Monday, May 27, 2013

The Limits of Empathy? Trayvon Martin, "Piloting While White," and the Perils of "Stop and Frisk"

For the record, as with the previous accounts this is one more story of a pilot who was:
  • doing absolutely nothing wrong;
  • breaking no law, guidance, or suggestion formal or informal; and yet
  • was detained for an extended period, subjected to an intrusive search, and otherwise treated as a suspect in a process that yielded no incriminating material nor anything even vaguely suspicious.
Call me crazy, but the above sounds like an experience all too common to many black and brown people in the United States.

The shadow of the Trayvon Martin case is still with us. Now, George Zimmerman's attorneys embarked on a campaign to poison the jury pool by smearing Trayvon as a wayward "ghetto" black youth.

In their efforts to channel dark and ugly stereotypes about black criminality--in essence making Zimmerman's murder victim into a teen Willie Horton or "black beast rapist" out of the lynching imaginary of 19th and early 20th century America--they have reminded us of the mix of race, politics, and political ideology that make the Martin murder such a lightning rod issue.

If the more than 600 comments at the Daily Kos in response to my essay on the "niggerization" of Trayvon Martin are any indication of the divides in public mood and opinion regarding the case, there are two perspectives which track nicely along the color line in America.

Some assume that Trayvon Martin as a black teen is a priori guilty of some type of crime, and is an existential threat to public order, until proven otherwise. Others see it as ridiculous how a person can face summary execution by a vigilante who decided that he had the right to violate another person's basic freedom to walk down the street.

For a certain political personality type and cohort in the United States, black Americans are viewed as a threat and a poison in the community and public sphere. Whiteness is understood to be a condition of safety, security, and freedom. White privilege operates here through a basic understanding that "White" spaces must be protected and secured from some type of Other and outsider. Freedom operates here to give some individuals the license to deny it to other citizens...and to feel righteous and just in doing so.

Those black Americans who have a shared historical and collective memory of Jim and Jane Crow, slave passes, informal rules about stepping off of the sidewalk when white people pass, the Negro Motorist Green Book, family histories of being threatened by white racial pogroms and violence, or the day-to-day experience of suffering under racial micro-aggressions, see the Zimmerman killing of Trayvon Martin as one more reminder that in too many contexts people of color do not have any rights that white people--and those identified with White Authority--are bound to respect.

In all, the Trayvon Martin tragedy is an unfortunate reminder of the perils (and failings) of racial profiling.

However, in the United States some folks are identified as being uniquely worthy and suitable for being targeted by such policies.

There are other groups of people who are never to be subjected to such treatment. The first group consists of black and brown people, "Muslims," and other people that are naturally deemed to be "suspicious." The second group is white people--the middle and upper class white men especially--who are never to be subjected to such "unfair" practices even if they are over-represented among domestic terrorists, those who commit mass shootings, and a litany of other crimes.

James Fallows has written an ironically well-timed piece (given the return of the Travyon Martin controversy this week) over at The Atlantic on the harassment of civilian pilots by the United States' police and security forces. In responding to a version of the controversial  "stop and frisk" policies of the New York City police, Fallows observed:
Over the past few days I've relayed several stories that amount to the familiar police force stop-and-frisk policy being extended from the sidewalk to the skies. The case of Gabriel Silverstein (originally told by AOPA) is here. Those of Larry Gaines and Clay Phillips are here. This photo, apparently of a real interdiction, is via AOPA. 
Now pilots and others respond, plus another first-hand story, from another pilot who for no reasonfound his plane surrounded by police.  
1) Politics. I pointed out earlier that as a group general-aviation pilots are older, whiter, more politically conservative, and more likely to have a military background than the population at large. While they're not all rich, they're all committed to an expensive pastime/ passion/avocation. So as a group they're not used to being on the wrong side of routine hassles by the police. Therefore, I concluded, if they (we) are now being viewed with routine suspicion, you can imagine circumstances for people in the "driving while black" category.
In essence, it is well to do white older men who are being subjected to harassment by police. Abstract matters of public policy often do not become personally relevant until they impact a given person directly. Here, "not in my back yard" would seem to extend to the "stop and frisk" policies of police against white pilots.

One of Fallows' commenters notes:
The stories you have published lately about the harassment of private pilots are truly disturbing. There is one point you made that I suspect is stirring up some dust -- "So if the security state is leaning heavily on them, you can extrapolate to other groups." I think your take on this is correct -- if older white guys are being harassed, just imagine what is happening to other folks. 
However, the "jack booted fascists" comment made me think that a lot of these folks feel that they are being targeted specifically because they are older white conservatives. This perception has been reinforced by the recent IRS hullaballoo of course. But the general sentiment has been going on for a long time -- fueled by all the right-wing media and repeated in their echo chambers.

I'm reasonably confident that one or two of your correspondents on the airplane stories have said something in the past in favor of "stop and frisk" type laws, property seizure in suspected drug crimes, etc. It is a reminder for all of us that freedom is for everybody, not just us and those who look like us...
I wonder, what are the limits of empathy?

Will the affluent, older, white male pilots who are being harassed by the police come to realize how these policies are universally unjust and a violation of all people's civil rights?

Or will these pilots concoct a rationalization that "stop and frisk" policies are okay for black and brown people--because "we" all know they are "guilty" of something--and are offensive only because harassment of upper class white people by the federal government is breaking a cultural norm that nurtures and protects white male privilege at any cost?

16 comments:

CNu said...

Those black Americans who have a shared historical and collective memory of Jim and Jane Crow, slave passes, informal rules about stepping off of the sidewalk when white people pass, the Negro Motorist Green Book, family histories of being threatened by white racial pogroms and violence, or the day-to-day experience of suffering under racial micro-aggressions, see the Zimmerman killing of Trayvon Martin as one more reminder that in too many contexts people of color do not have any rights that white people--and those identified with White Authority--are bound to respect.

The above has nothing whatsoever to do with stop and frisk. To pretend otherwise is to lie.

Over the past 30 years, the relevant period during which stop and frisk has been implemented, it is an objectively true fact that more than 50% of all U.S. violent homicides can be attributed to an environmentally and congenitally circumscribed hood-dwelling subset of the 3% subset of the U.S. african-american male population.

Stop and frisk is a threat mitigation strategy focused on interdiction of the environmentally and congenitally circumscribed and disproportionately crimey hood trash.

Will the affluent, older, white male pilots who are being harassed by the police come to realize how these policies are universally unjust and a violation of all people's civil rights?

3% or more of these private pilots are involved with the transhipment of illegal drugs, cash, and weapons.

Stop and frisk of private pilots is a threat mitigation strategy focused on interdiction of the resource and capability liberated subset of free white men disproportionately involved with large scale criminal activity.

If this long overdue level of interdiction and threat mitigation brings about a political backlash and desired end to the drug prohibition good. Those political benefits will extend to the street level, as well.


If not, then it is a long overdue and much-needed expansion of proactive policing reflective of the fair and uniform application of law enforcement standards and should be welcomed accordingly.

Joyce M said...

The DEA has a new policy--get the money! Instead of constantly arresting street dealers who are basically earning minimum wage, the government has decided to deprive the drug trade of it's monies by raiding their cash houses in penthouses and upscale neighborhoods, checking for cash crossing the border, arresting higher-ups in order to confiscate their expensive homes, luxury automobiles, businesses, investment properties and of course airplanes. I've read about major drug busts where most of the defendants were white people over the age of 40. Being in the drug business, unmolested by law enforcement for decades, they had accumulated mansions, luxury vehicles, yachts, limousines and investment property. Even the banks are under scrutiny. The government has collected billions in fines relating to money laundering.
(Reuters) - HSBC Holdings Plc agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion in fines to U.S. authorities for allowing itself to be used to launder a river of drug money flowing out of Mexico and other banking lapses.

There's a new drug in town and it is killing kids in the suburbs. http://vimeo.com/28313614

The media has ignored the raids on "Pain clinics" and the confiscation of assets from the associated prescription drug dealers.



The media has also ignored the arrest and conviction, along with confiscations and fines of those who rob the Medicare-Medicaid system. Again, billions in fines and confiscated property and a lot of white people going to prison.


I know that if you follow money from any large scale illegal operation, you will find a white man at the end of the money trail. Now, he gets to go to jail and it is long overdue.

Ben Grim said...

Probably equal proportions of both:

'Stop and frisk is a threat mitigation strategy focused on' primarily blacks.

'Stop and frisk of [white] pilots is a threat mitigation strategy focused on interdiction'

Plus it's a further roll out of the police state, extending it to whites.

'Weez all unmanned aerial vehicles now.'

chauncey devega said...

To not understand the divergent reactions to stop and frisk, the Trayvon Martin shooting and other matters across the colorline as a reaction to such shared histories is to lie to oneself.


I know you do not have a sense of linked fate. But, that is your own choice. Do not mitigate what we know about communal identity and memory simply because it is not a fit for your experience.


Again, mighty salty as of late. What is going on?

chauncey devega said...

"If not, then it is a long overdue and much-needed expansion of proactive policing reflective of the fair and uniform application of law enforcement standards and should be welcomed accordingly."


Mighty authoritarian of you. Do you support stop and frisk policies in New York, which by the police's own admission rarely uncover drugs on black and brown youth? And interestingly enough, when white folks are stopped--and at far few numbers--are much more likely to have drugs on their person...

CNu said...

I support across the board drug legalization - believing in inviolable individual sovereignty in this matter.



Organic drugs are abundant, cheap and plentiful and would make for new jobs, new taxes, and elevated levels of societal contentment.

CNu said...

To not understand the divergent reactions to stop and frisk, the Trayvon
Martin shooting and other matters across the colorline as a reaction to
such shared histories is to lie to oneself.


Rejection of such reactions is a default application of internally consistent logic, language, law, and values - which internally consistent application must of necessity reject bullshit narratives.

Do not mitigate what we know about communal identity and memory simply because it is not a fit for your experience.


Those of us in the fact-based world are obliged to reject nonsense and irrationality whenever and wherever we see it.


As for the validity of "what you know" you might as well be talking about ET's and anal probes...,

chauncey devega said...

Do you support stop and frisk and other such policies?

CNu said...

Now that make-work law enforcers are stopping privately owned aircraft - absolutely.

chauncey devega said...

Lots of bluster not much substance here:

"Rejection of such reactions is a default application of internally consistent logic, language, law, and values - which internally consistent application must of necessity reject bullshit narratives.

Do not mitigate what we know about communal identity and memory simply because it is not a fit for your experience.

Those of us in the fact-based world are obliged to reject nonsense and irrationality whenever and wherever we see it."

A sense of linked fate between black folks in our political calculations is a solid finding of folks like Dawson and others. That is fraying a bit, but still quite present.

Do you want to suggest that black folks and white folks in America do not have a divergent set of collective histories and memories? Please do that magic trick as I am eager to see it.

"Those of us in the fact-based world are obliged to reject nonsense and irrationality whenever and wherever we see it."



Given your tendencies as of late that can easily apply to your musings. Why so contrarian and adversarial as of late. This is getting very, very tedious.

Ben Grim said...

can't agree on stop and frisk. otherwise i'd vote the 2nd part way up.

CNu said...

Do you want to suggest that black folks and white folks in America do not have a divergent set of collective histories and memories? Please do that magic trick as I am eager to see it.

Civil rights and fair housing coming up on 50 years in full effect. The Hon.Bro.Preznit.Double-0bombamandius told this very message to Morehouse grads quite recently. It's not magic, it's just that whining about stuff that happened and went away before you were born is going to be ignored because cats from China, India, and Brazil want what you've been given, can do the calculus and differential equations, instead of just talk in arcane and useless argot, and won't engage in any hurty feewings negrological acting out.

I'm saying what your president said. None of your grievances amount to a hill of beans that anybody is obliged to acknowledge anymore.

Why so contrarian and adversarial as of late. This is getting very, very tedious.

The sun is setting on your schtick on a little less slowly than it set on Leonard Jeffries and afro-trekkie crew. Everybody gotta have a hobby, but when grown men confuse their interests and enthusiasms with actual vocations, problems ensue.....

Joyce M said...

News Flash. Private plane pilots are not being singled out for special scrutiny. I asked someone in the know, who told me that the U. S. Customs Service meets all international flights. All cargo that comes in and leaves on a international flight is opened and inspected by Customs agents or private contractors, screened and trained by the U.S. Customs service. Also, there are things just as dangerous as illegal drugs that are smuggled into this country, like invasive species of plants and animals, along with plant diseases that have devastated our natural and cultivated plant life. If anything, private pilots have been given a free pass compared to commercial airlines.

CNu said...

lol, your clumsily biased censorship reminded me of the tactics of ugly old white wymyn who've emasculated race studies kneegrows in the academy...,

Joyce M said...

Trayvon Martin was kidnapped and murdered by a mad man hiding behind our castle laws. Castle laws should not extend beyond someone's front door. But, people have been shot in a person's yard, driveway and even a neighbor's yard. http://jonathanturley.org/2009/05/11/texas-couple-kills-seven-year-old-and-wounds-adult-who-trespassed-on-property/
I've had male friends and relative (black and white) threatened and even held at gunpoint for standing on my porch when I was not at home.

The stop and frisk program in New York is just a corrupt police department not wanting to fight crime in certain neighborhoods. Instead of doing something that would be effective, they did something that was offensive. Now, with the resulting outcry, they can just throw their hands in the air and say they tried. I've seen the same tactic used in my city.

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