[blind-democracy] Re: today the ADA is 25: so, how's the education thing going?

  • From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2015 17:54:02 -0700

Kermit the Frog had it right when he sang, "It isn't easy being Green..."
We could substitute many words for Green. Blind, Black, Gay, Woman,
Old, and on and on and on.
But maybe it's not what we are, as opposed to how our culture defines us.
And most of us labeled as "different" are then seen as inferior.
Think about it. The group that sets the standard for "normal", is the
White, able bodied Male group.
Those of us who do not fit that category are then seen as substandard.
Of course things get messy. what with our Class Structure. But within
each Class, the White, Able bodied Male feels at home among his peers.
He may not relate to, or feel jealous toward those classes above or
below him, but in his place he determines who gets to be his equal.
And blind or disabled folks, as well as people of color are not
allowed equal status. And then we go and have "normal" children.
They want to fit in, because they are taught to want to fit in. We
even help them want to do that, by our very efforts to fit in
ourselves. So our struggle for equality is teaching our children that
we are not equal. But that's not a problem. Our Culture is busy
driving home that same lesson. Your children, Mariam, had the
difficult problem of two blind(inferior) parents who were struggling
to be equal. And you had the additional complication of adopting a
baby who did not meet the cultural standard of "Normal".
I recall my mother telling my sisters and me, "When you came into this
world you forgot to bring along an instruction book".
So my parents did their crumby best, struggling to raise children who
did not measure up to the local standard, as well as struggle with
their own identity. And all the time our society is sending out
nonverbal mixed messages.
I remember the old song, "Her lips said no, no, no, but there was yes,
yes, yes in her eyes". What a terrible message to confuse a young
teenager with. But it's no worse than the messages we send regarding
our social status. We are taught to conform, while being told that we
must speak our own mind. We are shoved into groups like the Scouts
and Church youth groups, but told that we are accountable for our own
actions. We're pressured to "fit in", but taught to resist socialism.
It never gets any clearer.
Sadly, the problems my children deal with have more to do with a dad
who went through two divorces. I've never really given much thought
to why my children seem to accept my blindness as a normal part of me.
Perhaps being married to sighted women? Perhaps because I did seem to
live a "normal" life? Certainly some of their friends had
difficulties dealing with my blindness. But it was usually my
children who stepped up and set their friends straight. I just don't
know how my children got to be so normal. I am truly proud of the
three of them. And I love each one, and know that they love me in
return. How we got to this place is beyond me. Blind luck, I
suppose.

Carl Jarvis

On 7/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have a daughter who is now 50 years old and she has never forgiven me for
being blind. She has never stopped believing that she has been shortchanged
in life. And she learned at least, some of that from the sighted people in
our lives who subtly, and not so subtly, communicated to her how difficult
they believed it must have been for her to have blind parents. I'm sure
some
of her anger and discontent has other causes, but having blind parents is
certainly one important cause. At one point, many years ago, after trying
really hard, I convinced her to see a therapist. And during her first
session, she began talking about her blind parents. The therapist, being
sighted and unskilled, wasn't hearing what my daughter was actually saying.
Her response to my daughter's description of us was, "Oh, they sound like
wonderful people!" And that was the end of the therapy. My daughter never
went back.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2015 12:24 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] today the ADA is 25: so, how's the education
thing going?

When I joined the NFB back in 1969, I truly believed that if enough blind
people got together, we could change public attitudes. When I began
working
in the Orientation and Training Center, I believed that if I were diligent
and persuasive I could change people's attitudes about blindness. Today,
after 50 years as a blind man, 46 years in blind organizations, 40 years in
the field of work for the blind, the greatest change in attitudes has been
between my own two ears. Oh sure, things have improved slightly for blind
and disabled people.
But after 25 years of ADA working to "educate" the public, statistics show
an actual decrease in employment among the disabled population.
I'll say that again. With all it's efforts to change public attitudes
toward disabled people, ADA has not been effective in changing employers
attitudes toward hiring disabled workers.
Our training program at the Department of Services for the Blind is a
residential program. When I was director, we worked with students from
8:00
A.M. until 4:00 P.M., five days per week with many evening events and
weekend outings. Students entered the program and lived in the Dorm for 6
to 9 months. We had a staff of 8, including myself, and 4 dorm
coordinators. That came to 12 folks working with the students. Add to
that
1 secretary and we had 13 total employees and a student body of 17. 6 to 9
months and at the end of this concentrated training I very often turned to
my staff and said about a graduating student, "I wish they were just now
coming into the program". We presented a trophy, a statue, upon
graduation.
Each student entered the program when an opening occurred, and left, or
graduated, when staff and their VRC felt they had gained all they could
from
the training. So we held a celebratory luncheons in the honor of each new
graduate and presented the little statue. On it was engraved their name
and
the dates of their stay in the program. Below were the words; Skills
Attitudes Motivation.
We called it the SAM Award, or the Sammy. Some members of my staff felt I
should not present the Sammy to any student who had not attained a certain
level of competency in all of the skills areas we taught. They felt that
those students who really did achieve high levels, would feel the award was
meaningless. I came to believe differently. I put together a short sermon
in which I challenged the graduating student to put their Sammy in a
prominent spot in their home and look at it every day. "When you think of
the words on your Sammy, Skills, Attitudes, and Motivation, you need to
remind yourself that you did not graduate from this program, you graduated
into the rest of your life. Finally, remember this, if you are not
constantly developing your Skills, improving your Attitudes and Motivating
yourself, it's a pretty good sign that you're dead".
And so Sam represented a beginning. But I never convinced some of my
staff, and I watched as many of our graduates went forth into the world and
applied for Care-Givers and all of the free services available. If one of
the program's goals was to reduce costs to the taxpayers and promote self
reliance, we were a standout failure. We tweaked the program, adding new
elements, changing our approach, involving successful former students, on
and on, without any significant difference. And yet, years later I meet
former students, never having worked, living in subsidized housing, needing
care givers, and stuck on SSI, students who completed the OTC program, and
they grab me and thank me for all I did for them. I think I have an idea
of
what went through Barak Obama's mind when he was told he'd been awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize.
And yet, some students did grow during their stay in the program. And
they,
and a few others, did and do continue to grow. But our Sighted Culture is
against them. Against all of us disabled folks.
The Establishment will say, "We open our arms to these poor disabled folks,
and do what we can for them". They are totally unable to see their
prejudice toward the, "Less Fortunate".
While I did manage to pull myself away from my original belief that I was
the Super Savior of the Blind, I was never successful in changing some of
my
staff's, "Rescuer Complex".
Society tends to dismiss the impact of subtle under currents. But the ones
being discriminated against are very well tuned into them. I go crazy when
I'm in a conversation with someone who feels they must announce, "I haven't
a prejudiced bone in my body". I used to say, "I envy you. I fight my
prejudices every single day".
I finally gave up on that approach. I feel sometimes like the fellow
pushing the boulder up the steep hill, only to have it slip past him and
roll back to the bottom. Perhaps the majority likes things the way they
are. They have their little Ruling Class to tell them when to jump, and
how
high, and they have those folks, like the Colored and the Disabled, to pick
on, and to "help". Maybe that's all we can hope for. I mean, hope for
from
our sighted all white society. Most days I figure I just let them do their
thing and I do mine.

Carl Jarvis



On 7/25/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And everyone is talking about this stuf and writing about it as if
this is new! My God, do these young reporters actually know why the
Black Panthers formed and what they were talking about? If only we
had them today. They began in California where it was legal to openly
carry guns and that's what they did. They patrolled black
neighborhoods with guns in order to defend residents from police
brutality. They are not the radicals who threw bombs and tried to
destroy buildings. That was mostly young white radicals who were
deluded into thinking that they could stop the war by bombing the
pentagon. The Black Panthers wanted only to defend their people within
their communities. Well, I started reading a very long academic
history of the group, and now I've been sidetracked by 2 other books.
But the leadership was killed by cops and the FBI. Fred Hampton was
murdered in his bed while he slept. And today, Black Lives matter
does peaceful noisey protests and they're being spied upon by our
security state and arrested for demonstrating. And, in the same way
the blind organizations keep saying that they will educate the sighted
world someday, black people say that they will overcome the system of
institutional racism some day.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2015 3:30 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Macho Cop not fit to wear the uniform

No doubt about it. Sandra Bland was victimized by a cop not fit to
wear the uniform.
I have done something I've avoided doing 99% of the time. I listened
to the recording, several times, of Sandra Bland being cornered in a
cat and mouse game where she was the prey.
As I say, I avoid these reports as much as I can because I become so
outrageously angry. And there's nothing I can do after the fact.
Furthermore, all I need to do is to wander around my own area and talk
to White folks about discrimination, to get the message that prejudice
still rules.
"I'm not prejudiced," an elderly White client told us. "But I don't
know why them Coloreds have to push in where they're not wanted."
Thank goodness he's not prejudiced.
"They say they're as good as the rest of us," a waitress in our
favorite eatery told us. "So why are so many of them selling and
using drugs and getting into fights and getting themselves arrested?"
She went on to exclaim that we don't have that sort of violence and
drug crime in Sequim. Ah yes, Sequim. A retirement town of about
9,000 almost all White residents. Mostly older. Cathy and I serve a
great number of these people, in their apartments and homes. Sequim
does not have any area one might consider to be slums. No Colored
Ghetto. No hookers walking up and down in front of the Penny Arcades.
No Arcades. No pimps jockeying with one another for the choice street
corners for their Ladies. No drugs...oops! Wait a second. A couple
of years back some 32 "users" were rounded up and booked in Jefferson
County court. They were "captured" in the small, almost all White
community of Quilcene, about 25 miles East of Sequim. . Little
Quilcene, closest town to my home, boasts a population of 2,500. I
swear they're counting the local cows and horses. But 32 arrests out
of some 2,500 people, cows and horses? That's a huge percentage to
ignore
when bragging about our "clean"
county.
A client of ours told us that he never went to the doctor. "I keep a
positive frame of mind and that keeps me healthy", he bragged. He
died at
73 of a diabetic coma. Is America killing itself by denying our
prejudices?
We sure can't have them removed until we admit that we have them.

Carl Jarvis

On 7/25/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Taibbi writes: "The Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian
Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and
threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state's
'courtesy policy.'"

Sandra Bland died at the Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas, on
July 17.
(photo: Jay Janner/AP)


ALSO SEE: Jail Where Sandra Bland Died Has History of State Rules
Violations Sandra Bland Was Murdered By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
25 July 15

Suicide or not, police are responsible for Sandra Bland's death

So news broke yesterday that authorities in Waller County, Texas,
have "full faith" that Sandra Bland committed suicide. They said
there was "no evidence of a struggle" on the body of the 28-year-old
African-American woman who was ludicrously jailed last week after an
alleged lane change violation.
In related news, the Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian
Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and
threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state's
"courtesy policy." The state said there was "no evidence" yet of
criminal behavior on Encina's part.
So barring something unexpected, we know now how this is going to
play out in the media.
Many news outlets are going to engage in an indirect version of the
usual blame-the-victim game by emphasizing the autopsy finding of
suicide, questioning Bland's mental health history, and by
highlighting the reports of marijuana found in her system.
Beyond that, we can expect a slew of chin-scratching "legal analyses"
concluding that while there may have been some minor impropriety on
officer Encina's part, the law governing police-motorist encounters
is too "complicated" to make this anything more than a tragic accident.
Media scandals are like criminal trials. They're about assigning blame.
Because Bland may have technically taken her own life, the blame is
now mostly going to fall on a woman with a history of depression and
drugs, instead of on a criminal justice system that morally, if not
legally, surely murdered Sandra Bland.
Backing up: It's been interesting following conservative news outlets
after the Bland case. They've been conspicuously quiet this week,
holstering the usual gloating backlash of the "He'd be alive today,
if he'd just obeyed the law" variety.
After the Garner, Brown and Freddie Gray cases, of course,
law-and-order commentators flocked to the blogosphere to explain the
secret to preventing police brutality.
It was simple, they explained. There's no police corruption problem.
The real issue is that there are too many people who don't know how
to behave during a car stop. Don't want to get murdered by police? Be
polite!
A writer named John Hawkins took on the subject for TownHall.com in a
piece last year carrying the not at all joking headline "How to not
get shot by police." After revealing that his only real experience in
this area involved speeding tickets, Hawkins lectured readers that
"the first key to not getting shot" is to not think of the police as
a
threat:
"They're really not going to randomly beat you, arrest you or shoot
you for no reason whatsoever. It's like a bee. Don't start swatting
at it and chances are, it's not going to sting you.
"In fact, when a cop pulls you over, you should have your license and
registration ready, you put your hands on the steering wheel so he
can see them when he arrives, and you say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.'"
It's hard to wrap one's head around the absurdity of someone like
Hawkins imagining to himself that black America has not already tried
using the word "sir" as a strategy to avoid beatings and killings.
But over and over again, we heard stuff like this from the Fox/Real
Clear crowd, which as time passed flailed around with increasing
desperation in search of a non-racial explanation for all of these
violent episodes.
After Eric Garner was killed, for instance, a New York Post columnist
named Bob McManus argued that we should only blame - the word "only"
was actually used - the "man who tragically decided to resist."
Michigan's even dumber Ann Coulter wannabe, Debbie Schlussel,
countered that Garner would still be alive if his parents had raised
him better, and if he wasn't a "morbidly obese asthmatic."
After Ferguson, it was the same thing. Editorials insisted that the
solution to the brutality problem lay in "less criminality within the
black community." The officer who shot Michael Brown, Darren Wilson -
the same guy who called Brown a "demon" - insisted that Brown would
still be alive "if he'd just followed orders."
But nobody yet has dared to say Sandra Bland would still be alive
today, if only she'd used her blinker. That's a bridge too far even
for TownHall.com types.
Suddenly even hardcore law-and-order enthusiasts are realizing the
criminal code is so broad and littered with so many tiny technical
prohibitions that a determined enough police officer can stop and/or
arrest pretty much anybody at any time.
Bland was on her way to a new job at Prairie A&M university when she
was pulled over for failing to signal when changing lanes, something
roughly 100 percent of American drivers do on a regular basis.
Irritated at being stopped, she was curt with Encina when he wrote
her up. He didn't like her attitude and decided to flex his muscles a
little, asking her to put out her cigarette.
She balked, and that's when things went sideways. Encina demanded
that she get out of the car, reached for his Taser, said, "I'll light
you up," and eventually threw her in jail.
Many editorialists following this narrative case suddenly noticed, as
if for the first time, how much mischief can arise from the fact that
a person may be arrested at any time for "failing to obey a lawful
order," which in the heat of the moment can mean just about anything.
But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern community policing
in big cities all over America for decades now. Under Broken Windows
and other "zero tolerance"-type enforcement strategies, police move
into (typically
nonwhite) neighborhoods in big numbers, tell people to move off
corners, and then circle back and arrest them for "loitering" or
"failing to obey a lawful order" if they don't.
Some cities have tried to put a fig leaf of legal justification on
such practices by creating "drug-free" or "anti-loitering" zones,
which give police automatic justification for arrest even if a person
is guilty of nothing more than standing on the street. Failing to
produce ID - even in the halls of your own building, in some cases -
or being seen in or around a "known drug location" can similarly be
grounds for search or detention.
A related phenomenon is the policy governing "consent searches."
Police stop people on the highways, in airports, on buses, really
anywhere at all, and ask for their consent to search their property
or their persons. Sometimes they do the asking with a drug-sniffing
dog standing beside them.
Studies have consistently shown that black and Hispanic people are
pulled over at a far higher rate than white people, usually more than
double, even though white people are statistically more likely to
have illegal drugs on them.
Add to this the whole galaxy of stop-and-frisk type behaviors, also
known as "Terry stops," in which any police officer with an
"articulable suspicion"
that a crime of violence might be committed can pat down and question
any person.
The end of New York's infamous program notwithstanding, there are
millions of such stops every year. In Chicago, for instance, recent
data showed a rate of about a million stops per year, with roughly 72
percent involving black people - and this in a city that's only 32
percent
black.
You add all this up, and we're talking about millions upon millions
of stops, searches and misdemeanor arrests and summonses that clearly
target black people at a far higher rate than the rest of the
population.
And if you're continually handcuffing people, sitting on them,
putting knees in their backs and dragging them to jail in cases when
you could have just handed over a summons, a certain percentage of
these encounters are going to end in fights, struggles, medical
accidents and other disasters. Like the Bland case.
We'd call it murder if a kidnapping victim died of fright during the
job.
Of
course it's not legally the same thing, but a woman dying of
depression during an illegal detention should be the same kind of
crime. It's especially true given our long and sordid history of
overpolicing misdemeanors.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander described how white America
re-seized control after slavery by instituting a series of repressive
"vagrancy laws," under which nonwhite Americans could be arrested for
such absurdities as "mischief" and "insulting gestures."
In an eerie precursor to the modern loitering laws, many states even
had stringent rules against "idleness." There were even states where
any black male over 18 could be thrown in jail for not carrying
around written proof that he had a job.
What exactly is the difference between being arrested for "idleness"
and being arrested for "loitering in a designated drug-free zone"?
What's the difference between an arrest for "mischief" and an arrest
for "disorderly conduct" or "refusing to obey a lawful order"? If
it's anything more than a semantic distinction, it's not much more of
one.
Law-and-order types like to lecture black America about how it can
avoid getting killed by "respecting authority" and treating arresting
cops like dangerous dogs or bees.
But while playing things cool might prevent killings in some
instances, it won't stop police from stopping people without reason,
putting their hands on suspects or jailing people like Bland for
infractions that at most would earn a white guy in a suit a desk
ticket. That's not just happening in a few well-publicized cases a
year, but routinely, in hundreds of thousands or even millions of
incidents we never hear of.
That's why the issue isn't how Sandra Bland died, but why she was
stopped and detained in the first place. It's profiling, sure, but
it's even worse than that. It's a systematic campaign to harass
people, using misdemeanors and violations as battering ram - a
campaign that's been going on forever, and against which there's
little defense. When the law can be stretched to mean almost
anything,
obeying it is no magic bullet.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.

Sandra Bland died at the Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas, on
July 17.
(photo: Jay Janner/AP)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/sandra-bland-was-murdered-2
0
150724
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/sandra-bland-was-murdered-2
0
150724 ALSO SEE: Jail Where Sandra Bland Died Has History of State
Rules Violations Sandra Bland Was Murdered By Matt Taibbi, Rolling
Stone
25 July 15
Suicide or not, police are responsible for Sandra Bland's death o
news broke yesterday that authorities in Waller County, Texas, have
"full faith" that Sandra Bland committed suicide. They said there was
"no evidence of a struggle" on the body of the 28-year-old
African-American woman who was ludicrously jailed last week after an
alleged lane change violation.
In related news, the Texas Department of Safety ruled that Brian
Encina, the officer who arrested Bland, pulled her from her car, and
threatened her with a Taser, had merely violated the state's
"courtesy policy." The state said there was "no evidence" yet of
criminal behavior on Encina's part.
So barring something unexpected, we know now how this is going to
play out in the media.
Many news outlets are going to engage in an indirect version of the
usual blame-the-victim game by emphasizing the autopsy finding of
suicide, questioning Bland's mental health history, and by
highlighting the reports of marijuana found in her system.
Beyond that, we can expect a slew of chin-scratching "legal analyses"
concluding that while there may have been some minor impropriety on
officer Encina's part, the law governing police-motorist encounters
is too "complicated" to make this anything more than a tragic accident.
Media scandals are like criminal trials. They're about assigning blame.
Because Bland may have technically taken her own life, the blame is
now mostly going to fall on a woman with a history of depression and
drugs, instead of on a criminal justice system that morally, if not
legally, surely murdered Sandra Bland.
Backing up: It's been interesting following conservative news outlets
after the Bland case. They've been conspicuously quiet this week,
holstering the usual gloating backlash of the "He'd be alive today,
if he'd just obeyed the law" variety.
After the Garner, Brown and Freddie Gray cases, of course,
law-and-order commentators flocked to the blogosphere to explain the
secret to preventing police brutality.
It was simple, they explained. There's no police corruption problem.
The real issue is that there are too many people who don't know how
to behave during a car stop. Don't want to get murdered by police? Be
polite!
A writer named John Hawkins took on the subject for TownHall.com in a
piece last year carrying the not at all joking headline "How to not
get shot by police." After revealing that his only real experience in
this area involved speeding tickets, Hawkins lectured readers that
"the first key to not getting shot" is to not think of the police as
a
threat:
"They're really not going to randomly beat you, arrest you or shoot
you for no reason whatsoever. It's like a bee. Don't start swatting
at it and chances are, it's not going to sting you.
"In fact, when a cop pulls you over, you should have your license and
registration ready, you put your hands on the steering wheel so he
can see them when he arrives, and you say 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.'"
It's hard to wrap one's head around the absurdity of someone like
Hawkins imagining to himself that black America has not already tried
using the word "sir" as a strategy to avoid beatings and killings.
But over and over again, we heard stuff like this from the Fox/Real
Clear crowd, which as time passed flailed around with increasing
desperation in search of a non-racial explanation for all of these
violent episodes.
After Eric Garner was killed, for instance, a New York Post columnist
named Bob McManus argued that we should only blame - the word "only"
was actually used - the "man who tragically decided to resist."
Michigan's even dumber Ann Coulter wannabe, Debbie Schlussel,
countered that Garner would still be alive if his parents had raised
him better, and if he wasn't a "morbidly obese asthmatic."
After Ferguson, it was the same thing. Editorials insisted that the
solution to the brutality problem lay in "less criminality within the
black community." The officer who shot Michael Brown, Darren Wilson -
the same guy who called Brown a "demon" - insisted that Brown would
still be alive "if he'd just followed orders."
But nobody yet has dared to say Sandra Bland would still be alive
today, if only she'd used her blinker. That's a bridge too far even
for TownHall.com types.
Suddenly even hardcore law-and-order enthusiasts are realizing the
criminal code is so broad and littered with so many tiny technical
prohibitions that a determined enough police officer can stop and/or
arrest pretty much anybody at any time.
Bland was on her way to a new job at Prairie A&M university when she
was pulled over for failing to signal when changing lanes, something
roughly 100 percent of American drivers do on a regular basis.
Irritated at being stopped, she was curt with Encina when he wrote
her up. He didn't like her attitude and decided to flex his muscles a
little, asking her to put out her cigarette.
She balked, and that's when things went sideways. Encina demanded
that she get out of the car, reached for his Taser, said, "I'll light
you up," and eventually threw her in jail.
Many editorialists following this narrative case suddenly noticed, as
if for the first time, how much mischief can arise from the fact that
a person may be arrested at any time for "failing to obey a lawful
order," which in the heat of the moment can mean just about anything.
But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern community policing
in big cities all over America for decades now. Under Broken Windows
and other "zero tolerance"-type enforcement strategies, police move
into (typically
nonwhite) neighborhoods in big numbers, tell people to move off
corners, and then circle back and arrest them for "loitering" or
"failing to obey a lawful order" if they don't.
Some cities have tried to put a fig leaf of legal justification on
such practices by creating "drug-free" or "anti-loitering" zones,
which give police automatic justification for arrest even if a person
is guilty of nothing more than standing on the street. Failing to
produce ID - even in the halls of your own building, in some cases -
or being seen in or around a "known drug location" can similarly be
grounds for search or detention.
A related phenomenon is the policy governing "consent searches."
Police stop people on the highways, in airports, on buses, really
anywhere at all, and ask for their consent to search their property
or their persons. Sometimes they do the asking with a drug-sniffing
dog standing beside them.
Studies have consistently shown that black and Hispanic people are
pulled over at a far higher rate than white people, usually more than
double, even though white people are statistically more likely to
have illegal drugs on them.
Add to this the whole galaxy of stop-and-frisk type behaviors, also
known as "Terry stops," in which any police officer with an
"articulable suspicion"
that a crime of violence might be committed can pat down and question
any person.
The end of New York's infamous program notwithstanding, there are
millions of such stops every year. In Chicago, for instance, recent
data showed a rate of about a million stops per year, with roughly 72
percent involving black people - and this in a city that's only 32
percent
black.
You add all this up, and we're talking about millions upon millions
of stops, searches and misdemeanor arrests and summonses that clearly
target black people at a far higher rate than the rest of the
population.
And if you're continually handcuffing people, sitting on them,
putting knees in their backs and dragging them to jail in cases when
you could have just handed over a summons, a certain percentage of
these encounters are going to end in fights, struggles, medical
accidents and other disasters. Like the Bland case.
We'd call it murder if a kidnapping victim died of fright during the
job.
Of
course it's not legally the same thing, but a woman dying of
depression during an illegal detention should be the same kind of
crime. It's especially true given our long and sordid history of
overpolicing misdemeanors.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander described how white America
re-seized control after slavery by instituting a series of repressive
"vagrancy laws," under which nonwhite Americans could be arrested for
such absurdities as "mischief" and "insulting gestures."
In an eerie precursor to the modern loitering laws, many states even
had stringent rules against "idleness." There were even states where
any black male over 18 could be thrown in jail for not carrying
around written proof that he had a job.
What exactly is the difference between being arrested for "idleness"
and being arrested for "loitering in a designated drug-free zone"?
What's the difference between an arrest for "mischief" and an arrest
for "disorderly conduct" or "refusing to obey a lawful order"? If
it's anything more than a semantic distinction, it's not much more of
one.
Law-and-order types like to lecture black America about how it can
avoid getting killed by "respecting authority" and treating arresting
cops like dangerous dogs or bees.
But while playing things cool might prevent killings in some
instances, it won't stop police from stopping people without reason,
putting their hands on suspects or jailing people like Bland for
infractions that at most would earn a white guy in a suit a desk
ticket. That's not just happening in a few well-publicized cases a
year, but routinely, in hundreds of thousands or even millions of
incidents we never hear of.
That's why the issue isn't how Sandra Bland died, but why she was
stopped and detained in the first place. It's profiling, sure, but
it's even worse than that. It's a systematic campaign to harass
people, using misdemeanors and violations as battering ram - a
campaign that's been going on forever, and against which there's
little defense. When the law can be stretched to mean almost
anything,
obeying it is no magic bullet.
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