Reforms go beyond the police station

This  post was published in the Wilson Times June 12, 2020.

            If you haven’t been moved by the protests and demonstrations that have swept American and foreign cities the past couple of weeks, you’re not paying attention. The earnest outrage over senseless deaths of African-Americans by police is understandable and righteous.

            The vandalism and looting that accompanied some peaceful protests were disgusting and disgraceful. Reports indicate that anarchists and criminals stole the spotlight from peaceful protests and proceeded to pilfer and destroy whatever they wanted. Shop owners, black and white, barely holding on during the pandemic, found windows smashed, inventory stolen and other damage. These criminals should be prosecuted. The peaceful protesters should be heard. Their message is honorable and justifiable.

            Last week, I called for a review of police training and tactics. That should be obvious. Police in body armor wielding armored vehicles, shields, explosives and chemical weapons make them more military combatants than protectors of the people. The Obama administration has provided a 40-page guide to reforming policing, but, as with all things from Obama, the Trump administration has exiled the needed reforms and turned to more weaponry, more violence, more force, more fatalities. Reform can be done, improving criminal justice and reducing police violence while keeping Americans safer in their own homes and communities. Increased violence and force is not the answer. Making police “helpers,” with better training and screening, instead of herders is the answer.

            Some are calling for defunding or dismantling police departments. That is not the answer, especially for minority communities with high crime rates. The militarization of police, developed in the Nixon “Law and Order” era, however, should be ended. Lethal tactics intended for foreign enemies should not be used against our own citizens.

            Criminal justice reform should accompany police reforms. As William J.  Stuntz showed in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice,” few criminal charges go before a jury as prosecutors force defendants to wait in jail until they accept a plea bargain, which avoids a trial and closes the case in the state’s favor.

            The rest of us also need reform. White Americans’ fear of black dominance has justified slavery, lynching, segregated schools and other atrocities. Some have advocated reparations for slavery and its aftermath. As New York Times columnist David Brooks has written, determination of who is eligible for reparations (documenting slave ancestors, adjusting for non-African ancestors, etc.) would be a nightmare. It would be better, he says, to help fund institutions that can bring prosperity to black families and black neighborhoods. Brooks acknowledges that this was tried before with Community Action Agencies under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society with poor results, but it can be done successfully, he says.

           

            Substandard housing could best be addressed by following the formula of Habitat for Humanity, which focuses on home ownership at discount prices. New owners make payments to Habitat and must live in their homes for 10 or more years. The owner may sell the home before paying off a zero-interest first mortgage, but a second mortgage comes due if the owner tries to “flip” the home for a quick profit. Federal housing projects that push the poor into rentals do little for the poor. Home ownership creates wealth, in which African-Americans sadly lag.

            Discounted home ownership could compensate for generations of red-lining, loan rejections, and other unfair treatment while building up minority communities.  Incentives could be added to promote desegregation of neighborhoods.

            In this pivotal moment, America should be bold enough to address police violence and the inequality of opportunity for minorities, an inequality that harms both minorities and white Americans.

Don't want to Bragg, but ...

The latest battleground in the effort to obliterate all reminders of slavery and slave owners apparently will be the names of U.S. Army bases, many of which are named after Confederate generals.

That is a distinction at which I have often marveled. Why name Army bases after people who fought against the U.S. Army? The answer apparently is that when new Army bases were established in the 20th century, Confederate heroes were still popular among local officials in the South, and the Army gave local officials naming rights for the new bases that engulfed millions of acres of land.

One Army base's name has a bit of irony. Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C., is named after Braxton Bragg, who is widely regarded as probably the worst general in the Confederacy. He might be one of the worst generals in history! Activists who want to purge Bragg's name from the huge Army base might want to think twice. Yes, Bragg was loyal to the Confederacy, and he was a slave owner (as nearly all wealthy individuals in the Old South were), but his bumbling and ignorance of strategy and tactics probably shortened the Civil War by several months and saved many thousands of lives, North and South. His incompetence was especially noted at Chattanooga and Franklin, Tennessee.

If Southern defenders of the Confederacy took a moment to learn more about Bragg, they might be less interested in defending the Bragg name. Yankees wanting to erase Confederate names from American soil might want to reconsider and make Bragg an honorary Union general. After all, he probably did far more from the Union cause that he did for the Confederate cause.

'I can't breathe' is being felt nationwide

This post was published in the Wilson Times June 5, 2020.

“I can’t breathe …” America has heard these words before. These words came as the desperate plea of black men in police custody. We heard it in New York City in 2014 as Eric Garner slowly suffocated in the arms of a police officer. We heard it again from George Floyd of Minneapolis May 25 as a police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, cutting off his air. Other African-Americans who posed no threat to police or the public have been shot dead by police officers.

The words of Garner and Floyd can apply in a larger sense to this nation, which has been denying that it has a problem with overly aggressive and needlessly punishing law enforcement. Protesters in cities throughout America and the world have proclaimed that they are on the side of African-American men who are routinely mistreated in the name of achieving “law and order.”

America’s cities have been inflamed before, particularly in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., but underlying problems persist.

The mostly peaceful recent protests have, in many cities, devolved into vandalism as stores and government buildings have been set ablaze by demonstrators who came prepared for violent combat. Private and public property was destroyed. Windows were shattered — even in Wilson — and stores were ransacked by organized or opportunistic looters.

To repair the nation, we must change the way law enforcement officers are trained. Excessive force should never be necessary. Garner was suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes on the street. Floyd may have been accused of possessing a counterfeit $20 bill. These men were not dangerous criminals, not a threat to society. Use of deadly force over an inconsequential offense cannot be justified.

These deaths are part of a pattern of racially tinged law enforcement going back, some say, to the era of slavery. Let’s get chokeholds and knees on windpipes out of police departments’ playbooks. Let’s restore black America’s trust in law enforcement.

And let’s take racial prejudice out of the economy. Some have relied upon the argument that people are poor because of bad decisions they made, and it is true that bad decisions can ruin a person’s opportunities for a better life, but that’s not the whole story. As writer Ta Nehisi Coates has documented, zoning laws, substandard education, federal banking rules, access to agricultural grants and other obscure limitations have kept African-Americans out of the larger economy.

America must begin a process of eliminating all these barriers so that equal opportunity really is fair. Federal grants could help poor people buy or repair homes or start a business, giving them a solid foundation.

We should also recognize that protests against injustice are being used by people with nefarious intentions. Rumors abound as to whether far-right or far-left extremists are igniting the fires that are burning down our cities. Let it be clear that anarchists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists are among us and are an imminent danger to America’s principles. A right to assemble and petition government is guaranteed in the Constitution. There is no right to riot, burn and destroy. Law enforcement should use every legal method, from facial recognition software to monitoring cell phones, to identify and indict those who steal legitimate protests to create chaos and destruction.

America needs a reassessment, an honest examination of how we got to this point. That reassessment can’t take place under a president who urges police to be more violent and abusive and touts military involvement. If we fail to change, the next “I can’t breathe” might summarize the entire nation’s suffering.