So far this week in responding to the very well publicized interaction between LAPD Police Sgt. Jim Parker and Django Unchained Actress Daniele Watts. I, for one, have mostly focused on the legal 4th Amendment and 5th Amendment concerns that it now appears regular LAPD policy creates in contrast to the fact that California currently has no "Show Identification" Law and - as I ultimately discovered - the California Peace Officers Legal Sourcebook [as written by the California Attorney General's Office] says that Police may not use California Penal Code 148(a)(1) [obstruction & interference with an officer] to arrest a person who refuses to provide them ID when requested, no matter what Police Chief Charlie Beck and the LAPD Protective League Says.
What I haven't talked about at all so far, is the Racial aspect of what happened. Or what the racial ramifications and atmosphere in general around issues such as this are. So now after receiving an email asking me this question.
So there is no proof for racism?
I will respond to that issue. Over the flip.
This may seem surprising coming from me but I generally think we talk about racism a little to much. Well, let me, rephrase. We openly accuse people of racism long before we have real hard evidence of it, because usually we don't have that evidence at all. And we don't have that evidence because people who are real racists, are doing their damnedest to hide their racism and their motivations, muddy the waters and leave us standing their sputtering, and indignant with nothing to show for it.
They turn it around and say we're "Playing the Race Card" as if it's all some sort of game to them. And in fact, it is a game to them - one in which we play into blindly a little too often. As a result we sometimes alienate those with weak accusations who would otherwise be more sympathetic to the cause of equal and civil rights.
They begin to think it's nothing more than a scam, a hustle, to get something for nothing. I've never felt that was the case, but false and weak accusations don't help make that point.
Anyway, the following is mostly the text from the email response I gave to the person who sent me the email starting with the Daniele Watts case and moving outward from there. My assumption was that they didn't really know me or the writing and research on this subject I've been doing for years, so as a result I wrote quite a primer, a summary if you will, of the last few best diaries I've had on the subject of Police and Racism in America.
Enjoy.
So there is no proof for racism?
On the proof of Racism issue;
Technically Sgt Parker mentioned her being black before she ever brought it up because that was part of the description he received from the 911 call - which is something her boyfriend Brian said occurred before she entered the conversation [ed. After hearing entire tape, I've found it was actually right after she walked away] - but the short answer to your question is “No”.
Here’s the long answer, because I’ve been researching this subject for years.
There’s almost never proof of Racism unless you can prove the motivation for someone’s actions, or match up the behavior of the people who called the police (which is who she was accusing of being racist) in a similar situation in order to track a pattern. Would they have called if both people were white? Don’t know. No one does. Would the Officer have been less of a dick if she were White? Maybe not. But you can tell from the tape that he’s offended and gets petulant about her mentioning the fact that she’s had the police called on her time and time again for minor or non-issues. He's just as over-sensitive to being accused of racism and she is over-sentive about possibly being on the receiving end of it. So is he taking revenge on her for bring race up and accusing him? (“Thank you for bring up the race card, [sarcastically] I Never hear that!”, "Keep yelling it really helps!") Maybe, it’s hard to tell, because if that’s his motivation he goes way out of his way to hide it and get her to admit on the record that she has no proof of it [“Did anyone say anything disrespectful to you at all?”] because if he doesn’t cover his ass this way I’m pretty sure he knows that it's actionable under Federal Civil Rights Law.
So is she more right to assume that people's complaint to 911 and this stop was racist, or is he more right to presume she's just saying that to gain some type of psychological advantage?
Statistically speaking, even though black people are less likely to be carrying guns or drugs according to Police Disparity Reports, they still get stopped and questioned by police about 20-30% more often than Whites. They get searched, looking for drugs or guns, about 50% more often according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics data, they get arrested about twice as much according to the BJS, their sentences are about 20% longer for the same crime according to the Sentencing Project, and their about three times as likely to encounter use of force with police (pushed, grabbed, fists, tasers, clubs, pepper spray) also according to the BJS.
http://www.semissourian.com/...
http://www.sentencingproject.org/...
http://www.bjs.gov/...
I would include a percentage of how many more black people are killed by law enforcement except that no one, even though it’s required by Federal Law, is keeping track of that data and publishing it. Not the FBI, not the BJS, nobody. I think the data’s there, I think they have it, they just aren’t publishing it because if use of force is already 3x higher, the police shooting/killing numbers are probably horrific. One reporter is attempting to gather this data using a crowdsourced data base. Others are using media reports and Facebook posts. It’s a bit of a mess.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
So just looking at raw data, in most general situations, it's not completely out of the realm of possibility that race could be a factor for a black person during just about any police encounter.
These numbers are generalized and nation wide, so your mileage may vary. Some areas, cities and states, are better and some are worse. Some cops are better than others. LAPD has a reputation for this going back to the 1930’s, so there’s that to also consider. The end result of all of this is of course, that higher percentage of black people are in jail than their percentage in the population. That data point is often used by police to justify their increase attention on black people.
So it’s a vicious circle.
Police say they’re just going where the “crime is”, or where people are making complaint calls. But are people making the assumption that - because of the prison stats - that any random black person on the street is more likely to be a robber or killer (or in her case a prostitute) than a white person?
Some of them damn sure do, I’ve been told that directly online.
Do people call the cops more often as Daniele complains, on black people than on whites? The numbers indicate they probably do.
Are those people racist? Most of them IMO would say “No”, they’re just following what the “Statistics" tell them. However, they are usually only looking at one stat when they claim that - Murder - because the FBI Uniform Crime Report really only does a race of the victim to race of the offender breakdown in cases of murder. That chart is here.
http://www.fbi.gov/...
This is the primary source of most people’s argument about this issue. The problem with citing this table is that it’s incomplete. This only reflects single victim, single offender murders - which comes to a total of 6018, but in other portions of the FBI report it says the total number of murder that years was over 12,000.
It’s understandable that they only focus on single victim, single offender because it would get very messy to assume what the bias is or could be when you have offenders of a variety of races, and victims of a variety of races. But that doesn’t really give us accurate data does it?
When it comes to other crimes people generally assume black people commit more of them, but not that long ago I found that the FBI publishes arrest stats by race in detail, what it shows that with the exception of Murder and Robbery they really don’t.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Generally speaking 6.5 Million Whites are were arrested for various crimes, mostly property crimes such as Burglary and Larceny, while Black people were at 2.5 Million arrests for 2012.
http://www.fbi.gov/...
Clearly 6.5 Million is bigger than 2.5 Million by about 2.5 to 1 but I’ve actually heard people argue that because black people are only 13% of the population their number should be smaller. I’ve argued that's setting a “Quota” for them if you’re going to do that why would you oppose Affirmative Action to erase other disparities in jobs, housing and fair lending? They then of course claim that's "different”... somehow, and refuse to see that having such an expectation in one area is inconsistent with the fact that things are never exactly proportional in all kinds of other areas. But fine let’s assume that their point is true for a just a second, that things are out of balance in the criminal area.
The first problem with their presumption is that an arrest doesn’t mean that you’ve committed a crime, it doesn’t mean you’re guilty it means you were suspected and brought into custody. Whether these people were prosecuted and that prosecution turns into a prison sentence is another matter, but as I stated above the BJS tracks this and starts off with the picture that black people get arrested about twice as often as they should for the same offense. That’s general and may vary from offense to offense just like anything else, but at the 10,000 ft level - it’s twice as much. If the legitimate "guilty” number for Black people is only half of the people getting arrested, then the real ratio of actual CRIME isn’t 2.5 to 1, it’s more like 5 to 1 and that fits exactly with their percentage of the population. But you have to look at all the data, all the arrests to get to that point, not just part of it.
So what happens when you don’t just look at single victim/single offender murders and instead look at all of them?
That’s pretty interesting.
I found a source for this information at the Supplemental Homicide Report and did a set of search requests for when the first victim was white and the oldest offender was black, no matter how many people were involved, then vice versa. i also looked it in the cases of White on White Murder and Black on Black.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
What I found was that the assumptions made from the chart I included above that 92% of Black people were Murdered by other Black people or that 83% of White people are Murdered by other Whites is completely, totally wrong. The more complete and honest data shows that arrests are made for only 62% of cases where some Whites are Murdered, and at least one of the arrested offenders was also White. (Down from 83%). For Black people that number is - ta da - only 55%. (Down from 92%) This isn’t to say that black people aren’t getting murdered at a high rate - because they are (and oh by the way the Larceny Rate for White people is through the ROOF, everyone be afraid! /snark), or that more often than not the perpetrator isn’t very likely also be black - of course they could be - but it does tell us something else. We don’t know who is committing nearly half of these murders. Murder is the crime with the highest arrest rate, but that rate is still only about 60%.
The percentage of cases where the offender is unknown and at least one victim is white is 24%
The percentage of cases where the offender is unknown and at least one victim is black is 40%
That’s almost a 2 to 1 ratio right there, and it shouldn’t be surprising that if black people are being arrested at double the rate they deserve - then black victims aren’t finding justice at about double the rate too.
And people wonder why Black people complain about police so much? They have reasons.
Almost twice as many people who kill black people aren’t being caught and aren’t being identified, so how can we with any confidence prove that those are also black people? And consequently that black people are “more murderous” than other people?
No one really can.
Unless you decide to guess about it when you can’t prove it and that’s exactly what a lot of people are doing. Which brings us right back to the original question about racism, where people are guessing about it but can’t really prove it.
The numbers generally show from the disparity reports to the BJS use of force info that there is an inherent police bias against black people. It’s not about individuals, it’s just what the raw data seems to show in general, regardless of the crime or offense or their provable guilt. Meanwhile other people - who probably haven’t dug into the details the way I have - might argue that the numbers show a greater propensity for blacks to be criminals which justifies the police heightened response in the first place. To them it’s not “Racism” it’s just the “facts” of inherent black criminality. It’s a deficiency in their culture. It’s all their fault.
I’ve talked to these people. a lot. They truly think that it’s not racist to claim an entire group of people is inherent bad.
If blacks being more criminal is just a “fact” then cops being generally racist is just as strong a “fact”, if not stronger.
But are the cops being racist or are they just following the numbers, even when the numbers don’t prove what they claim it proves? Are people who suspect cops of being racist, being racist themselves, or are the just following the numbers that justify that presumption?
Of course there are some racist cops, of course their are racist black people.
Can you tell which is which without a scorecard? Without evidence? Is merely being suspicious of someone else’s motivations make you racist, or does it mean you're just playing the odds? Can you prove someone is motivated by bias, and not a misreading vague stats , or using them to justify their own existing bias, that leads them to act with “legitimate" motivation in a biased way?
I don’t know. No one does. The only time you can usually tell, is when one of these guys, or gals, motivated by bias, admits what their doing and why to someone who they think is already on their side because they inherently know that since the passage of the Civil Rights Act - they’re likely to be accused of committing a crime, because they are committing a crime if they’re actions are truly motivated by race, or even just racial police statistics. Only no one can prove it if they keep their mouth shut.
Sgt Parker didn't admit to anything racial out loud. He never said anything foul. He didn't curse her, he didn't call her names. He didn't show any outward signs that his actions were motivated purely by race. In fact, he went more than a little out of his way to avoid that accusation sticking. He called a female officer to handcuff and retrieve Daniele after she walked away, so he couldn't be accused of touching her inappropriately. He went on at length questioning her on whether any of the officers there had said anything "Disrespectful" in the process ignoring his own "Keep yelling it really helps" and "Who brought up the race card?" outbursts. In the end, he didn't show any overt obvious racism other than being excessively Put out that she brought the subject up, all of his bias has to be inferred, but the under currents were certainly there.
No, you can't prove it, but it had the scent of bias just as much as her being overly upset - besides the fact she'd just heard that her step-mother was dying - has the scent of racial manipulation of the situation. Even if all the odds, all the percentages say it's more likely that this black person, or this cop, is in a general sense potentially dangerous to you, should you believe that stat or should you do the counter-intuitive thing and reserve judgement on the issue until you have proof in this specific case?
Is it possible you might never have that proof until it's far too late to do anything about it? Is it possible that you're completely rational statistic based, odds based judgement is totally flat out WRONG for this particular person in this particular situation?
Do you have the courage to take that chance? Do you think that your self-preservation is more important than possibly hurting the other persons feelings, or temporarily violating their civil rights?
If you're having a hard time easily answering that question, now you know why we have racial problems that seem to keep going on and on and on in this country. Doing the right thing, reserving judgement, taking the personal risk that all the stats, all the odds are wrong until proven correct on a case by case basis - is not what most people IMO are willing to do.
If we're going to demand that Police (and others) reserve judgement about each and every single individual black person until sufficient information is available, then we need to be willing to reserve that same judgement about each and every individual cop, or "Racism Card" whiner, until all relevant information is available. It's tough, but goose and ganders and all that.
Are we truly ready for that? I'm not so sure, because doing that, doing the right thing can sometimes mean putting your own ass, your own life, right there on the line. Are you willing to bet your life this cop isn't a bigot? Are you willing to bet your life this black guy isn't a criminal? Will you happily pay the price if you turn out to be wrong?
Hmmm...
So again, No, I don’t think there was "proof" of Racism on the part of Sgt Jim Parker. But there's more than a bit of "reasonable suspicion" of it. Maybe he should turn over his ID and we can check him for priors.
IMO Racism wasn't the key isn't or problem in this case, But it’s a problem. A big one.
Vyan