Hi Miriam,
I pretty much bet which daughter you were referring to. Interesting.
The daughter one might think would have resentment, turns out to be
more mellow. Too many factors are at play for us to sort out the
reasons for the difference.
I know for a fact that I made at least as many mistakes in raising my
three children as any other parent. But there were things I avoided.
I saw what happened when dominant parents molded their young to
reflect what their parents wanted them to be. The doctor's son who
joined the Foreign Legion rather than to become another doctor. The
preachers son or daughter who became an Atheist rather than go to
Bible College. So we nurtured our children and encouraged them to
follow their own chosen paths. Of course even then their paths were
being shaped by all of the influences around them. But having been
raised by a mother whose word was the Law of the Land, and any
smallest sign of rebellion was met with a heavy hand, I know the
consequences of domination. And look on the broader scene at how well
domination gets rid of Terrorism.
Being too permissive has its own problems. I leaned a bit too far
that direction, but Cathy, who helped raise James and Renae, was a
steady hand in keeping me from going overboard.
My eldest daughter, ten years older than my son, and a child who went
through two divorces, is my bubble of joy. She loves people and life.
If I could, I'd clone Jennifer and spread her around the world. Wars
would end and folks would all be planning picnics and family
gatherings. Her best friend came to me one time, after they were both
grown and married. "Jennifer says she never did anything wrong when
she was growing up. Tell me something she was punished for."
I thought and thought. "Sorry, she's right. We never disciplined her
for anything. Maybe we nagged her a bit in order to get her to eat
her vegetables, and once she fed the dog from the table, but beyond
that she was the model child." She never even stole a cookie out of
the cookie jar. I don't think her friend believed me. But our
youngest daughter Renae, who benefited from seasoned parenting by both
Cathy and myself, always believed we loved the older two children more
than we loved her. Now that she has four of her own, I think she's
come to understand that a parent can equally love each child.
Differently, perhaps, but equal love.
Certainly two blind parents can be a factor in a child's perception.
Of their self-image. But I can't give any particular weight to it.
I've known sighted children of two totally blind parents who appear to
be well adjusted. Appear to be. How do I know what is going on
behind their smiling faces?
We had neighbors in Renton who were both totally deaf. They had one
son. He was the Terrorist of our neighborhood. He came through our
basement door and into our daughter's bed room and threw her gold fish
onto the floor. "To watch them die", he told us when we rushed in to
see who was in her room. These people would go hunting their son late
in the evening, walking up and down the roads bellowing like Bull
Moose. If I had been that boy, I'd have hidden, too.
But the boy up the road, who had "normal" parents used to sneak into
the neighbors dog house and poop. Go figure.
The neighborhood around our house in South Seattle was a racially
mixed one. Several Asian families and on our side of the street, two
Black families. Next door was a Seattle Police Detective, his stay at
home wife and two sweet young daughters. The girls, a couple of years
younger than Jennifer, loved to come over and hang out in her bedroom
and watch her put on her makeup. They attended private Catholic
school and seemed to be model children. More than we could say about
their promiscuous father.
The family up the block a few doors had two working parents and two
young sons. I don't know what the dad did, but the mother worked for
the post office. Those boys, seemingly raised in a "good" family,
were constantly being hauled into Juvy for breaking and entering or
for "grab and run" in the grocery store. Who can sort it all out?
Far too many flows and ebbs of silent and not so silent influences.
As my mother used to say, "We do our crumby best". And as I add, "and
we don't judge others...as we hope they don't judge us".
Carl Jarvis
On 7/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
The daughter about whom I wrote, wasn't adopted. She was an only child for
almost eleven years of her life. But she had a totally blind father who
adored her and indulged her and felt like he needed to compensate to her
for
being blind. At least, I think that's what was going on. And she had a
mother with partial vision who was always a kind of nonconformist in
relation to the community where we lived. There are a lot of details that I
could add which might partially explain why she feels as she does. However,
you had one big advantage over me as a blind parent. You had sighted
spouses. I really think the dynamic is very different when both parents are
blind except if the one with partial vision has very good partial vision so
that he or she is not easily identifiable as blind. The daughter whom we
adopted, although she is very damaged, and although being a black child
with
white parents who are blind must certainly have been difficult for her, was
never angry or resentful about the fact that the people who adopted her
were
blind.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, July 26, 2015 8:54 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: today the ADA is 25: so, how's the education
thing going?
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 forgivenit's a pretty good sign that you're dead".
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,
And so Sam represented a beginning. But I never convinced some of mybooks.
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
"only"But the leadership was killed by cops and the FBI. Fred Hampton waswhen bragging about our "clean"
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
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
anything.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
"only"one.But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern communityblack.
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
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
Law-and-order types like to lecture black America about how it canobeying it is no magic bullet.
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,
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
anything.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
one.But this same kind of logic has underpinned modern communityblack.
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
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
Law-and-order types like to lecture black America about how it canobeying it is no magic bullet.
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,
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