Justice … In Black and White

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 2014.

            She stands blindfolded, the Goddess of Justice, holding scales. Justice, we are told, is blind. It is blind to color, creed, national origin. It is blind to wealth. Justice, the balancing of wrongs and restoration of rights rest on the fundamental tenet that it is fair, that all are equal before the law. “With liberty and justice for all.” Six simple words yet so complicated, so difficult to achieve. “All are equal before the law regardless of the color of your skin or your parents’ wealth.” That is the myth of American justice. And myths aren’t necessarily bad things. They bind us as community when there is truth in the myth. Unfortunately, justice is not equal. Justice sees wealth, and Nationality, and color. Justice is biased … and it is as different as black and white.

            Much of social media (the blogosphere, et al) is devoted to turning visceral reaction into fact. And, as my Poli-Sci professor in college noted thirty plus years ago, “where you stand (on an issue) depends on where you sit (your life experiences)”. So, a Black woman in a housing project who sees her teenage son repeatedly stopped and frisked by police will have a different opinion of law enforcement than the white, suburbanite homemaker in the gated community who watches as the same police make two passes each day through the neighborhood. Neither gut reaction can be challenged. Neither is built on fact, however. Facts matter, perhaps never more so than “Ferguson” and “Cleveland” so soon after “Trayvon.” Facts – and honesty – matter.

            Fact: 93% of all murders of African-Americans come at the hand of African-Americans. And the per capita murder rate is 8 times higher for black than white teens. At the same time, 86% of all white murder victims are killed by whites. This should come as no surprise. Even with the dismantling of de jure segregation we remain a country de facto segregated. My elderly mother lives in fear of young black men marauding through her neighborhood like an angry Viking horde. Know what? There are no black families in her upscale Raleigh neighborhood. There are no black teens and if there were, the chances are they wouldn’t bother it. A member of her church, or “over 55” club is more likely to cause her harm.

            Fact: Blacks and whites use drugs in equal percentages. But, blacks are more likely to be prosecuted for drug possession and more likely to be incarcerated. Blacks are also stopped significantly more than whites even when accounting for demographic data in a community (in wealthy areas, upscale black teens are still disproportionately stopped over their white compatriots). In Virginia, 59% of all DOC inmates are African-American while only 36% are white, yet both races commit crimes at the same level.

            “And justice for all.” One out of three young black men born since 2000 will end up with a criminal arrest record before age 18. Imagine – as a white parent – what your visceral reaction would be if those numbers were applied to your family and friends.

            Crime is color-blind; crime doesn’t care about the size of your bank balance. But, justice, justice does care. Black and poor are disproportionately harmed by arrest and sentencing. A huge bank steals billions in account holders funds and is given a “criminal settlement” of $7 billion – again money from the bank’s investors – while the perpetrators remain free. A young Iraqi War vet suffering from PTSD “robs” a bank with an unloaded shotgun. He gets $8,000; he sentenced to 12 years. “And justice for all.”

            Ferguson, Missouri. Race – on both sides – has driven this entire tragic circumstance. What if Michael Brown had been white? Chances are, he wouldn’t have been stopped, white teens are not stopped like black teens. What of the confrontation with Officer Wilson? Race factored in on both sides. Blacks generally view the police as a mercenary force, a foreign invader. Police – overwhelmingly white – view black teens as criminals – in – waiting; they sense the hostility present in the neighborhood. And the result is the loss of another young black man. Was the teen murdered by a racist cop? Was the cop attacked and in fear for his life when the gun was fired? I don’t know. My gut tells me Officer Wilson was not racist; he was a cop trying to do his job and “things” took a wrong turn. But, as a white cop, he was pre-disposed to see a black teen as trouble. And Michael Brown? He was no saint. That shouldn’t matter because (1) Wilson had no right to even stop him and (2) he shouldn’t be dead.

            Let’s remember, black or white, a mother and a father grieve over the senseless death of their son. Do we “hurumph” when a teenager, driving recklessly, dies in a car accident? No. We show empathy. We show sympathy. We feel for the grieving parents knowing that could be us. Michael Brown’s parents – like Trayvon Martin’s parents – deserve that. That isn’t a race issue, that’s simple human decency and compassion.

            “And Justice for All.” How many times do you think grand juris convene and don’t hand down indictments? It’s unheard of, and yet here we see a grand jury do just that. Makes you wonder, answer: 162,000 US grand jury indictments.

            Cleveland. A young boy flashing a play gun. The 911 call comes in saying that. “There’s a kid with a play gun.” The video shows police roll up to the scene, the boy waves the gun in the air and “Bam” a shot rings out from the police cruiser and the twelve year-old is dead. Silence. No outrage. No questioning about “justice” about living in a land dedicated to “equal justice under Law” where a Black President decries the violence yet allows the Pentagon to sell off military-style equipment to police departments; a President who oversees an “intelligence gathering apparatus” that collects virtually every bit of private data on you. Makes you wonder.

            Race and income matter in police work and in the criminal justice system. They cloud and distort the truth and they leave distrust and anger in their wake.

            I don’t know what happened in Ferguson, Missouri. I know this, race played a role in it. I also know those on the “right” and “left” who use tragedies such as this who spread innuendo and rumor in the name of their political position face a special place in hell. I know there are too many police shootings, too many dead black teens, too many mothers crying.

            Sitting in here I hear a disturbing separation. To the young black men who have had numerous encounters with officers like Wilson it reinforces the idea that America seeks genocide on young blacks; to the white guys, many viscerally side with the white cop and say the “n----- had it coming.” How do you respond to such ignorance? How indeed.

            “Red and yellow, Black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

            Justice – real, justice – like mercy, is blind. It is high time we begin in our own lives striving for that ideal.

 

Race...Again

Last Saturday night most TVs in the pod were tuned to CNN as “Breaking News” came in announcing a verdict in the most recent racially charged case out of Florida since the Trayvon Martin murder trial. The new case, involving a white middle class man named Dunn who pulled a gun out while in a “7-11” parking lot and proceeded to empty a clip into a red SUV parked beside him, killing the driver, a seventeen year-old black kid names Jordan Davis and wounding his two black friends. And people immediately compared this shooter (Dunn) to the Martin shooter (Zimmerman); and the case broke on racial lines just like the Martin case; and once again America was treated to the idiocy of Florida’s “stand your ground” law and way too many talking heads on TV inflaming the situation.

            The cases aren’t the same. There were major differences between Zimmerman and Dunn. Zimmerman stayed at the scene, Dunn left after firing. Zimmerman was in his own neighborhood, sober, and “observed” a “suspicious” man walking through. He contacted police who told him to “not interact” with the walker (advice he ignored). He confronted the hooded black teenager; a scuffle ensued and Trayvon Martin lay dead.

            Dunn had been to the wedding of his son from whom he was estranged. He had four rum and cokes at the reception and stopped at the 7-11 on the way home. His girlfriend testified he was in a “not so good mood” and immediately upon parking next to the red SUV with the three black teens in it, stated to her how much he loathed “that f---in loud rap music.” For some unknown reason, Dunn then felt “threatened” by the three teens. He claimed – well after he was tracked down for the shooting – that one of the black teens “brandished” a gun; only after seeing the gun – he claimed – did he pull out his piece and fire in self-defense. Funny thing was, there was no gun in the SUV. Dunn’s girlfriend said there was no gun that she ever saw and she never felt in fear. Not good testimony if you’re trying to build a “self-defense” defense.

            As any reasonable person would expect, Dunn was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder (the two wounded black teens) and the count on brandishing a firearm. However, the jury hung on the first-degree murder count, and that is where the problem with race comes in.

            Guys in here were livid. “M – F—er got away with murderin’ another black kid. It’s open season on young brothers.” CNN’s own anchor fanned the flames with outrageous, anecdotal comments and hyperbole (and yet, Don Lemon remains of the air – go figure.) And I watch it all and realize it is so easy to jump to conclusions and make over-generalized statements especially when it comes to races. America is a unique nation because it enjoys a prosperity and internal peace in abundance all the while being a very heterogeneous population. And yet, the elephant in America’s living room remains race.

            It’s weird really because I always considered myself racially fair (for lack of a better word). I told myself I didn’t judge people by their color (hell, I thought Halle Berry was the most beautiful woman in the world!), but it was easy saying that out there because I lived a racially segregated life. We had no black or Hispanic friends, and no races other than white attended our church. I had black employees; our kids went to school and played sports with black kids; but that was the extent of it. Then I got locked up and I shared cells, and chow hall tables, and my life with men who did not look like me and I realized all the preconceived ideas I had that involved a person’s skin color, National origin, religion, or sexual orientation were unadulterated bullshit.

            Race will continue to torment this country corporately and many of us individual until we overcome those preconceptions. Where is the empathy for the mothers of the two boys gunned down? Shouldn’t any parent be able to feel the loss these women feel? Why should our view of crime, politics, music, anything really be governed by the skin color of those involved?

            Dr. King urged America to judge a person “by the content of their character not the color of their skin.” Sometimes that’s tough. It’s always easier following preconceived notions. But, it isn’t right. Until we come to grips with the fact that a teenager was senselessly gunned down and not worry about his color, we are doomed to repeat the same tale over and over.

            This past week white fraternity members at Ole Miss placed a noose around the statue of James Meredith. The same day, a black Ole Miss student had a drink thrown on her from a passing car as the driver yeller the “N” word. It’s time to stop the ignorance.

Reaction Inside

Last Saturday night around 10:00 pm, as we waited for our final standing count of the day, news broke that the jury had reached its verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial. As we waited for the officers to whistle us to the ends of our bunks, almost every set of eyes was focused on the decision. In a place like this, where every man in here has dealt with court, and conviction, and sentencing, following trials is as natural as following football. Throw in the racial overtones the case presented and you couldn’t find a man who didn’t have an opinion. Hear the jury foreperson say out loud “not guilty” and you could feel the collective tension in the building rise.

           

It was an interesting next few days and it gave me a chance to analyze my own thoughts on the matter. As with most circumstances in here, my opinions - always asked for - somehow managed to upset both sides of the argument. I guess that means I’m on to something.

            

Does Trayvon Martin’s death have broad social implications? It shouldn’t, at least not any more so than the tragic death of any other young person in this country from random gun violence. The leading cause of death for black teenage boys in this country is shootings. Trayvon Martin is just one of too many young black men who will not see adulthood because of our nation’s obsession with guns. I’m not disparaging the Second Amendment. The fact is, in this country getting shot is as American as apple pie.

            

Trayvon Martin didn’t have to die. Unfortunately, too often we act in a careless, impulsive manner. We put a course of events in motion which soon take on a life of their own. We are at the mercy of the situation we began. It’s one of those laws of human nature as applicable as gravity: our actions have consequences. It’s my story of prison and divorce. It’s George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin’s story as well.

            

Trayvon Martin had every right to walk from the “7-11,” back to his father’s apartment by way of those public streets in that neighborhood. No one has a right to profile a person legally walking the street because he happens to be young, black, and wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

            

The irony of profiling young, black men in white neighborhoods is they aren’t the ones committing the crime there. Black on black crime is far more prevalent than black on white. It is simply prejudice fostered by ignorance that makes white people recoil when a black teen walks through their neighborhood.

            

So Trayvon Martin was legally entitled to be where he was. But, so was George Zimmerman. Zimmerman is the kind of neighbor we all want. He cared about the area he lived in. He knew the people who lived around him. He volunteered to keep the neighborhood safe. How many people, after coming home and finding their home burglarized haven’t wished they had a neighbor who watched what was going on and was willing to call the police? Zimmerman also had a right to carry a gun.

            

Both participants had every right to be where they were and behave as they did. Isn’t that usually how things start out before they go awry? The race baiters are wrong. This isn’t about “open season” on young black men. There’s simply no evidence that Zimmerman was motivated to act by any racial animus.

            

There are problems facing young black men. They kill each other at alarming rates. They are imprisoned at significantly higher levels than whites or other racial groups. But, is it color or class that matters? I keep telling the guys in here that black college graduates have the same low unemployment rate as white college grads. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of black families are one parent families. There is a direct correlation between one parent families, poverty levels, and a lack of higher education. Class, it seems, matters more than race.

           

I see it in here every day. The young black men I share this prison pod with almost all came from broken, single parent households. They knew more people who’d gone to prison than college. And, the crimes they committed: drug dealing, robbery, murder, almost always victimized other black citizens. No, Trayvon Martin’s death wasn’t about his color.

            

But it also wasn’t about self-defense. In here you know what they call a grown man who follows teenage boys: a predator. Zimmerman should have left the kid alone. And more parents, hindsight being twenty-twenty, would tell their kids to watch out for a “perv” on the street.

            

No one knows what led to the altercation between those two. And another senseless death resulted; and two families are forever changed. The prosecutors sought fame by grandstanding their case. They fed into the crowd’s call for blood, for retribution. The talking heads used both these men as caricatures of their biased views.

            

What are we left with? We see the words of a woman, Trayvon Martin’s mother, who after the jury returned its verdict simply stated “Lord, I lean on you in my darkest hour.” The next morning she attended church.

           

I’m not sure what justice is in a tragedy like this. But, I know what grace is. And grace matters more.

Guggenheim

Guggenheim.  What does that mean?  I have no idea.  I know it’s the name of an art museum in New York.  I also know it’s a person’s name.  But what does it mean and if I call myself “Guggenheim” does is suddenly change who I am?

There is a very troubling effort underway, primarily in the mass of young, black inmates, to recruit these men into “the knowledge”.  As I’ve written in past blogs, both the five percenters and NOI (Nation of Islam) are growing sects in prison.  Coming on the heels of the Trayvon Martin shooting you can feel the palpable rise in racial tensions in this environment.  It’s driven by ignorance, self-loathing and envy. 

Shortly after the Trayvon Martin shooting, Fox News contributor and author Juan Williams – a black man – wrote an Op Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.  In it, he decried the race-baiters (Spike Lee, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson) who flocked to Sanford, Florida to decry the “racially-motivated” murder of the 17 year old Martin.  Black celebrities and athletes – even a U.S. Congressman – donned “hoodies” and denounced the “open-warfare on young, black males.”  Williams asked a simple question.  If 90% of the murders of young, black males are at the hands of other young, black males, where is the outrage in the black community?

I found Williams’ argument very moving and insightful.  But Williams was not alone.  USA Today Contributor Dewayne Wickham penned virtually the same column.  Bill Cosby announced the Martin shooting was about guns, not race.  As I customarily do, I engaged a few of the guys in here in that “observation”.  What, I asked, did they think of the Williams and Wickham and Cosby theory?

“Sankofa” answered for the group of perhaps fifteen guys.  “They’re all house negroes, sucking up to the white man”.  Who is “Sankofa”, the forty-year old man making this statement?  He’s a friend of mine, Jay, a rather bright forty year old from Baltimore in the middle of a second degree murder sentence.  Six months ago Jay legally changed his “white name” to Sankofa an African-dialect word meaning “freedom”.  He has become a leader of the post-African movement.  Everything about Africa is wonderful; everything Western is vile.  Ironically, the books, the “history”, the “knowledge”, trace its roots to Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  It is built on revisionist history and completely devoid of fact or logic.  Simply put, I know more accurate African history and current events than any peddled by Farrakhan or the revisionists who peddle their distortions in prison.  Much like the white supremacists in here with their toxic views on Judaism and their holocaust denials, it is lie and misconception . . . and ignorance to the “nth” degree.

I recently read a book by Stanford University professor Richard Ford titled “Rights Gone Wrong”.  Ford, a black scholar, offered a detailed explanation of what he called, “The Balkanization” of the Black community.  He argued that much of the civil law created to stop discrimination and the criminal law created to end drug dealing and gun violence in the inner-cities was racially neutral and well-intended.  However, its application and abuse by parties on both ends of the political spectrum brought us to our current climate of racial toxicity.

The Black community, he argues, is not a monolith.  It is deeply split by those blacks who have reached educational and economic parity with the white middle and upper middle class versus uneducated, poor blacks.  Get an education, get a good paying job, and a middle class black family looks – and behaves – like a similarly situated white family.

As I’ve detailed numerous times in this blog, I struggle to understand what it means to be black in America.  For many of the young men whom I’ve met and befriended I realize their life experiences were so vastly different from the ones I tried to provide my own sons.  And there is no doubt that we are a nation with deep racial wounds and lingering prejudices.  The condition of poor black families in America is deplorable.  That a young black man has a better chance of being incarcerated than being a college graduate is disgusting and should shame every decent American, but the growth of “African” revisionist thought in prison is not the solution.

How dangerous is this ignorance?  Sankofa told me the other day that poor uneducated whites have it better in America than millionaire blacks.  I asked him if he knew who Charles Murray was.  Naturally, he said no.  I explained how Murray is a social scientist who has written throughout his career on the split in America along intellectual and cultural lines.  What Murray found, I argued, was that it’s the poor and ignorant vs. the wealthy and cultured.  It’s the haves versus the have-nots.

Ignorance.  Ignorance leads uneducated men in here to grasp at quick, easy to understand apologist theories for their incarceration.  Ignorance drives men to refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and to believe their criminal conduct is really a political reaction to a racist society.

Ignorance is a cancer.  It is destroying young black men in prison.  No program the government has prepared challenges this ignorance.  Only one thing can fight ignorance:  EDUCATION.

America is a divided nation.  The simple explanation is race.  But simple isn’t always right.  When a white person clutches their bag when seeing a young black man, or utters some asinine comment like “Obama hates white people” – they are as wrong – and as ignorant – as my young black friends in here.

America is a Balkanized country but it’s not Balkanized by race, but by lack of education.  Ignorance is rampant in prison.  Then again, it’s pretty prevalent in the “free world” as well. 

So I told Sankofa, and the Dominator, and Sincere and I God and Divine, to call me “Guggenheim”.   “Why?” they asked.  “Felt like I needed a new name to represent the new me”, I said.  “That’s stupid”, they told me.  Precisely my point. 

In Black and White

As opposed to most white Americans, I live in an integrated world.  Our “learning community” – the “Campus within Walls” is just over 50% white and just under 50% black.  Those percentages are an anomaly in prison where almost 70% of the inmates are African Americans.  One of the eye opening parts of my prison experience has been coming face to face with my preconceptions, my prejudices, about race. I’ve written about it before.  I live it every day.  I’ve learned quite a bit in four years.  First, that for the vast majority of whites, we haven’t a clue what it means to be black in America.  Second, that the vast majority of Black Americans don’t hate us should come as a pleasant surprise.  And third, that race continues to define and damage this country and will do so until we come to grips with it.

I write this as race again rears its ugly head with the news of the shooting of a 17 year-old black teenager by the name of Trayvon Martin (in Sanford, Florida).  His death was senseless.  That the shooter remains free should concern every parent.  When President Obama – a man I don’t often agree with – said “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin”, he spoke from the heart.  Unfortunately, in America, race matters.  Whether “driving while black” or walking back from a convenient market with skittles and an ice tea “while black” it is tough, sometimes deadly to be black in America.

A few weeks ago during a visit, a relative leaned in and whispered to me “Obama hates white people”.  How do you know that?  I asked, realizing the President’s own mother is white.  “It was on the internet”, came the reply.

And it made me think of my own upbringing.  I grew up in an upper-middle income family in upstate New York who had zero black neighbors or friends.  My high school had one black student.  Our church, a 400 member Presbyterian congregation had one black couple.  I still remember cringing as a middle-schooler in the late ’60’s when my mom remarked once that Shirley “is a credit to her race.”  I wonder what that makes me, now a member of the tribe of felons?

My family moved to Raleigh in the 80’s when I was in law school.  They have no black neighbors, no black friends, no black church families.  They have never voted for a black candidate.  The only contact they have with Black America is when they go to the mall.  And if my mom sees young black men she instinctively clutches her purse and car keys. 

And I wonder, thinking about all that, why no young black man in prison has ever suggested to me “your family hates black people”.  White America, I am convinced, doesn’t understand what it means to be black in this country.

Here are some facts to ponder.  Roughly three out of four black children are born out of wedlock.  60% of all black males between 17 and 25 have a criminal record.  80% of black students don’t go beyond high school.  Four in ten don’t even graduate high school.  The dropout rate, the incarceration rate, the mortality rate, the poverty rate for black Americans is dramatically worse than for the white community. 

Those are just facts.  That doesn’t quantify the number of times blacks are stopped by the police for random pat downs, or the fact that while drug use is proportional in both the black and white communities, a young black caught with drugs will almost always end up in prison.  And the white?  Rehab and probation.

America is not a color-blind society, and it’s a shame, a national shame.  Trayvon Martins lies dead for one simple reason; he was a black teenager walking at night.  I hate saying that, but the truth sometimes isn’t pretty.

Prison is an amalgam of gang bangers, white supremacists, and the rest of us.  I thought when I was first locked up how wasteful and inane the entire gang culture was.  Then, I looked myself in the mirror.  Gangs are a reflection of the sick, pervasive race issues this nation still suffers from.  And it will get worse.  The N.O.I. – Nation of Islam, with their call for race separation and their revisionist history and illogical conclusions passing as “knowledge” grows by leaps and bounds each week behind these walls.  I hear the young black guys discussing their “elements of wisdom” and my heart breaks.  They are being fed falsehood upon falsehood.

Dr. King understood the dangers that lurked for America if we didn’t grasp our race problem.  We are not to judge “by the color of our skin”, but “by the content of our character”.  Those of us who believe in the Gospel of Jesus know well that “in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, free nor slave”.

Trayvon Martin’s tragic death can be a chance for America to be something different, a nation not separated or defined by color.  Surely any parent can feel the pain his family must feel.  And that is as plain as black and white.