320 Years of History
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- #21
Being in Chicago and wandering into the wrong neighborhood will get you shot. Most people, who are lucky enough not to live in these neighborhoods, are safe. They know not to go there. Cops are paid to go there, and to engage with the worst, most dangerous products of our indifference and stupidity. Raise a human being to be a good person, through education and love, and their chances are good. Raise children in poverty and the results go from barely acceptable to monstrous.It is only I who is beginning to feel that:
- Being in Chicago while black has a pretty high risk of being fatal?
- Possession of a weapon anywhere in the U.S. while black is criminally fatal?
- Death by cop is moving "up the ladder" as one of the most common causes of death?
This is a solid slice of our gun violence problem. Not cops shooting black people, but the consequence of allowing people to be raised in a manner which creates a depraved indifference to human life. We hire cops and send them into these neighborhoods because we don't want to deal with the problem. It's cheaper and easier to sit on it. To punt. It's not the cop's fault, and it certainly isn't the fault of the monsters we create. Cops want to go home, every day. That's job one. Job two is maintaining order. Not peace, just order. As Jack Nicholson said, we want them on that wall, we need them on that wall. We're not inclined to question the manner in which they achieve that order. Hence, the Tamir Rice verdict.
Notwithstanding the contrast between the words and the "tongue in cheek" tone of my OP, I don't actually believe that being black exists as part of a causal relationship with being shot by a cop, or by most anyone else.
Red:
Yes, well, that is a huge problem from where I sit.
Blue:
I don't spend much time in Chicago; I go for a meeting or event and I leave, for no other reason than having someplace else I have to go to. I was born, raised and live in D.C. Assuming what you say is so, the two cities are quite different culturally...not something I'd have expected.
I live in a very nice part of D.C., but I mentor kids who live in what can only be called slums or "projects." (I didn't meet them there, but upon taking up the task of mentoring them, which too was a serendipitous "calling," I found that to be where they live.) There are a lot of people there who are black, poorly educated, poor, poorly informed, have guns, routinely use mind altering substances, and have guns and/or other weapons. In my neighborhood, none of the residents are poor, most are non-black (as am I), all are well educated, most are well informed, nearly all routinely use mind altering substances, and many have guns and/or other weapons.
The thing is I don't feel the least bit concerned going to their neighborhood (yes, my "country club" friends and acquaintances would likely be terrified), but I have some reservation about inviting them to mine. There is a pretty heavy law enforcement presence in my part of town. I know the kids and their parents are safe at my home, but several of them have been harassed by some the Secret Service when walking from my home to the Metro station or bus stop. Nothing physically brutal, but rather being given "the third degree" when all they were doing was walking down the street. "Why are you here?" "Where are you going?" "Where are you coming from?" That sort of thing. I know this is what happened because the cops came to my home to verify they were told.
In contrast, that has not happened to me anywhere I've gone in my whole life. The closest thing to it took place some 35 years ago when, to make sure she got home safely, I accompanied a coworker home after a holiday party and thus found myself in a particularly rough neighborhood that was also entirely populated by black folks, because that's where she lived. As I walked to a busier street than hers to get a taxi -- I'd called for one and got tired of waiting after an hour and a half -- a cop drove by and asked me if I was lost. He said he could tell I wasn't from the area and thought I might want a ride to subway or police station to file a kidnapping report. The man actually thought I might have escaped captivity!!! No cop ever appeared at my coworker's door to confirm my story.
Now, call me crazy, but I think there's all kinds of wrong happening in both situations.
- There is nothing right about the cops approaching those kids and giving them "the third degree."
- The cops didn't offer any aid to the kids but they were concerned for my safety and offered me assistance, yet I was an adult.
- The kids weren't dressed differently than kids who live in the neighborhood and they were just walking. (I'm know their clothes cost a lot less than the local kids' do, but that's not something obvious to a cop driving by.) The kids may have been horsing around amongst themselves as they walked -- I wasn't there to see it, but I know that's something all kids do -- but then the cops should have addressed that, not why they were there, where they'd been, where they were going, etc.
- That one's not "matching" a place's ethic makeup is cause for law enforcement officers to presume that the reason one is there stems from something having gone wrong, so to speak, is outlandish and uncalled for, to say nothing of morally reprehensible, stereotyping.
When one lives in a world that works as I described and one is on the "short end of the stick" in that world, it's not surprising that one will be angry. That doesn't explain all the violence, but it's part of what explains it. And it's a part that (1) doesn't need to exist, and (2) that can be eliminated. Hiring and training cops to treat people with dignity and to honor the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" is a great first step in making that happen.