From the DOJ Division of No Kidding: Ferguson Gov't Charged with Racism and Excessive Force
The New York Times today has a preview of the Department of Justice's report on Ferguson, Missouri. The full report will be released tomorrow. Here's what the Times knows about the report:
Police officers in Ferguson, Mo., have routinely violated the constitutional rights of the city's black residents, the Justice Department has concluded in a scathing report that accuses the officers of using excessive force and making unjustified traffic stops for years.
The Justice Department, which opened its investigation after a white Ferguson police officer shot and killed a black teenager last summer, says the discrimination was fueled in part by racial stereotypes held by city officials. Investigators say the officials made racist jokes about blacks on their city email accounts.
The population of Ferguson is 67 percent black. But 85 percent of all traffic stops from 2012 to 2014 were of blacks, as were 85 percent of all cases of use of force during that timeframe. Blacks accounted for 90 percent of all citations. Black motorists were twice as likely to be searched than whites, but were half as likely to have drugs or guns or other contraband.
One of the racist jokes referenced dated back to November 2008 and said that President Barack Obama wouldn't be president for long because "what black man holds a steady job for four years?"
The full report has not been released by the Department of Justice, so we only have this very preliminary information for now. Completely separate from these findings, the DOJ is still expected to clear Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson of any civil rights violations for shooting and killing Michael Brown last summer.
Below, Reason TV went to Ferguson to talk to citizens about the culture of harassment there:
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Must. Make. It. Racial.
Can’t. Be. Police. Culture.
In the larger context of Ferguson it is both, I think.
This^
By focusing on the racial aspect of it, the generally disgusting state of police culture is ignored.
iow no one cares about a bunch of niggers
Yes. I’ll never understand why. Tamir Rice, to me anyway, is about as bad as it gets and that has received 1/100 the coverage/grievance mongering as Brown and Martin.
Because the people pushing the narrative don’t really give a crap about police abuse. What they’re interested in is maintaining their rage machine. Rage machines don’t work real well when you have widespread agreement that something needs to be done to fix a problem. You need “the other team” to fixate your rage against. Cases like Rice or Garner get even conservatives noting that the situation is wrong and something needs to be done to change things. How’re you going to maintain a rage machine if conservatives are agreeing with you?
That is a good explanation. Hard to paint conservatives, or whomever, as knuckle-dragging racists when they’re trying to be on your side.
I forgot Tamir Rice, that’s probably the best example of a hill they should have tried to fight their battle on in lieu of picking some criminally aggressive ‘victim’ like Brown or Martin.
Tamir Rice is far worse, but it’s not sexy enough. It should be mind boggling that the police department over there is basically saying that the kid is responsible for his own death.
The fact is that the DOJ is following the media, and the media is responding to social media. The more tension, the more likely the story gets coverage and the more the media pays attention to it. For most people, what happened with Tamir Rice isn’t open to much argument or conflict.
This is an article on what the NYT says about the report, more than the actual report.
It is possible that the report will also addess the issue of the general police culture as it applies, and that the NYT is down-playing that part.
But likely not. We are talking about a mostly white police force working in a mostly black community. Any focus on the non-racial aspects of this situation is going to be shouted down and mostly ignored.
It’s no different than protestants and catholics in northern ireland. It’s not about religion. It’s about a powerful group suppressing the rights of a weaker group.
In Ferguson, it’s about an entrenched public union whose employees carry guns and can call out tanks versus an economically weak group of local residents. White versus Black is just optics.
Pretty much.
How could racial bias in arrest, searches, etc. not be racial? This study isn’t looking at how they handled the post-shooting protests.
Black motorists were twice as likely to be searched than whites, but were half as likely to have drugs or guns or other contraband.
I find this the most damning indication of racism. This says to me they were searching whites when some other form of suspicion indicated a search, while doing differently with blacks.
Either being black was the basis of suspicion, or subjecting blacks to a search was SOP. Either way, not good.
Black motorists were twice as likely to be searched than whites, but were half as likely to have drugs or guns or other contraband.
I think police interactions are like chaotic functions. The slightest differences in behavior can result in wildly disproportionate changes in the response by the police.
So you can wind up with a strange feedback effect, whereby blacks believe they are more likely to be harassed by police, thus they come off as more hostile (even if only slightly), thus the police escalate the situation, and so the narrative is reinforced.
None of what I’m saying excuses the police. They are trigger happy, hopped up gang members with badges and uniforms and little to no accountability.
However, nothing about them is particularly inclined to explain racism. There are plenty of black police officers who are no better than white officers, and there is very little evidence of overt racial hostility by police officers (nowadays, anyway).
The most likely outcome is that nothing will change, as has been the case for awhile now, but making this about race is missing the forest for the trees.
there is very little evidence of overt racial hostility by police officers
Well, this is why you RTFA:
That’s not hostility, although I would like to see just what these “racist jokes about blacks” are before drawing any conclusions. DOJ investigators are not going to get any assumptions of credibility from me on this matter.
My gut tells me this is more about institutional racism in the Ferguson organization driving this, rather than individual racism by officers.
The joke they reference in the article seems familiar to me. I thought I heard it originally from some black comedienne? Not for sure.
Sending it in an e-mail screams “STUPID!”, though.
Not that the joke is excusable in a workplace and one composed of public servants at that, but are there not black police officers in Ferguson? Did the DOJ interview any of them? If so, what did they have to say (even anonymously) about their department?
Even if the jokes are (horrors!) “racist”–so what? We still have a First Amendment in this country. I’d think that libertarians would be defending Free Speech over censorship.
I’d think that libertarians would be defending Free Speech over censorship.
I’m sorry, did you miss the part where we’re talking about public servants on the public dime?
I don’t care what they do in their off hours (provided that they’re held to the same standards as everyone else), but any time they are in uniform, on the clock, or using taxpayer funded resources is definitely subject to scrutiny. Objecting to misuse of said privileges is not censorship.
Having said that, they can say racist shit all day long provided that they do their fucking jobs, which means serving the public (not harassing them) and policing crime (theft, rape, murder).
Reportedly,
The one about how Obama won’t finish his term because “what black man holds a job for four years?”
And another one about how black women who get abortions get reward money from the organization Crime Stoppers
Bobarian (hyphenated-american): Yes, that’s the only real evidence here. The “stopped more often” stats by themselves prove nothing. Maybe blacks in Ferguson are worse drivers than the whites. Who knows? But if you search them more often but find drugs less often, that does look bad.
That does seem to me to be pretty damning. Of course, the solution is not to search more whites, it’s to improve the criteria under which you conduct searches (or better yet, don’t search vehicles for drugs at all).
Also, the solution is not to just stop search black people, either. If there are objective criteria and they are being met, then they should be applied equally regardless of race. That’s what “equal protection” is actually about.
SLD drugs shouldn’t be criminalized, you have the right to refuse a search, the police shouldn’t harass people, etc.
Let’s take a hypothetical.
If there were ten black people and thirty white people in a town, and five of the blacks were criminals but only three of the whites were, would it prove racial bias if the arrest rates were higher for blacks than whites?
No, it would not. Of course, it doesn’t disprove racism, either. The cops could be hassling and arresting black non-criminals just because they’re black.
In reality, trying to nail down the actual rates of criminality is almost impossible to do. Even the victim surveys are not truly accurate; people lie in both directions. Moreover, just because someone is the victim of a crime does not mean they know anything about the identity of the attacker.
Assuming uniform rates of criminality across all segments of the population is not valid just because it’s convenient. Thus, any claim of bias based purely upon the relative proportion of arrests, searches, etc. is specious.
Put another way, just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you understand what it means.
let’s not
The general idea is that the city is covering up funding shortfalls by writing shitloads of tickets.
And those tickets are primarily being written against people without the resources to fight back.
And yes, a black guy in a beat up car is more likely to be someone that can’t fight back versus a white guy in late model sedan.
It can be about race and not be about race.
It can be about race and not be about race.
Setting aside the obvious cognitive dissonance, what that says this is really about is that the people who support the laws and the people who actually have to suffer them are not generally the same groups of people.
And that has nothing to do with race.
And yes, a black guy in a beat up car is more likely to be someone that can’t fight back versus a white guy in late model sedan.
But, then, you’re fundamentally giving up the racial angle. The police aren’t interested in the guy’s blackness, so much as the beat up car that means he doesn’t have the means to fight back. Now, it could well be that more blacks are poor and thus more likely to drive the beat up cars that get pulled over. But, that’s a different matter.
“Investigators say the officials made racist jokes about blacks on their city email accounts.”
Sounds like it was racial.
Of course, the police culture is the sort of thing that makes them think this is acceptable behavior.
“Must. Make. It. Racial.”
That might be because the investigation was by the Civil Rights Division.
“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, created in 1957 by the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The Division enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status and national origin.”
http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/
That description is an exercise in doublespeak.
And “all Americans” is no longer official DoJ policy.
“Coates and other career attorneys told the OIG that they were aware of comments by some Voting Section attorneys indicating that the Noxubee case should have never been brought because White citizens were not historical victims of discrimination or could fend for themselves.”
The capitalization of “White” seems a bit bizarre.
Their mandate is to police discrimination, so of course they ‘made it racial.’
It is unsurprising, yes, but I was referring more to the nature of their mandate in the first place not to the quality of their adherence to it.
Well, there is a 14th Amendment. Nothing wrong with an agency that polices that.
Well, there is a 14th Amendment.
Did you have a mindmeld with John? The two of you have this amazing ability to read the invisible ink of the 14th Amendment. The 14th says everybody has rights, and does not call out any specific groups of people nor any specific reasons for unequal treatment.
Nothing wrong with an agency that polices that.
Just like any bureaucracy, it has an incentive to inflate numbers to appear relevant. If a year passed without any major civil rights violations, would the DOJ disband?
It really seems like, compared to ten years ago, Reason articles lack nuance and make the easy assumptions on major issues. But, I’m too lazy to find articles from ten years ago to prove this.
What nuance are they missing here?
That there are likely other factors than simple racism at play here. This was meant to be a reply to sarcasm’s post.
While I think focusing on racism is a diversion from the real issue of overcriminalization, I think it’s pretty hard to say that racism doesn’t exist in the justice system.
That’s pretty much my point, that there are many factors at play here, and focusing solely on racism simplifies a very complex issue.
Well, the writers here have written many times on the subject of overcriminalization. I don’t even interpret this article as stating that racism is the only problem, but it is summarizing the finding of a report which pretty much does focus solely on racism.
I don’t have access to the full report yet, so there’s no way to delve into any nuances.
I did just write 1,500 words on the intricacies of a White House task force’s policing proposals just earlier today. Just scroll down a little bit.
Fair enough, Scott, I spoke too soon.
I get extremely wary of using percentages as evidence of direct racism (ex: saying that because blacks are xx% of the population, but only x% are in higher education, this is slam dunk evidence that higher education discriminates). As others have illustrated here, there are likely other factors for the skewed percentages mentioned in the article.
However, I should have read your post more carefully before directly attacking your assumptions, since your were mostly just discussing findings from a report.
The full report will not be released by the Department of Justice
Oh really? How fuckng convenient. And typical, from the “most transparent administration ever”.
If this police department is so awfully racist, you would think that Holder and Obama of all people would want the entire report to be made public, wouldn’t you?
SORRY! It will be released tomorrow. I have absolutely no idea why I wrote that it won’t be released. I corrected.
I’m sorry Scott, but you deserve this.
Oh boy, now you’ve done it. You’re not allowed to bring culture into the discussion because being critical of culture is racist. Just like being critical of Islam is racist. You racist.
No small proportion of libertarians on this very message board feel that way. This belief that all cultures are equal and all deserving of respect is a disease, a disease that libertarians aren’t necessarily immune to. A steady dose of principles should inoculate people against that fallacious disease however.
There’s also the idea that judging every ‘member’ of a culture by the actions of other members might not be in the spirit of individualism..,
Who said anything about all blacks being guilty of X, Y or Z? There’s the idea that attacking a strawman might not be in the spirit of reason.
I was talking of Islam
And the fact remains… I’m just going to quote the previous statement and change one single word since you can’t be expected to extrapolate the point for yourself.
So Islam is bad but lots of Muslims are good. Got it
Mehhhhhhh. “Good” is a point we could quibble over. 89% of Egyptians think apostates should be executed and 70some % think adulterers should be stoned to death. Does that mean the vast majority of Egpytians are evil? I don’t think so, but I think their society’s near total lack of rational morality certainly precludes us from assuming that the vast majority of Egyptian Muslims are as good as they could be if they weren’t Muslims or otherwise not have their thinking infected with Islamic ideology.
Hahaha
How could I match your ‘I’m not saying all Muslims are bad, the ones that aren’t Muslims are ok!’?
How about Islam is bad, and lots of Muslims are bad?
Here’s another Muslim rape gang in Britain
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..0-men.html
There are good muslims, but those are the ones that are largely indifferent to their religion. The ones that take it seriously are simply at odds with Western culture and free society, because of the nature of Islamic beliefs
Why can’t people understand the difference between collectivism and generalization?
Generalizations are general for a reason.
The fine line between them?
Generalization is the mental process of noticing trends and patterns(otherwise known as pulling your head out of your ass) examples:
Tall people are generally better at basketball.
The Irish are generally drunks.
Muslims are more likely to be enthusiastic about dying in an explosion than other groups.
Collectivism is the belief that any member of whatever group is directly responsible for the behavior of the group, or vice versa.
That collectivism you’re talking about is based on generalizations. Most Irish are no good drunks so screw ’em is an example.
It depends entirely on who is doing the “judging” and how they act on that “judgment”. I can and should call out someone who’s never committed any crimes but adheres to a culture that glorifies crime. That does not mean said individual should be subject to harassment by the police, however.
Street altercations between non-cops kind of fall in a gray area here since establishing the exact cause and effect after the fact is a little difficult and witnesses are notoriously unreliable about things like “who threw the first punch”.
The real problem is that apparently we are just hiring people off the streets to be policemen. If you can’t exercise more discretion than the average street hustler, you shouldn’t be wearing a badge.
“..being critical of culture is racist.”
“..being critical of Islam is racist.”
That is a double whammy for me. Ouch.
I would add that the second is the same as the first.
It’s even worse than that. African Americans are 13% of the population and close to 50% of the homicides, and 93% of those homicides are of other African Americans.
There’s also a problem with the claim that this is all because of high poverty rates among African Americans, which is that poverty rates are HIGHER among Hispanic immigrants, but crime rates are far lower. Moreover, the lowest crime rates on Earth are found in East Asia, and those countries are frequently very poor.
I don’t think Indonesia’s low crime rate is because of Indonesia’s immense wealth.
That implies that something is going on beyond poverty. It’s difficult to know what that ‘something’ is, but the standard left-wing claim that it’s all down to poverty and lack of opportunity is disproven by the facts.
I think a lot of it is a consequence of the drug war. Once people discover that drugs like pot are basically harmless, they realize that the law is wrong. That naturally leads to disrespect for the law in general. If someone doesn’t have a strong moral sense when that happens, then the result is someone with no morality or respect for the law. Otherwise known as a dangerous criminal. Poverty and single parent households don’t help much either.
Or, as Bastiat put it:
No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.
That is probably part of it. Not to mention that the drug war also puts a lot of young fathers in jail resulting in kids growing up without fathers which probably isn’t very good either.
The drug war has produced a real ripple effect of problems, and the black community does seem to have been at the epicenter of that disaster.
Let’s not forget the modern welfare state was given to us with the idea in the mind that “We’ll have those niggers voting Democrat for 200 years.”
Welfare statism has played arguably as much of a role in the degeneration of black culture as the drug war has. I believe it’s been every bit as destructive, just not as violently so.
It most likely comes down to the culture, but good luck having an honest discussion about that without being labelled a racist. Maybe one day this country will grow up enough to have an open and honest discussion.
I think the smarter leftist say culture can be changed via better opportunities.
Also, if you apply a little extrapolation backwards, as humans were more impoverished in their primitive state, at some point the criminality should have been so great as to eradicate the species.
Really, the only way you can call modern “poverty” the cause of crime is if you accept envy as a legitimate motivation for violence.
Well envy seems to motivate the left so maybe they’re just projecting.
Ta Nehesi Coates was arguing with Jonathan Chait about whether or not culture had something to do with high black crime rates, and Coates’ argument was that it’s not culture because ‘when you’re in a violent neighborhood, violence is a shield. You use violence to protect yourself.’
The problem is, if a violent culture around you makes people ‘use violence as a shield’ then that’s ACTUALLY EVIDENCE that it’s primarily a cultural problem. He thought he was arguing against that position when he was actually providing evidence for it.
I remember reading Coates a while back and not thinking of him as such a hack.
Following from his argument, then what is it about violent neighborhoods that makes them violent in the first place? Is there something about the geography that inspires violence?
Of course, the government plays a massive role in shaping this situation, but admitting that would reveal the cracks in the larger narrative.
Which brings me to another point: Progressive arguments are consistently refuted by looking internationally, but they’re so myopic that they don’t tend to know anything about the world outside of the US, Canada, and a vague, highly stereotyped version of Western Europe.
One great example of culturally driven crime rates is the tripling of Venezuela’s homicide rate between 1998 and today. Venezuela actually became richer throughout the early section of Chavez’ reign because of high oil prices, but despite the oil windfall their crime rate skyrocketed.
Personally I think it has a great deal to do with Chavez’ mode of governance and the extractive, thuggish political culture that developed around him.
According to progressives, I am now a racist for saying there might be a cultural problem in a non-white country.
Irish, do you think the crime rate for wealthy blacks and poor blacks is the same? Or are they of two different cultures? How do define culture apart from propensity for crime?
Clearly there are correlations out the ass on this. I’m sure there’s a relationship between poverty and crime, it’s just that there are so many other factors you can’t claim it’s a straight causal link.
It’s also a chicken/egg situation. Wealthy black people obviously have vastly lower crime rates than poor black people, but are the crime rates lower because they’re rich, or are they rich because they come from a family that’s less prone to crime? I could very easily see the causal link being backwards – criminals tend to be poor because they’re in and out of jail and can’t hold down a job.
In that case, you wouldn’t be a criminal because you’re poor, you’d be poor because you’re a criminal. There’s no way of telling which direction the link runs.
In other words, clearly rich African Americans are culturally different than poor African Americans. How do you separate the wealth disparity from the cultural differences?
It’s tough as I said
Irish, do you think the crime rate for wealthy blacks and poor blacks is the same? Or are they of two different cultures? How do define culture apart from propensity for crime?
Chris Rock said something to the effect of “Black people hate niggers.”
That would suggest that there is indeed a cultural difference between poor blacks and wealthier blacks. Especially when you consider that in many places black kids are shunned by their peers when they study and learn in school. They’re “being white,” and that is looked down upon.
Of course there is a similar dynamic between poor whites and their more affluent counterparts.
So I see it as more of a cultural difference between the poor and everyone else. It appears to be a black thing, but it’s more of a poor thing.
The poverty argument is always interesting to me because I grew up in an area with a fair bit of rural poverty, all Caucasian. And there was a pretty obvious cultural divide in who stayed clean and who got into trouble. The close knit families that went to church regularly, avoided alcohol and substance use, and effectively managed their slim budget did a lot better than the more broken or even abusive relationships between unmarried couples with unplanned children that used substances and didn’t budget at all. The kids in the first spent a lot of time trying to pull their way out of poverty (some of which succeeded) while the kids of the second often found themselves into substance abuse early on followed by petty criminal acts and lots of DUIs later. It’s extremely depressing to watch, a lot of them had basically given up by age fourteen and only wanted immediate gratification without caring about the consequences.
Culture matters a lot when it comes to how people respond to poverty.
“*Completely separate* from these findings, the DOJ is still expected to clear Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson of any civil rights violations for shooting and killing Michael Brown last summer.” [emphasis added]
I would think that the fact that they couldn’t find enough evidence against the cop is very relevant to the aggressiveness with which they pursued the Ferguson police as a whole.
I mean, if the DoJ thought it had a chance in heck of getting a conviction, the cop would have been indicted and hung up to dry. So the cop is probably innocent.
When the local authorities reached the very same conclusion against charging the cop, the riots erupted. I doubt they’ll riot against the Obama DoJ’s decision, but to solidify their base the DoJ needs to bash the Ferguson authorities.
Of course, it could well be that the Ferguson authorities *deserve* to be bashed. I got that impression from the *Reason* coverage, not because I believe the Obama administration.
Meanwhile nobody seems to give a shit about the 12 year old shot in Cleveland by police. Nope not polarizing enough, won’t break down along racial lines, so “civil rights” leaders don’t give shits about it.
Nobody gives a shit about John Greer either.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..john-geer/
Hell, why is it no one cared about that Muslim guy beaten to death in south St. Louis by a mob with hammers?
Oh wait, that’s right, because the people who did it were black.
To be fair, if the media covered all the shootings of citizens by cops for no reason, we’d have no time to talk about politics and plane disappearances.
Because the only “civil rights” regards race.
Way to go, Holder.
Holy stupid Batman.
“The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division is the institution within the federal government responsible for enforcing federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin. ”
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki…..s_Division
I mean, ever notice how those stupid game wardens tend to make their charges about game violations?
derp
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Our Department of Justice has a nasty habit of calling “racism” where it doesn’t exist and placing blame where it doesn’t belong.
Why are there no conversations going about why so many black men break laws?
People who don’t break laws usually don’t get arrested or get shot.
In fairness, people who break laws usually don’t get arrested or shot.
Note the Orwellian doublespeak.
First we are told: “The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, created in 1957… enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status and national origin.”
Then we are told:
“Coates and other career attorneys told the OIG that they were aware of comments by some Voting Section attorneys indicating that the Noxubee case should have never been brought because White citizens were not historical victims of discrimination or could fend for themselves.”
i.e., white people are to be discriminated against on the basis of their color of skin.
Of course, the federal government is a leader in anti-white discrimination via affirmative action, minorities-only contracts, support for historically black colleges, promotion of black history month, “diversity” indoctrination, not prosecuting black-on-white flashmob violence as hatecrime, looking the other way when militants torch a city like Ferguson, etc.
They (DoJ) will impose changes upon Ferguson, and in five years things will be worse – sort of like the improvements that deBlasio has imposed on NYC, where the murder rate is up 20% over the the same time period a year earlier.
The main issue re Ferguson is how the Obama administration is exploiting it politically. This may be another federal attempt to end the autonomy of local policing, and consolidate the federal grip on law enforcement.
As for the activists: why was Michael Brown chosen as the martyr and not any number of citizens who were gunned down in their homes by SWAT teams? I’d again speculate that it was precisely because he was a known thug (cf the video of him assaulting a shopkeeper). For the radical left, this was a way to mobilize militants and get them out into the streets, pillaging a town as part of The Revolution.
You need to look at the participation of various radical groups, such as the Revolutionary Communist Party and New Black Panthers. None of these groups are libertarian, and if/when they win, it’ll be Big Government like you’ve never seen before.
How about if Reason were to do some real investigative reporting on Ferguson, instead of just repeating the DoJ party line?
Note how paragraph this pulls factoids out of context:
But 85 percent of all traffic stops from 2012 to 2014 were of blacks, as were 85 percent of all cases of use of force during that timeframe. Blacks accounted for 90 percent of all citations. Black motorists were twice as likely to be searched than whites, but were half as likely to have drugs or guns or other contraband.
This does not tell us what people are being stopped for, or the motivations for the search. See case law re Terry Searches.
There’s a disconnect here, because the cited paragraph jumps from traffic citations/stops to possession of drugs/guns. It ignores stops/searches for other crimes, such as answering the description of a suspect in a violent/property crime. Check the stats for the St Louis area, and you will find that blacks commit a number of UCR Part I offenses all out of proportion to their percent of the population. This is also why police are more likely to use force against blacks.
None of this fits into the party line of “Blacks = Victims of White Society.” Instead, a shoddy argument is thrown together to imply that there are massive civil rights violations in progress. Presumably, this justifies rioters torching a town and a malicious federal witch hunt.
The whole situation is messed up and the DOJ should not be hijacking it to bolster the racial bias narrative.
Having said that, however, the contempt of the Ferguson PD for many of the residents and business owners of Ferguson was pretty clearly on display throughout this whole affair.
Nothing absolves the rioters of blame for the destruction of property they caused, but the police can hardly be sympathetic figures when they stonewalled the press and then largely stood by and let the riots happen.
And there are massive civil rights violations in progress, it’s just that nobody really gives a shit about them. Like everything else he does, Obama is just poisoning the well by involving the DOJ only on the basis of racial bias.
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On the racial angle: I realize that most people cannot relate to it, and thus there’s a tendency to overlook it or flat out evade it, but the fact of the matter is that racial biases in political institutions has been something black people have been dealing with since Reconstruction, and the purpose back then, was to reduce the influence that black people had on the political status quo. This was evident a 100 years later in the 1960’s. It has been the norm now to say that this no longer exists or is no longer an issue, yet, no one can exactly say when that did occur.
It’s easier to relate on a police state level for most of us, we see it, and we’ve been pointing it out for quite some time. However, the simple fact is that if a community is 67% black, and yet all the positions of political influence is controlled by whites, and yet 90% of crimes and convictions are of the people that make up the majority of the population, in a democracy, something is going on. Why would these people keep voting for another race of people to govern them, when the only thing they are getting is fines and citations?