Category Archives: Justice

With Thoughts of Charleston

Posted on by
Reply

I often wonder what moments will be remembered in history. Which moments, in retrospect, will seem to mark a turning point, a watershed change.

Will history remember a church founded by Reverend Morris Brown? A church burnt to the ground in 1822 for its involvement with a planned slave revolt. A church rebuilt, only to be forced underground for 30 years after Charleston outlawed all black churches in 1834.

Will history remember the day in 2015 when nine black men and women were murdered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church?

To be surprised is to be naive.

All this has happened before, and we’ve done far too little to keep it from happening again.

“I have to do it,” the gunman was quoted as saying. “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”

Then he murdered people at church.

It may be the act of one deranged man, but its the rhetoric of too much of our nation. For too long we have allowed such hateful speech to flourish, giving a pass to hateful ideas – too afraid or unsure of how to intervene.

Where did the gunman learn to hate like that?

He learned it from us. From white America. From people who nurtured his hate or who simply left it there, unconfronted.

They say the gunman sat with parishioners for an hour before opening fire. He sat with them as they discussed biblical verse and prayed.

But in that garden of Gethsemane, it was Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s and Cynthia Hurd’s cup that would not pass. It was Myra Thompson, Sharonda Singleton and Tywanza Sanders who had to die to remind us that there is still hate and evil in this world.

That there is still hate and evil in our communities.

You wouldn’t think we’d need reminding, but clearly we do – since black churches are burned and black bodies are scattered in our streets. And yet we, white America, continue to sit by and sigh.

And nothing changes.

I want to make sense of this senseless horror. I want an action I can check to solve this problem once and for all.

But there are no easy answers, and it will take hard, long work for solutions.

All I know is that we can do better, and amidst this heartache, this pain, and sorrow we must do better.

How many more have to die?

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

Race, Gender, and Social Constructs

Posted on by
Reply

This story about Rachel Dolezal – the NAACP leader who represented herself as black even though she is white – has been blowing my mind since I first heard about it.

Seriously, I have so many questions.

But with Dolezal announcing her resignation today, it seems unlikely that I’m going to get any of the answers I’m looking for.

But the whole affair has raised some interesting questions.

Isn’t race a social construct? How is being ‘transracial’ different from being transgender? Why should we celebrate Caitlyn Jenner but shun Rachel Dolezal?

Those are good questions, and they are important questions.

In my circles, these questions have mostly come from well-intentioned liberals – myself included – trying to articulate what our instinct tells us so plainly: ‘transracial’ – if that even is a thing – is not the same as transgender.

There may be some parallels, sure. For example, I can imagine Dolezal claiming that she is a “black woman on the inside,” or that she was born into the wrong body. I’ll never know Dolezal’s true motivations, but I have personally heard at least one white person make such a claim.

My instinct is to scoff and to find such a statement deeply offensive. I mean, what kind of white privilege do you need to feel comfortable declaring such a thing?

But perhaps that’s how transphobic people react to the struggle of the transgender. I couldn’t say, but it seems tenuous to simply trust my instinct with such a response.

There have been some great take downs of so-called “transracialness”: in pretending to be black, Dolezal indulged “in blackness as a commodity.”

Transgendered people face a real struggle – as Jenner told Vanity Fair, “I’m not doing this to be interesting. I’m doing this to live,” while “Dolezal is not trying to survive. She’s merely indulging in the fantasy of being ‘other.'”

Or as another article puts it: “Rachel didn’t want to be Black because she *felt* Black, because Black is not a feeling.  Black is an existence that was created for us by racists as a tool to justify ill-treatment and codify oppression into law.”

These are helpful arguments, but they still don’t quite satisfy me.

After all, it was just last week that I was hearing that long-time feminist leaders felt uncomfortable with Jenner’s decision to come out as femme. After all, what does it mean to “feel” like a woman? Certainly it is more than being a pin-up girl.

While it is easy to dismiss such concerns as transphobic, I think it’s more productive to engage assuming good intentions.

Elinor Burkett writes that “Women like me are not lost in false paradoxes; we were smashing binary views of male and female well before most Americans had ever heard the word ‘transgender’ or used the word ‘binary’ as an adjective.”

Whether appropriate or not, I can see why she might be disappointed to see a person who has benefited much of her life from male privilege choosing to showcase her womanhood in such a gender-stereotypical way.

So all of this has gotten us nowhere.

Power and privilege are make it more inappropriate for a white woman to claim blackness, but its not solely an issue of power and privilege.

After all, there is a power dynamic at play when it comes to trans women – but I believe it is our moral responsibility to welcome trans women as sisters and invite them to (re)define womanhood with us – whatever that means to them.

The situation with Dolezal is different. I wouldn’t presume to tell the black community what they should or should not do, but neither would I fault them for refusing to embrace Dolezal and for finding her blackface routine offensive. It is offensive.

The reality is that race is a social construct, and that gender is a social construct, but that does not mean that we should treat them the same.

That fact that this is all so confusing is good – it emphasizes the constructed nature of these institutions and forces us to re-evaluate what it means to have a gender or a race, and it makes us confront the important question of who has the right to define those terms.

As a white person, am I comfortable leaving it to the black community to define blackness, but as a woman I would be dissatisfied with any definition of “female” which excluded trans women – even if that’s what was wanted by the majority of people who were identified as women at birth.

So power is a critical piece of this, but there is some more.

Michel Foucault brilliantly documented how mental illness is a social construct. And how, like many other constructs, it can be dangerous – giving those in power permission to detain and torture those who are found to be outside the norm.

But just because it is a social construct, doesn’t imply that anyone can declare themselves mad.

In fact, mental health can be a positive social construct – allowing people who need help to get the help that they need. And hopefully, someday, removing the stigma around mental health.

All of that is to say that “social construct” is not one thing. They are not universally bad and we should not deconstruct them all to be universally permeable.

Social constructs are how we make sense of the world around us. They are how people in power maintain their power, but they are also how those who are oppressed reclaim their power.

It’s messy and it’s complicated and its complex – because by its very definition a social construct is “constructed” by society. It’s a thin facade that quickly looses coherence when questioned.

These are our rules, our collective rules, and we have the right to change them – or not – as we see fit.

The social construct of race has a very different history from the construct of gender for one simple reason – they are not the same and they shouldn’t be treated as such.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

The Revolution Comes in Pieces

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve written before about my skepticism of “scaling up” as the solution to all our social challenges.

That’s not to say there aren’t some solutions which can provide more value by being brought “to scale,” but when it comes to issues of democracy and engagement, I prefer to think of “scaling sideways.” Lots of little, individual programs running parallel within parallel communities.

So I was quite taken with this little snipped from Joshua Miller and Daniel Levine’s recent paper on Reprobation as Shared Inquiry: Teaching the Liberal Arts in Prison:

“We do not know how to spark a revolution that will overthrow mass incarceration all at once and transfigure our society, but we believe that it can be made to fade away through a proliferation of non-carceral practices.”

The paper builds on Miller and Levine’s work with the Jessup Correctional Institution Prison Scholars Program – which you can support here.

Essentially, Miller and Levine argue that in order to build a truly just and effective prison system, we have to radically shift our society, doing away with our current systems of dominance and subordinance.

It’s not just a moral problem that “for the past 30 years, between 40 and 60 percent of prison inmates were below the federal poverty line,” or that “at midyear 1998, approximately 16 percent of inmates in US state prisons and 7 percent of inmates in federal prisons had a mental illness.” And it is not just a moral problem that the US “incarcerates Blacks and Latinos at disproportionate rates.”

Those are serious, moral problems within our society, but…those deep inequities also render our criminal justice system ineffective.

That is, “it is morally unreasonable to expect an offender to be moved by condemnations coming from agents of a system that routinely subjects him to injustice it is unwilling to recognize as such.”

Miller and Levine offer the Liberal Arts as a tool to break this dominant/subordinate cycle, a resource for engaging incarcerated people – not as subordinates in the ultimate system of domination – but as agents in reflecting on the “the nature of value, and the proper way to relate to other human beings in society.”

“Prison classrooms,” they write, “become political spaces at the heart of an institution where politics is disallowed.”

They acknowledge that their own work is small compared to the vastness of the challenge, but argue that “the utopian vision of a society in which the whole encounter between currently-dominant and currently-subordinated social groups is transformed is likely to be made up of a multitude of small, piecemeal encounters like this.”

Scaling sideways.

And that’s the thing: democracy requires individual engagement. It requires engagement from the individuals within a society, but more deeply, it requires that those individuals are engaged…individually. As autonomous beings, as agents of their own destiny and desires.

The challenges of democracy are challenges of collective action, to be sure – how to work together across differences and interests, how to divide and distribute limited resources.

But at its heart, democratic values are about the individual. The belief that every person’s voice has value, that all people are created equal and that all people demand your respect.

It’s not a simple case of rugged individualism, but rather a subtle interplay of individual and collectivist thought: all voices have value, and therefore we each have a responsibility to ensure that all voices are heard.

But a focus on individual agents requires programs that are small and flexible, developed for a local context and shaped by local knowledge.

You can’t scale up something like that without losing what gives it value.

But we can tackle the problem piece by piece, through networks of small efforts and regional connections.

We can scale these solutions sideways and little by little we can radically transform our society, making our deep inequities and injustices fade away through a proliferation of better practice.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

The Value of “Just Talk”

Posted on by
Reply

As I was reeling yesterday from the seemingly unending stream of assaults on people of color in this country, I was struck by a concern which I’ve often heard echoed:

Yes, there is something wrong in this country, but the real question is what should we do about it?

In many ways, one more blog post decrying the national tragedy of police brutality and our unjust criminal justice system seems vain. It is almost certainly issued in vain, unlikely to affect any real change, and it would most certainly be vain of me to think it might have an impact.

But I keep writing.

I don’t know what else to do.

To be clear, I don’t think my commitment to social justice is fulfilled by a few strong words and inciting posts. But I also don’t think writing is completely superfluous.

It does have value.

And I don’t mean my writing – I mean everyone’s writing, or more specifically, everyone’s self-expression on this topic. In whatever media fits them best.

That has value.

We’ve grown so accustomed to relying on professionals and experts, we’ve become so focused on the institutions and the systems, that we’ve nearly lost track of the individual. We’ve forgotten about our own agency.

Our systems and institutions are broken, and we must surely find ways to tackle those challenges, but even with a terrible police response, we ought to remember –

The police aggression at a Texas pool party was started by a white woman yelling racial slurs.

Our problems aren’t about a racist cop, and they’re not about a racist police department. They are problems endemic within our society.

We each play a role in perpetuating, experiencing, or interacting with racism, and the solution must come from all of us.

We shouldn’t let the cop off the hook, and we shouldn’t let the police officer off the hook, but we should also look at ourselves and look at our communities.

We should ask how we can do better, individually and collectively.

We should share our stories, we should share our views, we should learn from each other and we should work together.

We should talk together as much as we should decide how to act together.

Indeed, the question may be “what should we do?” but to find real solutions, we must ask that question together.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

The World Goes On

Posted on by
Reply

This morning I woke up to news from McKinney, Texas, where over the weekend a police officer broke up a pool party, throwing a 14-year-old girl to the ground and pointing his gun at nearby teens.

There was news out of New Jersey, where state troopers shot tear gas into a crowd outside a concert, arresting 61 people and turning ticket-bearing customers away.

From my home town of Oakland, CA, there was news that police shot and killed a man who was sleeping in a car with a handgun on the seat next to him.

And then there’s news of Kalief Browder, a young man arrested at 16 for stealing a backpack. The charges were eventually dismissed, but not before he spent three years in prison without a trial.

At the age of 22, Kalief committed suicide this weekend.

This is the world we live in.

I listened to these stories on the news this morning, interspersed with tidbits on race horses and football players. I listened to these stories of death and destruction, stories of our own criminal justice system turning against us.

And for a moment I wondered how I was supposed to get up and go to work today as if nothing had happened.

Now we all experience moments of tragedy. Through personal tragedies and national tragedies we persevere.

And there can be great power and strength in that. In soldiering on despite the torrent of tragedy, in pushing through a world which has ceased to make sense.

For many of us, that’s part of the healing process. When nothing will ever be okay again, step one is desperately pretending that everything is okay.

But this morning felt different.

These were black men and women being attacked, these were black bodies who were suffering.

The message wasn’t that we were facing a deep national tragedy, that we somehow had to get through it together and soldier on despite the gnawing despair within each one of us.

The message was that it was someone else’s problem, that it was other communities being affected. Their world might be crumbling down, but my world went on.

I was supposed to get up and go to work because my world hadn’t changed.

The police aren’t coming for me.

My world goes on.

But my world has changed. It changes every time an innocent person is shot in our streets and every time our criminal system is about less than justice.

My world has changed.

These are our neighbors, our streets, our laws. This is fundamentally about our society, and everyone’s right to exist equally within it.

And until we each realize that, until we see it as our collective world shattering, until we accept that it is our responsibility to make our society better, until then –

The world will just go on.

As if nothing has changed.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

The Dangling Conversation

Posted on by
Reply

It can be easy to be overwhelmed by the ills of the world.

For years, I worked on efforts to end genocide in Darfur. Or, perhaps more accurately, I worked to raise awareness of genocide as a real problem. A problem that, perhaps, someone ought to do something about. People were dying.

We raised money for on-the-ground and advocacy organizations. We held events with survivors of genocides from the Armenian genocide to the present. We pointed to the dark history of humanity and the shameful inaction of our forefathers.

We questioned why there was always a reason for the U.S. not to get involved, for the world not to get involved.

There’s always a reason not to act.

But the people keep dying.

I’m reminded of that song by Simon and Garfunkel:

And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.
Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said…

I long ago stopped engaging in anti-genocide work. I, like so many others, simply shake my head and heave the windy sigh.

I’ve moved on to other issues, other causes, other problems which also demand to be solved.

There are too many ills to take on them all.

And the dangling conversation remains the borders of our lives.

We each do our own work, focus on the accomplishable, perhaps, or simply tack into the wind for other causes. We each have our strategies for staying sane while we desperately try to bend the arc of the universe towards justice.

It is not easy work.

And there is always more work to do.

And there is always a reason not to act.

The best we can do, I think, is to constant question ourselves. To push to understand our own true goals an motivations.

When you throw up your hands and say, “well, what can be done?” are you genuinely too busy with other work or are you more or less comfortable with the status quo?

Do you genuinely think that nothing can change, or are you simply willing to accept things as they are?

You don’t have to announce your answer to the world, but you deserve to be honest with yourself.

There is too much work in this world, far too much, for any of us to do it alone.

No one person can do it all.

So forgive yourself for embracing some issues while being lukewarm on others, forgive yourself for preferring advocacy to direct service, or favoring one type of work for another.

Follow your strengths and your passions, but know there is always more work to be done.

And be skeptical of yourself when you find your dangling conversations, when you walk away from an issue rather than engage. There is only some much we can take on, sure, but we should push those borders back as far as possible.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

Voting Rights

Posted on by
Reply

In any democracy, the question of who gets to vote has important implications for a group’s power and voice within a society.

Voting has taken place within modern America since at least 1607 when the English established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown. At that time, six men from among the colony’s 105 settlers participated in electing Edward Wingfield as president.

While a 5.7% voting rate among colonists may sound like a dismal start to what would become our nation, those six men represented 100% of eligible voters.

In the United States’ first presidential election, held in 1788–89, there were 43,782 popular votes cast from a population of 3 million. Incidentally, “only 6 of the 10 states casting electoral votes chose electors by any form of popular vote.”

At that time, of course, the constitution didn’t provide any guidelines on who could vote. By convention, only white male property owners over the age of 21 had the right to vote. That was the popular understanding of “the people” at the time.

Since then, our definition has expanded.

In 1870, the 15th amendment gave black men the right to vote, and in 1920, the 19th amendment allowed women to vote as well. Then, in 1971, amongst the protests of the Vietnam War, the 26th amendment lowered the voting age to 18.

So throughout our history, our understanding of who are “the people” and who should be allowed  to vote has shifted.

And each expansion of voting rights has been met by skepticism by those in power.

In Some of the Reasons Against Woman Suffrage, Francis Parkman argued  “Whatever liberty the best civilization may accord to women, they must always be subject to restrictions unknown to the other sex, and they can never dispense with the protecting influences which society throws about them.”

You can perhaps imagine some of Parkman’s supporting points: “everybody knows that the physical and mental constitution of woman is more delicate than in the other sex.”

In his five page pamphlet, Parkman argues over and over again that women are not fit to vote, that most do not want the vote, that giving them the vote would destroy the moral fabric of our society, that the right to vote is a “supreme device for developing the defects of women” which “demolish[s] their real power to build an ugly mockery instead.”

This history is particularly compelling, because as the definition of “the people” continues to expand, we continue to see similar arguments.

People under 18 shouldn’t vote because they aren’t capable of being informed voters. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because most young people don’t care about voting. They shouldn’t have the right to vote because it is our job to protect them and nurture them – giving them the right to vote would be like letting them vote on whether to have cake for dinner.

But such arguments have proven to be flawed.

Those are the rationalizations of a society that has gotten used to putting a segment of the population in it’s “proper” place. Changing that place may disrupt social norms, but history has shown that change to always be for the better.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

Problematic Heroes

Posted on by
Reply

Heroes play an important role in our culture.

Whether they come in the form of celebrities, caregivers, or activists, heroes inspire us. They show us what a person can achieve, and they provide guidance – intentionally or not – on how a person should live.

There’s just one thing – heroes aren’t perfect.

None of us are perfect.

I tend to think of Gandhi as the quintessential problematic hero. He is widely revered and his words are often uttered as hallowed. As if we could truly build a better world if only we could internalize what it means to be the change you wish to see in the world.

But despite his near-saint status, Gandhi was not without his faults.

Speaking of Jews in World War II era German, Gandhi wrote:

And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring [Jews] an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can…The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

That’s some commitment to non-violence.

Furthermore, there is significant evidence that Gandhi was “a most dangerous, semi-repressed sex maniac.” It is certainly well documented that he preferred to sleep “naked next to nubile, naked women to test his restraint.”

I could go on with other problematic elements of Gandhi’s character and beliefs, but I think I’ll stop there.

The point is – the man was far from perfect.

And I don’t mean to pick on Gandhi. I suspect that under the surface of many of our revered, we’d find imperfections and flaws. Racism, dark elements of their past, or simply habits that would trouble our refined sensibilities.

There’s a reason why Jackie Robinson was selected as the first black major league baseball player:

The first black baseball player to cross the “color line” would be subjected to intense public scrutiny…the player would have to be more than a talented athlete to succeed. He would also have to be a strong person who could agree to avoid open confrontation when subjected to hostility and insults, at least for a few years.

And there’s a reason why Rosa Parks’ predecessors weren’t successful in launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 15 year-old Claudette Colvin, the first to be arrested for not moving to the back of the bus, was “too dark skinned, poor, and young to be a sympathetic plaintiff to challenge segregation.”

Activists Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith and Jeanette Reese were similarly seen as not being the right icon for the movement.

But icons aren’t always selected by shrewd organizers, carefully crafting an effort to shift public opinion.

Sometimes these heroes just emerge.

And we should not be surprised to find them flawed.

Perhaps the Greeks were wise to see their gods as afflicted by the drama of human emotions; a hero always has his hubris.

And none of this is to say we should abandon our heroes – that we should be disappointed with their humanity and cast them aside for their flaws.

But we should see them not as a remote icons of perfection, but as whole people – struggling with their flaws just as we struggle with ours.

And then we much each decide whether we find a person’s failings forgivable – whether we can still find wisdom and insight in their words.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

Where the Streets are Reclaimed

Posted on by
Reply

There was some news coming out of my hometown this weekend. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf instituted a ban on nighttime protests in response to Sunday’s #SayHerName protest.

Mayor Schaaf argued that “there have been no changes to any city policy or enactment of any new ordinances in any way to prohibit peaceful protests,” however, it seems clear that this is a novel interpretation or implementation of city laws.

After night fall, Oakland Police Officers will “block demonstrators from marching in the streets.”

This, despite the fact that “Oakland crowd control policy specifically states that OPD will facilitate marches in the street regardless of whether a permit has be obtained as long as it’s feasible to do so.”

Of course, since its implementation, there have been protests every night as citizens peacefully test the limits of the new regulations.

Now, too be fair, Mayor Schaaf is in a difficult position. She was harshly criticized at the beginning of the month for the vandalism which occurred at Oakland’s May day protest.

And I don’t imagine Oakland to be a city where keeping demonstrations peaceful is easy. Oakland has long been known for its riots – for social justice and Raider’s games alike.

Some of that reputation is overblown racism from the wealthier side of the bay – but as an Oaklander myself, I have to admit, even riots make me a little proud.

So, reasonable or not, the city government sees two possible actions: minimally impinge on protestors rights, risking significant property damage, OR minimally impinge on property-owners rights, ensuring the safety of homes and businesses but restricting the freedom of protesters.

From that point of view, I’d expect most city officials to go with the property-owners. The first responsibility of any government is to ensure the safety of its citizens and their belongings. Justice will almost always take a back seat to that.

I see similar logic coming out of Baltimore and other cities – when a portion of the population turns to looting and vandalism, best impose a curfew. Keep the law abiding citizens out of the way, and clean up the trouble makers. That’s the best solution for the folks who don’t want any trouble.

In someways, that approach is not dissimilar to the shutdown of Boston which occurred following the 2013 marathon bombing. Police were searching for a suspect, a lot was uncertain, and they asked the rest of us to stay out of the way while they got their work done. Seems reasonable.

There’s just one thing: perusing a man who set bombs off across the city – even hurling explosives at police as they fled – is not the same thing as protecting a city from itself.

These are Oaklanders out on the street protesting. These are Baltimoreans and New Yorkers, and folks from Ferguson.

Whose streets? They chant. Our streets.

These are our streets.

I’m not convinced the problem is really a zero-sum game as it’s been laid to to be. Does it really come down to a choice of restricting freedom for protestors or restricting rights of property owners? Are those really the only choices we have?

That implies that government’s role is primarily to protect the rights of the majority. That whenever conflict arises, it is the minority who must suffer. It’s James Madison’s fear of factions all over again.

Our government was designed to prevent this.

But perhaps it could do a better job. Perhaps too often the rights of the minority are subjugated to the rights of the majority.

Indeed, they are – that’s why we protest.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail

Double Standards in Coverage and Response?

Posted on by
Reply

My newsfeed is full of stories questioning the role of race in covering the recent incident in Waco, Texas, where a shootout between rival biker gangs left nine people dead, seven hospitalized, and many more wounded.

Some of these memes have been straight up erroneous, arguing that our country’s racial double standard is clearly demonstrated by the fact that nobody was arrested following this shootout. That’s a tough sell, though, since 170 people were arrested and are each being held on $1 million bond.

Other articles question the language used to describe these white perpetrators – people in Baltimore were described as “thugs” why not these gang members?

That’s a really interesting question and I’d love to see more data on the words used to cover different incidents. For me, the absence of the word “thugs” is not enough to see a clear distinction in media coverage.

After all, the mayor of Baltimore apologized for using that word, and frankly, I’m not sure “gang member” is much better – to me it sounds like a thug with a better network.

(Although I do have to question NBC’s decision to use the word “rumble” – what is this, West Side Story?)

All of this is not to say that there aren’t terrible racial inequities in this country. If the news coverage has been biased, than we should think carefully about how all crimes should be covered.

But while news coverage is important, I’m far more interested in a different question – how do institutions treat people differently?

The shootout happened at an event for which a “coalition of motorcycle groups had reserved the outdoor bar area.”

Just right there that sounds different.

These are groups known for illicit activity and violently defending their territory. Yet their freedom to assemble remains impinged.

Frankly, I think that’s good. While it may come with some risk, there’s a reason that right is guaranteed to us in the Constitution.

However, it’s a right that can be easily taken a way by mandatory curfews for an entire city.

Police arrived on the scene in Waco “within 30 to 45 seconds” of the first gunshots. They opened fire on the warring gang members only after “some bikers turned their weapons on law enforcement.”

From what I can tell, police responded swiftly, strongly, and appropriately – none of which were true in Baltimore. In that city, police set up a situation almost destined to turn into a riot, and then didn’t have enough force to shut down what they created.

Baltimore was a hot mess from top to bottom.

It’s hard to tell empirically just what led to the different responses. Baltimore is a city know for its corruption and mismanagement. Texas is…a place where its not surprising that they have no qualms about hosting a gathering of armed criminals.

It’s almost impossible to believe that race wasn’t a factor in this differing response, but I also wonder – are there lessons we can learn more broadly from Texas about institutional support and police response?

That is to say, we shouldn’t just be asking whether media has a double standard. We should be asking that of ourselves and of all our institutions.

facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditlinkedintumblrmail