Fear-mongering vs. Fact-mongering: The BigData of BlackLivesMatter
Fact: There is no point in American history when the demand by black people for equality was not declared by powerful people to be criminal. None. @tanehisicoates
So now the conservative media echo chamber has a campaign to smear #blacklivesmatter. I’m tickled at their ignorance of what #blacklivesmatter is and the idea that they could “shut it down”; I’m proud that in one year the movement has generated awareness and real results that threaten the agenda of organizations like Fox; I’m furious with the disingenuous mischaracterization of a call for law enforcement accountability as being anti-law enforcement; and I’m sad that so many Americans agree or at least appreciate these baseless accusations as legitimate journalistic inquiry.
The fear-mongering crisis manufacturing is the same playbook that is right now attempting to bring down Planned Parenthood; the same process that was used to bringing down A.C.O.R.N and enact voter ID laws in attempts to keep minorities from registering to vote last election; the same used to create mandatory minimum sentencing in the 90′s; the same used to depict black woman as “welfare queens” and black male youths as “super-predators” in the 80′s; the same used to create the war on drugs in the 70′s; the same used to discredit the organizations of and ultimately foment the assassination of Malcolm X and Fred Hampton in the 60′s. I could go on....
But times change. Techniques have a useful life. Today, racism in America wears a “we shall have overcome” t-shirt. Today racism quotes “MLK - the hits” never the b-sides. In 2015 racism contends that all is and has been well with the black community for decades. Racism vehemently asserts that America has reach an enlightened plateau and can aspire for nothing more. “Sure”, racism says, “there will always be racists, but institutional racism has been stamped out.”
The new litmus test for racism is intent. If a single minority supports a policy, how can you call it racist? If someone has a black friend, a company has a black board member, if your show has a black pundit spewing racist garbage, if a nation has a black president - then how can any of those things be racist? As long as starting a discussion about racism requires proving intent then 99% of conversations about racism will be people agreeing to disagree and saying that “We need to have a conversation about race in this country”.
BlackLivesMatters is a movement built to break the gridlock of this 21st century civil rights struggle. Don’t get me wrong. Direct action matters. I am awed by activists. They are the foundation that built #BlackLivesMatter. It was courageous queer black woman like @bdoulaoblongata and @musicoverpeople livetweeting the ongoing struggles in Ferguson that had me examine exactly where I stood and what I was doing for the struggle. But the genius of their struggle was that they always contended that it was bigger than #MikeBrown or even #Ferguson. They simply acted locally but never forgot what they were doing was global.
At it’s heart #BlackLivesMatter is a crowdsourced bigdata project.
The latitude that police are given as they detain, summons, arrest and assault citizens is staggering. The entire argument depends on how you believe police use this latitude and what should be done about it. It is generally understood that a police officer can accost you for any reason, ticket you for any infraction, or arrest you anytime it suits their fancy and the BEST outcome for you as a citizen is that the charges will be dropped. Your time, inconvenience and frustration means nothing to them or to the government. If you happen to have been assaulted or killed in the process then there is a small chance your family might be awarded damages, but a nearly zero chance that the officer will face any charges. Policing is a messy bit of wet work that the American public has never had the interest in investigating deeply. It’s easier to trust (or some might say bury your head in the sand). We trust that the people that police officers are accosting, arresting and assaulting have done something criminal or at least criminally suspect. But what if the police are wrong. It’s no secret that there is a significant segment of the population who, from personal experience, know that you cannot simply take a police officer’s word as to how an event happened. So the question is “How do we ensure that our officers are acting honorably and fairly?”, “How do we bridge this gap of trust in the community?”, “How do we restore people’s faith in the police and the criminal justice system?”.
The transformative approach of #blacklivesmatter is getting as many people as possible to SEE the problem.
The name screams “We have a problem!” and the movement rejects platitudes that downplay the need for action. Yes, MOST police officers are NOT racist. Yes, the VAST MAJORITY of police encounters do NOT result in arrests or violence. Yes, ALL LIVES MATTER. But this is the language of indifference. Indifference ignores that SOME lives, BLACK LIVES, are in crisis. Some communities are terrorized by those that are supposed to protect them. TOO MANY times officers with no real civilian oversight act with impunity and people die, is this all the time? No. But now every American has to ask themselves “How many innocent black deaths is ok?” Are we content to say that the vast majority of airline pilots follow all safety regulations? Are we content when banks ONLY steal funds during an infinitesimal number of transactions?
The statistics have always been there. The data in every area shows our criminal justice system deals more harshly with those of darker skin with regard to tickets, arrests, convictions, sentencing, the use of paramilitary tactics, injury and death. But the statistics aren’t convincing, because there is a “cultural” narrative pushed by conservatives. They say “This movement is not about black people wanting the right to life.” It’s not that we all share common humanity and values but some people have to protest for what others are given freely and take for granted. The narrative says that black people cause all their problems by not getting married before having kids, that they are too lazy to work hard and don’t take care of their communities. Even more absurd, the newest version of this narrative goes so far as to suggest that since blacks don’t raise their children to respect authority they’ve easily become the puppets of shadowy billionaires and since we're all "thugs and murders" we just fall in line with the idea of killing cops.
The isolated publicized event have always been there. MLK was gunned down by a crazy lone gunman. Conclusion? “Man, THAT guy was crazy”. Rodney King was beat-down by a dozen police officers. Conclusion? “Man, L.A.P.D has gone off the deep end having to deal with all these gangs and thugs”. Eric Garner got choked to death with an illegal choke hold. Conclusion “well there isn’t enough evidence to indict for the officer for choking to death someone who was verbally resisting but he WAS resisting. The cops should get some more training”. Tamir Rice was gunned down sitting in the swings - “Man Ohio has problems, but that gun looked real”. Racism always says “Racism doesn’t exists and in the isolated case that racism stares America in the face. Racism is never here - it’s always a problem over there”.
Just as a media-savvy civil rights movement in the 60′s trained activists to endure injustice as it was captured by a new medium, television. #BlackLivesMatter amasses a preponderance of video evidence of black bodies being subjected to state sponsored violence and injustice. With enough data points the isolated incident defense is exposed. With enough qualitative examples of brutality, overreach and instigation the “cultural” argument is exposed as baseless and racist.
BlackLivesMatter is Fact-mongering: painting a picture of injustice, present-day, endemic and lethal. That picture cannot be denied or discounted or dismissed as someone else’s problem. BlackLivesMatter empowers activists to demand that politicians at every level of government, in every party, in ever corner of the country take a public position with regard to this problem.
Some will continue to say:
Nevermind the hundreds video examples of police violence, brutality and outright murder.
Nevermind the indictment of an entire cities by the department of justice as it exposed institutional racism as the economic driver of a city.
Nevermind the record number of police indicted for crimes in 2015.
Nevermind that before #blacklivesmatter police did not even COUNT the number or record the ethnicity of people that died during encounters with police.
Nevermind the judges going to jail for bribery and coercion with the for-profit prison industry.
Nevermind the data in every area that shows our criminal justice system deals more harshly with those of darker skin with regard to tickets, arrest, convictions, sentencing, use of force and execution.
Those people will never change. As for the rest of us, we will begin to ask ourselves and each other.
Do I believe that our justice system treats blacks differently than whites?
How important is that to me?
Where does it rank versus immigration? terrorism? defense? the environment? the economy?
What should we do about this?
That’s more powerful than having a black president. That’s having a country that is willing to face the facts, look in the mirror and start moving forward.
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