A half-century of progress & black America's still burning

A good opinion piece.

It asks a key question that if crime rates are decreasing & racial intolerance among Americans is also decreasing, & esp. among the millennials, there's pretty much no intolerance, then why are we still seeing such wealth gaps & unemployment problems among African-Americans? Why do American cities which are predominantly African-Americans, demographically, are burning, even though, those cities have African-Americans in the political arena & other influential areas of the city / region?

Although, the opinion piece gives the answer that "once an institution (a city, a police force, a school system, an economy) is set up to create a racial divide, it will continue to do so, regardless who’s running it, unless there’s a dramatic intervention," I'd further add into that answer that those institutions only bring those people up through their ranks who have been successfully molded into that institution's thinking / culture. That "culture" is still of racial discrimination against "coloured" people, be it Africans, Latinos, South Asians, Asians, etc.

To have a dramatic intervention, the institution needs someone who will think radically different & have the full support to bring about that radical changes. We have multiple examples of these "radicals" successfully changing corporate cultures in the business world. We need the same in the public / political arena.

But the problem in public arena is that politicians think short-term & how will it affect their political prowess. If the answer is negative, then either an absurd action is taken or no action at all. Final result is that the society keeps itself on a downhill spiral & problems keep snowballing to the point that the general public then takes dramatic steps, which then, result into violent protests & riots.
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/a-half-century-of-progress-and-black-americas-still-burning/article24329853/

You can’t help thinking that the US has gone back to 1965. You see it in the fury over racially charged killings by police in Ferguson, Baltimore, Staten Island & Charleston – the latter of which even involved that staple of sixties old-boy racism, the “broken tail light” police stop.

You see it in the mass protests provoked by that fury & the riots that often ride the coattails of those protests, making Baltimore & Ferguson resemble Watts & Detroit. And in the barren, boarded-up streets of those cities, so shocking in an era when “the ghetto” has all but disappeared from larger cities. And in the broken, isolated, impoverished lives of the young men taking part in those protests & riots. Has America regressed?

On one hand, it hasn’t: The past decade has seen the US move sharply away from that divided era. Crime rates have plunged to record lows & crime rates among black Americans – including violent crimes – have fallen even more sharply, to well below where they were when measures began in 1964. Many other social measures – teen pregnancies & school-dropout rates, especially among African-American youth – have dropped to all-time lows.

Attitudes have changed even more. Racial intolerance, by almost any measure, is more rare in the US today than it has ever been; among Americans in their 20s today, acceptance of interracial marriage & dating (a key measure of tolerance) is now nearly 100%. American white millennials are growing up without measurably racist attitudes.

But if the attitudes are becoming a thing of the past, the outcomes aren’t. Black Americans are, on average, even further apart from white Americans in income (where black people earn $27,000 [US] a year less than white people, up from $19,000 in the sixties) & wealth (an $85,000 gap, up from $75,000 in the eighties). African-Americans face double the unemployment rate of white people, poverty rates are higher & the incarceration rate is shockingly high, cutting holes in half of black families (& having almost nothing to do with the fall in crime rates).

“When it comes to race relations, America is better than it’s ever been,” the Washington journalist Jamelle Bouie writes. “With that said, we shouldn’t confuse optimism about race relations (or, again, how whites view blacks & other groups) with optimism about racial progress, or how groups fare in relation to each other. There, the news isn’t just bad – it’s bleak.”

Why have the huge improvements in American racial attitudes & general social measures not brought about an improvement in racial equality? Why do police attack & discriminate against black Americans disproportionately – even when, as is the case in Baltimore, most of the police force, its chief, its mayor & its president are African-American?

This is the paradox of the US today: A population of voters & leaders who have largely moved beyond racial discrimination continue to produce often grotesquely racist results. Why does the reality not change with the attitudes toward it?

The answer is found in the cities & towns where these explosions of violence & deprivation are taking place: Once an institution (a city, a police force, a school system, an economy) is set up to create a racial divide, it will continue to do so, regardless who’s running it, unless there’s a dramatic intervention.

Too many Americans don’t see these institutions, but only their victims, who then get blamed for the outcomes: It has become popular again on the North American right to claim, in pseudo-scholarly language, that “that’s just how they are” – that African-American culture, or families, must be to blame (even though culture & family structures are always consequences, not causes, of larger ills).

This view has been decisively disproven this month in a vast & expensive study by economists Raj Chetty, Lawrence Katz & their colleagues at Harvard University, in which thousands of randomly selected low-income (mainly black) families were given vouchers in the nineties to move out of deprived neighbourhoods (& thousands more stayed put as control groups).

The results, a generation later, found that poor, crime-addled families prone to intergenerational poverty & broken homes become, within a generation of leaving their context, prosperous, educated & marriage-prone families, with outcomes similar to those of average Americans.

The Obama administration has attempted the sort of big interventions (such as the ones of the sixties & nineties) that are needed turn around this trajectory of inequality. The post-2008 stimulus & the “Obamacare” medicare system have stopped the rise in inequality & poverty. But many large urban-policy & education programs have been blocked by a recalcitrant US Congress. It might take flames from the cities, as it did 50 years ago, to provoke a change.

Leaked UN report details French soldiers' abuse against young African boys

This news wasn't surprising at all for me. After watching the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," such horrible acts of soldiers working for UN are not a surprise. Heck, even UN's own actions after discovering what French soldiers were doing in Central African Republic are no different than what was portrayed in the movie; bury the evidence, deny any wrongdoing & punish the whistleblower.

Ironically, the world media brings down the house, if & when, these kinds of things are done by so-called "Muslim" groups. Then, the reactions of general public are such that Islam allows these things to happen or Muslims love doing these.

Well, what was driving French soldiers to rape & sodomize small African kids? What was their religion ordering them to do (if they believed in an organized religion / faith)?

Why the general public of "fair" & "just" developed, Western world has such double standards that if a so-called Islamist group performs these acts, then "it's hang-man time" for the whole religion & members of that group but if the same horrible acts are done by their own soldiers, then "it must be a mistake" & "it's all good."

What ISIS do with Yazidi girls / women (I am not condoning those acts ... just putting them in perspectives) is still much less in scope & effect than what soldiers do, under the auspices of UN, in foreign countries from Cambodia to Thailand to Bosnia to Somalia to Central African Republic. At least ISIS doesn't hide what they are doing, unlike UN, which always tries to brush these problems in its rank & file under the proverbial carpet.
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http://rt.com/news/254205-french-soldiers-abuse-boys/

A damning UN report about how French soldiers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9, has been leaked to the Guardian, & the UN official who blew the whistle is facing dismissal.

French peacekeeping troops were supposed to be protecting children at a center for internally displaced people at M’Poko Airport in CAR’s capital Bangui, when the abuse reportedly took place between December 2013 & June 2014. It was at a time when the UN’s mission at the country, MINUSCA, was in the process of being set up.

An internal investigation was ordered by the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights (UNHCR), after reports on the ground of sexual abuse of children displaced by the conflict.

A member of staff from the high commissioner of human rights & a specialist from UNICEF interviewed the children between May & June last year. Some of the boys were able to give good descriptions of individual soldiers who abused them.

Officials in Geneva reportedly received the report in summer 2014.

Swedish national, Anders Kompass, a senior UN aid worker who has been involved in humanitarian work for over 30 years, passed the document on to French prosecutors because of the UN’s failure to take action, sources close to the case told the Guardian.

The newspaper reports that after receiving the confidential UN report entitled Sexual Abuse on Children by International Armed Forces, French authorities traveled to Bangui to investigate the allegations.

A French judicial source said that the prosecutor’s office had received the UN report in July 2014 & that a preliminary investigation had been launched.

“A preliminary investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutor since July 21, 2014. The investigation is ongoing,” he said, as quoted by Reuters.

The UN also confirmed Monday that it had given an unredacted report to the French authorities on the alleged abuse of children by French soldiers in CAR.

“The unedited version was, by a staff member's own admission, provided unofficially by that staff member to the French authorities in late July, prior to even providing it to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' (OHCHR) senior management,” the spokesman for the UN Secretary-General said in a statement.

The report made its way to Paula Donovan from the organization Aids Free World, who then passed it to the Guardian.

“The regular sex abuse by peacekeeping personnel uncovered here & the United Nations’ appalling disregard for victims are stomach-turning, but the awful truth is that this isn’t uncommon. The UN’s instinctive response to sexual violence in its ranks – ignore, deny, cover up, dissemble – must be subjected to a truly independent commission of inquiry with total access, top to bottom, & full subpoena power,” she said.

Last month, Mr Kompass was accused of leaking a confidential UN report & breaching protocols.
 
Kompass was dismissed last week as director of field operations & is now under investigation by the UN office for internal oversight service (OIOS). One senior UN official even said that “it was his [Kompass’s] duty to know & comply” with UN protocols on confidential documents.

Bea Edwards from the US based Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection & advocacy organization, blasted the UN for what is little more than witch-hunt against someone who sought to protect children.

“We have represented many whistleblowers in the UN system over the years & in general the more serious the disclosure they make the more ferocious the retaliation. Despite the official rhetoric, there is very little commitment at the top of the organization to protect whistleblowers & a strong tendency to politicize every issue no matter how urgent.”

France’s Operation Sangaris in CAR began in December 2013. It is now being wound down as Paris hands over security to an 8,500-strong UN peacekeeping force deployed to contain the deadly conflict.

The police force accused of hating black people

That headline may give a thought that this news is about police brutality & racism in US, but you would be wrong. This news is about Portugal.

So, if Europeans are thinking that "our European societies have grown out of such uninfluential & petty social issues as racism", then they would be very wrong.

Similar to the people saying, in regards to the police brutality & hate crimes against African-Americans in US, that American society is still very much racially divided, Europe is also still very racially divided. Over the years, I have read news how young black soccer / football players are discriminated against in Italy, or how Russian & Italian professional football matches are marred by racist chants & slogans, or how African migrants are treated badly in Scandinavian countries, or immigrants are treated badly in France (Paris) or the London riots etc.

We recently saw how African migrants are abused & hated in Europe, when they are trying to flee their war-ravaged homes in Middle East & Africa. Even though, those wars are the handiwork of Europeans themselves, by selling billions of weapons to the known corrupt governments of those conflict regions.

So, instead of successfully integrating these migrants in their societies, European countries are essentially rejecting these migrants & making them feel like that they are not wanted in their countries, by treating them "like animals".

So, as the world is seemingly becoming "modern," we, humans are moving backwards in our thinking of other human beings, & social diseases like hatred, racism, violence, & geopolitical conflicts are increasing on a daily basis.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32419952

Jailza Sousa's young son is afraid when she hangs out the washing on their first-floor balcony.
 
"He's traumatised," says the 29-year-old from Cape Verde. "He says, 'Don't go there because you're going to get shot.'"

Looking down the narrow, potholed streets, she remembers what happened one day in February, earlier this year.

It was noon in Cova da Moura - a ramshackle suburb on a hill on the outskirts of Lisbon built by immigrants from Portugal's former African colonies.

It's a colourful, friendly place by day, but it has a reputation for drugs, crime & violence. It's a place that taxi drivers refuse to go at night.

On 5 February, a team of police officers had a young man called Bruno up against a wall. They were searching him & started beating him - his blood stained the wall & street for several days afterwards. Bystanders started protesting, & the police reacted with shotguns loaded with rubber buckshot.

"They treat us like animals," Sousa says of the police. "It's a black neighbourhood - they treat us like we're all here to be exterminated."

Sousa was taken to hospital while 2 people who work for a local human rights organisation, Moinho de Juventude, or Mill of Youth, set off for the police station to find out what had happened to Bruno.

The two men, Flavio Almada & Celso Lopes, were accompanied by about 5 other young men who had witnessed the incident.

When they arrived at the police station, they say 3 police officers were blocking the entrance.

"Suddenly about 15 or 20 cops came with sticks, with shotguns, & started trying to kick & punch us, trying to hit us with batons," says Lopes.

"And I said 'OK, I'm leaving,'" claims Almada. But he says one police officer cocked his shotgun. "And quickly, he shoot."

Lopes was hit in the leg by rubber buckshot. He, Almada & 3 others were then taken inside the police station, where they were handcuffed. They allege the beatings continued accompanied by extreme racist abuse.

Almada says one officer told him, "You don't know how much I hate you. If I had the power, you would all be exterminated."

He says he was terrified. "I will never forget his face. I will never forget his words."

The men claim other police officers told them they should join Islamic State.

Lopes says for 5 hours they received no medical attention. Eventually all 5 men were admitted to hospital.

Almada says he suffers from terrible nightmares & some of the injuries have still not healed.

4 separate investigations are underway into what happened. Both the Interior Ministry & Portugal's racial discrimination commission are investigating the conduct of the police.

Almada, Lopes & their friends face charges of invading the police station, & they in turn are pressing their own charges of torture & racism against the police.

"When the police come the police are the law," says Lopes. "You are no longer living in a democracy, you are living in a police state."

At the time, the media reported that Bruno had thrown a rock at a police van, breaking a window & injuring an officer. Bruno & eyewitnesses deny this.

It was also reported that the men had tried to storm the police station & that the 5 who were detained had suffered "minor" injuries after resisting arrest. There were later reports that a police officer was taken to hospital with a broken arm.

This incident re-ignited long standing claims of police brutality & racism - a story told in the graffiti on Cova da Moura's walls.

A video circulating on social media shows another recent police raid in Cova da Moura which was filmed by a resident. In the early hours of the morning, police with shotguns & wearing balaclavas can be seen walking through the streets, & shots can be heard.

These police are part of what's known as a Rapid Intervention Team - highly trained & heavily equipped, & normally only called in when a situation escalates beyond what the regular police can handle. But Almada says they are a common sight.

He introduces me to Whassysa Magalhaes, a teacher & part of the management of Moinho de Juventude. One day the police stopped her and asked for her ID.

"I was late & said I had to go to university & they said, 'Black people study?'" she recalls, adding that they used a derogatory term for black people.

Others tell stories of being called monkeys or having their ID cards destroyed by police.

"Here, police just ask you to stop & if you don't stop or you ignore them, they shoot at you, start kicking you, hitting you with sticks," says one young man, Fabio.

"They hate black people."

In another part of Lisbon, Quinta da Lage, the side of one house is painted with a mural of a young black man, & the words "RIP Kuku, let justice be done."

The house belongs to Domingas Sanches. In 2009, her 14-year-old son Elson, also known as Kuku, was driving with friends in a stolen car when they were stopped by police. They started to run away, but Elson was caught by one of the officers. He managed to break away, & was then shot in the head at point blank range by the policeman.

"It's difficult but life goes on, sometimes I cry, I miss him," says Sanches.

The policeman was tried for gross negligent manslaughter & acquitted after claiming he heard a sound like a pistol being cocked, & saw a metallic object in Elson's hand. A weapon was recovered at the scene, although Elson's defenders say it had no fingerprints on it & claim it was planted.

"I felt a great disgust," says Sanches. "If it were a 14-year-old kid killing a policeman, then someone would be found responsible."

"The only thing I wanted was that justice be done, but it probably won't be."

This sense of injustice is widespread. Activists claim that 14 young black men have been killed by police since 2001, & that no police officers have been held responsible for those deaths, though the numbers include some deaths where police responsibility is disputed.

One person who remembers the first of those shootings is Lieve Meersschaert. Born in Belgium she came to Cova da Moura in the early 80s where she co-founded Moinho de Juventude, the organisation that Almada & Lopes work for.

In 2001 a police officer killed a man by shooting him in the back, she says, prompting an escalation of violence.

Eventually Moinho arranged a dinner for local police commanders to meet young people from the neighbourhood - including the sister of the man who was shot.

"It was very funny when the 35 police station commanders arrived, they didn't want to come in. And afterwards we almost had to kick them out, because they didn't want to leave," she says.

After that meeting the police commander of the local area, Antonio Manuel Pereira, worked on improving relations between police & residents. They held football tournaments & children spent time with the officers.

But Pereira retired in 2012 & his replacement put less emphasis on community policing, says Meersschaert. Around the same time a pilot programme called the Critical Neighbourhoods Initiative, which promoted closer co-operation between police & residents, was cancelled by the newly elected conservative government.

Meersschaert says brutality has got worse since then, & that the government ignored warnings.

The BBC made several requests for interviews to the Interior Ministry & the Prime Minister's office, which were all turned down. Eventually the Ministry provided a statement about the police, referred to here as the PSP.

"We reject the suggestion of the existence of police violence & racism. Community policing was, & will continue to be the basis for the deployment of police resources, with a view to ensuring the safety of people & property & to prevent crime. [Community policing] has never been abandoned by the PSP, either in Cova da Moura or in any sensitive urban area. On the contrary, the PSP carries out, on average, more than 15,000 community or neighbourhood policing operations a year, & in sensitive urban areas, interventions of this nature have been increasing. It is not correct to establish a correlation between the reduction of police officers in recent years & purely economic measures."

Almada feels that the problems in Cova da Moura come from a deeper attitude in Portuguese society.

"Racism is beyond the police, it's the whole frame of society, it's a big issue & I don't believe they want to change all these things," he says. "If you see Portugal receiving a prize for well integrated immigrants it's a big lie."

But Portugal's High Commissioner for Migration, Pedro Calado disagrees. "We don't have this big problem of racism in our society," he says.

Calado - the head of the government body tasked with promoting integration, & dealing with racial discrimination - points to the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). This global study ranks countries according to how successfully they integrate migrants. Portugal currently comes second, behind Sweden.

Portugal's defenders also point out that it hasn't had riots like London or Paris, & that there's little anti-immigrant political rhetoric in Portugal.

"I have this clear perception that what happened in Cova da Moura is not the general situation of the country. This was an exception," says Calado.

He also oversees Portugal's Commission for Equality & Against Racial Discrimination, which handles racial discrimination complaints.

"We don't have many complaints," he says as he shows me a report containing the data. It indicates that from 2005-13, there were 75 complaints against the security forces.

I ask how many of those complaints were upheld.

"We would have to look at the data," says Calado. "I cannot tell."

Despite several weeks of emailing back & forth after our interview, the High Commission wouldn't tell me the number of complaints upheld against the security forces for racial discrimination. They say they lack the resources to process the data.

But piecing together the data that is available, it seems that fewer than 10 racism complaints against the security forces have been upheld in the past 10 years in the whole of Portugal. In places such as Cova da Moura, this is seen as evidence of a broken system which doesn't hold police accountable.

Although Portuguese officials deny a deep, systemic problem with the police, the recent incident involving Almada and Lopes has led to some changes.

The Interior Ministry met people from neighbourhood organisations, including Moinho de Juventude & promised to set up a new Early Warning Commission to avoid conflict.

Almada says he hopes that what happened to him might make a small difference, but he's cautious.

"I want to see the results," he says. "I'm like that guy the disciple of Jesus, I just want to see."

Land of the free? The US has a prison problem

Although, it was good to read this article that US has started to look into reforming its prison system, I don't have much hope of something actually happening. Reason being that US prison system, similar to its medical system, is becoming profit-driven.

Some states have contracted out the prison system to private contractors. Those private contractors benefit from prison population's almost-free / "slave" labour & they also get subsidies / tax breaks from the government (similar to several other companies / industries). Of course, if the contractors are profiting from the labour, they need more of that "free" labour. So, of course, they lobby hard & get the judiciary (judges, attorney generals etc.) on their side of the table.

Result is harsh sentencing laws, e.g. minimum mandatory sentence, are then passed. By the way, there was a good crime drama 2013 movie on this issue, "Snitch," starring Dwayne Johnson, & based on a real story. Anyway, so contractors need to keep a certain level of beds fill in their prisons. They may even be getting tax breaks or subsidies based on prison fill-rate (sort of like how hotels operate their business). On top of that, attorneys' successes are measured based on their conviction rate. So the more they put people behind bars, the more they are considered as making the public safe. That perception comes in very handy if those attorneys are dreaming of getting into government one day.

So who suffers in all of this self-serving agendas, fiasco & corruption? The Public.

1. Taxpayers: As the article states, millions of taxpayer $$$ are spent in housing these prisoners. Those same millions which could have been spent on improving infrastructure, putting food on the poor family's table (by increasing the budget of food stamp program, instead of cutting it), improving schools in poor, urban areas so kids of disadvantaged families also get the same quality of education as the kid from an elite family.

2. People: Those people who get snared in this prison system. As recent incidents have widely shown how much racism is still existent in the American society; African-Americans, who are usually on the disadvantaged spectrum of the general population, face the brunt of these harsh laws. They get locked up for minor offences, assuming they did commit an offence in the first place.

Once they caught up in that cycle, there is no exit out of that maze. Even when they do get out, they have a hard time securing employment and/or housing. Result is they may not have enough money to pay alimony or provide a suitable place to live for their kids or live in a safe & secure place just by themselves.

So, if, due to unemployment, that person, who was not a violent offender in the first place, but has an "ex-con" label now, doesn't pay child support, then he is put into prison. If that person, due to unemployment, can't secure housing, & starts living on the streets, where he/she can easily become a drug addict, & if he gets caught with a drug, he/she visits the prison, again. What happens with all these prison visits? That person is labelled a multiple offender, & has much longer sentences.

Essentially, that person, who was wrongly / perhaps, harshly convicted of a minor offense, becomes a hardened criminal. Who gets the blame then? That person him/herself.

My solution:
1. Be extra careful in sentencing a person in the first place. Don't make stupid harsh laws, which, in effect, make the net bigger, so more "fish" are caught.

Try to make laws which focus on catching violent criminals in the first place, rather than, making one out of a non-violent offender.

2. I'm a proponent of capital punishment. That's why, I said in point one above, that try to make laws to catch violent criminals in the first place.

Once those hardened criminals are caught, the hopes of those criminals ever becoming good guys again are slim to none. So, execute them swiftly.

What these two points will do in tandem?

1. Improve relations between the public & law enforcement, since the law enforcement is focusing more on violent criminals & not catching any & all people. Arresting violent criminals will be looked at appreciatively by the general public, since then, the perception would be of a just society.

2. Law enforcement will also become more efficient & their efforts more effective, since their conviction rates will go up, since they are focusing on violent criminals, who will, most likely, get convicted, & since, they are focusing more on few people, they will get more efficient.

3. Law enforcement agencies will focus more on less people, so they may also need fewer cops, which in turn, will result in decreasing the tax burden on the public.

4. Decreasing tax burdens from keeping few people, if any, in prison, fewer cops, fewer prisons, & a less clogged judicial system, where cases are moving faster.

5. Seeing the end result of what happens to a violent criminal, other people, e.g. misguided youths in the public, will also avoid pursuing that lifestyle. Currently, they see that the worst happening to them, if they do pursue that lifestyle, is going to jail & perhaps, staying in there, & in return do some work & get free housing & food, & make friends with life-minded individuals. Life is sweet.

That mindset will get a jolt that no, if you commit a serious crime, you will get the lethal injection. No free lunches & friend with a gang leader.
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http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/criminal-justice-in-america-home-of-the-free/

Since 1990, Missouri’s Hedy Harden has been lobbying for criminal justice reforms in the Midwestern state. On March 11, the 70-year-old chair of the Missouri branch of CURE­—a national criminal-justice-reform organization founded in 1972—joined other like-minded activists for a lobby day in the state capital of Jefferson City to pressure lawmakers to pass a handful of bills aimed at reducing the state’s mandatory-minimum laws & other reforms.
 
Missouri’s prison system cost state taxpayers some $680 million in 2014—up from $220 million in 1994 after the state brought in harsh sentencing legislation that curbed early prison release. Its prison population has since increased nearly 9 times over the past 3 decades, mirroring similar trends across the US.
 
And while Harden has 25 years under her belt advocating for changes to Missouri’s justice laws—& is growing increasingly skeptical that proposed legislation will ever make it into law—the case for criminal-justice reform is riding a wave of support across the US.
 
That support has been spurred by a combination of budgetary constraints, prison overcrowding, shifts in public attitudes & a media spotlight trained on events such as the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in August in Ferguson, Mo., by police officer Darren Wilson, & the subsequent nationwide protests & scrutiny of policing & the criminal justice system. “Definitely, we all had some really high hopes because of Ferguson,” Harden says, “& we know the legislature has to deal with the whole issue of Ferguson.”

The results of the federal justice department’s investigation into the Ferguson police force in the wake of the shooting ... uncovered a municipal justice system rife with racial bias & geared more toward generating revenue for the St. Louis suburb than any concern for public safety. The federal probe found that, according to the police department’s own statistics, between 2012 & 2014, blacks accounted for 85% of traffic stops, 90% of citations, & 93% of arrests made by Ferguson police, despite making up 67% of the city’s population. They also faced significantly more citations for minor offences & bore the brunt of documented force by police. The municipal court, meanwhile, routinely ordered arrest warrants for residents who failed to pay fines for minor infractions such as traffic tickets & parking violations.
 
President Barack Obama cited Ferguson—as well as other recent high-profile police-related deaths in New York & Cleveland—in his March 7 speech in Alabama on the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches. “We can make sure our criminal justice system serves all, & not just some,” he said. “Together, we can address unfair sentencing & overcrowded prisons, & the stunted circumstances that rob too many boys of the chance to become men, & rob the nation of too many men who could be good dads, & good workers, & good neighbours.”

In Washington, Obama isn’t alone in calling for change in how America handles matters of crime & punishment. Criminal-justice reform has turned into a rare point of bipartisan consensus in a Congress that’s become synonymous with partisanship, gridlock & division.
 
The US is currently the world’s largest jailer, with roughly 2.2 million people behind bars. According to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), maintaining that prison system cost American taxpayers $80 billion in 2012. In 2013, the US had an incarceration rate of 716 prisoners for every 100,000 Americans. (By comparison, according to stats from the Sentencing Project, Canada’s incarceration rate is 118 per 100,000.) And, since 1980, the federal prison system grew nearly 800%, with some 219,000 people behind bars.
 
Policy-makers such as outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder are now increasingly likely to talk about being “smart on crime” instead of “tough on crime,” & there is a raft of proposed legislation meant to fix the system. The Smarter Sentencing Act, introduced in February in the Senate by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee & Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, & in the House by Republican Raul Labrador & Democrat Bobby Scott, would reduce the mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, along with other measures.
 
A prison-reform bill also introduced last month by Texas Republican & Senate majority whip John Cornyn & Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, aims to shrink the federal prison population by offering incentives to low- & medium-risk prisoners to participate in recidivism-reduction programs. And, last week, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul (a potential presidential candidate), along with New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, introduced the Redeem Act. That sweeping legislation would reduce the collateral problems former prisoners face when voting & seeking housing & employment. It would also make it easier for juveniles & adults convicted of non-violent offences to seal their criminal records, among other provisions. These & similar bills have been introduced in prior sessions of Congress in the past few years, but failed to gain real traction.
 
Groups such as the ACLU say increasingly harsh sentencing & parole policies, the war on drugs & rising parole revocations are behind the spike in the US prison population over the past 3 decades. Recently, however, sentencing reforms at the state level have helped to spur the first drop in prison populations in decades—a modest overall decline (2.8%) between 2009 & 2012.
 
Those state-level successes ... mean advocates for criminal-justice reform are optimistic. “I do think something significant will happen this year. I think the stars are really aligned,” says Marc Levin, co-founder of the advocacy group Right on Crime, & a prominent voice in the conservative criminal-justice-reform movement. “[It] is such a rarity in a gridlocked system [to find] actual agreement. I think there’s a desire on the part of many Republicans, & many of the consultants to Republicans, to show they’ve got a positive agenda, that they can govern & get something done. There’s a real breakthrough, where there’s something in it for everyone.”

Levin also has prominent conservatives lined up behind him: Big-name Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, presumptive 2016 frontrunner Jeb Bush, & Arkansas governor & former US Drug Enforcement Administration head Asa Hutchinson have all signed on to his organization’s statement of principles. Jesselyn McCurdy, who works with the ACLU in Washington to get members of Congress on board with criminal-justice reform, agrees the timing is right. “Any successes we have at the state level we’re hoping to translate to the federal level,” she says.
 
In November, the ACLU netted $50 million from liberal billionaire benefactor George Soros’s Open Society Foundations to push at the state level to reduce prison populations. Soros has also joined forces with the conservative Koch brothers & other groups (including the ACLU & Right on Crime) to form the new Coalition for Public Safety, billed as “the largest national effort working to make our criminal justice system smarter, fairer & more cost-effective at the federal, state & local level.”

... in a January op-ed in Politico magazine, Charles Koch made the case for reform, writing: “Overcriminalization has led to the mass incarceration of those ensnared by our criminal justice system, even though such imprisonment does not always enhance public safety. Indeed, more than half of federal inmates are non-violent drug offenders. Enforcing so many victimless crimes inevitably leads to conflict between our citizens & law enforcement.”

Still, while there’s broad agreement that the current prison system isn’t sustainable, not everyone agrees on the proposed blueprints for reform. In Congress, those skeptics include Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who, as head of the Senate judiciary committee, holds sway over which reform bills end up on the legislative agenda. On the Senate floor this past week, Grassley voiced strong opposition to the Smarter Sentencing Act, saying the arguments for it “are merely a weak attempt to defend the indefensible,” & pointing to examples such as growing heroin use in states such as Vermont. He also expressed misgivings that the legislation could impede efforts to curtail major drug-trafficking operations, or that it would allow repeat offenders to avoid serious jail time.
 
In California, Proposition 47—a ballot initiative passed last November with nearly 60% support that reclassifies some drug & theft crimes from felonies to misdemeanours—is also facing opposition from critics who argue it’s a flawed & dangerous measure. David Bejarano, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, argues that Prop 47 has: scrapped felony charges for possession of substances such as the date-rape drug; created a loophole for handgun theft; & removed a legal tool used by law enforcement to force people into drug rehab in lieu of jail time. “Other states are watching what California does. What we’re trying to do now through our legislature is correct some of the most obvious concerns we have,” he says.
 
In Missouri, there’s another campaign building to pass House Bill 657, which would reduce the state’s so-called “85% law.” The Republican-sponsored bill would lower the threshold of time served before being eligible for parole for certain dangerous felonies (arson, robbery, & assault) from 85% of the sentence to 50%. Even with that push, & a slew of bills aimed at reforming everything from those mandatory minimums to juvenile justice & the death penalty, Harden called the state legislature “a tough nut to crack.”

US media criticized for Baltimore coverage

A great small article highlighting the fact that how mainstream news media selects what to show on their channels, & how their anchors choose words to frame a certain section of population & their activities as illegal or dangerous. But when that same section of population tries to achieve their goals through peaceful & non-violent means, those news media are nowhere to be found.

Everyone is ready to quote Gandhi & gave examples of his non-violent struggles (if you read the uncensored history of freedom of Indian subcontinent from Britain, you'd realize that it was not non-violent & it involved a lot more people than just Gandhi) but forget that non-violence achieved nothing & won't achieve anything even more now, since the corporate news media is all about ratings & the general populace has been desensitized to the point that they won't focus on a news until chaos & anarchy is being televised.

Did the non-violent struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King achieved his dream of equality & justice for all, regardless of their skin colour? Did Nelson Mandela's non-violent struggles of freeing South Africa & building an equal & just society in South Africa has come to fruition? What about Dalai Lama's non-violent struggles or Aung San Suu-Kyi's for Myanmar? None of them achieved their dream to the full extent.

They / their population were / are still struggling for those rights; be it African-Americans, or Black South Africans, or Buddhists of Tibet, or full & transparent democracy in Myanmar (that military junta only opened the country & accepted a semblance of democracy so foreign investors pour money in the country & the military elite further increase their wealth).

Problem is that the root problems of all these struggles are not hard to find & they are pretty openly laid out by campaigners, activists, & community & political organizations, but the political & corporate elites don't want to resolve those issues. Unlike other minorities in US, African-Americans have been living in US for more than a couple centuries, but they are still considered second-class citizens & they are discriminated against, heavily. Sometimes, it feels like that my ethnic minority, South Asian, are relatively treated better than African-Americans.

These protests all over US are not the result of one person's death. These protests are the result of decades of frustration & anger towards the discrimination African-Americans face on a daily basis.

P.S., a great documentary to see how corporate world controls the American media is, "Shadows of Liberty."

Disclaimer: Of course, I am not condoning such acts of destruction or violence for someone to get their point across, but it is completely understandable why it is happening, & until & unless, the governments, at all levels, engage with the population, instead of merely deploying the police force, & work with the communities to eradicate injustice & inequality, these acts of destruction & violent protests will become more prevalent in the American society.
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http://rt.com/usa/254349-media-coverage-baltimore-questions/

The mainstream US media are facing criticism over their coverage of unrest in Baltimore. Activists & residents claim the media ignored peaceful marches, focused on labels & violence, & ignored the chronic issues of poverty & police misconduct.
 
Protesters shouted down Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera, who arrived in Baltimore shortly before the curfew on Tuesday. They blocked his camera and accused Fox News of lying & “false coverage.”

Fox & other networks were accused of ignoring the peaceful marches & gatherings that were previously protesting the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray in police custody.

“When we were out here protesting all last week for 6 days straight peacefully, there were no news cameras, there were no helicopters, there was no riot gear, & nobody heard us,” protester Danielle Williams told MSNBC's Thomas Roberts on Tuesday. “So now that we've burned down buildings & set businesses on fire & looted buildings, now all of the sudden everybody wants to hear us.”

Fox News host Shepard Smith, speaking on “The Five,” also pointed out that the media has ignored Baltimore’s chronic issues, including the Gray affair.

“We’ve got a major American city that has decades – decades – of turmoil within this neighborhood,” Smith said. “One quarter of the youth locked up. Clearly there is a big problem. Then all of a sudden, an African-American man is taken into a vehicle, & he comes out of it and dies – & you get nothing from authorities except a suspension. And those who would do harm take an opportunity to do harm. And here we are.”

City Councilman Carl Stokes was exasperated by CNN host Erin Burnett’s use of the word.

“No, it’s not the right word to call our children ‘thugs,’” Stokes said. “These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us.”

Comedy host Jon Stewart also took issue with the media coverage of Baltimore unrest, singling out CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s statement that Monday’s imagery was “hard to believe.”
 
“Elvis leading a herd of orthodox Jewish unicorns through a city street – that would be hard to believe,” Stewart chided Blitzer in Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Show. “Ferguson was just a few months ago, & you were talking about it.”
 
“Maybe a more nuanced alert system could allow for more productive intervention beyond, ‘You have 10 seconds to disperse,’” Stewart argued. “Or we could agree to keep ignoring the roots of how systemically, historically disenfranchised many African-American communities still are, only paying attention to them when their periodic fiery ball of anger threatens to enter our airspace like some kind of Alex Haley’s comet. And once again breathing a blissful sigh of forgetful relief when it’s another near-miss.”

"US Race Relations" by Jimmy Margulies

"US Race Relations" - Jimmy Margulies, NYC, NY, US

"Justice in America" by Randy Bish

"Justice in America" - Randy Bish, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Racially diverse emojis miss the point

One of the problems of current society; trying to minimize & tackle the sensitive issues of discrimination (racial, gender, sexual, religious etc.) by not investing enough time & resources to thoroughly understand the problem & then find its appropriate solutions. Trivializing or even deflecting a serious problem will not make it go away (as some may believe) but make the issue that much bigger when it's keep simmering below the surface when it is not handled in a proper way.
 
Trying to handle such critical issues as racial or gender discrimination through emojis or Barbie dolls isn't solving the problem but making it even worse. What does Apple is trying to say to the world through these colourful emojis ... that they are racially neutral? What Apple should have been doing was making its hiring practices more neutral & removing discrimination from it. An African-American/Canadian Barbie doll or an emoji is not going to suddenly get the people talking about race relations in North America or help change North American businesses' eliminate or reduce discrimination; that is just trivializing a serious problem.
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And there is a lot to say about the normalization of our media, about the belief that whiteness is our baseline, even as Caucasians become a racial minority in countries around the world. It is, no doubt, a problem; look no further than the marginalization of African-Americans from the Academy Awards, or the quiet neutering of Asian actors & actresses. A New York Times feature just this weekend helped to expose the insidious bias against black people in photography: “In our time, as in previous generations, cameras & the mechanical tools of photography have rarely made it easy to photograph black skin,” wrote Teju Cole. “Beginning in the mid-1940s, the smaller film-developing units manufactured by Kodak came with Shirley cards, so-named after the white model who was featured on them & whose whiteness was marked on the cards as ‘normal.’ ” Across a wide swath of pop culture, the idea that white is the standard has become ingrained.
 
The problem is, the idea and execution of racially representative emojis completely misses the point.
 
For starters, emojis never really had a race problem. The invention of Shigetaka Kurita, emoji have an Asian root that has in many ways been whitewashed over, with many of the original ones depicting Japanese-centric images such as a bowing businessman ...
 
So the standard baseline in emojis was never really white—that’s a later interpretation that society has applied.
 
And the reality of racial representation is that it will, invariably, leave someone out and leave someone unhappy. It has already begun; social media has noted there is no one with freckles & red hair among the six new colour options for each emoji. The backlash has started, too, as some have been furious over the bright yellow of what they are seeing as the “East Asian” skin colour—ironic, since they’re actually referring to the aforementioned “cartoon-like” emoji complexion, as Asians are not technically depicted at all, given the fact the new emojis reportedly hew to the Fitzpatrick scale, a “dermatological standard” for judging race. (The Fitzpatrick scale did not adequately measure non-white skin colour for years after its 1975 creation, dumping all non-white skin into one category.)
 
That doesn’t even cover the fact that racial representation in emojis squelches the very thing that makes emojis tick, which is their loose, ambiguous interpretative quality. ... the fun of emojis are that they mean nothing, & therefore, can mean anything.
 
And while it’s hardly wrong to get our hackles up over race, it seems odd that the hill we are choosing to defend is the one where the baseline was an intentionally preposterous complexion for a fun thing whose use is derived by its ambiguity.

http://www.macleans.ca/society/technology/racially-representative-emojis-are-missing-the-entire-point/

Canada's race problem is worse than America's

Another great op-ed on racism in Canada. I posted my opinions & thoughts on another article on racism in Canada. I did include immigrants in that blog, & this op-ed does too, but nothing will change in Canada, until we all firmly believe & accept that there is racial discrimination in Canada, & it is only going to get worse as the economy worsens further.
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In the recently released Social Progress Index, Canada is ranked 2nd amongst all nations for its tolerance & inclusion.

Unfortunately, the truth is we have a far worse race problem than the US. We just can’t see it very easily.

Terry Glavin, recently writing in the Ottawa Citizen, mocked the idea that the US could learn from Canada’s example when it comes to racial harmony. To illustrate his point, he compared the conditions of the African-American community to Canada’s First Nations. If you judge a society by how it treats its most disadvantaged, Glavin found us wanting. ... By almost every measurable indicator, the Aboriginal population in Canada is treated worse & lives with more hardship than the African-American population. All these facts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too.

How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue?

Possibly it is because our Fergusons are hidden deep in the bush, accessible only by chartered float plane: 49% of First Nations members live on remote reserves. ... Fewer than 40,000 live in Toronto, not even 1% of the total population of the Greater Toronto Area. Our racial problems are literally over the horizon, out of sight & out of mind.

If we don’t have a race problem then what do we blame? ... Us? For not paying attention. For believing our own hype about inclusion. ... For not acknowledging Canada has a race problem.

We do & it is bad. And it is not just with the Aboriginal peoples. For new immigrants & the black community the numbers are not as stark, but they tell a depressingly similar story.

If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-2/

Racism in Canada

A long, but great, article. Racism is rampant in Canada. Until a few years back, most thought there was minimal racism in US; well, we can see how that went & still coming along since last year there.

Racism is not felt by the majority of Caucasians in Canada; be it education, jobs, & other social spheres of society. But, it is felt by non-Caucasians, be they be Natives or non-Caucasian immigrants from other countries. Assimilation is the word frequently thrown about & the society usually start blaming the immigrants (similar to in this case, Natives) for all their troubles they are facing in Canada.

As I commented in another blog post a few days ago that assimilation is a 2-way street. Natives or immigrants can only assimilate only when Caucasian Canadians also move in their direction & are willing to accept them as their equal, as Canadians.

Jobs, education, & personal safety are 3 of the most basic requirements for any person. Most parents want to see their progeny have a good education, get a good job & lead a happy, safe, & successful life. However, in many cases, be it the African-Americans in US, immigrants all over North America, or Natives in North America (US, Canada, & even Mexico), are not provided educational facilities & some who do get through the education system, they are not provided jobs, as per their education & skills dictate.

If most of the jobs are taken over by Caucasians & they are not willing to help, or "network" with, non-Caucasians (immigrants & Natives), then they are always going to feel inequality & injustice. As long as they are going to feel that way, rightly or wrongly, they will lash out against the majority populations through violent means, which then cause prisons to fill up with African-Americans in US, Natives & even immigrants in Canada, which in turn, feeds the thinking of the society that these groups of people are violent & not good for society.

We can even expand the scope & scale of this to go global. RCMP, FBI, CIA, CSIS are all trying to curb the growth of ISIS, which it is doing through recruitment of western youths. They are failing to understand this basic point that immigrant youths in the West feel rejected from the society. They see that their future seems to be bleak in the West & they feel powerless to do anything in the West. So, they find an easy outlet to move to Middle East, enroll themselves in ISIS, & start feeling like they are contributing something meaningful to a cause.

Then, we have this problem of personal safety. Be it the law enforcement agencies acting out against the minorities (cops in US assaulting minorities or even the judicial system meting out much harsher sentences to minorities for similar offences perpetrated by a Caucasian person) or general Caucasian public on the main street (American Muslims being gunned down). From a Muslim perspective, we can take the issue of Muslim women wearing hijabs in Canada. Regardless of why federal government is demonizing hijabs, the general public take that in the wrong sense & then harassing, verbally, & in some cases, physically abusing Muslim women, out on the street. Law enforcement agencies don't take those matter seriously (similar to Natives in this article). NCCM (National Council of Canadian Muslims) record multiple incidents of harassment & abuse of Muslims in Canada, but how many do we see being reported in the media?

No society can ever achieve peace until & unless it ends injustice & inequality in itself.
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“Oh Goddd how long are aboriginal people going to use what happened as a crutch to suck more money out of Canadians?” Winnipeg teacher Brad Badiuk wrote on Facebook last month. “They have contributed NOTHING to the development of Canada. Just standing with their hand out. Get to work, tear the treaties & shut the FK up already. Why am I on the hook for their cultural support?”

Another day in Winnipeg, another hateful screed against the city’s growing indigenous population. This one from a teacher (now on unpaid leave) at Kelvin High School, long considered among the city’s progressive schools.

Badiuk’s comments came to light the day Rinelle Harper—the shy 16-year-old indigenous girl left for dead in the city’s Assiniboine River after a brutal sexual assault—spoke publicly for the first time after her recovery. She called for an inquiry to help explain why so many indigenous girls & women are being murdered in Winnipeg, & elsewhere in Canada.

Badiuk’s comments came while the city was still reeling from the murder of Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old child from the Sagkeeng First Nation who was wrapped in plastic & tossed into the Red River after being sexually exploited in the city’s core.

They came the very week an inquest issued its findings in the death of Brian Sinclair, an indigenous 45-year-old who died from an entirely treatable infection after being ignored for 34 hours in a city ER.

They came in the wake of a civic election dominated by race relations after a racist rant by a frontrunner’s wife went viral: “I’m really tired of getting harassed by the drunken native guys” downtown, Gord Steeves’s wife, Lori, wrote on Facebook. “We all donate enough money to keep their sorry asses on welfare, so shut the f–k up & don’t ask me for another handout!” The former city councillor & long-serving, centrist politician didn’t bother apologizing.

“We value dogs more than we do these women,” says indigenous playwright Ian Ross.

When measuring racism, social scientists tend to rely on opinion polling & media analyses. Last year, for example, Winnipeg recorded the highest proportion of racist tweets of the 6 Canadian cities known for high levels of hate crime, according to data collected by University of Alberta researcher Irfan Chaudhry. (Manitoba recorded the second-highest rate of hate crimes last year, after Ontario, according to a recent report.)

1 in 3 Prairie residents believe that “many racial stereotypes are accurate,” for example, higher than anywhere else in Canada. In Alberta, just 23% do, according to polling by the Canadian Institute for Identities & Migration (CIIM). And 52% of Prairie residents agree that Aboriginals’ economic problems are “mainly their fault.” Nationally, the figure drops to 36%.

1 in 3 North End residents drop out of school before Grade 9.... 1 in 6 children are apprehended by Manitoba’s Child & Family Services. Girls as young as 11 or 12 routinely work the stroll. On North Main Street, traffic slows to a stall when intoxicated residents stumble across the street. Solvent abuse is as common as alcoholism here, & rising. Even in December’s cold, kids as young as 9 clutch gas-soaked rags; some have begun stuffing them directly into their mouths for a more powerful high.

“I used to tell myself I wouldn’t live to see my sweet 16,” says 24-year-old Jenna Wirch. “I was sure I was going to die before then.” Both Wirch’s sisters committed suicide when they were growing up. 4 of her closest friends have also died by suicide. One hung herself in an alley using her dog’s leash. She was 11. Wirch’s mom put her to work in the sex trade before her 10th birthday. She ran away at 11, then bounced between the street & a long list of foster homes. One was a crack house. Two friends were stabbed to death in front of her, one with a machete. This is a North End childhood.

The area’s hospitalization rate for violence is almost 7 times that of the wider city. Within a year, roughly 20% of youth treated for violence will be back in hospital seeking treatment for another injury, says Carolyn Snider, an ER doctor at the core area Health Sciences Centre.

That’s just a reality of having brown skin in Winnipeg, says Jacinta Bear, who manages the North End Hockey Program. ... “Our team has heard it all,” says Bear .... “Even opposing coaches & refs call our kids ‘dirty little Indians.’”

A few years ago, the federal government investigated claims that indigenous Winnipeggers were being denied housing due to discrimination. The Canadian Mortgage & Housing Corporation pulled together a random survey of Aboriginal renters. The results were damning. 1 in 3 told the CMHC that after showing up to visit an available suite they were told it had “just been rented.” More than 30% felt they had been driven to neighbourhoods in the core, where the poverty rate & the incidence of crime more than doubles the wider city & jobs are scarce.

“Colonialism didn’t just impact Aboriginal people,” says Perry Bellegarde, the new national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. “It forever changed the way the European population on the Prairies would see Aboriginals as a problem, never a partner.”

The province imprisons a higher proportion of its indigenous population than apartheid South Africa did its black population. 65% of inmates at Stony Mountain Penitentiary, a medium-security prison just outside Winnipeg, are indigenous, the country’s highest Aboriginal incarceration rate measured by jail.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/welcome-to-winnipeg-where-canadas-racism-problem-is-at-its-worst/