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Tag: race

  • Civil Service and Affirmative Action

    The Supreme Court ruled in Ricci v. DeStafano that a particularly bizarre form of affirmative action is unconstitutional. You can’t just throw out a test because you don’t like the results. In 2003 a firefighter’s promotional exam produced no black candidates. The city of New Haven threw out the whole exam and promoted no one.

    I’m against racial discrimination and that includes many if not most forms of affirmative action. I think affirmative action does more harm than good.

    But while I think affirmative action is generally wrong, I’m not willing to say it’s always wrong. Obama or not, we’re not living in a race-blind society. We notice race and we have to take account of race. I do think diversity is good there are some cases where race-based approaches are needed.

    White people often say, “I didn’t get no benefits because of my race.” But you have. We all have.

    Take college admissions. There are plenty of affirmative-action-like systems out there that benefits white folk. Having a parent who went to a college or held a certain job gives you a benefit. But often that college or job wasn’t open to non-whites a generation or two ago.

    Should unqualified blacks get in over whites or Asians? No. But race should be one factor of many.

    Athletes get affirmative action. And though some poor blacks benefit from this, it really benefits people who go to rich prep-schools bloated sports programs. Did your school have a lacrosse team and a swimming pool? Well a lot of schools don’t.

    I went to the same college my father did. Did I get into college because my dad went there? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. I certainly didn’t hurt my chances. And my father got in on affirmative action because he was from the state of New Mexico. That’s geographic affirmation action. Colleges like Princeton want one student from each and every state. My dad was the token New Mexican. Perhaps, 37 years later, my wife was, too.

    But race-based affirmative action is supposed to address historic discrimination in the US. And if that is all it were, I would approve. Legal racial discrimination wasn’t that long ago. Even slavery wasn’t that long ago. To argue that centuries of racism had no lasting negative impact is crazy. And to push people to the bottom and then ask why they can’t lift themselves up is disingenuous at best.

    But… I think affirmative action should only be for black people who can trace their roots back to Slavery. Immigrants should never get affirmative action. Period. The idea that a Spanish sounding last name would give you any benefit at all is simply absurd. And women aren’t “minorities” (though a good argument could be an argument made for affirmative action for women based on historical discrimination).

    Affirmative action, when it is practiced, has become so broad that it no longer helps those people for whom it was designed. Simply being biased against white men isn’t the answer. And of course this creates resentment. Significant, real resentment.

    But when it comes to civil-service hiring and promotions, I think there are other issues. Civil-service promotional exams are as dumb if not dumber than affirmative action programs. To say that affirmative action isn’t fair somehow implies that civil-service exams are themselves fair. I don’t buy it.

    Civil service exams are a horrible way to decide, say, who should be a police sergeant (or a police officer. If you study hard for a civil-service exam you’ll do better. But does doing better on a test mean you’re a better worker? I don’t think so.

    A written exam tells you nothing what kind of cop or firefighter you will be when lives are on the line. These tests test nothing about leadership potential or collegial respect. I don’t think it matters one damn bit, in term of your competence to do the job of police officer, whether you score a 96 or a 98 on a civil service exam.

    Perhaps hiring and firing in the police and fire department should be done more like normal businesses do it. Let the bosses decide. Or ask the coworkers. While nobody is liked by everybody, if somebody is disliked by everybody, there is probably a problem there. People on the workforce tend to know who is good worker and who isn’t.

    In the meantime, I’m happy with the court’s decision. Picking on people because of their race is simply wrong. There has to be a better way.

    [update: very interesting story in the New York Times about Ben Vargas, the lone Hispanic firefighter on the winning side of Ricci v. DeStafano.]

  • Homicides and Race

    The New York Times has a nice map of homicides in the city. You can select by various variables, but unfortunately not more than one at a time.

    The Baltimore Sun has a similar but better map.

    I’m always a bit surprised by just how few white homicide victims there are. Or, conversely, how many of the victims are minority. In NYC since 2003 there are about 43 white homicide victims per year out of a population of about 3,700,000. That’s a very low homicide rate of 1.16 per 100,000. That’s a lower rate than Canada!

    Among blacks in NYC, there are about 329 homicide victims a year and 2,240,000 people. That’s a homicide rate of 14.7.

    Meanwhile in Baltimore, in 2007, there were 14 white homicide victims (a rate of about 7) and 252 black victims (a rate of about 60).

    Update: I crunched a few more numbers because, well, I’m curious.

    Overall in the U.S. rate is about 5.6 per 100,000. It’s about 3.3 for whites and 20 for blacks.

    Many other countries have homicide rates under 1. Most civilized countries have rates under 2. We don’t even come close. But America has always been a violent place. I guess the real question is why is white New York City so non-homicidal?

    And in talking about race and crime, I feel compelled to mention gender and crime. Murder really is a guy thing. In NYC just 8% of murderers (and 17% of victims) are women. And most of those are domestic situations. What is it about men? Can’t we all just get along?

  • Police Officer Jokes About Murder Victim

    That’s just about as exciting a headline as “dog bites man.”

    I joked about murder victims. Of course you joke about murder victims. I mean, you do try and wait till you’re away from from the murder scene before joking about murder victims (though I didn’t even always pass that test).

    So after work — after seeing another person take his last earthly breath, after looking at a dead criminal’s brain spatter all about, after seeing the bastard’s family break down over the death of their “baby,” after hearing witness after witness say they “didn’t see nothin’,” after sorting through the guy’s bloody and dirty clothes for evidence collection — after all that you go have a few beers with your buddies and you tell stories. You laugh. You try and make sense out of world that makes no sense.

    This is what police do. Doctors and nurses and paramedics and firefighters do the same same thing. I bet undertakers have a wicked sense of humor, too. Why? Because they do it day after day. What are workers of death supposed to do? Cry every time they see a dead body? Workers who have to deal with trauma day in and day out need to be able to be a bit callous to trauma. It’s literally a job requirement. And humor and sharing are coping mechanisms.

    We literally police to come across horrible scenes at random and also observe minute details. And sometime we require them to take pictures. And then you we expect them to… what exactly? Buy flowers and the first silk-screened t-shirt in memory of the dead guy?

    It’s called gallows humor. And I support it. It’s cheaper than a shrink. Often times it is more effective, too. People who deal with murder victims need to be able to joke about murder victims. Otherwise they’d go crazy.

    Now an Erie police officer, James Cousins II, is being suspended for doing just that.

    Sure, this cop had a few too many. But we all have.

    So what exactly is the crime? He was off duty. Is the crime to think such things? or to say such things? Or to be recorded and posted without your consent on youtube? We all gossip and think and say insensitive things in private and to our friends that are not appropriate for public broadcast.The appropriateness of speech changes according to time and place. If he gave this speech to a news camera for the evening news, then that would be inexcusable. Even in semi-public environments like bars we deserve some protection of privacy and free speech. This wasn’t a racist tirade. He didn’t use the N-word (neither of which would be appropriate in any context). He’s a drunk cop telling a war story.

    And for the record, it is funny, even hilarious, to see a picture of a guy shot dead in the head right under a malt-liquor sign that says, “Take it to the head”! Swear to God. But yeah, you had to be there. Whether you wanted to be there or not.

    And that’s the thing.

    Next round is on me.

  • What’s News?

    Why were the Oakland police shootings front-page nationwide news and the Pittsburgh police shootings not? I don’t think it’s just the difference between 3 versus 4 officers killed.

    Somehow an angry violent black killer makes for better headlines than an angry violent white killer. Am I supposed to believe that white killers just flip out and lose it while black killers are somehow symbolic of deeper problems of race and the community? If the media were really so liberally biased, wouldn’t it be the other way around?

    (On the other hand, I don’t hear of anybody in Pittsburgh heckling officers or setting up a shrine to the killer.)

    The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a lot of good coverage on the latest tragedy:

    Deadly ambush claims the lives of 3 city police officers

    Devotion to badge was slain officers’ common thread

    Hundreds of bullets fired in shootout with suspected cop killer

    Police risked their lives to rescue downed officers

    Suspect in officers’ shooting was into conspiracy theories

  • Baltimore NAACP Vice President Arrested, Not Charged

    The Vice President of the NAACP is out there copping like a junkie? He’s arrested and then not charged. I’m shocked. Shocked.

    WJZ reports:

    Police say Staten, who is an executive committee member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Maryland conference, was in the driver’s seat of a car that had stopped near Pennsylvania Avenue and Dolphin Street, which police say is a well-known drug market.

    Officers in an unmarked vehicle say a man walked away from a large crowd of people huddled on a street corner and climb into the passenger seat of a silver-colored vehicle.

    They wrote in charging documents that they watched a back-seat passenger hand cash to a man standing outside his window in exchange for suspected drugs.

    Officers approached the vehicle and found a folded-up dollar bill containing suspected heroin and two pills of suboxone, also known as buprenorphine, a medication used to treat heroin addiction, in the possession of the back-seat passenger, Kevin Logan, 44.

    Police found Staten in possession of additional suboxone pills inside a case, and in the driver’s side door. They also recovered a half-smoked marijuana cigarette.

    Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says a passenger told officers that Staten had brought him to the area to buy heroin.

    Staten and Logan were taken to Central Booking, where Logan was charged with two counts of drug possession. Staten, of Pikesville, was released without charges.

  • The Ed Norris Bike Ride

    The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #3 is pleased to announce and support the1st Annual “Ed Norris Bike Ride” Fundraiser to be held on Saturday, March 28th, that will support the newly established Baltimore Metropolitan FOP Police Widows and Children’s Fund.

    How can this be? I’m all for bike rides and raising money for good causes, but I don’t get it. My buddy Ed Norris is a convicted felon. Police are forbidden to associate with felons.

    Granted, in Baltimore it’s hard to go out and not to associate with some felons. A nice guy who served me beer was a felon. Now I pretended I didn’t know that, but I always assumed that if the powers that were came down and tole me I couldn’t drink there, I would have found a new bar.

    Anyway, if you’re not a police officer, by all means ride and raise money. If you are a police officer or a representative of the FOP, can you explain to me why Ed Norris is an A-OK felon but other felons aren’t?

    I guess this is what’s on my mind: if you don’t have sympathy for police officers hanging out with familymembers who are felons, why do you think it’s OK for you to chooseto hang out with felon Ed Norris?

  • Embrace the Right

    At the closing of Obama’s inauguration, Joseph Lowery said these controversial words:

    “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

    Often, I suppose for the sake of politically correctness, the quote is replayed without the last “white” phrase (uh, as if “yellow” and “red man” are politically correct?). But it’s the last phrase that pissed off a lot of people (admittedly, when I first heard Lowery I was too busy laughing to even hear the last phrase).

    Why are some so upset? What it all comes down to is the belief that Lowery “got away” with saying something that he could only “get away” with because he’s black.

    Personally, Lowery’s comments were my favorite part of the whole day (at least of the parts that involved speeches)! It was great to end everything on a lighter note, and the retro 1960’s cadence was charming (I was born in the 1970s).

    But I’m not surprised that so many take umbrage to what I see as a little humor with historical significance.

    To those who were surprised that there’s such passion, I offer this:

    Many people… and I’m thinking white working-class Republican police officers like those I worked with in Baltimore—but it could be anybody, I suppose.

    Many people are just trying to get by and provide for their families. Unlike wealthier folk, these working men and women can’t always afford to live out in “nice” suburban neighborhoods with safe streets and good schools and where Section-8 housing fears to tread.

    Say drug dealers move in down the block (be them redneck or ghetto) and things get worse. But say the drug dealers are black. Hell, they might be. Whenever working folk open their mouths, “liberals” (who of course don’t live on the block) call them racist. But they’re not. Really. They don’t hate drug dealers for the color of their skin; they hate drug dealers for the content of their character.

    Working folk too often don’t know the politically correct way to phrase things. Working class blacks can say all kinds of things about blacks that white folk can’t say. But the poor white guy, he feels he can’t even join the conversation.

    Here’s the rub: for people who so often feel trapped in a linguistic and socioeconomic bind—those who always feel they have to watch what they say so they don’t get called racist—it’s just not fair that Lowery gets applauded for these racially charged words.

    Take it when Sarah Palin was referred to as “pig in lipstick.” No supporter of Palin was seriously offended. Hell, McCain used the same line. But that wasn’t the point. The point was a rare moment of victory for them in the linguistic gotcha game: “Ha, see, you’re not being politically correct!”

    The thinking goes that if a black person can say something (take, for instance, a comment based on an honest observation like, “that nigga’s lazy!”), why can’t a white person say the same thing? Especially if the black and white man are working together and thinking the same thing about the same lazy person?

    What if Rick Warren, the white preacher said this: “We ask you to help us work for that day when white will not be asked to get back, and when black will embrace what is right. Amen.” Ignore the fact that it doesn’t make sense historically or rhyming sense. A white guy could not have said this to the nation. He’s be called racist. So if I white can’t say it, goes the thinking, why should Lowery get away with it?

    People don’t want to be held responsible for what others of similar skin color have done (now or in the past). For a lot of whites, being white isn’t seen as a privilege. Hell, they haven’t benefited from the system. The Man ain’t given them shit! They can barely pay the bills.

    I do understand the idea that people simple want a level playing field. There are people who want real racial equality. No affirmative action. No things that black coworkers can say that whites can’t. No nothing. No excuses.

    Personally, I believe that such an attitude lack a historical perspective and too generously presumes we’re in some post-racial Utopian world (though I do think we’re a bit closer to that world than we were a week ago).

    To those who took offense, Lowery reinforced a racial world view and represents an arrogant and liberal form of reverse discrimination. To generalize by race is a form of racial profiling; to do it against whites is just as discriminatory as to do it against blacks.

    For me, in my humble opinion, Lowery can say anything he damn well pleases. And we’d be all the wiser to listen.

  • Ghetto Court

    The Detroit News reports:

    Mayor Kenneth Cockrel Jr.’s administration was dealt an embarrassing blow Friday, after his top lawyer ignited a racial flap by saying the city’s 36th District Court was “acting like a ghetto court.”

    Kathleen Leavey, who is white, resigned as the city’s corporation counsel Thursday, but said the comment was misinterpreted. That same day, the court’s chief judge, Marilyn Atkins, sent a scathing letter to numerous city officials calling the remark racist.

    Deputy Mayor Saul Green asked Leavey to quit. Cockrel’s spokesman, Daniel Cherrin, on Friday called the comments “unacceptable.”
    …
    “I called it that because of the way they treat people,” Leavey said, referring to long lines for service that are common. “They treat people poorly … whether you are black or white. You just get less service than you get in the suburbs. It’s just a bad situation.”
    …
    “It definitely could be perceived as a racist statement,” Kenyatta said. “I don’t think she would have said that about Dearborn’s court.”

    Leavey said she plans to revert to her civil servant position in the Law Department. She’s been with the city since 1985, including a stint as director of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department from 2000 to 2002.

    “I am not going down without a fight,” Leavey said.

    She said she is “deeply, deeply wounded” by the accusations she is racist.

    So basically this woman is being canned because she’s white. I don’t normally have much sympathy for this line or argument. But let’s get real.

    Calling a messed up court system “ghetto” should not be a firing offense. Especially if the court system is! Yes, I know calling something ghetto is offense to some. And I briefly address this in my book (and then proceed to call the Eastern District “ghetto” with a capital G.).

    Yes, it’s a loaded term. Ghetto can be a racist term; it can also be a descriptive term. If it’s used to label a decent person as “low class” simply because of skin color, it’s racist. But many people call themselves ghetto. Many people actghetto. Many people don’t.

    To me, the question is whether callingthe Detroit system ghetto is justifiable. Now I don’t know the Detroit court system at all. But if it’s anything like Baltimore’s, and given Leavey’s comments it probably is, the court system is underfunded, overworked, and virtually incapable of meeting out true justice for and to the hundreds of thousand of poor black men and women–men and women from the ghetto (many but not all of whom are ghetto)–that walk through it’s revolving doors every year.

    The court system is one big hustle. It’s about getting by with what you got, pulling one over on people out to hurt you, and looking out for number one. The courts beat you down and saps your will to fight for what’s right. You can call that justice if you want, but if that’s not ghetto, I don’t know what is.

  • Shoot Don’t Shoot

    My former firearms instructor sent me this link.

    It’s a fun little game. Shoot the guys with the gun, not the guys with wallets and cell phones. You won’t do it perfectly (and neither do cops).

    You face around 100 people, my guess is half are black, half are white, half are armed, half are unarmed. All in all, it takes less than 5 minutes (including loading time).

    When it’s over it gives you a score and also the response time for armed and unarmed white and black men. Here’s mine:

    Game Over
    Your Score: 660
    Average reaction time:
    Black Armed:621.32ms
    Black Unarmed:728.96ms
    White Armed:688.96ms
    White Unarmed:655.96ms

    I think my overall score is pretty good. But the racial difference in response time is interesting. Of course I don’t think I’m more likely to shoot black men. Besides, like any good cop, I’m not looking at race. I’m looking at their hands.

    But the numbers show that I’m quickest to respond to an armed black man and slowest to respond to an unarmed black man. Mind you the difference is only 7/100th of a second, but still….

    This kind of racial bias in consistent with most academic research that finds differences in response time towards white and black armed and unarmed suspects.

    Feel free to cut and paste your scores in a comment.

    Here’s the websiteof the researchers.

  • Police kill white people, too

    But you usually don’t hear about it. I call this the Al Sharpton effect. There is no white version of Al Sharpton.

    As the trial of the officers involved in the Sean Bell killing begins, I’ve been thinking more about police-involved shootings and race. Given media reports, it certainly seems like police only kill black people. But I know this isn’t true.

    I did a little research. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports from 2000 to 2004, police-involved “justifiable homicides” kill about 350 people a year, 99 percent by shooting. [Update: That UCR data is horribly flawed. Some updated information starting here. And continuing here, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. Also this post.]

    Virtually all police-involved killings, most for good reason, are categorized as justifiable. Of those killed by police, 32 percent are black and 64 percent are white. While the percentage of blacks killed is high compared with the black percentage in America (13%), it is low compared with other indicators of violence, such as the percentage of homicide victims and offenders believed to be African American (both 48%)

    Perhaps it is more useful to compare police-involved shootings with those killed by non-police officers. Among “justifiable homicides” by regular citizens—about 210 a year—African-Americans are 40 percent of those who kill and 56 percent of those killed. Compared with these numbers, police seem restrained in their use of force toward the black community.

    Of course the numbers do not tell us the race of innocentpeople killed. And numbers are no solace to the family of any victim of police bullets.

    Update (December 2014): Here’s a video of a black officer shooting an unarmed white person. (A disabled vet, for what it’s worth.) It happened in March, 2014. I didn’t hear about it till much later. Unarmed white people who get shot by police just do not become national news.

    Though horrible, and in hindsight wrong, I think the shooting was justifiable. Though not exactly a good shooting… but when that guy gets out of the pick-up truck and the long hard object goes up and into my face — and keep in mind I’m watching a youtube video and I *know* it’s not going to be a gun — I still felt my ass pucker.

    Would a reasonable officer have feared for his or life in that situation? Yeah, potentially, probably, I think so.

    It would have been great if the cop had known it was a cane. It also would have been great if the guy hadn’t gotten out of his truck on the highway and reached for his cane.

    A mistake. But I think a reasonable one. I’d let that cop off.

    And just in case you think this is the only unarmed white guy shot by police, here is a second case. Despite what some people think, it’s really not that rare for an unarmed white person to be killed by police.

    [Update: Here’s a 2014 post with racial data on cop killers and those killed by police.

    And in 2015 I discovered better non-UCR data.]