Category: Race in America

More Evidence For the Practical Importance of Critical Race Theory

Colin Gordon is a history professor at the University of Iowa who specializes in the history and long-term effects of American public policy.

Professor Colin Gordon

Professor Gordon recently wrote a highly informative article for Dissent Magazine which asks the question, “Who Segregated America?”

In this article he demonstrates the pernicious role played by private business interests in pioneering the highly discriminatory methods that would eventually be used by public, government policies to permanently entrench racial segregation through America’s neighborhoods.

Here is one more example of why an understanding of American racism and its dissection though tools like Critical Race Theory are so important to our educational system.

Frankly, it is impossible to understand either our history or our current racial predicament without it.

Below is an excerpt of “Who Segregated America?”:

Federal housing policies contributed to the segregation of American cities in the twentieth century. But it was private interests that led the way.

Recent scholarship and reporting on racial disparities in the United States have emphasized the role of public policy—especially federal policy—in the creation of what the 1968 Kerner Commission famously dubbed “two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” This is especially true of housing policy. Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White (2005) skewers the stark exclusion of African-American veterans from the benefits of the GI Bill. Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law (2017) offers a damning synthesis on how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) embraced Jim Crow. More recently, the digitization of the infamous “residential security” redlining maps prepared by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the late 1930s has spurred academic interest in the connections between the HOLC’s bluntly racial assessments and contemporary disparities.

This condemnation of federal policy is certainly warranted. Even the constraints of the New Deal coalition (in which the Democratic majority was, as Katznelson observes, a “strange marriage of Sweden and South Africa”) cannot excuse the FHA’s slavish deference to racial prejudice in private realty. One can and should expect more of a public agency, wielding billions in housing subsidies in one hand and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause in the other, than a set of underwriting guidelines that “could well have been culled from the Nuremberg Laws,” as housing activist Charles Abrams observed in 1955.

But is it true, as Rothstein’s subtitle suggests, that “government segregated America”? Not really. As new work on the scope of private racial restrictions underscores, racial segregation in American cities (especially Northern and border cities) was largely accomplished by private interests and private action long before the FHA spent a dime or the HOLC opened its first bottle of red ink.

Race-restrictive deed covenants and agreements reserved the occupancy of individual lots or entire residential subdivisions to those (in the phrasing preferred by developers in St. Louis County) “wholly of the Caucasian Race.” The result was a sort of pointillist apartheid, filled in parcel by parcel, block by block, and subdivision by subdivision, on a scale sufficient to quarantine existing pockets of African-American residency and mark new developments as largely off limits. . .

(Observe in the following graphic how “Race-restrictive deed covenants and agreements reserved the occupancy of individual lots or entire residential subdivisions to those (in the phrasing preferred by developers in St. Louis County) ‘wholly of the Caucasian Race.'” In other words, private racial regulators orchestrated the creation of black ghettos and white suburbs with all the damaging consequences.)

. . . More to the point, the FHA and other federal housing policies were always—and remain—little more than a poorly regulated trough for private housing interests. They exist not to secure homeownership but to sustain the residential construction and home finance industries with direct subsidies, socialized risk, and tax breaks. In that role, they have always parroted the goals, motives, and prejudices of private interests and deferred to their assessment of what boosted—or threatened—the value of private property.

The segregation of the American city was conceived, accomplished, and justified largely by private action in response to the demographic upheaval of the Great Migration. Federal housing policies unconscionably doubled down on both segregation and its assumptions, but the damage was already done.

Read the entire article here.

Listen to Three Privileged, Christian White Guys Scold the Black Community

I would say that the news clip below is “unbelievable” except that it appeared on the Christian Broadcast Network. A network that conforms its opinion pieces so closely to the conservative, Republican obsession with “law and order” that you’d be forgiven for assuming its commentators all had day jobs as prison guards.

This editorial discussion is supposedly highlighting the importance of the

Jayland Walker

public “having all the facts” about a situation before drawing conclusions or making objections to the work of the authorities.

But then, conservative Christianity has always highlighted the importance of “obeying the authorities,” no matter how abusive they may be.

The matter at hand is the police murder of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio and the quick display of community outrage that followed.

The initial police reports, the details of which have not been changed, explained that Mr. Walker was going to be stopped for some unspecified sort of traffic violation.

Mr. Walker then took the police on a high speed chase which ended with him leaping from his car and running away. Police allege that Walker fired a gun out his car window during the chase.

As Walker ran away, his was chased by 8 – 9 policemen who fired 90+ rounds at his back. Mr. Walker never returned fire because, as the police later discovered, he was unarmed. (Duh, the fact that he never turned to fire back while unsuccessfully dodging a hail-storm of gunfire, hadn’t tipped them off to this already?)

Walker’s body was hit by 60+ bullets. He died at the scene.

These were the original facts. They are still the facts.

Mr. Walker is another unarmed black man gunned down for the crime of running from the police who consistently insult, abuse, assault, and murder unarmed black men.

As an African-American friend asked me not long ago, “David, why can’t white people understand why we are afraid of the police? We have good reason to be.”

Nevertheless, these CBN commentators object. They insist that most, perhaps all?, media reports have not mentioned the (alleged) gunshot out of Walker’s car window during the car chase.

However, EVERY report that I have read and watched HAS either shown the relevant video or mentioned the alleged gun fire from Walker on the highway.

In other words, CBN is ginning up an illegitimate, irrelevant concern for their own rhetorical purposes. Can anyone say, MANIPULATION? or PROPAGANDA?

But they all say these things oh so unctuously with such apparent concern…

They also fail to mention the many, many times that the police have been caught LYING to the public in their initial police reports in order to protect themselves and hide their own wrongdoing.

Naturally, the local black community responded with a large, peaceful, public protest demanding answers and accountability.

The very next day these three CBN Christian stooges, doing the half-step shuffle for white privilege, self-righteousness, hard-heartedness, foolishness and stupidity, scold the black community (!) for expressing their grief and anger, while exercising their first amendment right to cry out in the streets for justice.

I am sorry, but I find the entire diatribe to be absolutely infuriating!

Here we see three comfortable, extremely well paid, audacious examples of the poisonous fruit of white privilege dripping with the decay of dead men’s bones, all white-washed and dressed up pretty for broadcast TV.

I am sorry, but this report is nothing but pious hackery, blindingly oblivious to the persistent and pernicious racial/racist dynamic playing itself out over and over and over again in our city streets.

It is also painfully obvious — AGAIN– that something has gone horribly wrong with the way police officers are being trained to handle both people and their weapons.

It’s not a few “bad apples,” folks. It’s the entire system that appears to be rotten.

I could go on, but I will stop now. Watch for yourself. Especially notice the mini-sermon about “unrighteous responses” given in coordination with the film of African-American protesters walking through the streets.

Really?!?!

I have asked in the past. I am asking again. If anyone has a video clip of an unarmed white man being shot or chocked to death by police, please send it to me.

Frederick Douglass: “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”

All understanding is relative.

Mr. Frederick Douglass

Any adult who does not understand this simple truth has not been paying attention to the way life works. But, then, many of us go through life with our minds closed and our eyes firmly shut.

To these folks, my understanding of life is the only possible, the only acceptable understanding. And it probably should be enforced onto anyone who disagrees with me.

It remains the case that, even in today’s America, race, class, education, political, and economic opportunities all play a sizeable role in determining how people evaluate their lives, set their priorities, and consider their circumstances.

Frederick Douglass was an American statesman, abolitionist, author, orator, and an escaped slave. In 1852, Mr. Douglass was asked to give a speech about the significance of the American Day of Independence, July 4th.

As a former slave fighting in the front lines against the institution of American slavery, his perspective on Independence Day celebrations was very different from that of the average, well-off, white person.

Then, as today, race and class matter. They matter greatly. They make all the difference in how a person understands life, and what events appear worthy of celebration.

As I argue regularly on this blog, similarly stark differences in perspective ought to be heard in Christian evaluations of this secular holiday, the 4th of July.

The fact that the average American Christian typically applauds in the front row of this annual standing ovation for American “freedom,” brazenness, and over consumption is additional testimony to our cultural captivity, not to mention our spiritual blindness.

Listen to what Mr. Douglass said:

You can read the complete text of Douglass’s powerful speech here.

Although Douglass’s entire speech is brilliant, for me, the special genius of Douglass’s wonderful oratory is on fullest display in the following excerpt. (The emphasis is mine):

. . . What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.  

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour…  

The Entire Rittenhouse Scenario Reeks of Arrogance and Sociopathy

The author Ron Jacobs has a new article at Counterpunch discussing the Rittenhouse trial and the final verdict declaring him innocent of all charges.

Illegally armed vigilante, Rittenhouse, was welcomed and thanked by local police

Two unarmed men are dead and the shooter goes free because he was scared. Welcome to America in 2021.

Jacob’s piece is entitled “A Land Where Justice is a Game.”

Below is an excerpt:

Another right-wing vigilante walks free in the USA. The fact that I was even mildly hopeful Kyle Rittenhouse would get some prison time only proves my eternal optimism. Once again, that optimism was misplaced. After all, it is the United States of America that I’m talking about; a nation whose history is replete

Rittenhouse drinking beer and sharing white supremacists hand-signs with members of the Proud Boys shortly after he killed two men and wounded a third

with stories of white men walking free after murdering individuals who made them afraid. It is the United States of America; a nation whose history is replete with stories of Black men lynched, executed, or imprisoned for crimes the state knew they didn’t commit. It is the United States of America; a land where the defense of property takes precedence over human life in the courts and in the streets. Especially when that property is owned by a white man.

Nothing could be more typically American than Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder spree and its aftermath. From the shooting itself to his courtroom defense that he “was only defending himself,” the entire scenario reeks of arrogance and sociopathy. Indeed, it’s a perfect metaphor for the US empire and its “foreign policy,” where

Right-wings groups, including white evangelicals, donated $2 million to Kyle’s defense fund

the concept of self-defense often involves traveling away from one’s home with a loaded weapon, walking down unfamiliar streets away from home, and then murdering people who tell you to go away? This series of events is the template for what US politicians (and many citizens) call US foreign policy. The mindset it inculcates is one that creates the Kyle Rittenhouses among its residents.

Make no mistake, the Rittenhouse trial was a political trial. The far-right knew it could manipulate the evidence in its favor, especially given the nature of stand your ground laws. The jury selection was also manipulated and the judge was not sympathetic to the murdered men. As for the prosecution, I was reminded of those grand juries that fail to indict murderous police officers because the state presents its case in such a way that makes indictment unlikely if not impossible. The assumptions of a jury’s members are played upon with the intention of bringing forth their fears and prejudices. A sophisticated legal team can convince a jury that what they see is not fact and that the legal team’s fiction is. Often, this manipulation involves removing the context of the acts being considered, shortening the timeline, and ultimately transferring the blame to the victims. This is a standard approach for the defense when police officers are charged with murder. It was used quite deftly by the Rittenhouse defense team.

Let’s pretend Rittenhouse was a leftist/BLM protester and had murdered two pro-police protesters in the same scenario like the one he was in when he killed those men. I doubt he would be a free man today. Instead, he would have been portrayed as the active shooter that he was, walking the streets of Kenosha fully armed and under the illusion he had the right to shoot people if they challenged him. In this imaginary circumstance, the pro-police protesters attempting to disarm a scared left-wing Rittenhouse would have been the heroes, and that Rittenhouse would have been the killer the real Rittenhouse is. This scenario assumes that a murdering left-wing Rittenhouse would not have been shot down in the streets by the police—a big assumption. I have protested too many Klan and Nazi rallies that were protected by the forces of law and order to think otherwise.

You can read the entire article here.

Evangelicals Share Their Stories of Dealing with White Racists

Journalist Adelle M. Banks has an interesting article at the Religious News

Journalist Adelle M. Banks

Service describing a recent evangelical conference held at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D. C. called “Let’s Talk.”

The purpose of Let’s Talk was to address the continuing problem of racism within the white, evangelical church. Ms. Banks’ article is entitled “Stories of racism permeate ‘Let’s Talk’ evangelical reconciliation kick-off event.”

Below is an excerpt:

The “Let’s Talk” initiative was hosted by Bishop Derek Grier, a northern Virginia

Bishop Derek Grier

pastor who asked clergy at the kickoff to agree to a “Statement of Change,” financially support the initiative and meet monthly via Zoom starting Dec. 7. The monthly calls will offer more opportunities for participants to share in small groups the kinds of stories heard Wednesday under the crystal lights of the museum’s ballroom.

“Tonight, we are going to step on the third rail together, the place where angels fear to tread,” he said. “We’re going to talk about race and religion.”

Grier said he believes God prompted him to take action after the Jan. 6 violence at the U.S. Capitol — just blocks away from their location — to try to bridge divides in the country.

He read portions of the Statement of Change, which noted the Bible’s call for humility, cited the three-fifths clause of the U.S. Constitution that normalized slavery, and defined racism as “inconsistent with the heart of the Holy Spirit” and scriptural teaching.

“Because men and women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, color, culture, class, sex, or age, has an intrinsic dignity and should be respected and served, not exploited,” the statement reads in part. “We believe both the spirit and clear moral imperatives of scripture require the Christian community to lead the way in defeating racial bigotry.”

Grier also shared, via video, some of his personal experiences with racism. When he was a child, a white female classmate informed him her father said he would beat her if she kept walking home with Grier, her Black friend. As an adult, he saw his son initially denied access to a school’s gifted program until Grier asked a teacher about his child’s scores and learned they were higher than most of the students who already were in the program.

You can read the entire article here.

Study Shows Muslims Gave More to US Charity Than Other Americans in 2020

Shariq Siddiqui and Rafeel Wasif have an article at Religion New Service explaining the results of a recent study demonstrating that not only did Muslims give more money to charity in 2020 but that they also are more likely to volunteer their time to charitable causes than non-Muslims in this country.

Below is an excerpt:

Muslim Americans gave more to charity in 2020 than non-Muslims, we found in a new study. They are also more likely to volunteer, we learned.

Only 1.1% of all Americans are Muslim, and their average income is lower than non-Muslims’. But as we explained in our Muslim American Giving 2021 report, their donations encompassed 1.4% of all giving from individuals. U.S. Muslims, a highly diverse and quickly growing minority, contributed an estimated US$4.3 billion in total donations to mostly nonreligious causes over the course of the year.

As philanthropy scholars, we believe our findings are significant not only because this is the first time that we can see the size and scope of giving by this small and highly diverse community, but also because U.S. Muslims face a great deal of discrimination. . . 

. . . We found that Muslim Americans gave more to charity, donating an average of $3,200, in 2020, versus $1,905 for other respondents. They also differed from non-Muslims in many ways. For example, nearly 8.5% of their contributions supported civil rights causes, compared with 5.3% of the general public.

You can read the entire article here.

 

Is Mega-Church Pastor John MacArthur a Racist?

I recently came across this interview with the well-known US, mega-

Pastor John MacArthur

church pastor, John MacArthur. He is being asked about Critical Race Theory, which he describes as THE greatest danger to the evangelical church in the last 100 years.

Really?

Check it out below. My thoughts appear afterwards:

First, the majority of MacArthur’s remarks are, frankly, incoherent. He is rambling. There is no logic to anything he says. He is simply making “authoritative” declarations, without any apparent logical connection linking them together, while expecting his listeners to take him seriously.

Apparently, MacArthur has basked in his status as an adored, authoritarian mega-church preacher for far too long.

Second, MacArthur is obviously a dedicated American individualist, as are  most evangelicals in this country. He speaks strictly in terms of individual sins and personal responsibility. But that is only half the picture. Every society is a collective enterprise in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

Thus, social evils are always sins of the collective. And the collective is only changed through new legislation, restructuring, and advocacy for a renewed type of social conscience. MacArthur is either unwilling or incapable of recognizing this fact. Thus, his comments have little relevance to people working to improve the broken social structures in which we live.

To pursue justice within a society, it is not only possible but necessary to address the problems of BOTH individual AND corporate, collective sins. Like far too many evangelicals, MacArthur cannot or will not acknowledge this fact.

Third, MacArthur believes that the current controversies over “social justice” (SJ) within evangelicalism pose the most dangerous threat to the church in the past century!

Frankly, that assertion strikes me as a remarkable “chicken little” type of over statement, to put it mildly.

Why does he believe the social justice movement is so dangerous? Because, (a) in his view, social justice is actually socialism, the eternal boogey-man for American conservatives. [Does he honestly not understand that history has been filled with godly Christian socialists?]  (b) He further claims that SJ is simply a “euphemism for equality of outcomes.” (c) “Critical Race Theory only wants to destroy,” “to abolish everything.” And (d) CRT insists that individuals are not responsible for evil; only society bears that responsibility.

MacArthur’s claims are nothing more than fear-mongering falsehoods. Frankly, he does not know what he is talking about, plain and simple. Each of these points is demonstrably false.

CRT uncovers the many ways in which western society, constructed by white Europeans, has legalized an unequal social system that has historically granted significant advantages to white folks while denying them to people of color. That sort of system needs to be torn down in same way that slavery was torn down by Christian politicians in 19th century England.

Every follower of Jesus, who sees every fellow human being as made in the Image of God, should want to see all racial privilege and systemic inequalities abolished! There is nothing the least bit radical about any of this!

The fact that SJ is now “dividing the church” simply reveals how deeply paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — more specifically, white, paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — is embedded within American evangelicalism!

It is always difficult for those who rest easy in the enjoyment of their social privileges to recognize, confess, and repent of their ignorance and indifference to the difficulties created for others by the very system from which they have always benefited.

I do not know John MacArthur’s heart.  But I will say that he is a misguided, reactionary white man whose “criticisms” of SJ and CRT are very similar to the arguments used by Southern segregationists as they combatted the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 70s.

Leaders like John MacArthur need to be ignored when they address important topics with such arrogance and self-satisfaction.

A Book Review of “The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy,” by J. Russell Hawkins

I recently finished reading the new book from J. Russell Hawkins, historian of American evangelicalism. His book is titled The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy (Oxford, 2021).

The cover image from Hawkins’ book

Professor Hawkins carefully examines the various anti-desegregation strategies deployed by the Southern Baptist and Methodist churches in South Carolina following the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954. Together with the vast majority of Southern evangelicals at the time, these two Christian denominations were vociferously opposed to the civil rights movement, including the efforts to end racial segregation.

This evangelical fight against racial integration broke out on two fronts. One was motivated by white outrage over the desegregation of public schools. The private, Christian school movement (at least, in the south) was a direct result of this anti-integrationist campaign.

The second wing of the battle was aimed at fighting off the threat of integrated churches. Black people were NOT going to be allowed into their white congregations.

I had intended to review Hawkins’ book myself, but since I recently discovered a good review by Christopher Cantwell at Religion Dispatches, I will excerpt his review here and save myself the trouble. [Click on the link above.]

In the light of current controversies surrounding Critical Race Theory (CRT), however, I do want to note the origins of one particular argument that remains very relevant today. In fact, we hear it all the time. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention continues to rely on this argue in its recent, public rejection of Critical Race Theory (now forbidden in its seminaries and churches.)

As the civil rights controversy slowly moved from the 1950s into the 1970s, evangelical racists (yes, we must use this word very intentionally here) were aware that the entire country’s atmosphere was changing. While continuing to use their old, racist arguments in private, they saw the need to adopt a more family-friendly, publicly acceptable line of argument in public conversation.

This new line of dissent emphasized the need for a “color blind” society that could only be achieved through “personal transformation” and “spiritual renewal.”

This is a prominent argument appearing throughout the recent anti-CRT best-seller by Voddie Baucham, Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Regnery, 2021). [I may post my review of this lamentable book in the weeks ahead. At the moment, I am circulating it for publication elsewhere.]

Falling back on the Christian emphasis upon personal, spiritual renewal, Southern evangelical racists abandoned the overt fight against race-mingling and shifted their fight to emphasize the futility of legislating morality.

Talking about race and racism only stirred the pot and aggravated racial tensions, they said.

Instead, what was needed was internal, personal, spiritual transformation. Racism was a sin problem, we were told, and no public policy could ever change a sinful heart.

Here was a new abuse of Christian theology that many continue to find serviceable. Southern Baptists and other opponents of CRT are still making such logically mangled claims to this day.

The fact that public policy is not intended to change human hearts or personal feelings but to ensure acceptable public behavior was a very deliberate bait-and-switch tactic for the originators of this pro-segregationist argument. They were hoping that no one would notice the illogical non sequitur buried in the heart of their claims. And it seems that most southerners didn’t.

Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. also promoted the hope of a color-blind society, where little children “would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

However, Dr. King never left it at that. He knew how to hold two different but related concepts in his mind at the same time.

So, he dreamed of a day when personal transformation would eliminate all racism and discrimination from this world. But, in the meantime, he marched; he agitated; he sought to change the laws of the land. He campaigned for new legislation like the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because he understood that in public, as well as in personal behavior, acting differently often precedes (and generates) new feelings.

New anti-racist behaviors can help to erase old racist dispositions long before the racist prayer meetings pleading for evangelical “revival” will ever feel a fart from the Holy Spirit.

Below is an excerpt from the review by Christopher Cantwell:

Last month, the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention became national news after Ed Litton defeated Mike Stone for the convention’s presidency. For months the conservative evangelical denomination had been embroiled in both scandal and controversy after noted Black minister Dwight McKissic removed his 1,600 member congregation from the Texas state convention over the organization’s outspoken repudiation of critical race theory. But McKissic’s departure would become the first of many desertions from the SBC after noted Bible teacher Beth Moore and ethicist Russell Moore resigned from the denomination over its mishandling of sexual abuse allegations and tolerance for white supremacists.

Stone, a hard-right, Trump-supporting minister from Georgia, had spearheaded the denunciation of critical race theory and intersectionality. Litton, meanwhile, was a winsome preacher from Alabama who recently had made racial reconciliation a centerpiece of his ministry. To some, the two candidates represented a referendum on the Trump era, with Litton’s victory serving as something of a reckoning. 

But as a new book by historian J. Russell Hawkins suggests, Litton’s election might just be a new chapter in the SBC’s long and sordid history on matters of race. 

In The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, Hawkins places debates like those taking place in the SBC in a much larger frame. Focusing on the denominational workings of both the Southern Baptist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, Hawkins unflinchingly shows how segregationist Christians drew from their faith in opposing the modern civil rights movement. But in the book’s reflection upon the relationship between race and religion in modern America, Hawkins also has a lot to teach us about our own moment as well. 

You can read the rest of this review here.

More Evidence that the Republican Party Hates Democracy

The extraordinary phenomena of last year’s protests over George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, combined with two Democratic victories in Georgia for the state’s seats in the US Senate has infuriated the Republican party.

Republicans have responded as Republicans do: undermine the power of the people.

First, they have introduced dozens of new voter suppression laws in local legislatures across the country. Naturally, Republicans object to this characterization, but Stacey Abram’s recent testimony before a Senate committee regarding Georgia’s new voter laws puts the lie to that Republican defense (watch here and here).

Second, Republicans have submitted numerous bills that would outlaw public protests and demonstrations.  They would also immunize drivers who run into protesters with their cars. (All the videos I have seen show drivers who deliberately target peaceful demonstrators.)

Today’s edition of the New York Times has an article about this second problem. It’s entitled, “G.O.P. Bills Target Protesters (and Absolve Drivers Who Hit Them).”

Below is a lengthy excerpt of that article. (It is behind a pay wall). Or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets.

A Republican proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance.

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed sweeping legislation this week that

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has used the term anti-riot bills for legislation that limits the right to protest. Credit…Phil SearsAssociated Press

toughened existing laws governing public disorder and created a harsh new level of infractions — a bill he’s called “the strongest anti-looting, anti-rioting, pro-law-enforcement piece of legislation in the country.”

The measures are part of a wave of new anti-protest legislation, sponsored and supported by Republicans, in the 11 months since Black Lives Matter protests swept the country following the death of George Floyd. The Minneapolis police officer who killed Mr. Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was convicted on Tuesday on murder and manslaughter charges, a cathartic end to weeks of tension.

But while Democrats seized on Mr. Floyd’s death last May to highlight racism in policing and other forms of social injustice, Republicans responded to a summer of protests by proposing a raft of punitive new measures governing the right to lawfully assemble. G.O.P. lawmakers in 34 states have introduced 81 anti-protest bills during the 2021 legislative session — more than twice as many proposals as in any other year, according to Elly Page, a senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks legislation limiting the right to protest.

Some, like Mr. DeSantis, are labeling them “anti-riot” bills, conflating the right to peaceful protest with the rioting and looting that sometimes resulted from such protests.

The laws carry forward the hyperbolic message Republicans have been pushing in the 11 months since Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice swept the country: that Democrats are tolerant of violent and criminal actions from those who protest against racial injustice. And the legislation underscores the extent to which support for law enforcement personnel and opposition to protests have become part of the bedrock of G.O.P. orthodoxy and a likely pillar of the platform the party will take into next year’s midterms.

“This is consistent with the general trend of legislators’ responding to powerful and persuasive protests by seeking to silence them rather than engaging with the message of the protests,” said Vera Eidelman, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If anything, the lesson from the last year, and decades, is not that we need to give more tools to police and prosecutors, it’s that they abuse the tools they already have.”

Laws already exist to punish rioting, and civil rights advocates worry that the new bills violate rights of lawful assembly and free speech protected under the First Amendment. The overwhelming majority of last summer’s nationwide Black Lives Matter protests were peaceful — more than 96 percent involved no property damage or police injuries, according to The Washington Post, which also found that police officers or counterprotesters often instigated violence.

Police officers making an arrest during protests in Miami last year over the death of George Floyd Credit…Cristobal HerreraEPA, via Shutterstock

Most of the protests held across Florida last summer were also peaceful, though a few in Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville produced some episodes of violence, including the burning of a police car and a sporting goods store. Still, as they embraced the bill that Mr. DeSantis signed into law, Republican leaders expressed scorn for cities that trim police budgets and tolerate protesters who disrupt business and traffic.

“We weren’t going to allow Florida to become Seattle,” said Chris Sprowls, a Republican who is the speaker of the Florida House, mentioning cities where protests lasted for months last year and demonstrators frequently clashed with the police. “We were not going to allow Florida to become Portland.”. . . 

. . . State Senator Shevrin D. Jones, a Democrat from Broward County and a vocal critic of the law, noted that Mr. DeSantis had been quick to emphasize how necessary the bill was the day after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol but had made no mention of that event during Monday’s bill signing, focusing solely on the summer protests.

That was evidence, he said, that bills aimed at punishing protesters were disproportionately targeting people of color. “This bill is racist at its core,” Mr. Jones said.

So far, three bills aimed at limiting protests have been signed into law — Florida’s and new laws in Arkansas and Kansas that target protesters who seek to disrupt oil pipelines. Others are likely to come soon.

In Oklahoma, Republican lawmakers last week sent legislation to Gov. Kevin Stitt that would criminalize the unlawful blocking of a public street and grant immunity to drivers who strike and injure protesters during a riot. Last June, a pickup truck carrying a horse trailer drove through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters on a Tulsa freeway, injuring several people and leaving one paralyzed. The driver, who said he had sped up because he feared for the safety of his family, was not charged.

The bill’s author, State Senator Rob Standridge, said the Tulsa incident had prompted him to seek immunity for drivers who strike protesters. He said Tuesday he wasn’t aware of any drivers who had been charged after striking protesters in Oklahoma. “My hope is that this law never is utilized,” he said in an interview. Carly Atchison, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stitt, declined to say whether he would sign the bill, which passed with veto-proof majorities.

Tiffany Crutcher, whose twin brother, Terence Crutcher, was shot and killed in 2016 by a Tulsa police officer who was later acquitted on a manslaughter charge, said the Oklahoma proposal represents Republican efforts to extend the Trump administration’s hostility toward people of color.

Reflections on the Derek Chauvin Verdict and George Floyd’s Murder

The good news is that Derek Chauvin has been convicted for the murder of George Floyd. In this instance, the justice system has worked. A white police

Derek Chauvin

officer is being held accountable for his excessive use of force against an unarmed black man.  Something that very rarely happens.

But this is also the bad news.

At this point in America’s history, Derek Chauvin’s conviction is a “black swan event.” Recall Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestselling book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2010), reminding us that incredibly improbable events (like a black swan) may have considerable influence while remaining very rare.

Notice the two provisos: first, the transformative event is very rare; and two, it MAY have significant consequences. In other words, the possible results are far from assured, and the event itself may never be repeated.

Krystal Ball

Krystal Ball (yes, that’s her real name) reminded her viewers on “Rising” this morning of the extraordinary efforts that created the context for Chauvin’s successful conviction.

First, is Darnella Frasier, the teenage girl who had the presence of mind and the courage to pull out her cell phone and film the 9 minute video of officer  Chauvin kneeling of Mr. Floyd’s neck.

Second, is the largest, most sustained protest movement in US history, which spread around the world.

Were it not for these two momentous actions, George Floyd would have been just another anonymous victim of police brutality. And Derek Chauvin would have gotten away with murder.

Hardly encouraging news.

Think about that. Let it sink in. It hardly indicates that this is the beginning of a new day in prosecuting police misconduct, let alone altering police behavior nationwide.

[Krystal’s remarks begin at about the 30 second mark.

Now is the time to keep the celebrations brief.

Because now is the time to insist that our legislators pass H.R. 1280, The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021. Though this piece of legislation is inadequate on its own, it may serve as a piece of the larger police reform puzzle.

Now is also the time to continue campaigning for local Defund the Police programs across the country. Numerous cities are testing these ideas now and the preliminary reports are very encouraging in places like Denver and Colorado Springs (see here, here, here, and here).

Now is also the time for Christian leaders to continue speaking out about  justice and equality for all people, regardless of race, color, ethnicity, or class.

Do not swallow the Fox News cool-aid insisting that this trial was only about one bad apple who did one bad thing, and that his conviction proves the reliability of our glorious criminal justice system.

That predictably conservative framing of the issues is a recipe for going back to sleep and maintaining the status quo. A status quo that ignores the larger context of US policing and police training which allows police brutality to continue unabated.

No. Now is the time to keep the pressure on, to continue protesting, to insist that the culture of American policing is in dire need of regeneration.

Now is also the time for the evangelical church to break ranks with the Republican party, Fox News, and the politics of fear.

It will mean wanting to become more like Jesus, releasing our vice-like grip on worries over personal security and caring more for those who suffer than we care for ourselves.