Tag: ferguson
Did We Expect Too Much From Obama On Race?

Did We Expect Too Much From Obama On Race?

With less than two weeks to go before Barack Obama vacates the White House, an apparently racially motivated crime has once again ignited debate about how race relations have changed under America’s first African American president.

In Chicago, four African Americans have been charged with kidnapping, beating and tormenting a mentally disabled young white man whom they bound and gagged. They live-streamed the victim’s shockingly cruel ordeal on Facebook.

At one point during the attack, one of the perpetrators cursed “white people” and President-elect Donald Trump. Based on this and/or perhaps his disability or some other evidence, authorities have charged the suspects with hate crimes.

When asked by a Chicago reporter to comment on the incident, Obama called it a hate crime and “despicable.” Yet, in the measured tones that he has always brought to the sensitive issue, he disagreed with the contention that race relations have become worse in his adopted hometown.

As anyone can attest who was around in Chicago in 1985, when Obama first came to Chicago, there’s no question that they have improved. Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor and a progressive reformer, was besieged by hostile white aldermen in an atmosphere of frank racial animosity. A notorious Chicago Police commander was torturing black suspects to extract false confessions in a series of murder cases. Thanks to gerrymandering, blacks and Latinos were underrepresented in the city council.

Whatever its problems today, race relations in Chicago have come a long way since then — which was Obama’s point to the reporter.

Another change is that mobile phone cameras and social media have made the visuals of various crimes and violent incidents widely available to the public; for the better and, perhaps in some cases, for the worse. Violent crime rates have broadly declined in America since three decades ago — even in Chicago! — yet this is not apparent to many, thanks partly to “viral” blood-and-guts news.

A similarly equivocal assessment of “progress” applies to Barack Obama’s legacy as the nation’s first African American president. Most Americans greeted his election as a watershed for American society. And yet the achievement came with unrealistic expectations for what he could do for America under that label.

It was unfair to expect that Obama’s election signaled a massive turning point to America’s past racial divides, as if the event was a stopping point, a culmination, rather than a milestone on a long historical journey.

This is the fantasy of America as a post-racial society. People of all races, arguably goaded by media, bought into it. We liked the sound of hope and change. And an optimistic America is good thing, as long as it’s honest.

It was also unrealistic to believe that a black man waking up every day in the White House and going about the presidential duties was going to suddenly lift all minority-led households.

Many black people, especially those at the bottom economic rungs, became fed up with the lack of change under his watch. They’d bought into the idea sweeping change might come to their lives under Obama. But the problems at the root of the angst — poverty, the state of many urban school districts, gang and drug violence, fragmented and dysfunctional families — started long before he took office and cannot be solved with a stroke of the president’s pen.

There is a second, equally delusional notion that Obama somehow caused race relations to fester and boil. As if his very presence is the reason that Americans are sensing higher racial tensions.

For many, especially white conservatives, any time Obama weighed in on the mistreatment of black people by police, he was “playing the race card.”

It was during Obama’s time in office that these events resonated in the news: the killing of Trayvon Martin; the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and endless other cases of police shootings followed by unrest; the Black Lives Matter movement; and the horrific assassination attacks on police.

It’s naive to believe Obama flipped some switch for these events to occur. As if the problems between police and urban black communities aren’t far more complicated, more long-standing and entrenched. It’s offensive to both police and those communities to see it any other way.

Obama never should have been expected to heal all racial grievances in America. If that is what you expected, sorry, but the last eight years obviously haven’t sufficed.

Obama’s real and lasting impact on race relations in America will be seen in less sensational policy decisions: who he brought to the federal benches, his efforts to protect the Voting Rights Act, measures to expand access to health care and quality schools. None of this can be easily measured at this point.

So we’ll muddle and march forward. And if we admit Obama’s limitations, we’ll also have to see that the work of creating a more perfect union is really ahead. The goal is to take it on — eyes and ears wide open.

IMAGE: U.S. President Barack Obama pauses as he delivers a speech during a visit at the the Parque de la Memoria (Remembrance Park), where they honored victims of Argentina’s Dirty War on the 40th anniversary of the 1976 coup that initiated that period of military rule, in Buenos Aires, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Darren Seals: Ferguson Activist Found Dead In Burning Car With Gunshot Wound

Darren Seals: Ferguson Activist Found Dead In Burning Car With Gunshot Wound

(Reuters) – Missouri detectives have not determined a motive or identified any witnesses in an investigation into the death of a man who led protests in the city of Ferguson following the fatal 2014 shooting of Michael Brown by a law enforcement officer, police said on Wednesday.

Protest leader Darren Seals, 29, was found shot inside a burning car in the village of Riverview, about five miles east of Ferguson, early on Tuesday, St. Louis County Police said in a statement.

Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb, gained national attention because of rioting after the August 2014 shooting of Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by white police officer Darren Wilson. Most protests were peaceful, but violence erupted again when a grand jury decided not to bring charges against Wilson.

A federal investigation later found patterns of racial discrimination by Ferguson police.

The demonstrations helped to coalesce the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter.

“I don’t recall anyone having a longer protest, a more productive protest, a more creative protest than what we did,” Seals said in an interview with MTV released in November 2014. “I don’t think people will ever really appreciate what we did until years from now.”

Hours before Seals‘ death, he posted on Twitter about Colin Kaepernick, a San Francisco 49ers National Football League quarterback who protested racial injustice and police brutality by declining to stand for the national anthem, and the U.S. presidential election. In his Twitter profile, Seals described himself as a “businessman, revolutionary, activist, unapologetically BLACK, Afrikan in AmeriKKKa, fighter, leader.”

Police have not determined a motive for the crime or identified any witnesses, Sergeant Shawn McGuire said. McGuire declined to say in which part of Seals‘ body he was shot.

County police said officers were first called to investigate a burning vehicle in Riverview. “When the fire was extinguished, a deceased male subject was located inside of the vehicle,” the department said in a statement.

Seals, whose last-known address was in St. Louis, was identified as the victim.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; editing by Grant McCool)

Photo: An undated photo of Darren Seals from his facebook account. Darren Seals via Facebook/Handout via REUTERS

No, Trump, Most Dangerous Place In The World Is Not Ferguson

No, Trump, Most Dangerous Place In The World Is Not Ferguson

I hesitate to bring up facts.

If recent years have proven nothing else, they’ve proven that we have fully embarked upon a post-factual era wherein the idea that a thing can be knowable to an objective certainty — and that this should matter — has been diminished to the point of near irrelevancy.

Donald Trump is the avatar of the era. Not content to rest on his laurels, he recently provided superfluous proof of his supremacy in mendacity. Asked by The New York Times to name the most dangerous place in the world he’s ever visited, Trump replied that “there are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously.”

You wonder whether it’s worth correcting him. After all, neither Trump nor his followers seem especially interested in truth. But for the record, according to the Citizens Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice in Mexico, which tracks murder statistics around the world, only four U.S. cities make the list of the 50 most dangerous places on Earth. None of them is Ferguson or Oakland.

Trump’s use of those cities, both with high poverty rates and large African-American populations, is, of course, intended as a crude dog whistle to the angry white men he’s courting — some old-fashioned victim blaming and shaming to rouse the rabble. But it got me thinking about this whole concept of the most dangerous place on Earth. If by that we mean the place with potential for the greatest amount of harm to the largest number of people, maybe we should broaden our definition of “danger.”

For example, climate change is sure dangerous, linked as it is to increased risk of fire, flood, famine, drought, freakish storms, high temperatures and resultant illnesses. The World Health Organization says this already contributes to 150,000 deaths a year and that between 2030 and 2050, the death toll could rise to a quarter million a year. A 2015 study in the journal Politics and Policy found the GOP is virtually the only major conservative party in any democracy on Earth still denying this reality — and opposing measures to deal with it.

So the most dangerous place on Earth could be Republican headquarters.

Lead poisoning causes behavioral problems and irreversible brain damage in children and memory loss, high blood pressure, decline in mental functioning, reduced sperm count and miscarriages in adults. The water crisis in Flint, Mich., we now find, was the tip of the proverbial iceberg, with reports that high lead levels have been found in 2,000 water systems serving 6 million people in 50 states.

So the most dangerous place on Earth might be your local water department.

The economic collapse of 2008 wiped out $7.4 trillion in stocks, $3.4 trillion in real estate and 5.5 million jobs, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts. It cost the average American household $5,800 in lost income. The effects were felt worldwide amid fears of a global financial meltdown, a Second Great Depression, brought about by too-big-to-fail-banks playing the U.S. economy like a Vegas casino. Some experts say the threat of a relapse endures.

So the most dangerous place on Earth may be Wall Street.

But it isn’t. No, the most dangerous place on Earth is none of the above.

Consider for a moment: To lead America through a world of complex and difficult challenges, the Republican Party offers us Donald Trump. He is pervy, thin-skinned, loud-mouthed and volatile, a preening bully and serial liar who shows little evidence of core values, nor even inner life. Yet, some large percentage of us thinks he should have access to the nuclear codes.

So if you really want to know the most dangerous place on Earth, it’s simple. It’s every polling place in America, come November.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

(c) 2016 THE MIAMI HERALD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Photo: Police take a mug shot of a protester who was detained in Ferguson, Missouri, in this August 10, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/Files

How Dangerous Is Donald Trump?

How Dangerous Is Donald Trump?

This post originally appeared with the Roosevelt Institute.

On Sunday, Vox posted a video in which editor-in-chief Ezra Klein makes his case that “Donald Trump is the most dangerous presidential candidate in recent memory.” While I agree that Trump is dangerous and appreciate Ezra as a brilliant and thoughtful journalist, I disagree with his analysis. In short, I fail to see how Trump is substantively more dangerous than any of the other potential Republican presidents, or how he could possibly prove more dangerous than many presidents we have had already.

Klein’s thesis—that Trump’s candidacy represents an unprecedented level of danger in American politics—ignores a rich history of deadly and destructive policy by the leaders of both political parties, to say nothing of the plight of many millions of Americans for whom the worst has already come to pass. I agree with Ezra that the time to take policy and elections seriously has come; I just disagree on when it came.

[Requisite Trump disclaimer:] I am, of course, deeply troubled by Trump’s candidacy and his success with American voters. The broad approval that his brand of paranoid xenophobia has received reveals something truly disturbing about a large portion of American voters.

But, in my mind, the danger Klein speaks of was real long before Trump.

If I am a Black youth in Ferguson, Missouri, or Baltimore, Maryland, how much weight do Donald Trump’s racist diatribes really add to the pre-existing burden of going through life knowing I could be shot dead by a police officer who would face no legal ramifications for my murder?

If I am a single mother living under the poverty line in Flint, Michigan, with scant job prospects and poisonous water flowing out of my kitchen tap, how much of an additional threat does Donald Trump truly pose to my well-being? I am already drowning in a sea of existential threats.

The truth is, American politicians have been playing with live ammunition since the first Congress was convened in 1789. Just ask the relatives and friends of 58,220 American soldiers unnecessarily slain in Vietnam. Ask the victims of Japanese internment. Ask the descendants of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muskogee, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee tribes, forced out of their ancestral land and into a federally mandated death march.

These are dramatic examples, to be sure, but even more mundane-seeming policy questions elucidate the point that, when it comes to dangerous policy, Donald Trump is nothing new.

Republican candidates and presidents (Trump included) have a long history of proposing outrageous, unaffordable, and regressive tax cuts, many of which have become law, to the detriment of the American people and the economy. The carried interest loophole is one example: This provision costs billions every year, exists exclusively to benefit wealthy investment managers, and has been supported by every Republican presidential candidate—except Trump, who has proposed to end it. Overall, Trump’s tax plan—like those of his fellow candidates—is terrible and unrealistic, and this proposed repeal is mere lip service, but it is still more than any other candidate has proposed with regard to closing loopholes for the wealthy.

If it is Trump’s honesty Klein worries about (the man does love a good flip-flop), then again, I must insist the bar is set very low.

President George W. Bush led the American people to believe he possessed incontrovertible evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq and used that misinformation to drag the country into a 15-year war that cost trillions of tax dollars and 4,486 American lives. Those were my generational brothers and sisters, as are those now living through unprecedented violence and political upheaval throughout the Middle East. So forgive me if I appear unfazed by Trump’s racism, because I already lived through eight years of a president who went to war over prejudice. If anything, Trump’s attitude seems par for the course.

And I in no way mean to be partisan: It was four presidential terms, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, that led to the largest financial crisis the world has ever known and the worst recession since the Great Depression. We watched the perpetrators walk away without a scratch. Some got raises.

Looking at the other candidates, I detect no safe choice. In fact, all but Trump support defunding Planned Parenthood, and every single candidate followed his lead on supporting a ban on refugees from the Syrian civil war. Ditto his Sinophobia. Ditto the wall on the Mexican border. Is Trump dangerous for his beliefs, or is he just offensive for his willingness to state them?

What I suspect Klein is responding to is not the content of Trump’s policies but the disturbingly disrespectful way in which he hocks this ever-shifting platform of xenophobic rabble-rousing and racially charged scapegoating. And I don’t blame Klein for feeling the way he does: It is an ugly, ugly business, and it is revealing an ugly, ugly side of American culture. But to many observers of American politics, it is nothing new.

The Republican Party has been campaigning and leading on a platform of very thinly veiled (and sometimes completely unveiled) xenophobia, homophobia, and disregard for the poor and working class for quite some time. Trump is just saying in plain English what has been the implicit conservative platform for over half a century. Did the mild manners of previous candidates make their stances any less destructive to the American people? Perhaps Klein took solace in the panache of primary politicians gone by, but I do not, and I doubt that those who have suffered the worst ills of American policy do either.

Perhaps it is better that progressives can finally fight this battle out in the open, offering a direct challenge to the ugly underpinnings of right-wing ideology instead of grappling with the coded language and feigned innocence of other candidates.

Klein’s video suggests that, though we’ve lived through decades of unjustified war, top-heavy tax cuts, financial deregulation, and structural discrimination, now is when we are really at risk.

I think that moment came and went some time ago.

Photo: (L-R) Governor John Kasich, former Governor Jeb Bush, Senator Ted Cruz, businessman Donald Trump, Senator Marco Rubio and Dr. Ben Carson pose before the start of the Republican U.S. presidential candidates debate sponsored by CBS News and the Republican National Committee in Greenville, South Carolina February 13, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst.