Ta-Nehisi Coates

The problem of police brutality

Ladies and gentlemen, I direct your attention to the Maryland's Prince George's County police department, which is, to my mind, the most brutal police department in America. You can read all about them here. But to give you some facts on these jokers--since 2000, they have paid out some $20 million in lawsuits for brutality. Now it's been discovered that one of the officers at a jail in PG county likely murdered a suspect in the killing of an officer.

I want to first say I've always thought it was arrogant and twisted that cops somehow are more outraged by the murder of a fellow officer, than the murder of some kid in the street. A cop is paid to risk his life. It's in the job description. But I digress. PG County has always been interesting to me for deeply personal reasons. First, it is home to the greatest concentration of black wealth in the country, and probably in the world. PG County is the only municipality in America to grow richer as it grew blacker. More pointedly, it's the only place I've ever seen that actually benefited, economically, from white flight. But despite this great largess, these guys have the sort of cops that swing night-sticks first and ask questions much, much later.

This is not mere theory to me. The picture you see above is of my old friend Prince Jones, fellow Howard University student, father to a baby girl, and great, great guy. People always say that, but I mean it. Me and Prince were in love with the same woman for a period of time, but he always carried it with class. Of course, you can see by the photo he was a handsome fellow, so it could be, that he just always had options. He's pictured in this post because eight years ago a PG county cop took Prince for a drug dealer, followed him from through Washington, into Virginia and then promptly shot him right outside the home of his girlfriend and baby daughter.

I am going to try to be fair about this. The cop was in an unmarked car, and wasn't wearing a uniform. According to his own testimony, he basically cornered Prince's car pulled out a gun--but no badge--and IDed himself as an officer. Prince. whose vehicle was hemmed in, rammed the cops car. The cop shot him Prince and he died. The officer was presumably in pursuit of a "suspect." But the suspect looked nothing like Prince, except that they were both black. All I could think when that happened was about what I would have done. The way we come up, if a black dude with dreads (which is how officer Carlton Jones looked) is following you and then he corners you, pulls a gun, but doesn't have a badge, you don't assume he's cop. You assume he's trying to rob you.

If people want to know why tempatures flair over, say, a Sean Bell, it's because the only denominator in all of these cases is color. The fact that Prince was doing the right thing with his life--raising a baby girl, finishing up a degree--meant nothing. He ended up in the same way as a suspected cop-killer. It was later found that the officer who killed Prince had lied in several drug cases, all of which had to be tossed out. Think Carlton Jones was tossed off the force for, essentially, malpractice? No. Dude was cleared of all charges, and as of 2006, is back on the PG County force, "protecting" your children.

No more complaints about how black kids act in public please

You really don't want to go there, dun. It's now cliche for white folks looking to justify their own paranoia and fears to invoke rowdy black kids on the train, with no parents, acting a fool. Word up, I hate it to. But my ability to see this threw a racial lens is undercut by one observable fact--white kids act a fool in full view of their parents. In the last three months, I've seen a white child hit his mother, tell her mother to shut up, and run up and down a subway car, ignoring his parents pleas to stop. Yesterday, on my plane to Denver, I watched a white kid get up and walk the aisle--while the plane was ascending. He kept going even after the stewardess warned him.

I've been watching scenes like this for much of my adult life, and there are some pretty good stats which show that white parents are much more permissive than black parents. This doesn't just mean that black parents are more likely to spank (though they are) but punishment in general:

...black parents punish their children more than white parents in all ways. If you're black and you misbehave, you're both more likely to get spanked and more likely to lose your allowance than your white neighbor, who in turn is both more likely to get spanked and more likely to lose his allowance than the Hispanic kid down the street. So on average, poor people spank more and withdraw allowances less, whereas black people spank more and withdraw allowances more.

Anyway, it's always amazes me how white folks--and black folks--will talk about how black kids act in public, but miss the obvious parallel among white folks. I know the white kid with his mother is just rude, while the black kid is "scary," but to me, they're just annoying--both of them. And that brings me back to a sort of equality I can embrace--Black and white folks, please yoke up your kids, so I don't have to.

From the desk of the ugly American...

I mean really, this is just stupid:

School officials in Terrebonne Parish are considering a policy that would require all commencement speeches to be in English.

The proposal comes after Hue and Cindy Vo, cousins who were co-valedictorians at Ellender High School, delivered part of their commencement addresses last month in Vietnamese.

Cindy Vo, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, spoke about high-school memories, friends and the future. Then Ms. Vo, 18, recited a sentence in Vietnamese dedicated to her parents, as they watched. She told classmates that the line, roughly translated, was a command to always be your own person.

A sentence? Just a sentence?? Turns out Vo's parents barely speak English, and people are pissed that she had the temerity to adress them in words they might understand.

Keep up the pressure folks

Seriously, just because we support Obama and think he's the best guy for the job doesn't mean we don't stay on him.

A reason to not vote for Obama

I am going to guess that this notion that Obama will support religious charities ability to hire and fire, based on faith, is false. It better be. I know New York isn't up for grabs, but I can't, in good conscience, support a candidate who would take that sort of step. Your basically talking about state-sponsored discrimination, no? This qualification doesn't help one bit:

He also only supports letting religious institutions hire and fire based on faith in the non-taxypayer funded portions of their activities, said a senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe the new policy.

I'm already uneasy about expanding faith-based charities, precisely because of crap like this.

UPDATE: The Obama camp claims AP has the story wrong, and even after ammending, they say it's still wrong.

Some thoughts on poverty, black folks and libertarianism

As I've said, there are certain things that I will never bend on--gay marriage, abortion, the war on drugs etc. I also hate demagogues and bullies, hence my general lukewarm feelings for race-based Affirmative Action, but utter disgust at people who want to use it to score points, while ignoring the broader context of preferences. I utterly despise people who make their living writing reports which disparage the pathology of the black poor, and yet spend no time talking with/living around/having a meal with actual black poor people.

But other things, I'm less rigid on. I arrived in lovely Aspen last night for this Ideas festival. Later today, I will moderate a panel on race and politics, featuring Shelby Steele, Charles Kamasaki, and Richard Thompson Ford. I'll report back on that later. But as for the trip, for most of it, when I wasn't admiring the shocking beauty of the Rockies or reeling over the majesty of "Heaven or Hell" ("So now we see him up in BoJangles/Stranglin a forty ounce, with ten G's worth of gold bangles/Diamonds, what, all up in his face/ With his man's mace, medallions the size of dinner plates" effing incredible), I kept mulling over this rather shocking blog post:

I know, far out in right-field. To put it as plainly as I can: I don't believe in a governmental attempt to engineer a substantively "fair" society through taxation.  I see taxation as a necessary evil to pay for those few social goods that private individuals cannot provide for themselves. And the mode of taxation, in my view, should be as simple and as market-friendly as possible and should treat citizens equally, irrespective of their incomes. I believe in formal equality and a very limited state, not substantive equality and the welfare state.

And:

I'm happy with the government then setting up programs to assist the poor, to provide better education for those at the bottom, safety-net healthcare and better policing. i.e. to gear spending toward social ends that might help the poor the most. These are measurable, practical goods. What I'm not happy with is the assumption that tax policy should really be about redistributing wealth, and engineering substantive economic outcomes. Yes, of course, at lower income levels, a 20 percent flat income tax will be more onerous proportionally than at higher incomes. So what? Why should that even concern a government that is not aiming to socially engineer more substantive equality? and the alternative - skewing taxes to target success - is an absurd set of incentives to put into a growing society.

Am I heartless? I hope not. I just don't believe that having a heart is what government should be about. It's what the rest of us should be about.

I'm not shocked that Andrew wrote this--I'm fairly familiar with his vaguely libertarian politics. I was more shocked by the baldness with which he expressed it. Anyway, my liberalism never originated in a belief that there were a cabal of white oligarchs conspiring to keep the black poor down. More likely, people just protect their interest. Because of how I came up, because I've lived around black poor and working folks all my life, my immediate sympathies are there, and always will be. But my sympathies are moral, or rather emotional, they aren't necessarily logical.

A good man

Jonathan Weisman apologizes for saying Barack was "much more white than black." It's a credit to Weisman that he doesn't hedge in his apology--he explains, then says the explanation isn't a defense, and then he apologize. Frankly, his apology made me think that I should have picked up a phone or sent him a note before ripping him.

Funny of the day...

Heh, a self proclaimed "black Republican" group is trying to woo black voters away from Obama. Because black Republicans are so popular in the black community.

More travel

I mean, not that I'm complaining. I'm just explaining why blogging will--again--be a bit light. Headed up to the Aspen Ideas Festival for a week to rub elbows with people much smarter than me. Gonna try to keep up, and do some blogging in between. Should be a lot of interesting stuff to talk about.

Why Ta-Nehisi and Kenyatta aren't married

I promise you a long post on this soon guys. But for now, understand that an admitted John and a closeted gay dude are trying to ammend the constitution so that other gay dudes (and dudettes) can't get married. Hmm, feels like a Chris Rock moment.