Black and Blue

I know I am not the only American who is struggling to come to terms with the events of the past week: the videos of police killing black men whose “crimes” consisted of selling CDs and driving with a broken taillight, the equally horrendous murder of Dallas police by a U.S. Army reservist bent on “killing white people,” and the use of a sophisticated robot to kill, rather than incapacitate or capture, that gunman.

Most reasonable people understand that every group–racial, occupational, whatever–has its bad apples, deranged or bigoted or otherwise damaged individuals. In the case of police, the rogue behaviors displayed by a small percentage of officers makes police work more difficult and more dangerous: for one thing, when people fear and distrust law enforcement, they are unlikely to co-operate and provide helpful information; for another, as we have seen in Dallas (and last year in New York),  shocking evidence of such behaviors can provoke attacks on all police by unstable individuals.

When one of those attacks, or another high-profile crime, is committed by a black person, it reinforces stereotypes of black criminality, making the lives of the vast majority of black citizens more difficult. (Of course, when whites like Dylan Roof massacre churchgoers, his actions do not feed into widespread beliefs that all whites are murderous. The fact that whites are not seen as monolithic and interchangable, while marginalized minorities are treated as if members of those groups (African-Americans, Muslims, etc.) are fungible, is one aspect of what has come to be known as white privilege. The difference is incredibly unfair, but it exists.)

The question before us is: what do we do?

There are practical steps we can take to reduce the likelihood of gratuitous police violence; many police departments are already implementing better training protocols and better psychological screening of applicants, and others–especially in smaller, less professionalized police forces– need to do so. We also need to eliminate systems like the one in Ferguson,where citations for low-level infractions actually funded the police department, incentivizing unnecessary confrontations between citizens and police. (For that matter, we need to stop criminalizing everything from not using your seatbelt to driving with a broken taillight, and let police focus on crimes against person and property.)

As many people have pointed out, when everyone is armed to the teeth, we shouldn’t be surprised by gun  violence. If not for the NRA’s stranglehold on our feckless lawmakers, we might be able to institute some reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.

Those and other measures should certainly be undertaken, but they ignore the elephant in the room.

Racism is certainly nothing new in America, but over the past few years we have seen an upsurge in nativism and bigotry of all sorts. It began with the ubiquity of talk radio–with Rush Limbaugh and his clones, who made money by appealing to the discontents of older white men, assuring them that women and African-Americans and various “others” were taking  jobs and status that was rightfully theirs. Fox News followed the script and amplified the resentments.

It got worse when we elected an African-American President; evidently, the thought of a black man occupying the White House was enough to make previously closeted white supremacists crawl out from under their rocks.

That led to Donald Trump, and his attack on “political correctness”–an attack seen by  legions of angry white guys as permission to discard hard-won norms of civility and respect. In Trump World, it is disdained as “politically correct” to refrain from ridiculing the disabled; “politically correct” not to display crass racism; “politically correct” to refrain from sexualizing or demeaning women.

Ultimately, what keeps police from disregarding the worth of black lives is a culture that genuinely values those lives. What keeps most citizens from breaking the law are social norms that value the rule and role of law. What keeps our diverse and polyglot nation from disintegrating is the conviction that we share an identity as Americans, that there is a “we” that supersedes our various tribal commitments.

Americans will probably never live up to our highest aspirations and principles, but when we discard them, when we celebrate crudity and name-calling and bigotry as “telling it like it is,” we betray those principles and degrade our communal life. Worse, we give damaged people from all groups encouragement to act on their anti-social impulses.

Last week wasn’t a face-off between black and blue. It was a test for us all.

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The Right to be Wrong

[This post should really be about Dallas and the two horrific incidents preceding and triggering what happened there. It isn’t, because I am still processing it all. I find myself unable to put my reactions into words right now. Those words will come, but not yet.]

The Des Moines Register recently reported on lawsuits brought against the state and city by churches challenging recent interpretations of Iowa civil rights laws to prohibit church members from making “any public comments — including from the pulpit — that could be viewed as unwelcome to people who do not identify with their biological sex.”

They [the churches] said they are asking the commission to declare that Iowans have a right to speak from church pulpits about biblical teachings on sexuality. The Sioux City church also wants a declaration that Iowa churches are free to follow their religious doctrines in how they accommodate people in restrooms, locker rooms and living facilities.

Unless there is something I’m missing, the actions of the Iowa Civil Rights Commission violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. (According to the article, the Commission is evidently denying that the churches are “bona fide” religious organizations–a fairly bizarre position.)

We live in a time of social change. Greater acceptance of LGBT citizens, especially, has led to all sorts of debates about “religious liberty.” (We’ve seen this movie before; in the past, merchants and landlords have claimed “religious liberty” entitled them to refuse service to African-Americans, Catholics and Jews.)

As I have written before, government has the right–indeed, the obligation–to prohibit discrimination in housing, education, employment and public accommodations.

That said, churches and other genuinely religious institutions are not public accommodations, and their right to preach as they see fit, to take positions on public issues informed by their doctrine, is protected by the First Amendment. I might believe–as I wholeheartedly do–that these church folks are wrong about homosexuality (and actually, about a lot of other things) but they have an absolute Constitutional right to their beliefs. They have a right to preach about those beliefs, and to conduct their congregational affairs in a manner that is consistent with their religious doctrines.

It’s particularly unfortunate that the Iowa Civil Rights Commission has taken the position that it can suppress the churches’ religious message, because that position feeds into entirely bogus assertions made by proponents of so-called “Religious Liberty” laws. The Eric Millers and Micah Clarks of this world insist that “secular activists” will force pastors to conduct same-sex weddings, or will outlaw preaching against homosexuality. Constitutional lawyers respond–properly–that churches and pastors are protected against such efforts by the First Amendment.

Overreaching in Iowa just supplies ammunition to those who want laws giving them a wide-ranging right to discriminate. The churches that brought these lawsuits should win–demonstrating that RFRAs and similar measures are unnecessary because the Constitution already protects religious expression.

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Thankfully, a Lot of People Don’t Find Redistricting Boring….

The second meeting of Indiana’s Interim Study Committee on Redistricting, of which I am a lay member, was held yesterday. Despite the fact that it was a Thursday afternoon, and the meeting started at 1:00, there were well over 100 citizens present; they filled the House Chamber and from where I was sitting, it looked like they filled the balcony too.

The purpose of this meeting was to hear expert testimony. (Discussion leading to the committee’s recommendations will come at the next two meetings. I’ll blog the dates and times when I know them.)

There were two presentations; one from a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, affiliated with New York University Law School, and the second from the Senior Legal Counsel to the Iowa LSA–the person responsible for directing Iowa’s redistricting process.

The Iowa presentation was a description of that state’s use of an independent commission to draw district lines–from all reports, a very successful effort to draw districts in a fair, transparent and nonpartisan way, and one that has earned the strong approval of most Iowa voters.

The first presentation, by Michael Li of the Brennan Center, focused upon the negative consequences of gerrymandering, and the current efforts of several states to reform their processes. He included a couple of interesting points that tend to get lost in discussions about gerrymandering’s more obvious effects.

Li pointed out that the redistricting “nitty-gritty”–the drawing of the lines–isn’t handled by local politicians; instead, the national parties send in teams of “experts” whose expertise is in manipulating data and computer programs, and who know little about the politics or culture of whatever state they are carving up. This dependence on national party operatives facilitates the contemporary shift of power and influence from state policymakers to national ones– further nationalizing America’s political parties.

Li also noted that although redistricting reform might not effect much change to the partisan composition of a state’s legislature, especially in very Red or Blue states, it does tend to change the nature of the partisans who hold those seats. (Social science research supports that observation; in states using independent commissions, Representatives of both parties tend to be less rigidly ideological and more willing to work across the aisle.)

This last observation is particularly important, because one of the arguments used by defenders of the current system (like Senator Hershman today) is to claim there are states where redistricting reform has changed a very minimal number of seats, and that shows the current system isn’t really a problem.

As Li quite properly responded, partisan shift is not the metric we should apply. In Republican states like Indiana, redistricting reform is unlikely to change control of the Senate, for example. If fewer elections are decided in the primaries, if fewer general elections are uncontested, if new people emerge to challenge incumbents, and –when those incumbents die or retire–if there is genuine competition for the open seat, then reform has worked.

When Senator Pat Miller challenged the notion of “nonpartisan” commission members–making the point that everyone has political opinions–Li agreed that most people have what we might call “political orientation,” although he noted that there is a difference between redistricting done by people who are deeply involved in the political process and that done by people who are not politically active. He compared the process to the composition and operation of juries; people serving on juries have prejudices and opinions, but most who serve take their responsibilities very seriously, evaluating the evidence and following the judges’ instructions.  ( I found the comparison compelling because when I was a practicing lawyer, I saw juries in operation, and saw the same seriousness of purpose.)

The one thing that seemed clear in the wake of the meeting was that Senators Hershman and Miller are not going to be voting for reform of any kind. But I have high hopes for the rest of us.

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Crime and Punishment

When I was practicing law, I often heard people complain about judges and prosecutors when those officials reached conclusions with which they disagreed. In most instances, the complaints were based on a lack of understanding of the facts of the case, the legal rules involved, or both. That was particularly true of criminal accusations.

Let’s say you are texting and driving. You know better; Public Service Announcements tell you how dangerous it is. Your mother tells you how dangerous it is. But your state has no law against it, and you think you’re in control. While you are texting, you crash into another car, injuring a passenger and totaling the vehicle.

Or let’s say you made the potato salad for the family’s picnic. It’s a really hot day and the sun is beating down. You know that foods with mayonnaise shouldn’t be left in the heat, but you are tending to other things. When everyone finally sits down to eat, several people get violently ill and it’s traced to the spoiled mayo.

Or let’s take a far more serious situation: you are one of those “good guys” with a gun. You bought it legally and have a permit to carry it. You have it in a holster, and for some reason, when you sit down, it discharges, killing a bystander.

In each of these scenarios, you have been responsible for harm. In none of them have you committed a crime, because criminal acts require something the law calls mens rea–criminal intent. In order for the state to charge you with a crime, it must have evidence that you intentionally committed a criminal act. Negligence and stupidity are not crimes.

That is not to say that your actions cannot be punished. In each of my examples, the persons harmed can bring civil actions against the negligent person who caused the harm, and can recover damages. In addition, your actions can be reported by the media, censured by your neighbors and provide reason for your boss and others to lose confidence in your judgment.

The FBI investigated Hillary Clinton’s use of her own email server, and found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing sufficient to charge her with a crime. The investigation found (and severely criticized) carelessness–both in Clinton’s handling of her emails and in what the agency characterized as the “culture” of the State Department. The conclusion was not that she hadn’t done anything wrong; the conclusion was that the wrong was not criminal in nature. (Click here for a more extensive explanation of the legal standards and relevant statutes.)

Individual voters can–and will–decide for themselves whether they think this particular breach of judgment makes Clinton unfit to be President. If she weren’t running against a certifiable psychopath, it might well cost her the election; but even if it doesn’t, even if she wins handily, it will cost her significant political capital (indeed, it already has) and will give additional ammunition to those who despise her.

Although it does not excuse her breach, the investigation’s discovery that many other State Department officials (including but not limited to Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice) have used and continue to use personal servers because of the ponderous nature of the “official” system should lead to a formal review of the agency’s technology systems, and to an effort to improve the State Department’s evidently unwieldy system.

Rather than Congressional action that might reduce incentives to bypass the rules, however, we have Paul Ryan’s announcement that the GOP will now “investigate” the FBI for reaching a conclusion partisans dislike.

The FBI investigation was conducted by a Republican appointed by George W. Bush, a man with a reputation for independence and unimpeachable ethics. Ryan’s willingness to besmirch that reputation and impugn the credibility of the FBI in order to make political points is something we might expect from Donald Trump, but is exceedingly disappointing (albeit not surprising) coming from the Speaker of the House.

At some point, it would be nice if our political actors focused upon making government work better, and left toxic gamesmanship behind. But I’m not holding my breath.

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While We’re Talking About Patriotism…

Among Monday’s Fourth of July reliable pieties were many exhortations to “support the troops.” We heard little or nothing about what really supporting our troops would look like.

A commenter on my Fourth of July post advocated reinstitution of the military draft; the comment reminded me of a book review I read awhile back, so I dug it out. In the New York Times, Matthew Crawford reviewed Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger. Junger had previously directed two well-received documentaries about an American platoon stationed in a small village in Afghanistan. In those films, Crawford tells us, we see

…the recalcitrant realities of killing. We see the joys and depravities of a cell of men released from the neutering moral regulation of American society. That society has a mission for them to do, but it cannot avow the means by which it is to be accomplished and must avert its gaze from the appalling maleness of it all.

In Tribe, Junger asks: how do you return home from such an experience, an experience where the qualities demanded of soldiers, the qualities cultivated by war, are “fundamentally at odds with our public principles”? How do you reintegrate these young people into a society largely indifferent to and unaware of the nation’s foreign entanglements, let alone the realities of combat?

In his review of the book, Crawford points out that the problems of re-entry and reintegration into society in countries (like Israel) where the burdens of national defense are widely shared–and much less remote from the collective consciousness of the general public–are much different from the problems faced by returning American soldiers.

There are strengths and weaknesses to a volunteer army. I would suggest that the weaknesses are significant–and corrosive–and that they outweigh the strengths.

Our “volunteers” are mostly recruited from marginalized populations and those who have few other educational or employment options. To be blunt (and not “politically correct”), that reality–and America’s extensive use of “contractors” (aka mercenaries)– makes it easier for lawmakers to authorize military actions. They need not come back to their districts and face constituents whose sons and daughters have been conscripted and sent into danger.

I have previously written about the negative consequences of “outsourcing” patriotism. In the concluding paragraph of his book review, Crawford underlines several of my concerns.

The self-deceptions of contemporary society that Junger elaborates run too deep to be relieved by exhortations to “support the troops.” The conclusion one reaches upon finishing Tribe is that we should bring back the draft and have universal, obligatory military service. It is hard to think of a public policy reform that would do more to heal the growing chasm of social class, affirm our shared destiny as citizens and at the same time discipline our foreign policy. A nation of 320 million will never be a tribe, but if after such a reform we still have enthusiasm for putting “boots on the ground,” those boots will belong to “us” rather than “them.”

I couldn’t agree more.

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