Facts from the Front – July 2016
by Moe White –
Wrongs and Rights
What’s wrong with the black family?
Op-ed columnist George Will wrote in the July 6 Washington Post about “what’s wrong with the black family.” He drew on Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report on “The Negro Family” and the 1966 Coleman report, which blamed the failure of poorly performing schools on the poor students and families they served, to bolster his (Will’s) contention that the problems of the poor are 1) self-inflicted and therefore, 2) cannot be solved, and 3) therefore should not be addressed by the federal government. Will’s other reference was to Charles Murray, another conservative sociologist and Reagan advisor who advocated discontinuing support for the successful programs of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty—and then condemned them for their failure.
In answer to Mr. Will’s question, I would suggest that:
What’s wrong with the black family is white people and white people’s laws and customs: the redlining of neighborhoods; discrimination in hiring and renting; 300 years of slavery followed by a century of Jim Crow laws followed by 50 years of intense opposition to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts; and the past 20 years of right-wing racists doing everything they can to eliminate black voters from the rolls in Florida, Texas, Kansas, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, and everywhere else the Republicans gain power.
What’s wrong with the black family is, bluntly, racism, a racism so deeply embedded and pervasive in some quarters that an overt bigot can become the Republican nominee for president with the open support of David Duke, the KKK, and other white supremacy and antisemitic groups.
What’s wrong with the black family? Lack of justice, liberty, opportunity, equality, and legal protection against white bigotry. Lack of freedom from being shot by police for driving while black, walking while back, breathing while black.
That’s “what’s wrong with the black family.”
Along with disparaging, dismissive columns by wealthy white conservatives like George Will.
What’s wrong with dashcams?
Over the past few years police dashcams and bodycams have proven an invaluable tool in confirming or challenging incidents of misconduct by law enforcement. Recordings made by police cams frequently support law enforcement’s claims about what happened in a particular incident; but far too often, they have shown official denials of such misconduct to be lies.
Used properly, videocameras protect all three factors essential to law enforcement in a free society: the constitutional protection of citizens against unreasonable or unlawful police behavior; the rights of law enforcement officers to be judged by their official actions on behalf of the public; the integrity of a law enforcement system that must function within the law and with the support of the public so as to protect society rather than to control it.
As with any tool, dashcam recordings can be misused, and as with any evidence, they can be suppressed by those who don’t want it exposed. Governor Pat McCrory and the NC Legislature have ensured that videocam evidence will be both misused and suppressed under HB 972 (Body-Worn & Dashboard Cameras/No Public Record), a bill mandating that body-worn camera and dashboard camera recordings are not public records.
The law enforcement agency that makes a dashcam or body-cam recording has complete discretion to honor or deny a request to review its video. If it denies it, only a court order can require that it be shown to the person recorded or his or her lawyer or representative. If the court denies the request, there is no appeal.
Susanna Birdsong, Policy Counsel for the ACLU of North Carolina, said, “Body cameras should be a tool to make law enforcement more transparent and accountable to the communities they serve, but this shameful law will make it nearly impossible to achieve those goals. People who are filmed by police body cameras should not have to spend time and money to go to court in order to see that footage. These barriers are significant and we expect them to drastically reduce any potential this technology had to make law enforcement more accountable to community members.”
What’s wrong with police videocameras? Nothing, as long as their recordings are public records. Under this legislature, that possibility has been denied.
What’s wrong with teenagers
Many others in the media have pondered why the Republican Party has been unable to capitalize on FBI Director James Comey’s lambasting of Hillary Clinton. To the GOP’s chagrin, Comey recommended no indictments, completely clearing her of illegal behavior. But before doing so, he pilloried her with disparaging comments and his highly personal judgment of her actions while Secretary of State.
This is not Comey’s first brush with unprofessional behavior: he has continually claimed, with no evidence or substantiation, that police are “hesitant” to do their jobs, and therefore the streets are “less safe,” because Black Lives Matter and other groups have called out officers who have killed so many innocent black men.
In this instance, Comey’s press conference gave the GOP half a dozen powerful soundbites to use in campaigning against her. But instead of capitalizing on that gift, GOP House members ordered Comey to testify in an “emergency hearing” on why he hadn’t indicted her, as they’d expected. There, questioned by Democrats, he contradicted every negative statement he’d made two days before about Clinton’s behavior: he even admitted that what he’d called classified material was not properly marked classified at all.
That reversal has prompted the question, “Why does the GOP continually make itself look foolish?”
I suggest it’s because they, collectively, are a case of arrested development. That is, I would rephrase the question this way: What’s wrong with teenagers? Nothing, unless they get elected to Congress. To wit:
Most of the men who become GOP candidates for Congress and state legislatures demonstrate the emotional intelligence and psychosexual maturity of eighth-graders, i.e., 14-year-old boys. They were scared of girls in middle school, they resented female teachers who were more knowledgeable and wielded authority over them, and they had deep insecurity about their own manliness (who doesn’t at 14?). Their response and self-defense—as I remember from my own junior high school days—is to band together and disparage girls who are “too fat” or “ugly” or brainy or “not sexy enough,” or who ignore them, or giggle at them. Or worse, turn them down.
Locker-room talk and attitudes don’t stay in the locker room, as we know from college rape statistics and the frequent examples of how men (Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, etc.) take advantage of their power to mistreat women.
Today’s GOP congressmen are simply the most public manifestation of that syndrome. Like teenage boys everywhere, they are an embarrassment to everyone but themselves. They sneak into closed caucus rooms for mutual reinforcement, then go out and put their insecurities on display in front of the cameras, with no more awareness of how foolish they look than the typical teen bro.
So imagine their fear, hatred, fury, and frustration when faced with Hillary Clinton—a smart older woman reminiscent of the teachers they loathed and resented, with authority and power and knowledge and much bigger cojones than they have. Is it any wonder they behave as they do?
Facts From The Front is a monthly column by copy editor Moe White in which America’s Constitutional democracy is defended against ongoing assaults by those who prefer less palatable alternatives: oligarchy, autocracy, theocracy, feudalism, fascism, and other nondemocratic methods of government. Among the qualifications for White’s commentary and ridicule are hypocrisy, dishonesty, corruption, unbridled greed, flat-out lies, and sheer idiocy on the part of public figures.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in “Facts from the Front” are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Urban News.
