The unbearable enormous gift of Whiteness

A new study, undertaken by Ravi Shroff, an assistant professor holding joint appointments at NYU Steinhardt and NYU CUSP, and his colleagues at the Stanford Open Policing Project, found that in a dataset of nearly 100 million traffic stops across the United States, black drivers were about 20 percent more likely to be stopped than white drivers relative to their share of the residential population.

The study also found that once stopped, black drivers were searched about 1.5 to 2 times as often as white drivers, while they were less likely to be carrying drugs, guns, or other illegal contraband compared to their white peers.

But this isn’t just a problem of police conduct, after the arrest when a person of color ends up in court — they tend to be convicted and sentenced, for the same crimes, at a rate that is 5 times higher than whites.

     Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of White Americans, according to a new report by The Sentencing Project.  

     The report found that one in 81 Black adults per 100,000 people in the United States is serving time in a state prison, using data and projections from recent years from the US Census, the US Bureau of Justice Statistics and information provided directly from some states.  

     “Truly meaningful reforms to the criminal justice system cannot be accomplished without acknowledgement of its racist underpinnings,” Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst for The Sentencing Project, wrote in the report. “Immediate and focused attention on the causes and consequences of racial disparities is required in order to eliminate them.”  

You can be a totally innocent man, you could have done nothing to noone — and still end up in prison under this system ( the Innocence Project has used DNA to exonerate over 200 people who were on Death Row but innocent of the crime they accused of), and if you’re black or brown you’ll be in that system for up to 5 times longer, than if you were white.  And it’s not that this disparity only happens in certain states and not others, it happens pretty much across the entire justice system — stem to stern.  It’s everywhere.

Let me digress and get personal for a moment.

I’m not a criminal.  I’ve never had anything more than minor traffic violations.  Speeding.  Lane Change.  Red light.  Turning left against a sign that said “No Left Turn” that I didn’t see.  I recall after I bought my first new car I was stopped about 7 times between the time I brought the car home and my plates arrived in the mail a few weeks later.  Once they ran the VIN number and it wasn’t even in the DMV database yet. I had a cop pull his gun on me during one of those stops. I even once had a cop stop and cite me for “worn tires” and I was stopped another time because my tags were “about to expire.”

Yes, that means my tags were perfectly good — but I was stopped and cited (for my seat belt) anyway.

Every single one of those police encounters was tense.  Because 1) Quite a few times I had literally done nothing wrong except exist and 2) I knew damn well what could potentially happen.

Before I even started driving, I already knew about the case of Ron Settles and his tragic death at the hands of Signal Hill PD.

There was a stretch back 25 years ago where I got a lot of tickets back-to-back.  At some point I missed a payment or a court date — I don’t even remember which.  This resulted in a bench warrant for $10,000, requiring that I go back to court and see the judge.  Because of the warrant my license was suspended.  Because I was still driving — because work was almost 15 miles away — I got stopped again and busted for driving with a suspended license.  So, now we have even more fines, plus having my car impounded with more fees on top of that.

I got the car back, but I didn’t go back to court.  I had seen up close how that judge treated people of color, if he wanted me back he was going to have to come and get me.

Time passed, I got picked up in Seal Beach and taken to OC Jail.  I was there about 24 hours before I spent my entire savings, $4,000 on bail.  I saw that judge again,  he was still a dick.  I made a deal to pay off the $1,000 suspended license fine.  I paid it down to $300.  Then, because my finances were wonky, I bounced a check.  That meant I had to see that judge, again.  I *knew* he would send me to jail.  I also knew at that period in time, inmates at the county jail were getting killed on a fairly regular basis. 

Fuck that guy.

I alleviated the issue for a while by not driving anymore.  If I’m not in the driver’s seat the cops almost literally couldn’t see me.

So, um, 12 years went by.

I got picked up again while crossing the street in the crosswalk. [It was while traffic was turning left] Normally, I should have had right of way, but I let the cars finish the turn in front of me.  This one cop [who was literally famous for being a bigot in town] didn’t see it that way.  He busted me for jaywalking-while-black and the outstanding warrant came back up. 

Finally, I went back to that judge and since I didn’t have his $300 on hand right then and there — I had filed for bankruptcy in the intervening years and I *know* that payment was included — he sentenced me to 60 days in country jail.

Ultimately, I did about 2 days because of overcrowding — plus 20 hours of “work release.” (More on this later)

If I had been white — none of that would have happened.  Probably half of those traffic stops wouldn’t have happened. I never would have missed a court date or payment or whatever it was. I never would have gotten a bench warrant, I never would have gone to jail — twice.

If I were white, I wouldn’t have to think about the fact that this process — the slow drip of minor infractions that gradually puts you into debt, and then into jail has been a main function of our justice system since the end of the Civil War.

It used to be called Debt Peonage.  It led to the use of Convict Labor, Convict Leasing and Involuntary Servitude, and it was far more savage and brutal than the previous Slavery system which had been supposedly “outlawed.”

The Black Codes, apparently “color-blind” laws against minor issues such as vagrancy, loitering and trespassing were actually only implemented against black people.  Then the suspect would be convicted and fined, then offered a “deal” where he could “work off” his debt with a local contractor.  If the suspect tries to fight the charges and pleas “not guilty” more court fees would be applied to their sentence, and their debt would grow.  Most often the “officer” who had affected the arrest would work for the magistrate, and the magistrate would be an employee of the contractor.

So we have a system where law enforcement is used to create cheap labor, then that labor would be farmed out to corporate agencies such as the railroad or a steel factory.  Workers would be placed into “Involuntary Servitude” which could go on for years as room and board is added to their debt while they work.

Unlike Slavery, the contractor did not “own” the workers. They were simply being lent to them at a rate that was pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of an actual slave.  Consequently, since they didn’t have a major investment in these workers, they really didn’t need to treat them well to protect that investment. Many of these workers died from the conditions they were placed in. They were literally being worked to death, then easily replaced.

Where we once had 12 Million slaves in this country, after emancipation and the 13th Amendment — we still had about 800,000 people who were pulled off the streets and placed into Debt Peonage. Thousands of them died.

This was before Jim Crow. This was before Poll Taxes.  This is before Plessy V Ferguson and “Separate but Equal.”  This is before Brown v. Board. This is before the Civil Rights Act which is only a weak hardly enforced civil law. This was before the Voting Rights Act which was gutted by Shelby V Holder in 2018.

Let me repeat that: The Fucking Voting Rights Act — which wasn’t even written until almost 100 years after the 15th Amendment was supposed to give Black people the right to vote —  is currently Nonfunctional.

Since then open acts of voter suppression have been popping up all over the nation.

Voting should be as easy and accessible as possible, and in many cases it is. But in recent years, more than 400 anti-voter bills have been introduced in 48 states. These bills erect unnecessary barriers for people to register to vote, vote by mail, or vote in person. The result is a severely compromised democracy that doesn’t reflect the will of the people. Our democracy works best when all eligible voters can participate and have their voices heard.

Suppression efforts range from the seemingly unobstructive, like strict voter ID laws and cuts to early voting, to mass purges of voter rolls and systemic disenfranchisement. These measures disproportionately impact people of color, students, the elderly, and people with disabilities. And long before election cycles even begin, legislators redraw district lines that determine the weight of your vote.

Voter Gerrymandering is rampant.

What I experienced is the modern watered-down version of that previous Debt Peonage system.  Black people — and poor people —  are specifically targeted by law enforcement for placement into the “System.”  The system is designed to slowly put you into debt with minor petty fines until eventually, you trip up — you miss a payment — and you get a bench warrant.  You get your car impounded. You can’t go to work, you lose your job. 

Then they put you to work, their way, in my case it was 20 hours cleaning up a local park. They don’t give you any pay, they don’t provide you any worker compensation insurance. They don’t provide you with any healthcare.  You get hurt — too damn bad.  (And I did get hurt) You don’t do all your hours in time, you go to State Prison to finish your full sentence.

Maybe you get desperate and angry. Maybe you act out and do something stupid and potentially violent like rob a liquor store for $200, or burglar a house to steal some costume jewelry.

Now, then you’re well and truly fucked.

[I’ve seen this personally. The son of my old boss when I worked in South Central is currently doing 20 years for burglary since that was his “3rd Strike.”  His father passed away this year so he’s never going to see him again.]

Black men are 7% of this nation, but they are 40% of the people currently in our jails.  That’s not just bad luck, that’s not just coincidence, that’s part of a plan.  That’s part of a system. [And how this happens is exactly what CRT explains.]

While all this was going on at the turn of the 20th Century, the nation gained a new tradition — making racist jokes and fun of black people in vaudeville using blackface.

Blackface was used to demean black people for decades. It was highly popular to make fun of the “uneducated” blacks — since it had been illegal to teach them to read and right for decades — and to make fun of their culture — which is one that was largely what was “allowed” for them by whites.  Even major performers, such as Judy Garland and Fred Astaire appeared in blackface.  Some black performers themselves even adopted blackface — even though they were already black — because the tradition of racially insulting black people was so strong.

As this was going on you had the KKK terrorizing black people, using intimidation and murder to cow them into obedience to the wills of White People.  One of the worst examples of this campaign of terror was the firebombing and massacre of Black Wall Street in Greenwood, Oklahoma.

The 1921 Attack on Greenwood was one of the most significant events in Tulsa’s history. Following World War I, Tulsa was recognized nationally for its affluent African American community known as the Greenwood District. This thriving business district and surrounding residential area was referred to as “Black Wall Street.” In June 1921, a series of events nearly destroyed the entire Greenwood area.

On the morning of May 30, 1921, a young black man named Dick Rowland was riding in the elevator in the Drexel Building at Third and Main with a white woman named Sarah Page. The details of what followed vary from person to person. Accounts of an incident circulated among the city’s white community during the day and became more exaggerated with each telling.

Tulsa police arrested Rowland the following day and began an investigation. An inflammatory report in the May 31 edition of the Tulsa Tribune spurred a confrontation between black and white armed mobs around the courthouse where the sheriff and his men had barricaded the top floor to protect Rowland. Shots were fired and the outnumbered African Americans began retreating to the Greenwood District.

In the early morning hours of June 1, 1921, Greenwood was looted and burned by white rioters. Governor Robertson declared martial law, and National Guard troops arrived in Tulsa. Guardsmen assisted firemen in putting out fires, took African Americans out of the hands of vigilantes and imprisoned all black Tulsans not already interned. Over 6,000 people were held at the Convention Hall and the Fairgrounds, some for as long as eight days.

Twenty-four hours after the violence erupted, it ceased. In the wake of the violence, 35 city blocks lay in charred ruins, more than 800 people were treated for injuries and contemporary reports of deaths began at 36. Historians now believe as many as 300 people may have died.

Similar white race riots also took place 2 years earlier in Chicago.

Chicago Race Riot of 1919,  most severe of approximately 25 race riots throughout the U.S. in the “Red Summer” (meaning “bloody”) following World War I; a manifestation of racial frictions intensified by large-scale African American migration to the North, industrial labour competition, overcrowding in urban ghettos, and greater militancy among Black war veterans who had fought “to preserve democracy.” In the South revived Ku Klux Klan activities resulted in 64 lynchings in 1918 and 83 in 1919; race riots broke out in Washington, D.C.; Knoxville, Tennessee; Longview, Texas; and Phillips county, Arkansas. In the North the worst race riots erupted in Chicago and in Omaha, Nebraska.

Chicago racial tension, concentrated on the South Side, was particularly exacerbated by the pressure for adequate housing: the Black population had increased from 44,000 in 1910 to more than 109,000 in 1920. The riot was triggered by the death of a Black youth on July 27. He had been swimming in Lake Michigan and had drifted into an area tacitly reserved for whites; he was stoned and he shortly drowned. When police refused to arrest the white man whom Black observers held responsible for the incident, indignant crowds began to gather on the beach, and the disturbance began. Distorted rumours swept the city as sporadic fighting broke out between gangs and mobs of both races. Violence escalated with each incident, and for 13 days Chicago was without law and order despite the fact that the state militia had been called out on the fourth day. By the end, 38 were dead (23 Blacks, 15 whites), 537 injured, and 1,000 Black families made homeless.

Besides the direct terrorism of the KKK and their lynching of over 4,000 Americans (about half of whom were white), you also had government policies that were specifically implemented to harm black people.  Policies such as Red Lining which trapped blacks and other people into job and education deserts full of pollution and bereft of public services.  Racial covenants that enabled white generational wealth and repeatedly robbed the wealth of black people.

Essentially these became open-air prisons.

Let’s be real, when it comes to racism — Hitler learned nearly everything he did from America. He followed the Eugenics movement. He following the KKK. He didn’t do anything that they hadn’t been trying to do for generations.

And just remember that the Supreme Court validated all this. The Supreme Court found against Plessy establishing “Separate and Unequal.”  The Supreme Court ratified the Internment of Japanese Americans. And that bigoted ruling, among others, stood for decades.  Decades where the damage was done and exacerbated.

That’s one issue. There are others.

You have the issue of the fact that when white people (refugee Europeans) came to this country, they found that it was already full of people. 

Native Americans.

Many treaties were made and broken with the Natives. Many were killed by foreign diseases such as Small Pox.  It was a genocide.  Eventually, the demands for more land for plantations and farming forced the natives into war over that land with the European colonists. The Natives fought valiantly — sometimes against Black Cavalry brigades such as the Buffalo Soldiers — but eventually they lost and were taken from their normal land — sometimes in forced marches like the Trail of Tears where 60,000 people were displaced — and placed in “Reservations.”

In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma.  The Cherokee people called this journey the “Trail of Tears,” because of its devastating effects.  The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march.  Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died.  

We’ve seen this same strategy implemented in Apartheid South Africa, and also — in Isreal with Gaza and the West Bank.

Worse than that is what was then done to young Natives in various “Boarding Schools” around the nation.

“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

100,000 of these children were taken from their parents and placed into Boarding Schools to “civilize” and then, to take the “savagery” out of them, where their language was forbidden, their culture was stripped from them, they were abused, beaten, and exposed to starvation and disease. 40,000 of them died.  There have been shallow graveyards of the bones of children found underneath these schools.  It was forcible assimilation. Cultural genocide.

And then there’s the system of natives being adopted by white parents, again to “save” them.

I’m going to also mention the creation of Latinos in the Americas.  Essentially, this is the melding of the Spanish Conquistadors and the Mestizos.  Again, the atrocities, genocide and cultural appropriation was massive.  Mestizos lost their native language, their native religion and native culture only to become something new.  Hundreds of years later nearly all trace of those native tribes except for their ruins, by the Aztecs, the Incas, the Mayans, has been virtually erased by White men.

100,000 Aztecs were killed by Cortez and his Conquistadors either by combat or disease.

Centuries later we had a program where Mexican workers were allowed to travel across the southern border regularly to work in the U.S. under the “Brocero” program.  But then some started to complain and this resulted in new immigration program meant to deter Mexicans from entering the U.S. called “Operation Wetback.”

Let me finish up by pointing out the treatment of Asians, particularly the Chinese and Japanese in this nation.  Many Chinese immigrants were crucial in the building of the transatlantic railroad, but they were badly repaid for this accomplishment.

What resulted from all these workers was the Chinese Exclusion Act which specifically blocked the immigration of Chinese workers once most of the railroads were completed.

In the 1850s, Chinese workers migrated to the United States, first to work in the gold mines, but also to take agricultural jobs, and factory work, especially in the garment industry. Chinese immigrants were particularly instrumental in building railroads in the American west, and as Chinese laborers grew successful in the United States, a number of them became entrepreneurs in their own right. As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese sentiment among other workers in the American economy. This finally resulted in legislation that aimed to limit future immigration of Chinese workers to the United States, and threatened to sour diplomatic relations between the United States and China.

The Chinese Exclusion Act

See also

Criminal Justice & African Americans

Black leaders call out Trump’s criminal justice contradictions as he rails against guilty verdict

American objections to Chinese immigration took many forms, and generally stemmed from economic and cultural tensions, as well as ethnic discrimination. Most Chinese laborers who came to the United States did so in order to send money back to China to support their families there. At the same time, they also had to repay loans to the Chinese merchants who paid their passage to America. These financial pressures left them little choice but to work for whatever wages they could. Non-Chinese laborers often required much higher wages to support their wives and children in the United States, and also generally had a stronger political standing to bargain for higher wages. Therefore many of the non-Chinese workers in the United States came to resent the Chinese laborers, who might squeeze them out of their jobs. Furthermore, as with most immigrant communities, many Chinese settled in their own neighborhoods, and tales spread of Chinatowns as places where large numbers of Chinese men congregated to visit prostitutes, smoke opium, or gamble. Some advocates of anti-Chinese legislation therefore argued that admitting Chinese into the United States lowered the cultural and moral standards of American society. Others used a more overtly racist argument for limiting immigration from East Asia, and expressed concern about the integrity of American racial composition.

Then of course we have the treatment of American Citizens — who happen to be of Japanese extraction — during World War II as they were placed in Internment Camps.

If I were White, none of this would concern me. 

I wouldn’t care about the past and current treatment of black people, Slavery, debt peonage, Jim Crow, Lynchings, black face or the massacre at Black Wall Street, I wouldn’t care about how Native Americans were culturally and physically decimated, I wouldn’t care about how Cortez implemented the destruction the Mayan and Aztecs cultures. I wouldn’t care about what was done to the Chinese, the Japanese, and Arabs, and to Mexicans with “Operation: Wetback.”

None of this would be my problem.  I didn’t do it.  I wasn’t there.  I’m not responsible for any of that. All those people are dead (Not really).  It was all long ago (Not really).  The laws have changed (Not nearly enough of them). Our immigration rules aren’t racist anymore, right? 

If I were white I would have the luxury of being free from all this historical baggage.  I could easily just imagine that all the work and toil that was done to create “The Greatest Nation on Earth” just — well — happened.  Somehow.  Somebody did it.  All that stuff is over now, no need to worry about it. I’d just be happy to be a beneficiary of whatever that stuff was. I wouldn’t have to care how it all happened. I wouldn’t have to know the details in order to understand how things went wrong before, and how they just might be going wrong right now.

Yes, right here in the land of the free.  Home of the brave. Proud to be here.  I’m not one of those America Haters and Complainers about that old stuff America used to do. We’re better now.  Sure, we are.  Nobody is a slave anymore (Yes, actually, they are).  Nobody is getting lynched (Yes, they still are just like Amaud Arbery or Patrick Lyoya.)

What is it that the Proud Boys say?  “I refuse to apologize for creating the Western World.”

Refuse to apologize?  For what — creating math? (except for Algebra which came from the Arabs, and the concept of “Zero” which came from the Mayans).  For creating Art? (which everyone had, literally). For creating science with Copernicus, Divinci, Newton and Einstein? (Except they were all dirty Europeans again) Apologize for what? Could it be genocide? Could it be centuries of racism, violence, mass murder, degradation and terrorism?  Could it be twisting and contorting the American legal system to your own racial, religious, and cultural advantage and the disadvantage of anyone you see as a potential threat? 

Maybe that does deserve an apology. Maybe you shouldn’t try to repeat that shit.

What is it that Tim Scott says? “My life puts a lie to the leftist narrative?” Your life where you were a football star who got to become a Senator? Yeah, I think there were Black football stars before you Tim. Just a few. And Black Senators too.  Here and there.

Do you mean that narrative that says that any Black person or person of color who manages to scratch and claw their way successfully into the middle class is a God-Damned Hero?  Any Black person or person of color who manages to survive and evade the Injustice System, who manages to dodge racial redlining, racial covenants, racial gerrymandering, racial vote suppression, racial housing discrimination, racial job and worker discrimination and racial terrorism in this country is fucking lucky as shit and should be grateful for their fortunate situation?

I mean, it’s not like it’s not possible to survive and even thrive in the midst of all that.  It’s not impossible to “Make It” if you will. Black people, and people of color, have been “Making It” in this country for hundreds of years, despite all the challenges against them.  Starting with Frederick Douglas who began as an escaped slave. We created Black Wall Street — even while all that KKK shit was going on. We’ve excelled at many different sports. We created nearly a dozen forms of music, from Spirituals to Jazz, to Blues, to Honky Tonk, to Ragtime, to Bluegrass, to Rock N’ Roll, to R&B, to Funk, to Hip Hop. We created Art, particularly Street Art, we created Fashion, we have created CEOs, Millionaires and Billionaires in business and entertainment from Michele Ghee (Ebony and Jet), to Caroline A. Wanga (Essence Magazine), to Rosalind “Roz” Brewer (Walgreens), Marvin Ellison (Lowes) to Michael Jackson, to Prince, to Oprah, to Tyler Perry, to Kanye, to Jay Z and to Barack Obama.

And we did all that while (some) White people were all trying to hold us back and hold us down.  Despite them, black people lead and nearly the entire world follows us.

We did all that before Tim Scott came around.

A lot of us have beaten the odds. Climbed on top of the heap.  Some have done it by closing their eyes and ears and pretending race doesn’t exist. Sure, that’s a strategy.  It’s deluded, sad, myopic and selfish, but a strategy.  Even if racism isn’t impacting you right now, it’s likely impacting somebody.

Nobody ever said the struggle was “insurmountable.”  Nobody ever said it was “impossible” to overcome it. We can thrive in America, and despite all these issues — many of us have. It’s absolutely possible to climb over all the obstacles in our way and get ahead.

We just shouldn’t have to.

We shouldn’t have this burden on our backs.  We shouldn’t have all these obstacles in our way as if were running an uphill steeple chase while others are on a downhill water slide.  We shouldn’t have so many of us who are tripped up by obstacles get left behind.

In the case of a few of these atrocities, America honestly has realized and recognized its mistake.  America has — sometimes — apologized. Americans have even paid reparations in a couple of cases [Japanese Internment and uh, ok, that’s all].  Not nearly all of them, but it it did happen once.

If I were white — I wouldn’t have any of that burden. I would worry about any of this. I’d be truly free. None of this would be my concern.

It’s true of course, that when white people used to be Germans, and Irish and Italians and French and Polish — they had challenges also.  They faced discrimination and outright racism too.  Nobody likes this British.  Not really. Even fewer like the Irish. Don’t get me started on the Polish. Or the Italians. Or the German and Russian Jews. Oy very, amirite?          

But now that’s over, because they aren’t trash refugee Europeans anymore. Kicked out of their home countries for having the wrong version of religion, the wrong accent, or just being “too ethnic” or “too weird.”  Nope. No longer.

They’re Americans.  They’re white.  They’re perfect.  They’re clean. They get the benefit of every and all doubt. They’re considered to be innocent, and you have to prove they’re guilty of anything — not the reverse. They’re coveted.  They’re admired. Everybody wants to be them or be with them.

Right?

And if they’re often entitled as fuck and a little bit spoiled who cares?  Who wouldn’t be after they’re constantly being told they’re the greatest, smartest, prettiest and luckiest people to live on planet Earth since unleavened bread?  Who can blame them for being a little bit big-headed?

Plus, they’re nothing like their ancestors. They would never treat anyone else in the shitty way they were treated back in Europe now, would they?

Of course not, except y’know, unless they think they have to.

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