Have we done enough to address racism in America and if not, what more should we be doing?
Racism is a phenomenon that has existed throughout history and is not necessarily a matter of skin color. E.g. Germans Vrs Jews and Hutus Vrs Tutsis. In America there are racial tensions involving native Americans, Latinx, and many other racial groups. The focus here is primarily on the relationship between Caucasians and black people.
In 2020, we have seen millions of people (of all races) fill the streets of America and around the world rallying around a movement and a chant: “Black Lives Matter”. This movement began with a hashtag in July 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a white vigilante who shot and killed a young black man named Trevon Martin. It was started by 3 black women who felt that something had to be done.
This year, those 3 women were selected as among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the world (1.5 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddZajib9Z6k. These are not anarchists trying to overthrow our government. They have five objectives: https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/. Two of them include: (4) practice empathy and (5) create family-friendly spaces to enable parents to participate with children. Hardly the language of radicals.
Since 2013, there have been some 20 unarmed black people killed by police or vigilantes that were caught on camera/made national headlines. The event that unleashed the full outpouring of protests was the viral video of George Floyd being suffocated by 4 white police officers. Since then, killings of black people by police have continued with the highest profile one being Breonna Taylor and the subsequent acquittal of the police who shot her to death.
Nearly all the protests have been peaceful. The protestors are demanding major changes, particularly as it relates to policing and the justice system.
Relative to where we started – slavery and then Jim Crow, we have made major progress in America. We have ended segregation and even had affirmative action laws passed to specifically help blacks. Discrimination in the public sphere is prohibited by laws that are strictly enforced. Even mixed marriages – something almost unthinkable 75 years ago, are commonplace and fully acceptable today. And, of course, we sent Barack and Michelle to the White House for TWO terms.
Do blacks in America now have equal opportunity with everyone else? Is the onus now squarely on them to get out, take advantage of the positive changes made on their behalf and make the most of these opportunities? Or, are the odds still significantly and unfairly stacked against blacks to the point that we, as a society, need to make additional changes that will more evenly balance the playing field?
I have written the points and counterpoints to this subject. However, I will wait a few days before posting them. I am hopeful that some of my FB friends will send me their well thought out perspectives on this question including links to credible resources to support their views. Remember to be respectful. My email address is: david@gib.management.
Current Discussion: Points and Counterpoints
Point 1:
This time, I am beginning with the “Point” from the Right/Pro-Trump side. What I have written is not my perspective on this topic. Rather, it is the perspective that I used to have when I was a full fledged member of the Right Wing Tribe.
Yes, we have already done enough to address racism, just need to give more time for it to work.
There is no question that there have been incidents where individual policemen have done things they should not have done and great tragedies have resulted. People who were innocent or who it was later confirmed were not posing threats have been killed. And there have been incidents where white vigilantes have been over-zealous such as the ones who killed Arbery Ahmaud. And it is true that when you see a black person in America doing something that seems out of place, that people are more suspicious than they would be if it was a white person doing the same thing. But that does not mean we need to “defund the police” or pass a bunch of new laws giving blacks even more special treatment than they already get. There are certain factors that need to be considered that account for these incidents that have gotten people so worked up recently.
First of all, it is more dangerous to be a policeman in America than anywhere else because there are more bad guys with guns than anywhere else. God Bless the 2nd Amendment, but it does have a downside. There are 120 guns for every 100 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
The next closest valid contender is Canada with 34. France and Germany are less than 20. A lot of law enforcement officers get killed by bad guys with guns – so they have good reason to be jumpy.
Second, it is just a fact that blacks commit more crimes than anyone else. This article specifically checks that fact: https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime.
“The verdict. There is evidence in the official police-recorded figures that black Americans are more likely to commit certain types of crime than people of other races. While it would be naïve to suggest that there is no racism in the US criminal justice system, victim reports don’t support the idea that this is because of mass discrimination….” There are 5 times as many blacks in prison as whites. With those being the facts, police would be foolish not to be more suspicious of blacks than whites.
The third thing to consider is that video cameras are everywhere including body cameras. Law enforcement interacts with potential offenders millions of times a year. In those rare cases where they do something wrong, it gets recorded and goes viral. The technology is making it appear that there are more bad police than ever before, which is just not the case.
So yes, there is still some racism in America. But it is whole lot less than it used to be. Fifty years ago, they closed public pools and public schools because whites refused to mix with blacks. Compare the experiences in “The Green Book” to today where no one bats an eye when they go to a fine hotel or restaurant and are in a room or a table next to blacks. Blacks are now sports and entertainment idols. We have a whole lot of laws and agencies (e.g. EEOC and HUD Fair Housing) that ensure blacks are treated equally. We have made huge progress just in the past half century in America. Let’s recognize that and be thankful for it and continue on the course we are on making more progress. But we don’t need a bunch of new laws and we certainly don’t need to defund or demean the police. They are doing the best they can in a very hostile environment.
In another 20 years, Boomers, who are the most racist generation in America today, will be gone. That will go a long way to solving the racism problems in our country.
Counterpoint 1:
We have not done enough; we need to do more.
One single statistic says America has not done enough and needs to make major changes regarding race: The average incarceration rate in the world is 145 inmates per 100,000 population. In America, the incarceration rate for blacks is 2,306/100,000 which is sixteen (16) times the world average. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html. Per capita, America imprisons 5 times as many blacks as whites. Those numbers alone make it unmistakably clear that we are doing something very wrong.
At the core is that we are not investing enough resources in “social services”. The US is one of the lowest taxed of the industrialized nations (34 of 37 in the OECD.) Yet we spend more on defense and on our incredibly inefficient health care system than any other country (2.2 times the OECD average.) So, relative to other nations, we don’t have sufficient revenues to invest in education, early childcare, mental health, and law enforcement. By underfunding those areas and having to spend tens of $billions on incarcerating 5 times as many people as the world average, we are producing a much higher rate of dysfunctional citizens than any other country on earth. And this is especially true for that sector of our population who has the least amount of personal resources to invest in themselves. The average black household in America has only 12% of the wealth of the average white household.
The majority of Baton Police officers make about $30K/year. https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/How-Much-Does-a-Police-Detective-Make-a-Year-in-Baton-Rouge,LA. I pay my groundsmen more than that. Police work requires very competent, multi-skilled people, of sound mind, and good character. How are you going to attract quality people to the police force if you aren’t going to pay them what they are worth? You are not. And so as one of the concessions to make up for the low pay police get unwarranted job security. Consequently, we have unions and civil service boards that set up rules and laws such that no matter how badly a police officer performs, he/she can’t be punished or fired. So, you end up with incident after incident where law enforcement is grossly negligent – they kill or maim innocent or unarmed people and face no consequences. And this creates the civil unrest we are experiencing with the BLM movement.
A person’s character and overall qualities are pretty much set for his/her life by the time they are four years old. If we want to improve our society and insist that women work, then we have got to ensure that American children receive excellent early child-care and education. To pay police more and provide such services will cost a lot of money. The money is there, we just don’t require people and companies to pay it.
At the core of the problem is thinking that it is good and smart for people not to pay taxes. Exhibit A is Donald Trump. We now know that this billionaire has not paid any income taxes for 10 of the past 16 years. In 2016, he paid $750 in federal income taxes. Let’s assume he did not commit the crime of tax evasion – that this was all that the law requires. Why subsidize a billionaire so that he can develop casinos, golf resorts or lavish hotels? What positive contributions are those to our society that they justify not paying taxes that could be used to provide better child-care and pay police more? There have been four major tax cuts since 1983: one major one under Regan, two under George W Bush and most recently, the “Tax Cut and Jobs Act” under Donald Trump. We were running one of our biggest deficits in history in 2019 – when we had a booming economy. How are you going to make America Great if you refuse to generate the revenues to fund its public services? We won’t.
On a local level, Louisiana is one of the lowest taxed states in the nation. We have got to generate more public sector revenues so that we can invest in the social services that are so underfunded.
There are so many other things we need to do as well. In researching for this topic, I watched a number of Ted Talks. One of the most apt was by a black comedian named Baratunde Thurston who graduated from Harvard. https://www.ted.com/talks/baratunde_thurston_how_to_deconstruct_racism_one_headline_at_a_time?language=en#t-990440. He says a big part of our problem is the many whites who call police to report blacks “for just living”. I hope you can find the time to watch it. It is very interesting and worthwhile.
Yes we have made progress in America over the past 150 years. But we still have a long way to go. There are no easy solutions – and most of them can only be done if we stop fighting each other and work together to make America a much better country than it is now.