It’s May already. Wow. Happy May Day. Yippy Doo. How very exciting. I wrote the below yesterday, but got busy. It’s not Morning Coffee if it goes out at 1300. Very abbreviated mailing list today; not sure everyone could handle the below subject matter with any amount of rationale.
Apparently, minorities fare worse in traffic stops than white people do. A Justice Department report, which was based on interviews conducted by the Census Bureau, says as much. The Bureau interviewed nearly 64,000 people 16 and over for this report. You can read about it on CNN’s homepage. According to this report, people of all ethnicities get pulled over at about the same rate, but blacks and Hispanics are searched, threatened with force, and arrested more than whites. If that’s true, it seems the first portion is not about racial profiling at all, which is odd considering what you hear all the time about “driving while black.” The second portion is a bit troubling, but I’m not entirely convinced the statistics tell the absolute truth. For instance, I see no mention of margin of error in the CNN report. I also doubt the veracity of the interviewers. How many had a perceived score to settle, or simply perceived the encounter as hostile because they were being “hassled” by the police? How many perceived the encounter wrong because of this pervasive “persecution complex” we seem to have in our society?
Assuming that these numbers are 100% accurate, what do people intend to do about it? If they are accurate, you would think this behavior by our police is wrong, right? But maybe it’s a societal thing, and not a police thing. Perhaps then society needs to work on correcting itself rather than imposing some sort of “equal opportunity” quotas on arrests after traffic stops – imagine having to arrest the same numbers off all ethnicities, and having those numbers be dictated by law. I think the issue goes far beyond simple “racial profiling” by police.
Let’s again ignore a piece of the pie, and assume that it’s not a societal thing. I would like to know the circumstances behind these encounters. Could it be that the searches and subsequent arrests of any of the ethnic groups were the result of open hostility towards police? Perhaps this is a cycle, where people are told they’re being persecuted against (media, music, etc), and because of this they are more hostile in these encounters because they feel that they too are being put down by “the man.” Maybe a subsequent study on the circumstances of these encounters would paint a clearer picture. Perhaps, and this I suppose would classify me as a racist in this day and age, but perhaps this study would suggest that blacks and Hispanics are 10% more likely to suffer from this persecution complex and would thus be, I don’t know, 5% more likely to be belligerent in these circumstances (numbers purely fictional). Or, maybe whites are more afraid of the cops, or more respectful, or more fearful of getting arrested. Or maybe blacks and Hispanics are more afraid of cops, and cops sensing this, and being the A-Type personalities that they are, prey upon it, which escalates the situation. Perhaps the encounter with Hispanics is about “machismo” and it then escalates. Who knows what the deal is? But I think the statistics should say something more than “here are the numbers” which suggests a condemnation of the way the police conduct themselves out of hand. Circumstances are more important than raw data, yes, but equally important is the overall mindset of the population you’re surveying – this is not as simple as cops being racists.
To try to dissuade being accused of racism, I must say that this is not racist speech. I’m merely asking some tough questions. We shouldn’t just buy into these types of studies without asking some questions to try to get to the heart of the story. Sure, numbers do not lie, but you can get stats to say whatever you want them to say. And I’m not saying these stats were led in any way. I also have not read the Justice Department’s study. I’m instead going off what is readily accessible to the every day person. They’re not going to go delving into convoluted studies so for the purposes of this little discussion, neither am I. They’re going to get exactly what I just read, and will form an opinion based on that fraction of information. So it this study says something different than this CNN article, well, that speaks to a whole new problem, doesn’t it? One of media bias, perhaps?
This article also made mention of some mistake the “Bush Administration” made regarding the release of a similar study two years ago. I’ve noticed this a lot lately – mention made of this “Bush Administration.” I find it curious that the Justice Department does the study, but the Bush Administration is guilty of any errors (in this case there was allegedly forced suppression of a senior Justice Dept official by his “boss”). I’m curious as to exactly WHAT you can pin to any particular administration. Surely something that some peon in the Census Bureau does cannot be attributed to the Bush Administration, good or bad. These articles, when pinning blame, make it sound like the entire government is appointed by a president, from Secretaries of the Fill-in-the-Blank to the supply clerks and janitors, and every thing they do is thus attributed to the president. It’s annoying. I will agree that “the buck stops here” but my problem is the lack of credit given and the wealth of blame attributed.
Word of the Day: Supplant (transitive verb): 1. to take the place of (another), especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics; as, a rival supplants another; 2. to take the place of and serve as a substitute for. Isn’t that apt-ish, even six months later? Well…it’s even more apt now I guess.
On This Day in History: Diocletian and Maximian retire as co-Emperors of Rome (305 CE). Today is also the day of the all-women’s festival in celebration of the goddess of fertility, women, and virginity, Bona Dea. Also, Loyalty Day in the US. Loyalty Day, first observed as “Americanization Day” in 1921, was pretty much created to counter May Day, a perceived communist holiday. It was made an official holiday on 18 July 1958.
“There’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.”
