As the blog entry Untangling Police-on-Black Violence was spooling out, my attention kept being drawn back to my other blog entry, Blew My Theory, in which I admit my bias that the South would be the site of more such violence. I was wrong.
So I had to do something and grabbed the only book handy, Chris Hayes’ A Colony in a Nation, where he points out the answer to the conundrum: the punitive nature of Southern law enforcement results in Whites suffering in a much more “equitable” way there. So I put that in the blog item.
This means “Somebody Up There” likes me.
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
Does this translate to “southern cops are more likely to shoot you than northern cops”?
Possibly, but at least they don’t discriminate. Figures on the web.
Moreover, it means violence in general in the South is higher b/c of the punishment mentality. That’s part of what has been called the Southernization of America, the spread of the “Southern way of life” to other parts of the country, esp the Midwest and Southwest. California is horrible in regard to police lethality. But to the Southern way of life, complaining about police violence, brutality, lethality, is like complaining about the tide: it just is part of God’s Great Plan. They not only don’t see the problem, they don’t see the point. So Whites along with Blacks get swept up in the “code”, including Black cops. It’s all in the mix.
BTW, I wonder why you didn’t respond to the larger post, Untangling …..
Also, did you never get my question to you? Viz. how would you like things to be? Whenever I hear people saying that the ‘system’ or ‘establishment’ or ‘organization’ is dysfunctional, evil, corrupt, overbearing, whatever, I like to ask, “Well, how would you like things to be?”
I would be overjoyed to read your musings.
I don’t know. I defy the “wisdom” of “don’t complain unless you have a solution.” I do know I’d like to see more honesty in politicians and journalists. “Morning joe” was on in one of the bus stations I passed through, and I was not impressed. Accusation (not conviction) of insider trading while on White House grounds inspires that it “may be one of the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in Washington.” Same kind of crap that Fox spouts, only Fox is usually more subtle.
Complaining means you see something wrong. No one doubts there’s a lot wrong in any human endeavor. If you read my up-coming comments on the article in Foreign Affairs, you can see that great enterprises like democracy can go under unless we really work at keeping it going. Asking for people to possess qualities we would like to see in our leaders and supporters brings to mind two issues: how do you instill and install such qualities, i.e. where do they come from; and, closely related, how do people get to be the way we don’t like them. For that, we need to look closely at the society and its forces, a complex task. I wish all people would take reasonable stances and be principled Liberals, principled Conservatives, and whatever other brands, which brings me to the other part of your kind response.
Laura Ingraham (sp?) presented an openly racist and anti-immigrant diatribe on Fox yesterday. Nicole Wallace, a Republican host on MSNBC, said it was the first time in all the anti-immigrant rhetoric among Conservatives she has heard that anyone has targeted not just legal immigrants but illegal immigrants. On Morning Joe, which I glanced at just before I read your comment, Mika and Joe played Ronald Reagan’s last public talk before leaving the Presidency when he said he had received a letter from a man who said you can live in France, Turkey, Japan, but never become a Frenchman, a Turk, or Japannese; but you can come to America from anywhere in the world and become an American. They showed this right after showing Ingraham’s diatribe complete with pictures of White farmers harvesting wheat, recalling the America they want to bring back (never mind the family farms have been replaced by Big Agriculture and any field workers are Mexicans). That sums up the difference between Fox and MSNBC and most other outlets for commentatry – few outlets other than Fox would have hosts presenting such a xenophobic view of America, but Fox thrives on it.
As to Morning Joe’s commentns re the WH, it’s not crap. Numerous WH officials have been wallowing in corruption and outright crime. No WH in the past 100 years has been so plagued by scandal. What I think you miss is that the Right loves to refer to the Black neighborhoods of DC as crime-ridden, to underscore the failure of the federal government to keep even its own backyard clean while taking a swipe at Black people. So referring to the WH as a crime-ridden neighborhood is #1 accurate and #2 it turns the Fox rhetoric back on them.
Thanks for responding. I do like to know what people envision for a better country.