To Protect and Serve… Not to Interpret and Shoot

I am sure that most of you have seen the video or at least heard the news, but a white police officer in South Carolina has been charged with murder after shooting an unarmed black man after a routine traffic stop. The video shows the victim, Walter Scott, running away from Michael Slager resulting in Slager firing a series of gun shots toward Scott, eventually taking him to the ground and causing his death. According to Slager, Scott had taken his taser, apparently justifying shooting him in the back.

This seems to be the first time in what seems like forever that an officer is charged with murder themselves when killing another human being. As I was reading an article on the Washington Post about the event, I saw something which made me think of a connection to class. The mayor of North Charleston, R. Keith Summey said, “If you make a bad decision, don’t care if you’re behind the shield…you have to live with that decision.” It reminds me of Robert Cover’s piece, “Violence and the Word,” in its connection between the inherent violence of law and the violence carried out by certain legal actors involved. Essentially, legal interpretation is violent to deter societal violence. Judges interpret the law in a way to connect words with violence. For example, a judge interprets the law in a manner and then tells the defendant, “you’re guilty” and “sentenced to death.” Then those words are connected to the violent acts of being thrown in prison and the eventual death sentence.

However, the judge is the one who interprets the law. The bailiff, police officer, or whoever is not meant to interpret the law in a way that connects words with violence. They are the ones who carry out the violent deeds of the law, such as execution (at least in older forms of a death sentence) or using violence to stop a gunman from killing others. In these situations, the police officer is following the violent nature of law. They are not, however, interpreting the law.

Police officers are fully expected to use violence if need be to deter violence, but are not expected to go above their duty to “protect and serve.” If ever our law stipulates that killing a defenseless man who poses no immediate or external threat is fair game then we clearly have some institutional problems. Thankfully, that is not the law of the land. Unfortunately for Walter Scott, Eric Garner, and countless others, some police officers are able to hide “behind the shield” when they have overstepped their roles.

It is if we have given police officers the right to interpret the law on the fly. Scott, who was pulled over for a traffic stop, did not deserve to be shot at and certainly did not deserve to die. Slager’s interpretation of the law regarding a traffic violation was clearly flawed. I do not know if “justice” is at all given to Scott’s family by Slager’s arrest, but it is right and fair under the auspices of the law that Slager was charged with murder. Even without all the evidence and facts of the case out, Slager abused his power in the law and effectively connected legal interpretation and violence in a way that is all too common.

Let me know what you think. I wrote this immediately after reading the article so I apologize if it reads like I’m disregarding all of the positive works of law enforcement. However, I am just beyond disappointed that some citizens, disproportionally African American men, are not awarded the protection under the law that everyone has access to. It is an issue that damages our democracy and one in which I feel very strongly about.

The Party of Lincoln… Lincoln’s Not from Selma

One of my favorite people in U.S. history that I love to talk about is President Lyndon Johnson. I cannot think of anyone more interesting to study, both for the historical content and his larger than life personality. Experiencing humiliation at an early age, LBJ had a burning desire to prove himself and eventually become president. As he became older and eventually elected to Congress, Johnson became incredibly calculated including “active duty military service” during World War II, which was really him flying in one combat mission and then returning to Congress.

To put Johnson’s calculation into modern terms, Johnson was the Frank Underwood of his time, especially if you were to consider the handful of conspiracy theories about his involvement in JFK’s assassination. LBJ knew how to use politics to his advantage, whether as a member of the Legislative or Executive Branch. Perhaps no two years of Johnson’s political career are better examples of his political mastery than 1964-1965. In those two years, Johnson signed the two most important pieces of Civil Rights legislation since the 14th and 15th Amendments. While many question the amount of influence Johnson actually had on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, I want to point out a tactic that LBJ used to pressure Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois into supporting the Civil Rights Act. Johnson and other Democrats loved to remind Dirksen that he was the leadership of the “party of Lincoln.” Many people today are unaware that the Republican Party used to actually be the party of Civil Rights, especially during the 1960s (I link you to the Senate website with a lot of great background info on the two pieces of legislation. Also selfishly, I wrote a couple of the short bios in the biography section).

I bring this up because I read an article on Politico yesterday about members of the GOP leadership who are skipping out on commemorative fifty year anniversary events in Selma, Alabama this upcoming weekend. The March on Selma was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement and is largely responsible for getting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. In our political system where political calculation is the standard, I find it odd that members of the Republican leadership would miss out on the celebration of an event and bill that their party helped shepherd in, regardless of what else they could have scheduled (probably fundraisers). To me it seems like a no brainer.

Pundits are always talking about political rebranding and probably we hear about it most when talking about the need for the Republican Party to do a better job reaching out to minority voters. Attending the events in Selma would be a step in the right direction. Perhaps the ghost of Lyndon Johnson should remind Republican leadership that they could use politics to their advantage by remembering that the Republican Party is not only the party of Lincoln, but the party of Civil Rights in the 1960s and 1970s.

One possible explanation for not attending is the chilling video from last years fifty year anniversary celebration of the Civil Rights Act where both Democrats and Republicans locked hands to sing “We Shall Overcome.” There should honestly be a disclaimer on this video for how awkward it makes you feel.

Though this probably read like an attack on Republican leadership, I simply wanted to highlight this article because the March on Selma represents a moment in the Civil Rights struggle where race and law directly intersected and led to another intersection a few months later, the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Race and law are two incredibly politicized topics in our country and so I personally find it odd that members of the Republican leadership would pass on an opportunity to use that to their advantage. Let me know what you think!

Hip-Hop, The High Life, and the Big House

On Friday night I decided to hermit myself in my room and watch the documentary Planet Rock: The Story of Hip-Hop and the Crack Generation. The documentary examines the connection between the rise of crack cocaine in urban environments and the burgeoning genre of hip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s. The creation and widespread selling of crack cocaine allowed for many early hip-hop artists to get their start and similarly, as the hip-hop market grew bigger into the 1990s, the use of crack cocaine slowed down.

As a self-proclaimed hip-hop connoisseur and historian, the linkage between drugs, prison, and hip-hop are abundantly clear. Even so, I really enjoyed the documentary because it connects hip-hop with a lot of what we have talked about in class, included great personal stories and experience, and like any great hip-hop documentary, was narrated by Ice-T. However, before diving into this blog post, I believe that it is important to make the disclaimer and clarify that my discussion of hip-hop is largely dealing with African American communities. While hip-hop has reached across many racial, gender, and class boundaries, the origins of hip-hop rests mainly in black urban communities. Similarly, the documentary focuses on black hip-hop artists and black urban centers.

When put into conversation with the readings, Planet Rock best connects with Loic Wacquant’s, “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh.” Wacquant details the increasing ghettoization of prisons and the imprisonment of ghettos, which I think also relates to the creation and expansion of hip-hop. More than most genres, hip-hop is a story teller’s genre. It manifested with story tellers from the boroughs of New York City detailing their lives and struggles of their environment. One of the earliest examples of this is Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s “The Message.” Hip-hop eventually spread to the West Coast, namely Los Angeles, where similar struggles were expressed through the music. The earliest hip-hop artists coming out of “ghettoes” in New York City and Los Angeles used their music to give accounts of drug use and abuse, violence, and incarceration.

In 1986, as a result of the pervasion of crack cocaine in ghettoes throughout the country, President Ronald Reagan declared a tightening down on the War on Drugs started by President Richard Nixon in the 1970s. The documentary pays great attention to the subsequent efforts of the government to crack down on drug usage and the effect that had on urban black communities. As the war on drugs intensified, more militant messages in hip-hop developed resulting in the creation of a sub-genre of hip-hop, gangster rap. Gangster rap developed as greater divisions within black and Hispanic communities caused often violent strife between rival gangs. The intensification of law enforcement’s role in lower income black neighborhoods and the ensuing crack down on drug users and dealers is a common theme in many older hip-hop songs. One prime example is KRS-One’s “Sound of Da Police.” The increasing employment of law enforcement in minority communities is not only a common theme in hip-hop, but also an example of the imprisonment of ghettoes, as argued by Wacquant.

Both Wacquant and Planet Rock examine the militarization of the ghetto by law enforcement. For instance, the documentary pays particular attention to the use of battering rams in L.A. in order to raid drug houses. Similarly, Wacquant details the need for armed guards in public spaces like public housing and public schools. I thought the discussion on public schools was especially interesting because Wacquant talked about rather than trying to better students with a good education, public schools in ghettoes have become a place where students are just held to be kept out of trouble, like prisoners in a prison.

The other side of the Wacquant’s article looks at the ghettoization of prisons. The changing nature of the prison system is reflective of the major overcrowding in prisons and the overrepresentation of black inmates. The changing structure of prison has resulted in gang rivalries and violence within prisons. Wacquant talks about five characteristics that make prisons more like ghettoes, but I believe three highlight the greatest similarities: the racial division of everything, the transformation of the “convict code” to the “code of the streets,” and the purging of the undesirables.

This side of Wacquant’s argument relates to the expansion of hip-hop for several reasons. The birth of gangster rap and the increasing militancy within hip-hop glorified violence at a time when gang violence in ghettoes was at an all time high. Similar to gang loyalty and the “code of the streets” was the advent of the West Coast- East Coast hip-hop rivalry. Emcees and hip-hop fans were pitted against one another based on geographic location or turfs. This rivalry saw the deaths of many hip-hop staples, most notable Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.

The connection between hip-hop, prison, and the ghetto has been well documented in the last thirty years. However, I think that using Wacquant’s essay on the prison and ghetto to look at the history and expansion of hip-hop offers a new perspective. Planet Rock and my love of hip-hop led me to write this blog, but I also believe that growing up in California has made me keenly aware of the overcrowding and the unfair overrepresentation of African Americans in prisons. Just some interesting food for thought to end my post, California spends billions of dollars on its prisons and significantly less on public schools. Long live hip-hop!