Johannes Mehserle, the white transit cop who accidentally drew his gun rather than his taser (completely different weight and placement on his body), and then accidentally turned off his gun’s safety, and then accidentally shot Oscar Grant, a young black man who was unarmed and lying helpless on the ground, to death, was convicted of accidental manslaughter (the minimum possible charge) and given a sentence of two years minus 146 days already served (the minimum possible sentence).
As I interpret the law, it’s in effect legal for police to shoot black men to death at any time, for any reason, or for no reason, as long as no one records video of the shooting. However, if multiple people happen to record the shooting, and if the videos become public, then shooting black men becomes illegal and carries a two-year sentence.
It’s not that one can’t construct a narrative legitimizing a range of different sentences; it’s that, given that discretion, courts consistently apply the harshest narratives in cases of white victims and black defendants, and the most lax ones in cases of white defendants and black victims. In this case, the could rationalize either a two year or a 14 year sentence — it elected to do the former. In the next ten cases — all with black defendants — the court probably could rationalize either a two year or a 14 year sentence, and will likely pick the latter. The fact that we might be able to justify each sentence individually doesn’t actually resolve the moral problem.
I’ve seen this approach to the sentence a lot, and it really bothers me. I’ve written about this in another context. But I think it’s really problematic for progressives, or anyone wiht a critique of the nature of hte prison/justice system to use the commonly held meaning of prison sentences to our own ends.
The idea that the value of Oscar Grant’s life is measured by the length of sentence handed out to the person who shot him is nonsensical in itself – it only makes sense as description of a dominant ideology. A longer sentence for Merschele would not bring Grant back, it would not protect the people of Oakland from harassment, it would not deter the next cop from shooting a black man (to the extent that punishment is deterrance it is certainty of getting caught, not severity that ), prison isn’t going to make Mehserle less racist, less violent in 2 years, or in 10 years.
It’s the justice system, which includes the prison system, that killed Oscar Grant. To call for a harsher sentence is legitimising the system that killed Oscar Grant – it’s saying it is the right system, and it has the solution to the problem. The idea that the racist prison and justice system is the solution to the racist prison and justice system is nonsense to me.
I really liked this post as a response.
Maia, I read that link you put up and it actually pointed towards a question I was going to ask, which is how much of this is properly attributed to racism and how much of this is properly attributable to the fact that the offender was a cop instead of a civilian? Do you think that a white cop would have gotten a greater sentence if the victim was white, or that a black cop would have gotten a greater sentence if the victim was white? And now that I ask that, I wonder if there are data on that?
See, as an isolated consideration I can actually rationalize pulling one’s gun instead of a taser and using it as having been unintentional. It’s amazing what you’ll do when the adrenaline is pumping and you’re in fear of your life. Training takes over and your right hand may literally not know what your left hand is doing. I can see where without thinking you can mean to reach for one and instead reach for and use the other. And as far as being unarmed, there are certainly circumstances where it’s appropriate to use a Taser or even a gun on an unarmed man; e.g., a meth user high as a kite on the stuff.
What I can’t figure out is why the adrenaline should have been pumping to that extent in the first place. Mr. Grant is down with how many cops on him? If he’s resisting he’s under control. This in fact was not a meth freak going crazy. So why would the cop who fired the weapon even be reaching for a taser? Why would the cop be in such a state as to taking the action that led to the mistake? In this case it appears that the cop is the one that was out of control. What was the explanation for why the cop had any kind of weapon in his hand?
To expand on David:
Focusing on the ultimate sentence is a mistake. Rather, focus on the findings that underlie the sentence: first time offender, “remorseful,” etc. Once those findings exist, the eventual sentence is a wash.
The question shouldn’t be “why do whites get low sentences?” because that obscures the real issue in the process. He got a low sentence because the findings related to sentencing justified them, just as those same findings would justify a low sentence for a black civilian.
But would those findings actually exists for a black civilian? Probably not, so the questions should be more in the vein of “how/why do some people get classified as remorseful, and others as non remorseful, even if there doesn’t seem to be much difference? Do rich folks who have ‘clean’ records really behave differently than poor folks? Or are a lot of the prior offenses just an effect of increased police scrutiny and less flexibility, starting at a young age?” Etc.
Well, in the case of Mehserle, the case for remorse is buttressed by the video tapes. The guy freaked out as soon as he saw what he had done. Either he’s genuinely remorseful, or he’s a good actor who came into the situation with a plan to kill a black man and then immediately act sorry.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/11/the-cops-we-deserve/66235/
I’m not sure about the best path on this myself-, but Coates argues plausibly that there’s something very wrong with what the police are allowed to get away with that wouldn’t be solved by a longer sentence.
<emWhat was the explanation for why the cop had any kind of weapon in his hand?
Interesting question. Some possible explanations I can think of:
1. The story as we know it is incomplete. Grant was far more of a threat than he appears from the publicly available evidence, including the videotape. I find this unlikely, but possible.
2. Mehserle had something against Grant or someone who Grant reminded him of or perhaps against Blacks in general and took the opportunity to kill him “by mistake”. In other words, it was really a murder.
3. Mehserle is fundamentally wrong for the job of police officer: If he panics at fairly small events like a confrontation with a single unarmed civilian he’s really not fit for the job.
4. Extremely poor training on the part of the Oakland police force such that Mehserle really had no protocols to fall back on when things got even slightly exciting and had not developed the right instincts for dealing with such situations.
It wasn’t intentional, but I think my list is in reverse order of probability. It seems to me that the police’s training procedures ought to be examined carefully to determine whether they’ve been giving new officers adequate training to avoid panic in difficult situations, keeping up continuing training for long term employees in how to deal with unusual but critical situations, etc. Also at their hiring practices: Are they screening people psychologically? Do they weed out people with obvious racists? Where can improvements be made that would mean that the next officer in that situation would assess the situation more reasonably and not go for ANY weapon?
Dianne, you left one off your list:
5. We live in a society that routinely marks black men as dangerous, scary, violent, and out of control. White people in particular are conditioned by messages overt and covert to see black men as threats even when they’re just walking down the sidewalk. A black man who is interacting with authority figures in a way that is anything other than absolutely deferential and passive is seen as a particularly alarming threat, though even being deferential and passive is not a guarantee of being regarded as a neutral or positive figure.
Which I think is the greatest possibility of all. Black man = scary. Black man saying to cops “hey you’re arresting my friend” = DefCon 5.
All the focus on Mehserle as an individual and what he was or was not thinking, feeling, trained to do, etc. ignores the giant elephant in the room of systemic, institutionalized racism which I believe to be the single greatest contributor both to the inordinate amount of men of color shot by police, and the inordinate sentences given to men of color who shoot white victims compared to white men who shoot victims of color.
…Not to get Catholic on you, Robert, but I would define remorse very differently from, “Oh, shit, I totally just shot a guy in front of a crowd of angry witnesses.” And I think the law does too, even when it’s discussing degrees of culpability for what it terms murder.
I believe that he committed murder in the heat of the moment; I doubt it was premeditated, since it was really stupid even from a cold-blooded standpoint. But his actions following the murder look a lot more like cowardice than a desire to make expiation for the death of a helpless young man. I don’t see remorse. I see a healthy sense of self-preservation and a very sensible terror for the legal consequences of a serious crime.
With respect for your understanding of incarceration in general, I disagree.
This is not about deterring crime. Police brutality isn’t crime in that sense. It’s not like corruption. We have given the police the idea that brutality is a necessary part of their duty or even a laudable aspect of police work itself. Look at the actions of Mehserle’s fellow officers at the station. They did not treat him as a dangerous criminal. They were a lot more threatening towards the witnesses.
A sentence on equal terms may not make any officers more afraid of the consequences of brutality. It may simply make them more careful to avoid attention. It almost certainly wouldn’t make Mehserle more aware of Oscar Grant’s humanity–but then, neither will his freedom.
This sentence is a message from that justice system that police officers are not committing murder when they shoot unarmed, restrained black men. This sentence sends the message that shooting an unarmed, restrained black man is not a serious crime if you’re a cop. Barely a crime at all, really–imagine what the sentence would have been if Mehserle had had any excuse.
That is very dangerous, as dangerous as any instance of racist jury nullification. And it does have an impact on the willingness of police to brutalize citizens.
piny said what I was about to say. The “it won’t bring them back” is what you hear from the mouths of defense lawyers trying to get their clients off the hook. The logical conclusion of this argument is that if a cop deliberately shoots a black man dead in cold blood, we shouldn’t do a thing about it because it’s not going to bring the brother back, so why bother, right?
Pointing out that the justice system is racist is very different from saying that therefore, who gives a rip if the judge sentencing Mehserle gives him a big verbal hug.
We live in a society that routinely marks black men as dangerous, scary, violent, and out of control.
I agree. However, I would argue that a police department that doesn’t take this subtext into account and specifically teach its officers how to counter that racism within themselves is grossly negligent. If Mehserle had had some awareness of his own (possibly unconscious) racism, maybe he would not have assumed that a man lying on the ground face down must be going for a weapon simply because he was black.
And yeah, I should have been more explicit in putting that up front as a-the-major issue. Thanks for calling me on it.
piny –
The verdict sent that message – I agree with that absolutely. I don’t know much about the US criminal code, but everything I’ve heard about involuntary manslaughter (which is not a crime that exists in New Zealand) makes it clear that the verdict sent a political message.
But the sentence? I think it’s really problematic to give the length of sentences meaning in and of themselves.
In particular, I was criticising the idea that the worth of Oscar Grant’s life was determined by the length of the sentence that was handed out. I think this statement is nonsense, by itself. New Zealand generally has lower sentences for murder than the US – does that mean that New Zealand thinks lives are less important than the US?
Giving meaning to the length of a prison sentence is not an ideological tool which will help dismantle the power structure that killed Oscar Grant. The idea that we value life by giving out long prison sentences, does far more damage to black men, than it does to police officers.
Certainly there is a belief within our society that lengthy prison sentences value the victims of violence – but that’s a belief that I oppose absolutely. And we can talk about comparative sentences and what other actions would get you sent to jail for two years in Oakland – and what the sentence says *within the framework of the justice system*. But the ideology of the justice system is what killed Oscar Grant. So I think it’s important not to uphold the ideology of the justice system when criticizing Mehserle’s sentence. There are many ways to criticize the sentence while acknowledging the problems with a justice system. Saying that the sentence shows how much Grant’s life is worth is not one of htem.
Mythago – you appear to have missed my point entirely.
That’s specious. If New Zealand had lower sentences for murder than every other crime, then it would be appropriate to say that New Zealand placed very little value on human life. And if New Zealand had lower sentences for murder of a particular group of people, then it would be appropriate to say that New Zealand placed very little value on a certain set of human lives.
The way a culture chooses to deal with crime varies for a lot of reasons–the United States has changed its attitudes profoundly over the past few centuries, and even decades. But the way it deals with crime is legible within its system. Our laws place a particular value on human life, by setting a particular penalty on the theft of a human life. This particular human life was exempt from that calculus, because the murderer was more and the victim less human.
It’s clear. You can argue that it is wrong to punish this man, for any number of sensible reasons. But you can’t argue that this punishment does not carry this meaning: the devaluation of Oscar Grant’s life according to the lights of our justice system.
I endorse what piny is saying. But I also think there are important distributional consequences that are being overlooked here.
There are, in essence, two models of responding to crime being laid out here. In one, we respond to crime by punishing the criminal, with the severity of the punishment increasing in tandem with our evaluation of the severity of the crime. Crime and, to a large extent, criminals are interlopers to be fought against — social enemies to be combated with the full force of state coercion. Criminals are to be boxed away for long perhaps — both for retribution and to incapacitate. In the other, we respond to criminal activity by trying to blend reintegration for the criminal and some form of restorative justice for the victim. We rely on the social stigma of being “caught” and subject to the shame of the community to provide sufficient deterrent to wrongdoing, as well as to express our retributive desires.
We often talk as if the first “track” is hegemonic, and we need to move to the second. But I think that’s incorrect — we already operate, in effect, a two-track system. As it is, certain types of criminals already gain access to the second track. This is largely how we treat white collar offenders, White drug offenders, young White violent offenders, and spousal abusers. It is the track that we appear to putting Officer Mehserle on. It is not how we treat offenders of color of any offense, and it is not how we treat women who kill or assault the men who abuse them.
It’s definitely true that the first model imposes massive costs on people of color. But so does the second, insofar as it differentially treats the desires and pain of crime victims of color (and I do think we have an obligation to take their revealed preferences seriously as legitimate, not just one that occurs because of a lack of alternatives). The shift to the “ideal” is, once again, being done on the backs of the least powerful members of society (I think one sees similar dynamics in discourses surrounding color-blindness, or the abolition of nations). If we want to experiment with restorative justice — and there are excellent arguments to do so, though I’m undecided myself — we should start by focusing on the main victims of the carceral state. But I think we have to be very wary of viewing a light sentence for this officer as a bank-shot victory for the rights of people insofar as it indicates a shift away from reliance on long prison terms. All it signifies is that the dual-track system continues to function. I have no doubt of the good intentions behind it, but there is no reason to believe that opposing the carceral model when the offenders are White will ever do anything but insure that only Black people go to prison. And until we’re willing to commit to providing restorative justice for even America’s subordinated classes, then I don’t think we have the right to protest when they demand justice according to the rules of status quo.
I would tentatively suggest that the most important power dynamic here is cop/civilian not white/black. A white civilian killing a black civilian in the same situation probably would have gotten a stiffer sentence. A white civilian killing a black cop would have gotten a stiffer sentence. A very big problem is that we give enormous amounts of leeway to cops in their dealings with civilians. If you read Radley Balko regularly (the source for most of the things that Coates links to in the above link, you will see all sorts of racially questionable actions taken by the police, but you also see lots of well out of control police behavior toward white people–up to and including shooting them at completely mystifying times. And worse, the cops get away with it.
There is something fundamentally wrong with how we train our police to deal with civilians, and it shows up all over the place.
RonF:
Sebastian:
Forget it, Jake. It’s the kyriarchy.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
—Myca
I agree with David, but I think the problem is different in this specific situation. I don’t think this is a normal crime, with the normal implications of stigma and secrecy. Like I said, policy brutality is generally not a problem of self-interested crime like corruption, or of actual sadism. Brutal police officers act this way because they have been told that it is an important part of their job. Unsavory, sure, but not shameful. They operate with social sanction, and they hurt people not only because it’s expedient, but partly because they feel they should.
So when a police officer commits murder and gets the lightest sentence that can be handed to any defendant in his situation, his fellow officers are not told that murder isn’t such a big deal when they do it. It’s worse than impunity. They are told that police brutality–sometimes including murder–is a recognized part of police work. And that when they commit murder in the course of their duties, they are doing a kind of police work. The message is the jury nullification message: Thank you.
I am not primarily concerned with the fortunes of ex-officer Mehserle. I’m especially not concerned now that he has received such a token sentence.
I am primarily concerned with the life of a community that must deal with peace officers who are now officially above the law.
I struggle with talking about prison on feminist blogs. My experiences and analysis are so different from many people’s, and when I say something, people read something entirely different. I feel as if I’m butressing against this wall of hegemony where I’m suddenly not speaking the same language as everyone else. And the main symptom is that people aren’t just paraphrasing my positioin in a wholly inaccurate way – they’re paraphrasing
I was not making an argument about Mehserle or what should happen to him – I was criticising the ideology behind Amp’s post about Mehserle.
I think the statement “Oscar Grants life is worth two years” only makes sense within an ideological construct about prison terms – and that ideology is one that upholds the system that killed Oscar Grant. I’m making a much narrower point than people have been reading me as making (probably I should not have tried to provide evidence of various planks of my argument in this context, as it seems to have been distracting – my point would have been clearer if I was more concise I think. But I’m going to compensate by being extremely repetitive in this comment, and seeing if I can make it clear).
David – I find your response extremely condescending and arrogant. “But I think we have to be very wary of viewing a light sentence for this officer as a bank-shot victory for the rights of people insofar as it indicates a shift away from reliance on long prison terms.” There is nothing that I, or anyone else in this thread has said that could be interpreted as having anything to do with this idea – an idea that is nonsense. On top of that the way you try and limit the terms of acceptable discourse really bothers me – there are many more than two models of justice. I don’t think we have enough common ground to have a useful conversation about this.
piny – we agree on this:
And I agree with you about the dangers of this verdict and sentence. But I don’t think that’s the only consideration. I think any response which accepts hte justice system at face value, and in particular the meaning of prison at face value, reinforces an ideology that does far more damage to people whose lives are criminalised. Amp didn’t make your argument. He didn’t qualify his statement by placing it within the system – he made an absolute statement – and I find that problematic.
I’m not arguing that it’s wrong to punish the cop. I think the prison system is horrific and damaging, but I’d be happy for ex-cops to be the last out. I really don’t care what happens to him.
What I am arguing is that the punishment only carries that meaning because society gives it that meaning. That the meaning that this punishment carries cannot . So to treat that meaning as natural, to criticise it absolutely, rather than inside the system that that it operates in is to uphold that system.
It’s really not specious – it really is my point. An argument that says that prisons sentences reflect a way to *actually* value human life – rather than a damaging social construct about how we value human life in the absense of a society that does value human life, makes no sense.
Maia, I think if there’s one constant between us, it’s that we both find each other to be arrogant, condescending, and high-handed. I doubt that’s going to change, and so I accept that it is what it is.
That being said, you’re right that I don’t know the precise contours of your alternative to the carceral model. Of course there are more than two models than the ones I laid out (I was attempting to say there were two models implicated in the discussion of this thread, not only two models possible), and it’s entirely possible that I didn’t even come close to encompassing yours. I can certainly empathize with not feeling like one’s position is getting a full and fair airing, or that it is being caricatured before it gets off the ground.
The broader point I was trying to make, and that I will stand by, is that it is my experience that attempts at radical social change to move us toward a supposed ideal nearly always come on the backs of the least well-off, and usually what ends up happening is that the elites get (or already possess) the benefit of the “ideal”, and the downtrodden are left with even less than they had before, because now even their meager claims predicated on the former structures are delegitimized while possessing virtually no capital to make claims on the new order. And that is what I worry will result from taking a “strong” anti-prison stance. Effectively, it will mean that White people won’t go to prison, Black people still will (or will have their rights restricted in a myriad of other, quasi-carceral ways), except that when Black people try to demand similar treatment of those who victimize them, they’ll be dismissed as vengeful, backwards, and barbaric.
That’s not the intent, obviously — the folks who advocate such changes do so with good hearts and, usually, motivated precisely by the ravages the status quo wreaks upon the underclass. But still, my read of history is that — intentions notwithstanding — this is what often happens (for a variety of reasons), and that makes me leery of politics which are too quick to advocate dispensing with the world as it is. That’s why my writing tends to focus on promoting equality and egalitarianism within the overarching frameworks we possess, rather than promoting radical overhauls (and I think this posture is what’s primarily responsible for us having, as you say, so little common ground, why our discussions tend to go nowhere, and why we both often feel like we’re talking frustratingly past one another. At least, that’s what I’d primarily attribute it to — you may have a different list altogether). I accept there are excellent reasons for adopting a more critical posture, but there are distributional transition costs to doing so that I think don’t get aired enough.
False dilemma there, Maia.
Sebastian H conveniently left out the hypothetical of a black cop killing a white civilian. How do you think THAT would play out? I can certainly see that resulting in a much higher sentence.
David – I am so sick of men telling me what I think: “Maia, I think if there’s one constant between us, it’s that we both find each other to be arrogant, condescending, and high-handed.” That is not what I think, nor is it an accurate paraphrase of what I said. Please never tell me what I think again.
Mythago – I wasn’t presenting a dilemma.
Maia, you’re arguing that we can’t see the two-year sentence as a judgment on how the system values Oscar Grant’s life because to do so means ignoring how the system is racist. That’s what I’m referring to.
I think Maia’s perfectly clear, though of course I may just be “clear” about the entirely wrong thing :)
It’s the difference between
“This result is unjust” (something can be unjust for an infinite number of reasons, and the statement makes no base assumptions about the validity of the system); or “the cop deserved worse” (without defining exactly what “worse” is, it’s also making no assumptions)
versus
“This result is unjust because he should have been convicted of murder and/or because the prison term was too short” (which makes base assumptions about the validity of prison terms as punishment, and the ability/validity of the system to use criminal convictions to determine justice.)
Oh, okay!
So the problem, then, is that this is a specific discussion about a pretty transparent and shocking case of jury nullification, not about every problem the justice system embodies.
I’m sorry, but…I don’t think this is actually an issue. I don’t think progressives who hate transparently racist verdicts carry briefs for a transparently racist prison system, or a transparently racist law-enforcement culture, or a transparently racist legal code. I think that they note that the justice system often lets murderers go scot free when those murderers perpetuate that systemic racism, and that this is a problem. And that it is a problem both in terms of the system’s dimensions and in terms of the system’s own potential to violate its own conceded ideals and subvert its own subsistence restraints. And I think they are talking about this specific problem because it just fucking happened. Again.
If we were talking about Emmett Till, would shame and fury over the post-verdict party also merit tsking? After all, it would be wrong to see a prison sentence as richly deserved and wholly appropriate, because prison is never richly deserved or wholly appropriate in a sense divorced from the human context of the victims of violent racist crime or the moral context of the perpetrators. And even though it is not immoral to not give a fuck about what happens to Mr. Mehserle the convict, it is extremely dangerous to be cavalier about the political consequences of not condemning incarceration on principle, even though Mr. Mehserle’s incarceration will be exactly as representative as the sentence itself.
Maybe it would depend on the title of the post.
piny – Yes it would depend on the title of the post. I think no matter how oppressive systems are our responses, and the language we use to describe them matters.
My problem is not that Amp’s response is too specific. It’s that it discusses this specific problem in a way that upholds other problems. I think it’s possible to discuss jury nullification, and even the length of the sentence in a way that doesn’t uphold the injustice system – I just don’t think this response does.
I don’t want to widen up this discussion any further, because I was making a narrow point. But I would say that yes there are many different ways people could have responded to Emmett Till’s murder (and possibly did repsond I’m not an expert) that upheld damaging ideologies. I think critiquing those responses would have been perfectly legitimate, and would not have in any way deligitimised the anger.
I don’t know if you’re stating that it is impossible to critique the sentence in ways that don’t uphold the justice system – or if you think that I’m saying that (I think it’s possible) – or if you think that to ask that is an unreasonable burden on those who are responding to Grant’s murder. That makes it hard for me to respond. I don’t think I’m trying to make quite the point you think I’m making
mythago – I think you’re still assuming that I’m making a larger point than I am (probably my fault – I’m really bad at gauging what bits of my points on prisons people will accept/understand and which need explaining). I think we absolutely can see the two-year sentence as a judgment on how the system values Oscar Grant’s life. But I think the point needs to be made explicitly. There is a huge difference between “Oscar Grant’s life is worth two years” and “According to the justice system killing Oscar Grant is equivalent to [and then give an example of another crime that got two years – I don’t know what would get two years in the US]” All I’m asking is that people who are critiquing what the sentence reveals within society make it explicit rather that they’re doing that.
There is a huge difference between “X inherently means Y” or “I believe X means Y” and “X means Y because we live in a society that says it does”. I think it’s important for progressives to maintain that distinction.
Yes. And I think you’re overanalyzing the headline which, after all, is a headline. Perhaps it’s just those provincial Americans again, but I had no problem understanding that Amp was saying “Within the context of the United States criminal justice system and how it values crime victims by the severity of the crime and the sentences handed out to perpetrators, Oscar Grant’s life was worth only two years.”
This probably comes across as angrier than I intend, Maia, but it’s frustrating when you repeatedly assume that if people don’t understand the point you’re trying to make, it’s because the communications failure is entirely on their end.
piny, I don’t think ‘jury nullification’ tells the whole story – to me, this was a compromise verdict, where some people wanted to send Mehserle home with a victory parade and some wanted him to rot in San Quentin, so they split it at involuntary manslaughter. Still shitty, of course.
Mythago – I don’t think I’m overanalysing – it’s not like Amp is the only person to use this device, on this blog – or in other places. But why I think the idea “The way we value someone’s suffering is the length of time we incarcerate the person who inflicted it.” is a dangerous one to uphold is a huge topic. So I’ll just acknowledge that I haven’t made it clear why this matters – and this was probably too big a topic for a comment.
I think when I’m being as badly paraphrased as David paraphrased me, but this widely misunderstood, there are problems with both the writing and the reading. Although I do think the underlying problem is the hegemonic status of the prison system – but then I would. In my last comment I thought I was acknowledging that I hadn’t communicated my ideas effectively.
This is what is frustrating. I get you. I disagree with you. I don’t agree that this is truly a problem in this instance or a big problem in the general context of the reaction to this event (or the reaction to the multitude of events like it). I don’t think people actually are equating the length of a prison sentence with the length of Oscar Grant’s interrupted life. I don’t think people actually are welcoming greater cruelty for the sake of honoring a dead man. I don’t think people are actually supporting the prison system when they say these things. I don’t agree.
I think you are ignoring some important components of what Amp has actually said in this post, as well as the implied stances of the commenters in this thread. I think that your interpretation of this argument is a misguided oversimplification that borders on the extraterrestrial. I think it’s insulting to the people involved in the event, the community, and the discussion. I believe that you are sincere in your beliefs and your priorities, and I still think they are wrong.
Please stop arguing that your highly developed conceptual framework is too singular for our hidebound hegemonic mindsets. You’re being condescending. It’s not that it takes too long to explain, or is too difficult to explain here. It’s that we’re not in agreement.
Piny – You don’t get me – because even now what you say I’m saying is not what I’ve said:
I don’t think, I haven’t said, any of these things. In fact I agree with that entire paragraph. I was not, and have not, talked about intent. I was talking about the effect.
You did make just that assertion about the beliefs you’re attempting to critique. And you did talk about the beliefs themselves by themselves, but I was able to figure out that you were implying that beliefs affect stuff and so on, when you used words like ‘dangerous:’
***
But I was talking about effects also. Because you are not the first person to talk about unqualified acceptance of the justice system and its constructions of punishment and incarceration and retribution and the predictable effect that has on social-justice objectives and on the real-life dimensions of the justice system itself.
All this is going to accomplish is another round of, “You don’t understand! I am scaling the crystalline wall of hegemony, but it is so tiring! Nobody even speaks my language!” I know the arguments you’re referencing; I see the arguments you’re making; I think you’re wrong. And it’s not because you’re unclear. Your conclusions are not self-evident to all those who truly understand them.
Piny – I actually don’t understand what you’re saying. “You did make just that assertion about the beliefs you’re attempting to critique” Which assertion? Which beliefs? (I wasn’t attempting to critique beliefs – I was attempting to critique expressions).
I don’t think my conclusions are self-evident to those who understand them. I just assume that if people have summarized what I said and have come up with the opposite of what I believe, then they don’t understand what it is I’m saying (and as I’ve said that’s probably partly because I’m not clear). Possibly that’s an inaccurate assumption – possibly I don’t understand what they’re saying (at this stage I don’t think I have understood a lot of what you were saying).
ETA: If you are arguing that the effect of my critiquing those expressions is to imply those beliefs you listed, and that that is damaging. I can see that. All I would say to that is that I wanted to say this on Myca’s similar post a few months ago, but I didn’t, because it ended up being dominated by people from the area who were more directly involved in the struggle, and therefore it seemed inappropriate.
I would also say that slogans are slogans – and often problematic. Finding a way to express ideas pithily is complex. I think it is a legitimate for those outside the struggle to analyse the implications of slogans or implications. Although, depending on the circumstances, often they should make sure that they do it in a way that doesn’t disrupt those who are on the ground. I would also say that there is a difference between “This thing you said upholds the justice system” and “you uphold the justice system”.
[and if that’s not what you meant at all, sorry for the diversion]