Race, Class and Justice

Ferguson and police brutality in other quarters have had me thinking about police, justice, race and equality lately.

As the pensive progressive that I am, I've been watching the back and forth of the arguments on both sides and been slow to respond, because I wanted to fully think through my thoughts on the matter before commenting.

In a sense, I think both sides have valid points, in some ways, but many, many points are being missed.  The conservative side seems to be that police officers have tough jobs, that punching cops is not only foolish but immortal and conservatives tend to believe that Brown was not running away when he was shot.

My fellow progressives point out that history has shown that we cannot always trust the police to be just and non-brutal, that black people, being an oppressed minority, are full of anger that we as a society should try to understand and progressives tend to believe witnesses who say that Brown was running away when he was fired on.

It's true that actual law and justice matter.  It's also true that black lives matter.  The problem, as it seems to me, is that justice is what's missing from the entire situation.  Doesn't our Pledge of Allegiance say, "liberty and justice for all?"  "All" certainly includes black people, Latinos and, indeed, every type of human being of all races.  It is explicitly non-limited to white people.

I think the problem with understanding the issue and just what's at stake here is that we have the illusion of non-racism in middle class, white America.  On TV, we see non-white people in every walk of life, both fictional and non-fictional.  We see non-white news casters, CEO's, police officers,  lawyers and we have a non-white president.  It can seem like non-white people have plenty of power.

It's a common experience, particularly in a progressive milieu, that we white people talk amongst ourselves and nobody seems racist in any prejudicial way.  Many of us, at least in progressive urban areas, probably know mixed race couples.  It can easily seem like everything's fine.  I can see how how easy it is to think that there's nothing beyond the idea that "the police have a tough job" and sometimes accidents happen and, that, anyway, "good" people don't punch police officers. 

I think the line of reasoning that such people have is based on the idea that non-whites are being extended the same justice that white people are and, therefore, non-whites should be expected to have a relationships to the police similar to what people in white suburbia have: a respectful attitude in which we trust police to protect, serve and play their proper role in our justice system.

While I can see that perspective, I think people who see American justice that way are missing something very important, but something that, to be fair, is hidden in plain sight.  It's something that is so easy to miss, particularly if one's background is middle class white.

There's been an eerie calm for quite awhile in such milieus.  It's almost like one can see that something very wrong is there out of the corner of one's eye, but can't quite make out what. Let me see if I can bring it out into plain sight.

Let me start by pointing out that not all forms of racism fit the traditional prejudicial variety that we most commonly think of as racism.  Before I explain this, though, let me say that that traditional, prejudicial definition that we commonly think of when we hear the word is very, very much alive, even today in the early Twenty First Century.  If you're a white person reading this, it may not be you who's doing it and it may not be your friends or anyone you know, but, rest assured, there are very real prejudicial, all-out, oppressive racists out there and in higher numbers than one might imagine.  However, I think many of my fellow progressives have covered that angle on this issue, and I'd like to use my blogging to raise awareness about some other forms of racism that I think greatly impact the present issue of the recent police killings of non-whites.

One often overlooked form of racism is functional racism.   That is racism that is in place because of institutions, the way our society is setup and because of social history.  Even if every single white person in America had zero prejudice whatsoever, there would still be major racial problems.  The descendents of black slaves were almost universally never given their one acre and donkey.  The native tribes and nations in our land (I'm speaking of the "Native Americans" for those for whom I'm being too subtle) would still be living on the reservations. 

If poor black people were to go to a completely non-prejudiced bank for a home loan and get serviced by a black person, they'd still be more likely to get denied for the home loan because they're more likely to have a bad credit rating, which in turn is because they're families have been poor for generations, which in turn is because they've been oppressed. 

Recall that our credit all starts out relatively "bad" without doing anything.  Like many, I graduated college without very good credit when I had done nothing at all to deserve it.  I didn't get good credit until I paid off my first car loan and paid my credit cards off on time for several years.  That's because that's how our credit works but it's also because I come from a middle class white family that could afford to buy me a college education, which in turn meant that I could get the sort of job that allowed me to pay off a car loan and pay off my credit cards.  So, good credit is a middle class privilege and, therefore, a privilege denied to many oppressed people, because they didn't have parents who could pay for their college because they're ancestors have been oppressed.

This brings me to a combination of factors that brings class into the picture.  Let me focus on blacks, for the moment, since it's germane, but the following comments also hold true of other people of color as well.  It's hard to get out of poverty and it's only become harder over the decades.  We all hear about how great the 50's was for upward mobility, but it was good for white people, whereas black people were being severely oppressed.  Ever since then, upward mobility has become less and less viable, largely due to conservative efforts to kill equal opportunity.

Are there black people who have made it out of poverty?  Of course there are and we should applaud them for doing so, but anyone who's poor, white or non-, will have a hard time getting out of poverty no matter how hard they work and no matter how much they steer clear of addictive drugs, gangs, gambling addictions, alcoholism and so forth.  Someone who's well off and has these behaviors can often squeak by, whereas poor people often can't.

So, class comes into this picture and I think that while there may be much less prejudice against non-whites in some ways, there's also a strong prejudice against impoverished people of color.  Take, for example, a Puerto Rican friend of mine.  He has a high tech job at a major corporation in San Francisco that I guarantee you've heard of.  He reports that his coworkers and management treat him just fine, but that he often gets harassed by the cops, walking back to his car in the evening.

I think what's going on here is that it's easy for us middle class white people to think we're not prejudiced in cases in which we can clearly identify a non-white person as middle class.  Ditto for police officers.  After all, if we have non-white coworkers maybe even non-white managers, and we're cool with it, it can easily seem like we're not prejudiced.  I'd ask my white readers to imagine, let's say, a black guy in a nice sweater, a black guy in a collared shirt or even a black guy with a geeky t-shirt.  I'd imagine that for much of white middle class America these images seem easy.  It can be easy imagining that the guy is middle class like us, working with the guy, getting a beer with him and being friends with him.  We may even know black guys like that whom we count among our friends.

Now, however, I'd invite my fellow middle class white reader to imagine a black guy in torn jeans and a sweatshirt with a hoodie walking down a dark street at night.  Did you suddenly want to cross the street?  If so, I think it's because of a prejudice against a race/class combination.  If so, that means that only non-white folks who have gotten out from under poverty or who were never poor to begin with are really afforded a non-prejudicial status.

And here's the really hard part.  Low income neighborhoods tend to be higher crime.  That means that non-whites who haven't gotten out from under poverty (and recall that they're poor because they or their parents, or grandparents have been oppressed) live in high crime areas.  That also means that a higher percentage of poor/non-white people are going to commit crimes because they're poor, not because they're non-white.  In fact, a lot of poor white people are also more likely to commit crimes.  However, let's take a breath here and remember that there are lots and lots of poor people (non-white as well as white) who aren't criminals at all.  In fact, I could easily imagine that the vast majority of such people are not.

Why are poor people more likely to commit crimes?  It's difficult to tell.  The most obvious answer often given by progressives is that they commit crimes because they're desperate.  The counter-argument that conservatives often make is that non-good people are more likely to be poor.  That holds about as much water as a sieve for me, because I can't think of really any examples of people who started out middle class, gave into their desires, became criminals and ended up in poverty.  I am convinced that there are lots and lots of people who can't get out of poverty and that some (I think actually small but larger than middle class) percentage of those people are criminals.

However, I'm not entirely convinced of the argument many of my fellow progressives make that poor people are more likely to commit crimes out of desperation.  In fact, I have another theory.  It's well known that the police in many metropolitan areas have given up on certain poor neighborhoods because they're just "too high crime".  What kind of an excuse is that?  If middle class neighborhoods were being overrun by crime, the police would stop it.  I think that the real reason why there's more crime in poor neighborhoods is that our society makes it a low priority to bring justice to poor neighborhoods because, frankly, our society doesn't, as a whole, care enough about poor people (and that goes double for poor people of color).

I know enough middle class people, such as former coworkers of mine, to know that there are lots of nasty people everywhere.  There are plenty of middle class people who I think would commit crimes if they thought they could get away with it.  They don't, I think, because they live in well policed neighborhoods and don't want to get in trouble.  Also, they have more legal, if just as unethical, means of getting what they want: the corporate machine that they're a part of.

I think if the police, DA, judges and really our whole justice system withdrew justice from middle class neighborhoods, those neighborhoods would also be high crime  too because there are just nasty people everywhere.  The good news is that I think the non-nasty of us outnumber the nasty, but it only takes small numbers of nasty people to tip the balance to where we'd all be afraid without our society having a justice system.  I think this is exactly the picture of poor neighborhoods.  That's why this theory of mine is so compelling to me.

So... to review where we've come so far, I think what we have in America today is a class/race combination that is being very seriously oppressed.  Why is there so much police brutality in poor non-white communities?  Because our society as a whole doesn't care enough about justice in poor neighborhoods and this goes double for poor non-white neighborhoods.  I think way too many among us look at those neighborhoods, see how high crime they are and think that they're high crime because there's something wrong with the people in them.  In fact, these neighborhoods are high crime because justice has been withdrawn from them and many, many non-white people live in them because they can't get out of poverty, which in turn is because they've historically been oppressed.  Make sense?

The solution needs to go far beyond eliminating prejudice and far beyond having all police officers be good and do the right thing (like avoiding firing on unarmed civilians).  Although it's a problem that there are bad cops, I think that the problem as a whole runs much deeper.  To solve all this, we need to solve the root problems.  Part of this is to bring true justice to poor neighborhoods, part of this is to recognize race/class prejudice and change our thinking as a society and part of it is solving class problems and including non-whites in the solution as we do so.

Before we even begin to talk about whether a civilian with a criminal record punching a police officer justifies a police officer shooting the civilian and how tough police officers' jobs are (and it's not clear to me that police officers do have the right to fire their guns and kill people even in such situations), we need to have justice implemented uniformly across all classes (and races, of course, too, but I want to tease out the class element of this issue, so I'll focus on that for a moment).

To do that, our society has to really get serious about justice in poor neighborhoods.  Now, conservatives seem to think we already have that, but I'd ask them to think again.  As I've said, justice is a middle class privilege when it should be acknowledged as everyone's right.   Taking justice in poor neighborhoods seriously means bringing the same level of justice to bear that is brought to middle class neighborhoods.  That, in turn, means eliminating prejudice against poor people.  Police seriously need to start seeing poor people the same way they see middle class people: as, for the most part, basically good human beings who are just trying to make it.  They need to recognize that poor neighborhoods are high crime because they're poor, which, as I've said, I think is because they've been neglected by our society, rather than seeing them as poor because they're high crime.  That is, police need to stop blaming the victim.  It's not just police who need to do this, either, it's all of us.

Justice and severity are two entirely different things.  Being brutal to people in poor neighborhoods is as far from justice as I can think.  Justice means a balance between mercy and severity.  It means a that people are understood to be innocent until proven guilty, that police need probable cause for searches and arrests and so forth.  It means that, while police can and should do their jobs, they should treat poor people with respect and not just assume that they're drug users, drug dealers, gang members or what have you.  It means that they need to honor poor people's human rights when they question them, ask to search their cars, homes or persons, etc.  It means they shouldn't harass people.  Yes, they should do their jobs (which, if we'll recall is to protect and serve), but they should avoid suspecting poor people of being criminals and, instead, keep everything cut and dry and by the books. 

Only then can we talk about how tough police officers jobs are, when they have a right to fire their guns, use other forms of force and so forth.  Only when we have justice in all neighborhoods and all quarters can we hold police officers the protectors of justice.  Even then, we must always keep an eye out for corrupt officers, because weeding out bad officers is part of justice.

This would be the first step is bringing justice to poor people of color, but a second condition must be met too.  We must stop prejudice against poor people of color (or people of color perceived to be poor).  The first step toward this is acknowledging that there's a difference of perception among many of us between seeing, say, a black guy in a sweater and khakis in a middle class neighborhood and a black guy in a sweatshirt and jeans in a poor neighborhood.  The second step is to eliminate class/race of prejudice once identified.

A huge step, though, that needs to be taken in our society is to increase class mobility and equal opportunity so that people who are born poor have a fair shot to all forms of success in their lives (in the many ways we measure success) compared to people born middle class compared to people born rich.  We need to do this by having our public schools be the best schools government revenue can provide.  We need to provide universal healthcare to all.  We need to put the generation of jobs before profit margins and tax loopholes so that there are actually jobs for poor people to get.

And, yes, this means paying taxes.  None of us like paying taxes any more than we like dieting, going to the gym or balancing our checkbooks.  However, if we're ethical people, we'll realize that we, as members of society, have a social obligation to make sure that everyone has equal opportunity.  People who were born middle class or rich and complaining about paying taxes for good public education, public healthcare and so forth fail to realize how much privilege they were born into.  We all need to pay taxes in order to have a good, just and fair society in which everyone gets a fair shot at all forms of success.

And, such a society will have the benefit of being lower crime, which will be better for everyone.  Living in a world in which everyone succeeds is best for all of us and, if ethics for the sake of ethics aren't a good enough reason to pay taxes for equal opportunity, living in a world in which everyone gets a fair shot at success and crime is low is a great reward.  Ensuring this is a social obligation for all of us.  It is non-optional.

To be blunt, someone who grew up poor in a gang-dominated neighborhood, devoid of justice has way, way less opportunity than someone who grew up rich.  Until that problem is dealt with, the whole conservative argument that somehow people who are poor are just lazy and people who have money somehow "deserve" it is bunk.  People who are poor typically lack equal opportunity.  People who are rich typically started out with privilege.  (Never mind the fact that a lot of people who got rich did so by being underhanded, dirty cheats, but I'll save that for another blog.)

Until we have equal opportunity and upward mobility in place, poor people of color will continue to have tremendous and undue difficulty getting out of poverty, because they're poor and they're poor because their ethnic groups have traditionally been oppressed.

Only once we solve these deep problems can we really know if prejudice is keeping them down.  It may well be that it is and, if so (and I think it likely), we'll have to address that too.  However, just eliminating prejudice will never be enough.  We need to respond to the class part of the issue as well as the race part of the issue.

In conclusion, police brutality against poor people of color is only one small part of this huge social problem.  We must deal with the entire social problem at its root.  Fighting prejudice alone is insufficient.  Just being outraged about police brutality, while important, is insufficient.  Having a long term strategy to address the root causes I've described is the only road to assure that police brutality and other atrocities against poor people of color truly cease.