Tag Archives: racial profiling

Racism is not a mental illness

Racism isn’t all in individual heads; it doesn’t just reveal itself in interpersonal relations. History, politics, and economics matter.

By Jeremy Adam Smith. Published June 26. 2015 at openDemocracy.

Little Rock, 1959. Rally at state capitol, protesting the integration of Central High School. Photo by John T. Bledsoe [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Last week a young white man named Dylann Roof killed nine black people at prayer in South Carolina. Some have called it racism. Others say it was a crazy, isolated act. “He was one of these whacked out kids,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. “I don’t think it’s anything broader than that.”

Does Graham have a point? After the news of Charleston broke, many of my Facebook friends referred to racism itself as a “sickness” or “disease,” and some described Roof as “insane.” A great deal of research suggests that racial discrimination can harm the physical and mental health of its targets, mainly due to the increased stress racism can cause.

But are mentally ill people more likely to embrace and express racial prejudice? Could racism itself be a mental illness?

Probably not, says the research. Even proponents of this view, like psychiatrist Carl C. Bell, argue that mental illness is associated only with certain forms of prejudice, as when people with paranoid disorders “project unacceptable feelings and ideas onto other people and groups.” Prejudice becomes pathological only when it interferes with functioning in daily life, which is part of the definition of mental illness provided by the DSM (the diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists). Continue reading →

Minneapolis as the ‘New South’: Police Data Shows Severe Racial Disparities

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‘In Minneapolis, the eyes of the law look at Blacks and Native Americans differently than whites,’ says ACLU

By Deirdre Fulton, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published May 28, 2015

In Picking Up the Pieces, the ACLU “demonstrates how racial inequalities in the city extend to the way police enforce low-level offenses, which only increases the feelings of alienation many Minneapolis residents of color have towards state and local government more generally.” (Photo: Taber Andrew Bain/flickr/cc)

Black people and Native Americans in Minneapolis face “extreme racial disparities” at the hands of local law enforcement, with black residents nearly 9 times more likely than whites to be arrested for a low-level offense, according to a new analysis released Thursday.

“Minneapolis police show the same patterns of racial bias that we’re seeing across the country and that demand reform,” said Emma Andersson, staff attorney with the ACLU, whose Criminal Law Reform Project worked with the ACLU of Minnesota to examine more than 96,000 arrests made by Minneapolis police officers for low-level offenses—any offense with a fine of $3,000 or less and/or a year or less in jail—from January 2012 through September 2014.

“In Minneapolis,” Andersson continued, “the eyes of the law look at Blacks and Native Americans differently than whites. The resulting injustices—more fees and fines, more time in jail, more criminal records—hurt Minneapolitans and undermine public safety.” Continue reading →

117 Countries Slam American Police Brutality at UN Human Rights Council

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By Claire Bernish. Published May 11, 2015 by The AntiMedia.org

In what could hardly be called a surprise, the UN Human Rights Council chastised the US over its epidemic of police violence, discrimination, needless killings, and general neglect, following through with recommendations made in its first review in 2010.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) takes place every four years to scrutinize the human and civil rights practices of each of the UN’s 193 member nations. Delegates from 117 countries took the opportunity to lambaste the US’ record of civil rights violations exacted by its brutal and racist police forces.

In an attempt to fend off the inevitable, James Cadogan, a senior counselor in the Department of Justice’s Human Rights Division, said the US must“rededicate ourselves to ensuring that our civil rights laws live up to their promise,” listing several “tragic deaths” that sparked numerous demonstrations and wide-scale unrest across the country. However, he seemed to be blind to the fundamental basis for such outrage saying the US wishes to “identify and address potential policing issues before they become systemic problems,”, even asserting a fictitious good record for holding violators accountable. As Mary McLeod, acting legal adviser to the US Dept of State, put it, “We’re proud of the work we’ve done since our last UPR.” Most would disagree. Continue reading →

From Wisconsin to Baltimore: which lessons learned?

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By Juan Conatz. Published May 7, 2015 by ROAR Magazine

The Wisconsin uprising of 2011 provides valuable lessons for the Black Lives Matter movement across the US, especially about the directions not to take.

Photo: Black Lives Matter protesters occupy the Wisconsin Capitol after the police killing of the unarmed black teenager Tony Robinson, March 2015.

In response to the police killing of Tony Robinson in Madison, Wisconsin, a movement appears to have taken root in the state. This happened around the same time as the movement against the ‘right-to-work’ legislation — a continuation of what started in the spring of 2011, with the occupation of the state’s Capitol building and massive rallies contesting the abolition of public sector collective bargaining as proposed in the controversial Act 10 legislative bill — has grown exhausted and dejected. Continue reading →

Baltimore’s Finest Hour

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We, along with many others, have been watching the events in Baltimore over the last couple weeks. They followed a pattern that’s become all too common; a black man dies during a confrontation with the police. A cellphone video of events draws national attention.

Freddie Gray. Photo by the Gray family.

Baltimore looked as if it were going to follow the path set forth in Ferguson. At the same time that the police investigation’s findings were sent to the state attorney’s office, we saw attempts to paint Freddie Gray as the person at fault. Conservative media began hyping his arrest record (which has nothing to do with the case). The police said that he had been arrested for possessing a switchblade. The Washington Post reported that another person who had been arrested and was in the same police van as Freddie Gray said that Freddie might have been trying to injure himself.

This time, it didn’t go as planned. The day after the Washington Post story, Donta Allen, the person who their story referred to, said the Post distorted his story. Then came yesterday. Continue reading →

Minnesota Nice At Last?

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Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that six cities will be pilot sites for a federal program. The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice was announced last September, and is aimed at reducing racial bias and improving ties between law enforcement and communities. The six pilot cities are Fort Worth, Texas; Gary, Indiana; Stockton, California; Birmingham, Alabama; Pittsburgh and Minneapolis.

Now, you’re probably thinking: “OK – I can understand Gary, Fort Worth and Birmingham. Stockton and Pittsburgh I can understand. But Minneapolis? Minnesota nice?”

Yes, Minneapolis – and it belongs on the list. Last October, the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota released a report which shows that a black person is 8.86 times more likely to be arrested than a white person for disorderly conduct, 7.54 times more likely to be arrested for vagrancy and 11.5 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession. Continue reading →

The New Face Of Judicial Extortion

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Protest at Ferguson police Department, August 2014. Photo by Jamelle Bouie [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

Sunday evening, on the eve of the six-month anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown, a group of civil rights lawyers filed a pair of lawsuits on behalf of 11 residents of Ferguson and 9 residents of Jennings; two suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri.

The lawsuits claim the cities involved have pursued the “policy and practice … to jail people when they cannot afford to pay money owed to the city resulting from prior traffic tickets and other minor offenses without conducting any inquiry into the person’s ability to pay and without considering alternatives to imprisonment as required by federal and Missouri law.” Continue reading →

Explosive Rates of Mass Incarceration Called Major ‘Civil Rights Issue of Our Time’

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Published on Friday, January 16, 2015 by Common Dreams

by Sarah Lazare, staff writer

Over the past 40 years, U.S. incarceration has exploded, the report notes, not due to a corresponding increase in severe crimes, but due to society’s “collective choice to become more punitive.” (Image: okayplayer.com)

The disproportionate mass incarceration of people of color in the United States, particularly of black men, is no accident, finds a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. It stems from deep racism in U.S. society—enacted through public policy, policing, a dual court system, media representations, and more—and constitutes “one of the most pressing civil rights issues of our time.”

Entitled Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights, the analysis was written by Robynn J.A. Cox, assistant professor at Spelman College. Published Friday, the report comes amid mounting nationwide protests to reclaim the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr in the lead up to the federal holiday, at a time of protracted and large-scale movements to declare Black Lives Matter.

Continue reading →

Another Week, Another Grand Jury, Another Travesty Of Justice

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Last Monday, a St. Louis County grand jury decided to not indict former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on charges related to his killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager. Yesterday afternoon, a Staten Island grand jury voted not to indict NYPD officer David Pantaleo on any charges related to the death of Eric Garner.

In both cases, the blame can be laid directly at the feet of the prosecuting attorneys. It’s a well known (and true) adage that “a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.” All a prosecutor has to do is show that there’s enough evidence to warrant a charge and a trial; it’s supposed to be up to a full jury trial to determine innocence or guilt. A prosecutor can get a grand jury to do anything they want; in these two cases, the prosecutor didn’t want the officers to go to trial, so that’s what they got. Continue reading →

A Recap Before The Storm

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A little over three months ago was the first time we wrote about what would become the biggest story in America over the following days; Ferguson, Missouri and the shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, a Ferguson police officer. With the grand jury verdict due any day, this last week had more than its share of troubling news about what might happen in the aftermath.

First, the grand jury. In the Wilson case, it’s been more like an in camera trial, and not a grand jury. The person who’s the focus of the charges rarely if ever gets to testify in front of the grand jury; the grand jury’s job is to see if there’s enough evidence to bring the case to trial, and not to decide innocence or guilt. Continue reading →

Occupy World Writes

The Movement Continues – Globally

Tag Archives: racial profiling