Every so often, even well-meaning people will pooh-pooh the notion of “white privilege.” Most of us who enjoy that privilege fail to recognize how it works, both for us and for those who don’t benefit from the unspoken assumptions evoked by white skin.
What made me think about the subject was an email I received the other day from a (white) friend. She wrote
I’m currently reading “Ted Koppel Off Camera” a book of his daily journal of news and personal observations from 1999. In it, he says he read a statistic that was so incredible he didn’t believe it – that 8 of 10 blacks had spent time behind bars. That includes people held for short times in jail and released for lack of evidence or wrongful arrest, but nevertheless, he was incredulous. So he asked 5 blacks with whom he worked if they had ever been arrested and spent time behind bars, and every one of them had -one repeatedly for driving a new car which police didn’t think a black man should be driving.
Her email reminded me of my own dumbfounded reaction several years ago, when I was part of a small group that later became the much-larger Race Relations Network of the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee. There were approximately 20 of us in that early group, about half and half white and black. Most were professionals, or highly-educated executives with local companies or organizations.
For some reason, the discussion turned to speed limits, and someone asked “How many of you have been stopped for speeding?” All of us raised our hands. The next question was more pointed. “When you were stopped, how many of you were asked ‘Can I search your vehicle'”? Every black hand went up; no white ones did.
A 2012 research paper by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute in Mexico called ‘If Our Neighbours Legalise’, said that the legalisation of marijuana in Colorado, Washington and California would depress cartel profits by as much as 30 per cent. A 2010 Rand Corp study of what would happen if just California legalised suggests a more modest fall-out. Using consumption in the US as the most useful measure, its authors posit that marijuana accounts for perhaps 25 per cent of the cartels’ revenues. The cartels would survive losing that, but still. “That’s enough to hurt, enough to cause massive unemployment in the illicit drugs sector,” says [fellow at the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center David] Shirk. Less money for cartels means weaker cartels and less capacity to corrupt the judiciary and the police in Mexico with crumpled bills in brown envelopes. Crimes like extortion and kidnappings are also more easily tackled. …
Mr Shirk puts it this way. If you ask enforcement folk how large a dent their interdiction efforts – seizures, arrests, helicopter raids and so on – actually have on cartel earnings, they will say between 5 and 10 per cent. But just a few states embracing legal cannabis may end up robbing them of two to five times that amount.
In other words, when you reduce demand for an illegal product–in this case, by offering a legal alternative–you reduce illegal behavior associated with the marketing of that product.
Since cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, regulating its sale and taxing it–rather than criminalizing its use– would appear to be a win-win.
Several years ago, my eldest granddaughter–then 13– interrupted a lively dinner discussion by our extended family, saying “Stop it! Just stop it! All this family talks about is politics and I’m sick of it!” I apologized and said we’d talk about anything she wanted. What did she want to discuss? “School uniforms. I don’t think we should have to wear uniforms.”
Not long after 9-11, when our daughter was still on IPS’ School Board, she and my lawyer son disagreed about encouraging schoolchildren to recite the Pledge. He cited Barnette v. Board of School Commissioners of West Virginia; her Christmas gift to him that year was The Story of Our Flag.
And so it goes–at least in our family.
Most recently, my two younger sons have been arguing about Edward Snowden. On Facebook, my (very liberal and idealistic) middle son approvingly posted the New York Times editorial arguing that Snowden should get clemency; his brother (the lawyer) shot back with Fred Kaplan’s article for Salon, Why Snowden Won’t (and Shouldn’t) Get Clemency. That led to a spirited exchange, to put it mildly.
Each one called and tried to get me to weigh in on his side.
In other families, I am told, children call their mothers (when they do) to ask for money, or to report on life events, or even to ask advice. Mine call to talk politics and argue policy.
For what it’s worth, I agree with my lawyer son on this one. As Kaplan–like me, a foe of NSA domestic spying– notes in his article, had Snowden only disclosed information about domestic surveillance, leniency might be appropriate. But he did much more than that. He disclosed information having nothing to do with domestic spying, or even spying on our allies. He disclosed information about intelligence gathering practices that are not “illegal, immoral or improper”–information useful to the Taliban and Iran, among others.
Kaplan quotes Snowden telling the South China Morning Post that he took his job with the express intention of gaining access to NSA information–rebutting the assumption that what he learned on the job so distressed him that he decided to broadcast what he’d found. He only stayed on the job for three months– just long enough to get what he’d come for. (He also lied to some 25 co-workers, telling them he needed their logons and passwords as part of his system administrator duties. Predictably, those co-workers were subsequently fired.)
There were also his glowing remarks about the “commitment to human rights” shown by Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, his praise of Hong Kong’s devotion to freedom of speech, and his expressed intent to share the pilfered documents with “every country where the NSA had operated.”
Someone who really wanted to shine a light on government misconduct–to engage in the time-honored tactic of civil disobedience–would not have taken refuge in countries whose interests are inimical to ours. He would have stayed in the U.S., made his case, and accepted the consequences of his actions.
Had Snowden limited his disclosures to the NSA’s clearly unlawful domestic activities, had he remained in the U.S. to argue that his actions were in service of the Constitution and Rule of Law, he would be a whistleblower entitled to our consideration.
Bradley Manning was a whistleblower. Snowden is not, and the fact that his disclosures will end up doing some collateral good really doesn’t change that.
My lawyer son’s analogy is apt: if someone goes on a shooting spree and kills two innocent people and one murderous son-of-a-bitch, the fact that he rid the town of the SOB doesn’t excuse the murder of the other two.
I hate taking sides when my kids have an argument, but sometimes, it’s unavoidable. At least they aren’t arguing about who Mom loves best…
Since I frequently use examples from Texas in my classes–the state is a reliable source of “what not to do”–Juanita Jean has been a godsend, covering as she does a range of idiocy beyond that which hits the national news.
Here are a couple of recent examples.
Rep. Steve Stockman is the Tea Party candidate running against Sen. John Cornyn in the 2014 Texas Republican Senate primary. (Cornyn, one of the most conservative members of the Senate–and that’s saying something!–is evidently not sufficiently crazy.) Anyway, Stockman has announced that he is now accepting donations in Bitcoins, a virtual currency.
As Juanita Jean explains,
“Of course, Stockman says it’s about … wait for it … freedom.
“I really think digital currency’s more about freedom,” he explained in a YouTube video. “Because all the time people are trying to get in your pocket, trying to do different things to control you. And if you have your own wealth, and control your own wealth, it’s about freedom, it’s not about anything other than that really. Freedom to choose what you do with your money, and freedom to keep your money without people influencing it by printing money or through regulation.”
Yeah, it’s not about ripping people off with a volatile currency. It’s not even about untraceable campaign donations. And it certainly isn’t about being able to track what Stockman spends that money on. It’s about freedom.”
Juanita Jean is at her best, however, when she explains what passes for social policy in the Great State of Texas. For example, she describes a recent deal between Rick Perry and a payday loan company that will require poor people to visit payday loan offices to set up accounts in order to use a new toll road.
I’m not making that up.
People who want to set up an account to pay their toll charges can do so by phone, mail or online, but the only places to do so in person in El Paso are at ACE stores. ACE is a payday lender. Individuals who make the transaction at the payday lender will be charged a $3 fee to set up the account and a $2 convenience service fee to replenish a non-credit card.
Let Juanita Jean take it from there….
What the partnership is essentially doing is sending thousands of potential first-time customers directly into the stores of a payday lender.” said Diane Standaert, senior legislative counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending.
But it does not stop there.
Additionally, the man Perry appointed to be Texas’ consumer watchdog, William White, is also vice president of payday lender Cash America. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently fined the company $19 million.
Do you wanna know what interest Cash America charges for a 14 day loan? 533%. No, that’s not a typo. It’s three numbers starting with a 5. Some poor guy working two jobs living paycheck to paycheck has a sick kid. Where’s he going to get medicine before his next paycheck? Welcome to Cash America! He even charged higher rates to United States service men and women.
William White is going to hell. But, meanwhile, he’s Texas’s consumer watchdog.
The Indiana General Assembly has re-introduced the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage previously known as HJR6–it is now HJR3–and in an effort to blunt mounting criticisms of the measure’s “what the hell does that mean?” second sentence, they’ve introduced a “clarifying” companion statute.
As a number of lawyers have pointed out, the “clarification” is a legal non-starter: legislative bodies don’t get to tell judges how to interpret constitutional language, and efforts to do so raise substantial separation of powers issues. The lawyers serving in the Indiana General Assembly undoubtedly know how meaningless this legislation is, but then, its purpose was political, not legal. HJR3’s second sentence is a disaster, and this is just a lame effort to obscure that fact.
Attempts at distraction aside, here’s what mystifies this recovering lawyer:
Over and over, its proponents insist that a state constitutional amendment is needed because Indiana’s current statute defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman isn’t strong enough. We’re told a constitutional amendment is needed to protect Indiana’s existing ban from “activist” judges.
This is utter horse poop. (I am trying to watch my language.)
In Indiana, “activist” state court judges have already upheld Indiana’s legislation banning same-sex marriages. So there is no threat from the state bench. And a state constitutional provision would be utterly useless should the U.S. Supreme Court affirm a right to marry. In such a case, a state constitutional measure would be just as unenforceable as the existing statute.
Let me spell this out slowly, for those crack legal minds (or was that legal minds on crack?) in the General Assembly: passage of HJR3 will not “protect” Indiana’s current ban on same-sex nuptials.
That isn’t to say that passage of HJR3 would be meaningless. It would do several things: send a signal that Indiana is a backward, intolerant state; invite lots of litigation inviting those “activist judges” to figure out what the hell the second sentence does or doesn’t mean; encourage members of Indiana’s creative class to consider relocation; and make it far more difficult for Hoosier businesses to recruit “the best and brightest.”
