Mary Mitchell

50 years of precedents paved way for blatant police brutality

November 30, 2006
BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist

We don't have a black and white problem as much as we have a black and blue problem. While the race of police officers who have been involved in questionable, high-profile shootings have been black, white and Hispanic, the race of the citizens who have been shot by police have been the same: black.

In most instances, those citizens have also been males.

Whether we're talking about police shootings in L.A., Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta or New York, the common denominator has been race.

On Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called the 50 shots that killed Sean Bell, 23, on his wedding day, and critically injured two of his friends "inexplicable" and "unacceptable."

But that's PR talk meant to appease black leaders.

Firing 50 shots at unarmed men should be called what it is: extreme brutality.

Worse yet, the only reason six undercover New York Police Department officers -- who by the way, were black, Hispanic and white -- could even think they would get away with such a barbaric act is because of what happened in the shooting case of Amadou Diallo.

In 1999, the unarmed African immigrant was shot 41 times by NYPD street crime officers because they "thought" he had a gun. All Diallo had on him was keys to his apartment.

Despite the brutal nature of the shooting, the four officers involved were found not guilty of committing a crime.

That jury verdict may very well have made matters considerably worse for America's blacks.

In fact, police brutality against black people is just more evidence of how some things don't seem to change.

An infamous precedent -- 150 years ago
Last week, Conrad Worrill, founder of the National Back United Front and one of the early supporters of reparations, asked me to take another look at the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857.

Dred Scott was a Missouri slave whose master had taken him to live in Illinois and in the northern part of the Louisiana Territory.

Scott sued for his freedom, on the grounds that living on free soil had liberated him. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Scott "was not a citizen and therefore could not bring suit in the courts."

Indeed, language by the court was clear: the "negro" had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

As noted by historian John Hope Franklin, that ruling -- from the nation's highest court -- not only further divided the North and the South, it ensured that only a "social revolution" could bring about an end to slavery.

The Diallo case created a similar precedent.

If police officers can be cleared of wrongdoing in one of the most egregious cases of cop brutality, then there's little chance that officers in other brutality cases will be held criminally accountable.

Although police departments are allowed to fire trigger-happy cops, it is not enough.

By not prosecuting these cops as criminals, we are reinforcing the notion that black people deserve this brutality.

Brutality cases settled, while cops go free
And it is outrageous that taxpayers -- black people included -- must finance police brutality. Local governments routinely pay defendants millions of dollars to settle brutality cases without ever acknowledging that the officers did anything wrong.

I understand that police officers who patrol high-crime areas are putting their lives at risk. But there are decent, law-abiding citizens in those communities, and they are at the mercy of cops who just don't give a damn.

For example: How could police shoot an 88-year-old woman to death?

Last week, Kathryn Johnston of Atlanta was killed by officers who came to her apartment looking for a man who had allegedly sold an informant crack from Johnston's home.

According to the New York Times, Johnston met the officers at the door and began firing. The officers had entered her apartment by cutting the burglar bars, and forcing open the doors before announcing themselves.

Now think about that for a minute.

If you're an elderly woman stuck in a crime-ridden neighborhood and you own a gun, and bunch of men cut the burglar doors off your door, would you wait around to see if they were really police officers?

Instead of retreating, the officers gunned down the old woman in a hail of bullets -- to allegedly retrieve two bags of crack and three bags of marijuana as evidence in a drug sting.

It is highly unlikely that those cops would have exchanged gunfire with an elderly white woman over that small amount of drugs.

Yet, this is the blatant brutality that goes on in black communities.

I'm afraid that just as the Dred Scott decision affirmed slavery, the Diallo ruling justified cop brutality.

Until reckless cops are prosecuted as criminals, black people won't have any rights that cops are bound to respect.

Posted by Mary Mitchell at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (86) | TrackBacks (0)

Isn't it ironic.
It took a ballistic white man spewing the "n" word for black leaders to finally call on Black America to stop using the racial slur.

On Monday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other black leaders applauded comedian Paul Mooney for agreeing to stop using the "n-word."

I suppose these black leaders are better late than never. But why not call out P. Diddy, Chris Rock, or Russell Simmons on this issue? Who really cares anymore about Paul Mooney?

Also, this recent "ban the "n-word" campaign shows just how far behind black leaders really are on this issue. Activists have been raising awareness about the unacceptable use of the slur since 2004.

Posted by Mary Mitchell at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (87) | TrackBacks (0)

After watching a video-clip of "Seinfeld" has-been, Michael "Kramer" Richards, going into a racist tirade in response to black hecklers at a West Hollywood comedy club, I have only one question:

Are African-Americans still confused about the word "nigger?"

Click here to watch the video
WARNING: This video contains graphic language.

Nigger is what some white people call black people behind their backs. Nigger is what some other white people call black people when they are annoyed or angry, and Kramer was obviously p---- off.

I learned how easy it is for the age-old slur to slip out of a white person's mouth early in my working career.

A white co-worker was so upset by something her boss said, she ran crying into the bathroom. I followed and attempted to console her. While I'm patting her on her back, the co-worker suddenly looked up and said with malice: "He can't treat me like a nigger!!

I don't think she even considered that she was talking to a black person.

Unlike "cracker" and "white boy," racial epithets that are often used in routines by black comics, the word "nigger" cuts to the bone because it is loaded with historical hatred and disrespect.

But Kramer, like many white people, doesn't get it.

He says he spewed the slur because he lost his "cool" like that makes a racist rant more acceptable.
Like my former co-worker, Kramer has a word for black people and it isn't African-American.

Even so, it's difficult for me to be too shocked by Kramer's use of the "n" word when black people are calling each other niggers in front of white people everyday.

Posted by Mary Mitchell at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (231) | TrackBacks (0)

Mitchell column: Marriage is for black people, too.

Black man, it is time to get married. No more pathetic excuses about not being ready, or not being able to get along, or not having a good enough career.

In the old days, when a man got another man's daughter pregnant, the father would march the expectant father down the aisle at the end of a shotgun. We don't believe in forcing couples to get married these days.

And look what's happened.

At the rate black men -- many of them fathers -- are not marrying, the entire race may be at risk.

Here are the simple facts, according to credible research:

African Americans are significantly less likely to marry than are whites. Only 50 percent of African Americans born between 1960 and 1969 were married by the age of 30 (compared with 78 percent of whites).

African Americans have higher rates of divorce than do other racial and ethnic groups.

And because of lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates, African-American women are about half as likely as white women to be married at any one time.

But marriage is no longer a moral issue.

It is an economic one.

According to research found on the Web site for National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, "marriage is clearly linked to economic, psychological and social benefits."

African Americans who are married have more money and higher-status jobs than unmarried African Americans, and the economic benefits of marriage for blacks may be more important than they are for whites," researchers found.

Not just poor people
This is not a lot of right-wing mumbo jumbo.

In fact, the next time a politician starts downplaying this problem, notice the wedding ring on his finger. Just about every high-profile civic leader today is or was married, and made the effort to raise his children in a two-parent family.

That goes for the political rock star, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, too.

But when was the last time any black leader made a pitch for marriage? More of them have defended same-sex marriage than have pointed out that the lack of marriage is destroying the black community from the inside out.

This is not a ghetto problem.

There are a lot of educated black women who should have been at the altar a long time ago. Instead, they settled for the challenges that come with raising children alone.

It wasn't always this way.

In 1970, African-American and white marriage rates were statistically comparable, says Edward Laumann, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and author of "The Sexual Organization of the City," a landmark study that looked at sexual behavior in black Chicago neighborhoods.

"Over the next 10-year period, the rates just dropped like a rock," he said. The causes for that drop included "stagflation," he said.

"Inflation was going up and the economy was stagnant in areas like Chicago, and one argument is that this hit the black male population very hard. So their ability to take on the role of principal breadwinner was compromised. At the same time, there was a fairly big rise in the incarceration rate of black males and an increase of males who had felony convictions, which lessened the willingness of another party to marry them," said Laumann.

More dropouts, violence
While that explanation makes some sense, it doesn't account for the educated black men in their 30s and 40s who have children out of wedlock and are still juggling other relationships. These men aren't committing, either.

"Black men are more permissible about extra-marital relations and about two-timing women and that sort of thing. They now are in a buyer's market and they can demand a price," Laumann said.

Their price is pretty high.

Black women are waiting longer and longer to walk down the aisle. By the time some get there, they have already had one or two children. If the children are by different fathers, these women's lives are further complicated.

Common sense should have told us there would be consequences for this selfish behavior.

By now, so many blacks have ignored the warnings about the harm caused by the absence of black fathers that those consequences are now overtaking communities in the form of high dropout rates and senseless violence.

Black man, this is not an attack. It is a black woman's plea.

We are tired of seeing our daughters travail in such sorrow. We are tired of watching our grandchildren cling to fragile family ties. And by now, we are clear:

Politicians can't fix this problem. Preachers can't fix it.

There's only one real way to ensure that a black child has the best chance to succeed in this life.

Black man, marry your baby's mother.

Posted by Mary Mitchell at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (286) | TrackBacks (0)