Without a doubt, it is the people that make an organization what it is. And we here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute would not be what we are today without the hard work of the staff here. It is with that note that we wish our wonderful Professional Development director and all around fantastic civics educator, Peggy Renihan, the best of luck as she transitions to a new position in Bay County.

Peggy has worked at the Lou Frey Institute for more than a decade. In many ways, she IS the face of the Institute and FJCC in certain parts of the state. Her approach to both relationship building and working with teachers and districts, especially but not exclusively in the northern part of Florida, is one that will not be duplicated.

We wish we could keep her, and we envy Bay County for getting someone with such incredible talents and expertise. Peggy, thank you so much for all that you have done, for civics, for the Center and the Institute, and for your family here. You are appreciated beyond words, and our community will not be the same without you.

We reported on June 17:

Sixty-eight percent of African Americans say they know someone who has been unfairly stopped, searched, questioned, physically threatened or abused by the police, and 43 percent say they personally have had this experience—with 22 percent saying the mistreatment occurred within the past year alone, according to survey results from Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement.

According to the KFF Health Tracking Poll for June, 2020, about 30% of Black adults say they have “experienced unfair treatment in interactions with police” within the past year. Forty-one percent of Black adults “say they have been stopped or detained by police because of their racial or ethnic background,” and “about one in five Black adults (21%)–including 30% of Black men–say they have been a victim of police violence due to their racial background.”

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ most recent (2015) Police-Public Contact Survey, 19.8% of African Americans age 16+ had some contact with the police in the past year. This number is the total of several specific types of contact that are asked in the survey, such as riding in a car that was stopped by the police or reporting a crime, among others. The total rate of contact was down by six percentage points compared to 2011.

In the BJS survey, whites were three percentage points more likely than African Americans to report any contact with the police but were also more likely to initiate the contact. Of those who reported that they had been stopped on the street by police, two thirds of whites (67.8%) but only half of Blacks (50.1%) said that the reason for the stop was legitimate.

Of Blacks who said that they had contacted the police, 90.7% said the police behaved properly and 83.6% said they were satisfied by the outcome–very similar rates to whites. The survey implies that 2.7 million African Americans initiated contact with the police in 2015, of whom about 2.3 million were satisfied. This is a fact with some political significance in discussions of defunding the police. At the same time, 3.3% of Blacks and 1.3% of whites reported that the police had used force against them in 2015.

A significant limitation involves the samples of all these surveys. Our survey excludes people in prisons or jails. So does the BJS survey, which also excludes “homeless persons.” I am not sure about the sample of the KFF survey, but it is conducted predominantly by random-digit dialing, which would miss institutionalized people and homeless people. Rates of discriminatory contact would likely be higher if institutionalized and homeless people were included.

The statistics from these three surveys are not strictly comparable. The populations, samples, dates, and questions vary. Still, careful comparisons are interesting. BJS finds that 19.8% of Blacks reported any contact with the police in 2015, and many of those contacts were perceived as legitimate. We find that 22% of Blacks experienced discriminatory treatment by the police in 2020. There could certainly be measurement errors or biases in either survey. Or the rate of discriminatory treatment could have risen in 2020 as a result of mass protests. I would also suspect that some forms of discriminatory treatment do not occur during events that people identify as “contacts.” If a police officer yells at you while driving by but doesn’t stop, that could be an act of discrimination but not a contact.

See also: Two-thirds of African Americans know someone mistreated by police, and 22% report mistreatment in past year; on the phrase: Abolish the police!; insights on police reform from Elinor Ostrom and social choice theory; and science, law, and microagressions.

Survey by Tufts University researchers also finds 42% of Latinos and 27% of Whites know victims of police mistreatment

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (June 17, 2020)—Sixty-eight percent of African Americans say they know someone who has been unfairly stopped, searched, questioned, physically threatened or abused by the police, and 43 percent say they personally have had this experience—with 22 percent saying the mistreatment occurred within the past year alone, according to survey results from Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement.

Forty-two percent of Latinos and 27 percent of Whites also say they know someone who was unfairly stopped by police, with 23 percent of Latinos and 13 percent of Whites reporting that they personally have had these experiences.

The nationally representative survey of adults, conducted between May 29 and June 10, also looked at other forms of discrimination, and found that, in all types except one, higher percentages of African Americans report being subjected to discrimination than other groups. The survey was designed and analyzed by Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement.

“Some people might think that day-to-day discrimination happens primarily during routine interactions, such as shopping. But one of the eye-opening results of our survey is that Black people are about as likely to report being stopped unfairly by police as they are to encounter discrimination in a store or in other interactions,” said Deborah J. Schildkraut, professor and chair of Political Science in Tufts’ School of Arts and Sciences.

Although African Americans are 3.3 times more likely than Whites to report that they personally have been unfairly stopped by police, 34% of all Americans say that someone they know has been unfairly treated by the police, and 18% have had such experiences themselves. “Across all races and ethnicities, many people may either feel a personal stake in reforming the police or they may be primed to believe accusations that the police are racially biased because of their own experiences, or both,” said Peter Levine, associate dean for research in Tufts’ Tisch College of Civic Life.

Other forms of discrimination are also pervasive

The survey shows that a higher percentage of African Americans report being subjected to other forms of discrimination than other groups do. For example, 28 percent of African Americans sometimes or frequently feel that other people are afraid of them. By contrast, nine percent of Latinos and six percent of Whites also have that sense.

The only form of discrimination for which African Americans are not the highest percentage involves being mistaken for someone of the same race despite having dissimilar appearances. This experience is most common for Asian-Americans in this survey, although the sample size for Asian-Americans is small.

*Includes Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and people reporting more than two races/ethnicities. The sample size does not permit reliable estimates for Asian Americans or Native Americans separately. The discrimination survey items were adapted from those developed by Williams, D. R., Yan Yu, Jackson, J. S., & Anderson, N. B. (1997). Racial Differences in Physical and Mental Health: Socio-economic Status, Stress and Discrimination. Journal of Health Psychology, 2(3), 335–351. The table and figure show the proportions of people who have ever been treated unfairly by the police, denied a service unfairly, or known someone who has faced police discrimination, and the proportions who “sometimes” or “frequently” report the other forms of discrimination. (The response options for these questions were different.)

Most people of all races and ethnicities (76 percent of the whole sample) report experiencing at least one of the forms of discrimination in the survey. However, the proportions of people who say they have never experienced any of these forms of experience varies from 11 percent of African Americans to 27 percent of Whites.

Personal experiences

In addition to answering the survey’s questions, respondents could type comments about their personal experiences with discrimination, and some described pervasive negative experiences based on feelings of racial isolation. For example, a Latina woman wrote, “It’s hard and a bit humiliating when you try to be in a town of only white people.” 

Several African American respondents offered stories of discrimination by the police. One man wrote, “[I was] walking home and got [stopped] by the police for no reason. He said ‘hey boy where are (you) going and start laughing. pull up your shirt’.  … one said this is how you plant drugs on someone” [sic].

An African American woman wrote, “I’ve been [asked] to leave a public parking lot, at an apartment complex by the police, my boyfriend resided there.” And another Black woman wrote, “I had a cop grab me by my bra for no reason other than I was doing what was asked of me.”

Forty-four percent of the people who say they have been treated unfairly by police are White.  One white man, for example, described this personal experience: “Pulled over by a police officer. He asked me to get out of the car, I did. Then he slammed me on the hood of his cruiser.” Another white man offered a more general observation: “The police almost everywhere think that they are better and more privileged than others. They think that the law does not apply to them and they act with utter impunity.”

A smaller number of respondents also provided positive comments about the police, and two respondents who are police officers said they had faced discrimination because of their law enforcement affiliations.

Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement was established in 2019 as part of a strategic effort to use resources and expertise across the university to address major global issues. It brings together researchers from across the university to discuss and investigate aspects of equity and inequity in the United States and the world. The research has been funded by Tufts University’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research as one of several such initiatives.

The group’s principal investigators are Jennifer Allen, professor of Community Health in the Tufts School of Arts and Sciences;  Peter Levine, associate dean for academic affairs and Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts; and Thomas Stopka, associate professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Other members of the group can be found here.

By September 2020, the Research Group will launch a website at https://equityresearch.tufts.edu that will allow anyone to explore numerous dimensions of equity and inequity with an interactive data-visualization tool. Tufts’ Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life is funding the data-visualization tool.

The survey was fielded online by Ipsos using its KnowledgePanel. The sample was nationally representative, and the number of complete responses was 1,267. More technical information about the survey is at https://equityresearch.tufts.edu/the-survey/.

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About Tufts University

Tufts University, located on campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, Massachusetts, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university’s schools is widely encouraged.

Good evening, friends. You are likely aware of our recent re-launch of the first three courses in our The Civics Classroom series.

Well, we just couldn’t wait until July 1st, so are excited to announce that A Constitutional Classroom is now open! This fourth course in the series, developed in collaboration with our partners at Bay District Schools, explores the underlying ideas of the US Constitution and is ‘hosted’ by Dr. Charles Flanagan of the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives!

A Constitutional Classroom will provide teachers with an understanding of:

• Major ideas in the U.S. Constitution,
• How to apply disciplinary literacy skills, and
• Preparing for instruction to make content accessible for all learners.

You can get info to register for the new course, and download the syllabus, over at Florida Citizen!

As the salesman on TV once said, but wait, that’s not all!

We have also completed and are now launching the first course in what we hope will be a strong and long series for high school US history! The High School US History: The Civil War and Reconstruction Era is, like A Constitutional Classroom, hosted by our friend Dr. Charles Flanagan from the National Archives’ Center for Legislative Archives and was developed in collaboration with our partners at Bay District Schools. 

The High School US History: Civil War and Reconstruction course will provide teachers with pedagogy, content, and resources for:

• the major ideas of the cause, course, and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era
• primary sources and disciplinary literacy
• strategies and structures for accessible learning

You can get info to register for the new course and download the syllabus at the course page on Florida Citizen.

But what about you folks in high school US Government? We have a new course for you as well!

The High School Government Classroom: Building Critical Knowledge course will provide teachers with pedagogy, content, and resources for:

• lesson planning and preparation in social studies
• the principles of American democracy
• the US Constitution
• Founding Documents
• Landmark Cases

For Florida teachers, this course is intended to help you prepare students for the new Civic Literacy Assessment. However, it also provides a basic foundation in US government content, pedagogy, and resources and aligns with the newHigh School US Government modules on Civics360! (And there will be a post on the launch of that new resource later!). 

You can get info to register for the course and download the syllabus over at, you guessed it, Florida Citizen.

We hope that you find these new courses beneficial!

Questions? Email Steve!

Here is a general theory, drawn from the “Bloomington School” of political economy:

1. Public safety is a good. Providing this good is at least somewhat costly: people must keep an eye on each other, refrain from violence, teach their children to be respectful of others, maybe punish or at least shun violators. The benefit is shared: everyone gains from the prosperity and peace that result from public safety. But the benefit is fragile: when any individual violates these norms, public safety can be undermined for all.
2. Costly, fragile, shared goods are difficult to provide. One way to provide such a good is to make and enforce a rule that everyone must pay to provide it, and then use the funds to hire some people to do the work. If public education is a public good, then we can require everyone to pay taxes and use that money to hire professional teachers, and perhaps require every child to attend public schools. If public safety is a public good, then we can collect mandatory taxes to pay for police.
3. One advantage of a mandate is that it solves the collective-action problem of providing the common good. Another advantage is that it puts the service-provider under the control of a government, which can be an equitable and liberal democracy. A third advantage is that the same rules that create the service can also regulate it in the interest of justice. For example, when establishing public schools, we can require that they serve all children.
4. One disadvantage of this method is that the service-providers will likely reflect the biases and downright evils of the society. In a racist society, the schools, police, public health systems, and other public services will likely be racist. In a colony, they will probably be imperialist. In a communist state, they will probably be predatory. This means that although policing is not inherently racist in all countries and times, the police will be structurally racist in any racist society. (The generic problem is untrustworthiness.)
5. Another disadvantage is that the service-providers, although meant to be agents of the community, may develop their own interests. They may lobby, threaten to strike, vote as a bloc, form close relationships with elected leaders, and so on. Then their actual impact will deviate from their assigned mission.
6. Considering that the basic task of policing is coercion, the generic disadvantages of mandates will likely take the form of harmful coercion in the case of police. Harmful coercion is violence. In contrast, mandatory education or public health systems are more likely to demonstrate bias in how they distribute resources and define goods. Hospitals, for example, are “violent” (if at all) in a looser or more metaphorical sense than police with guns.
7. One kind of solution to the problems listed in #4-6 is reform: change rules, oversight mechanisms, organizational flowcharts, or budgets to reduce bias and self-interest.
8. Another kind of solution is to develop a thorough alternative to the mandatory approach described in #2. Mandates are not the only way to provide public goods. People can provide goods voluntarily under favorable circumstances.
9. One kind of alternative to a mandate is a market. Individuals can purchase their own goods, possibly with a subsidy from the state to equalize their buying power. This is the idea behind school vouchers; it is also very common in policing, where lots of security is actually provided by private firms and technology, such as alarm systems. The drawbacks of markets are hinted at in #3.
10. A different kind of alternative is a “commons”: a mechanism for collective action that is neither a top-down mandate nor a market. For both education and public safety, we see pervasive elements of commons alongside states and markets. For example, on a city block where adults keep their eyes on everyone’s kids, public safety (and education) are handled as a commons.
11. Hybrids are not only possible; they are usually wise, because they avoid the risks of systematic failure and domination that come from relying on one social form alone. For instance, it is possible to have police with a limited role, a rent-a-cop at the drug store, and a range of voluntary associations and networks that generate public safety as a commons.

See also on the phrase: Abolish the police!; insights on police reform from Elinor Ostrom and social choice theory; the Chicago police and NY State prison scandals reinforce the need for countervailing power; avoiding a sharp distinction between the state and the private sphere; China teaches the value of political pluralism; polycentricity: the case for a (very) mixed economy; what kind of a good is education?; and the right to strike.

Consider these points, made in the last 48 hours by scholars of color:

In the last weeks, there have been unprecedentedly large protests against police violence and systemic racism. The grievances are familiar. … But this time seems different. The costs of protesting are higher, and grievances are more intense, as I’ll explain below. Partly as a result, policymakers appear to be doing more to address protesters’ concerns. …

I find that legislators are 44 percent more likely to vote in favor of black protesters’ demands than white protesters’ demands. They are 39 percent more likely to vote in support of Latino protesters’ demands than white protesters’ demands. Legislators are 32 percent more likely to vote in favor of low-income protesters than more affluent protesters. And they are 10 percent more likely to vote in support of in-person protests, like marches or rallies, versus online protests, like online petitions or social media posts.

[She explains that protest by disadvantaged people is more costly, and costly protests have more political impact.] Legislators’ greater support of costly protest exists even when evaluating protests of equal size, disruptiveness and media attention. …

To be sure, the costliness of the protests is not the only factor in these rapid actions. Black Lives Matter has been shifting public opinion for several years now, and the Floyd protests have dramatically increased that shift, so that a majority of Americans now say they support the protesters’ claims. But given the dangers — the costs — of protesting during a pandemic, massive unemployment, widely circulated stories of brutality, and an election year, officials realize that the grievances are intense — and that black people and their allies are likely to punish officials at the polls if they don’t take action now.

LaGina Gause, “Black people have protested police killings for years. Here’s why officials are finally responding“

The change is coming “at a speed that I don’t think we’ve seen before in American politics,” said Dorian Warren, president of Community Change, a nonprofit that works with grassroots groups in low-income communities around the county. …

“You can’t argue with the facts that you’re seeing, or wish them away, or make up an alternative story, because it’s 8 minutes, 46 seconds.”

Moreover, the Floyd video came on the heels of years of organizing by Black Lives Matter activists, as well as movements like the Women’s March and, further back, Occupy Wall Street, Warren said. It also came after the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, young black Americans whose deaths also sparked outrage. Activists have been drawing attention to issues of police violence and race, gender, and class inequality for years, and those issues have only grown more urgent in recent months.

“One way to think about this metaphorically is like an earthquake,” he explained. Organizing by Black Lives Matter and other groups moves slowly, like tectonic plates: “and then all of a sudden they collide.”

Warren is quoted by Anna North in “White Americans are finally talking about racism. Will it translate into action?“

The massive, multiracial coalitions that have taken to the streets to raise their voices against police brutality are replenishing springs of solidarity, nourishing the roots of a future social compact that we must now all get on with the business of making. We will do that most effectively with a common purpose in mind.

A common purpose is not some airy-fairy thing. It is a practical tool that allows people to achieve something together. It is a map marked with a destination, a guide that permits collaborative navigation. A common purpose is perhaps the most powerful tool in the democratic tool kit, particularly in a crisis, because it can yield the solidarity that induces people to do hard things voluntarily rather than through authoritarian compulsion. Yet the tool has been disintegrating from disuse.

Our common purpose is liberty and justice for all. We have rediscovered it. It’s time to build on that discovery.

Danielle Allen, “We seek reforms to policing. But something even deeper needs repair“

Anger, shame, and fear are appropriate emotions right now, but the emotional palette should be richer than that. And it is richer for many scholars of color (and others) who were already deeply aware of injustice, but for whom the news is the power of the popular response.

History unfolds gradually, painfully, without evident purpose–until suddenly people break it open, allowing a better future to appear like a flash of light. Many such ruptures close again, but some do not. Pessimism (a habit ingrained by ordinary history) blocks the light. An inward turn, even if it is meant to be self-critical, can turn you away from solidarity. To take advantage of an opening, you must be receptive to hope, boldness, and even joy in the opportunity for solidarity and collective purpose.

See also: the kind of sacrifice required in nonviolence; taking satisfaction from politics in the face of injustice; notes on Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution; the prophetic mode in the Civil Rights Movement and in everyday politics; on the phrase: Abolish the police!; Martin Luther King as a philosopher.