions and “visions” centering on specific issues. In the words of Executive Editor Dean Baquet at an internal “town hall” meeting of Times staff, the paper is now shifting from investigating “Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice?” to focusing on “what it means to be an American in 2019” and more specifically writing “about race and class in a deeper way than we have in years” because “America [has] become so divided by Donald Trump.”

Possibly worse is how The Times has also decided that this mission includes throwing much of its still considerable resources behind what Baquet called “the most ambitious examination of the legacy of slavery ever undertaken in [inaudible] newspaper….”

For although it’s disturbing that a news organization would in effect bet the house on probing an issue – and thereby create overwhelming incentives for its staff to assume continually that any and all appearances of smoke, even from clearly conflicted sources, add to the case of underlying fire – this Times decision at least dovetails generally with commonly used definitions of journalism that have long served the country and its democratic system well.

Not that the press should get into the habit of proactively designating issues as existential priorities well before the outcomes and implications are reasonably clear. But Baquet deserves some slack here given the charges that the President was a Manchurian candidate beholden to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin – unmistakably an earth-shattering story at least potentially. Therefore, it’s hard to blame him for in effect establishing a major priority and allocating his resources accordingly, and it’s nitpicking to insist that he still might have gone somewhat too far.

Two possible and related qualifications to these conclusions, though, should be kept in mind. First, it’s painfully obvious from the meeting transcript linked above (and not disavowed by any participants) that any number of Times staffers are virulently anti-Trump – which logically raises suspicions about whether any of the paper’s reporters or editors cooperated with the equally virulent Trump opponents in the Obama Justice Department and intelligence agencies to keep the story artificially alive through publishing obviously selected leaks selectively, and even through knowingly trafficking in sheer rumor and innuendo.

Second, as I’ve written, given the abundance of Never Trump-ers in the federal bureaucracy and in the D.C. Swamp generally speaking, and given how commonplace leaks of even the most sensitive material had become, long before the release of Special Counsel Mueller’s report, it was becoming increasingly apparent that if no smoking guns had yet been found, chances are they didn’t exist. But there’s no reason to believe that the paucity of genuinely damning evidence ever gave Baquet any second thoughts about his initial decision – which indicates troubling stubbornness at best and even more troubling bias at worst.

But I can’t prove either of the these two points. Moreover, just as I can’t legitimately fault Baquet for per se focusing, at least for a serious period of time, tightly on the Trump-Russia story, I can’t fault him per se for deciding subsequently to devote much of the paper’s attention to race relations. For times change, and news coverage priorities need to change with them – although Baquet’s link of the decision to a Trump record that he plainly views as uniquely and dangerously divisive strongly indicates that he’s prejudging the results awfully early in the game.

The examining slavery thing, however – that’s fundamentally different. It’s the kind of endeavor, after all, that can’t be squared with any longstanding tradition of American journalism. Instead, the “1619 Project” at its heart is nothing less than an effort to change the way Americans view their history, and how it’s been impacted down to the present by slave-holding. (1619 was the year in which the first enslaved African blacks arrived in North America – specifically, near British-held Jamestown, Virginia.  Just FYI, African slaves didn’t arrive in French-held North America until a decade later.) If you’re skeptical about this 1619 project claim, check out how it’s described by The Times:

“The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400^th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.”

For good measure, the paper tells us that “it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”

Any thinking person understands the need for continual reassessments of history – and all fields of knowledge – if only because new information is constantly coming to light. In addition, you don’t need to fall prey to “present-ism” (judging or merely viewing past events and works through the prism of contemporary standards) to recognize that standards do change; that they can change for legitimate and considered, as well as for faddish and/or partisan, reasons; and that whenever such circumstances warrant, reassessments are needed. Indeed, these exercises are especially important when engaged in the always hazardous but ultimately needed effort to identify the past’s lessons.

And what thinking, informed person doubts that the nation’s professional historians fully understand this imperative, and that in fact their discipline isn’t in a constant state of reassessment?

But even if these scholars were failing their country and academe’s best traditions and practices, why would any thinking person consider The Times institutionally qualified to fill the gap competently? What evidence has the paper presented that it can carry out satisfactorily a project that even it describes as “unprecedentedly ambitious” and that’s surely more accurately described as “unprecedented” period? And as a result, from where does The Times draw its confidence in declaring that it’s able to “finally…tell our story truthfully.”

My answers to all these questions: “Beats me.”

And if you believe that the paper is up to this task, you really need to read the full transcript of the town hall meeting. For it makes distressingly clear that many of the paper’s staffers have no use for notions like sticking to the facts and enabling readers to make up their own minds – at least not since the civilization-menacing emergence of the Trump presidency. (Or was it the Trump candidacy?) As for views of race and its proper role in Times journalism, take a look at these remarks from one staffer:

“I’m wondering to what extent you [Baquet] think that the fact of racism and white supremacy being sort of the foundation of this country should play into our reporting. Just because it feels to me like it should be a starting point, you know? Like these conversations about what is racist, what isn’t racist. I just feel like racism is in everything. It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting. And so, to me, it’s less about the individual instances of racism, and sort of how we’re thinking about racism and white supremacy as the foundation of all of the systems in the country. And I think particularly as we are launching a 1619 Project, I feel like that’s going to open us up to even more criticism from people who are like, ‘OK, well you’re saying this, and you’re producing this big project about this. But are you guys actually considering this in your daily reporting?’”

His boss’ response (in part)?

“I do think that race and understanding of race should be a part of how we cover the American story. Sometimes news organizations sort of forget that in the moment. But of course it should be. I mean, one reason we all signed off on the 1619 Project and made it so ambitious and expansive was to teach our readers to think a little bit more like that.”

Translation: “You’re right. And the 1619 Project is aimed at persuading Americans to think ‘a little bit more’ like you.” P.S. The transcript records zero pushback against this wildly distorted, reductionist view. That is, like too much of the rest of the Mainstream Media, The New York Times has drifted dangerously far from the notion that journalism amounts to “writing the first draft of history.” It’s going to start writing that history itself. And it’s firmly convinced that it has a monopoly on wisdom.

And that’s fine in principle – if the paper wants to turn itself into something like an opinion publication, a think tank or a lobby group. For a newspaper, however, it represents a bright and dangerous line crossed, and is certain to further erode the public’s confidence in journalists – thereby adding to a list of dangers facing American democracy that’s already far too long.