Some Thoughts On The George Zimmerman Trial

I think it’s important that George Zimmerman has had a trial.

I don’t know if George Zimmerman is guilty of murder under Florida’s laws or not. That’s partly a subjective determination which can only properly be made by a judge or jury. Martin’s death was not so clear-cut that a cop or prosecutor ought to have decided that Zimmerman should face no consequences. In our system, that decision is, and should be, made in a courtroom.

Given the US’s historic and ongoing racism, I think it’s reasonable to particularly fear such decisions being made by cops or prosecutors in cases where the person killed was a young black boy. It is reasonable to wonder, when a clearly innocent, unarmed, black kid is shot to death and the police decide no charges are needed, if the same decision would have been reached if the body were white.

That all remains true if Zimmerman is found “not guilty,” which strikes me as the most likely outcome (and one I’d probably vote for myself, if I were on the jury). From the progressive, anti-racist point of view, victory doesn’t require a guilty verdict. Even in a hypothetical perfectly non-racist system, injustice would still happen, and sometimes people would get away with murder. This is because our justice system, when it’s working properly, is and should be biased in favor of the dependent defendant.

I don’t blame people for being unhappy with Zimmerman being found not guilty (if he is found not guilty), or for correctly seeing it as part of a pattern in which black lives are taken less seriously by our justice system. But I also think that, given the facts of this case, it wouldn’t require racial bias for the jury to find that Zimmerman acted in self-defense.

Russell Simmons writes:

Even with this important day coming soon, I remind myself that we have already accomplished a tremendous amount in the memory of Trayvon. All we ever asked for was for equal justice for the young man who was killed that drizzling night in Sanford, Florida. If George Zimmerman had rights, so did Trayvon Martin. And that is why Mr. Zimmerman was properly arrested and charged with murder in the second degree. He will soon be judged by a jury of his peers, and that is the best we can do.

Victory should not require any particular verdict in this trial. That there was a trial is the victory.

Of course, some people consider it ridiculous that there was a trial at all, or that the jury is being allowed to reach a verdict. Over at Ethics Alarms, Jack writes:

Last week, Judge Debra Nelson, presiding over Zimmerman’s trial, rejected the motion by Zimmerman’s defense team to dismiss the case before a single defense witness had been called, because the prosecution had not met its burden of proof. Media analysts were quick to note that such motions are routine, but this one wasn’t: it was obvious and undeniable that the prosecution’s case could not support a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A courageous, fair and ethical judge would have dismissed the case: Judge Nelson did not. Judges usually default to the position that we should let the jury decide, but when the evidence won’t support a legitimate guilty verdict, as in this case, that position is irresponsible.

Not for the first time, Jack genuinely can’t imagine that any reasonable person could ever disagree with the right-wing view. This case is not nearly as clear-cut as he suggests.

According to Findlaw:

Florida’s jury instructions (which are based on the Florida statute) spell out three elements that prosecutors must prove to establish second degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt:

  • The victim is deceased,
  • The victim’s death was caused by the defendant’s criminal act, and
  • There was an unlawful killing of the victim “by an act imminently dangerous to another and demonstrating a depraved mind without regard for human life.”

The last element — an “imminently dangerous” act that shows a “depraved mind” — is further defined by Florida’s jury instructions. Three elements must be present:

  • A “person of ordinary judgment” would know the act, or series of acts, “is reasonably certain to kill or do serious bodily injury to another”;
  • The act is “done from ill will, hatred, spite, or an evil intent”; and
  • The act is “of such a nature that the act itself indicates an indifference to human life.”

Note that prosecutors do not have to prove the defendant intended to cause death, Florida’s jury instructions state.

IF the jury is persuaded that Zimmerman, who told the dispatcher “Fucking punks. Those assholes, they always get away,” before disregarding the dispatcher’s request to stay put and chasing after a 17-year-old kid in the dark while carrying a gun, had demonstrated both ill will and committing an act that was very likely to lead to serious bodily injury, they could reasonably find Zimmerman guilty of second degree murder.

The jury could also find Zimmerman guilty of the lesser included offense of manslaughter. Findlaw again:

To establish involuntary manslaughter, the prosecutor must show that the defendant acted with “culpable negligence.” Florida statutes define culpable negligence as a disregard for human life while engaging in wanton or reckless behavior. The state may be able to prove involuntary manslaughter by showing the defendant’s recklessness or lack of care when handling a dangerous instrument or weapon, or while engaging in a range of other activities that could lead to death if performed recklessly.

So to find that Zimmerman committed manslaughter, no finding of spite or ill will is required.

Zimmerman’s strongest argument is that Martin’s death was in self-defense. Although not all witnesses agreed, both Zimmerman’s injuries and the testimony of the closest third party witness support Zimmerman’s testimony that Zimmerman had been punched in the nose, and that Martin was on top of Zimmerman and may have pounded Zimmerman’s head into the ground.

I think someone in that situation could very reasonably fear “death or great bodily harm,” even if he provoked the situation himself through his own idiotic actions. However, from the standard instructions given Florida juries in self-defense cases:

The use of deadly force is not justifiable if you find George Zimmerman initially provoked the use of force against himself, by force or the threat of force, unless:

* The force asserted toward George Zimmerman was so great that he reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and had exhausted every reasonable means to escape the danger, other than using deadly force on Trayvon Martin;

So there if the jury believes that Zimmerman “initially provoked the use of force,” AND if they believe that Zimmerman had not “exhausted every reasonable means to escape the danger,” then they could reasonably decide that Zimmerman was not acting in legitimate self-defense.

Honestly, if I was on the jury, I’d probably vote “not guilty.” Someone on the ground, being straddled and beaten, can reasonably be in fear of death or serious injury, and may not believe he has any way out other than his gun. And although much of Zimmerman’s testimony doesn’t seem credible to me, that he was on the ground being straddled and hit by Martin does strike me as credible, given his injuries and the neighbor’s testimony.

But I’m not on the jury. And I don’t think the judge was wrong to think that determination should be made by the jury.

* * *

A couple of random thoughts:

* Ironically, it seems to me that if Zimmerman had died – if in the course of the scuffle Zimmerman’s head had hit the pavement so hard that Zimmerman died of a mortal injury – that Trayvon Martin would have a much stronger case for self-defense than Zimmerman has.

* Although I think Zimmerman may have reasonably been in fear of his life, given how objectively minor his injuries were, that fear was almost certainly mistaken. If Zimmerman hadn’t had a gun, it is overwhelmingly likely that both Zimmerman and Martin would be alive today. Yay guns!

* I actually think that chasing after someone in the dark with a gun, unless there are highly compelling circumstances justifying it, should itself be a crime – even if the gunholder winds up in a situation where he fears for his life. (I don’t find Zimmerman’s story that he didn’t pursue Martin credible, although of course a jury could reasonably disagree with me about that.) The potential for an otherwise nonlethal conflict to escalate into something deadly when idiots like Zimmerman bring a gun into what had been a non-gun situation is obvious, and in my opinion Zimmerman’s actions showed a depraved indifference to that possibility. That should be a crime. But maybe it’s effectively not a crime, under current Florida law.

* I find it disgusting that so much of the discussion of this trial, and the trial itself, (such as admitting evidence that Martin had – gasp! – smoked pot at some point!) has been about disparaging Martin and his friend Rachel Jeantel. In particular, the racist, sexist, classist, and fatphobic attacks on Jeantel have disgusted me. For more on this, read Erikka Yancy, Demetria Lucas, and Mychal Denzel Smith.

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467 Responses to Some Thoughts On The George Zimmerman Trial

  1. 401
    Robert says:

    I didn’t say you WERE poor, Amp, just that you looked it.

    Charles, you aren’t wrong. Part of the ability to be racist-who-ME?? In these situations is that our intuitive sense of statistics is so appallingly poor. Coupled with the temptation to always give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, it’s SO easy to think ‘THIS IS SCIENCE!’ when we’re really just exercising our prejudices. Wish I could claim a better personal record here; I can’t.

  2. 402
    Conrad says:

    So I take it the word of the day here is “microaggression.”

  3. 403
    Charles S says:

    Conrad,

    Yeah, I pretty much expected a lazy dismissive response along those lines from you.

  4. 404
    Conrad says:

    “Yeah, I pretty much expected a lazy dismissive response along those lines from you.”

    The irony. . . it buuurns!

  5. 405
    Charles S says:

    Robert,

    Can’t say I do as good a job as I’d like at it either, but I think recognizing what we’re doing is a necessary first step to not doing it.

  6. 406
    Ampersand says:

    The weird thing about this discussion is that no one has been willing to give an actual EXAMPLE of a situation in which they’d say that reacting differently because of race is justified.

    The risk from the two 19-year old kids who are smoking and drinking in the alleyway, is much, much, higher. That’s profiling, too. But it’s the type of “profiling” that makes sense.

    I sort of agree with this. (Although I’m not sure what good “profiling” will do me – I mean, if two 19-year-old toughs attack me, I’m in trouble regardless of if I was taken by surprise). But yes, of course, I’d be more cautious about the two 19-year-olds in the alley than I would be about Grandma, all else held equal. Even more so if the two 19-year-olds are male.

    But that has nothing to do with race (and G&W didn’t even specify race). Any rational person, if they engage in “profiling,” is going to be more cautious of two 19-year-old guys drinking and smoking in an alleyway than they are of grandma birdfeeder and her six-year-old granddaughter. But that’s JUST as true if the alleyway kids are white.

    The question is, is there any situation in which, ALL ELSE HELD EQUAL, someone here is willing to defend the idea that it matters what race a stranger is? A situation where, given the exact same actions, age, sex, wardrobe, and context, you’d argue that it makes rational sense to be afraid of a Black stranger but not a white stranger? [*]

    Because if no one’s arguing for that, then there isn’t ACTUALLY any disagreement going on here.

    * * *

    Similarly, everyone on the “pro-Zimmerman” side (not a great name, but I’m having trouble thinking of a better label) seems to be arguing that there’s no reason to think that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin, rather than arguing that racially profiling Martin was justifiable.

    In fact, there’s ample reason to suspect that Zimmerman DID profile Martin based on Martin being a young black male. Read this excellent (and not at all anti-Zimmerman) profile, for instance, which sets the context – Zimmerman was aware of a series of break-ings in the area which were attributed to young black men, and just a couple of weeks before had called police on a young black man (who was in fact a robber – he was caught on a later day) who on that day got away, arguably because Zimmerman didn’t go after him. Also, read the Miami Herald’s report – “Zimmerman went door-to-door asking residents to be on the lookout, specifically referring to young black men who appeared to be outsiders, and warned that some were caught lurking, neighbors said.” (How on earth is that NOT profiling?)

    None of this implies that Zimmerman is a KKK-style racist, or that he hates Black people personally. Just that it’s seems possible, given the recent crimes that he was very aware of, and given that he was going door-to-door asking residents to look out for young black men, that he would himself have been on the look out for young black men.

    So IF Zimmerman was profiling young black men, was he wrong? There were, in fact, reported crimes in the area by young black men. A young black man who he had recently spotted in the neighborhood (and called the cops on) did turn out to be someone who had committed at least one robbery in the neighborhood.

    I think that, even in that circumstance, profiling to the point that you follow someone in the dark with a gun is wrong. It’s been reported that about a fifth of the residents of The Retreat at Twin Lakes are Black. So that means about 50 Black families live in the neighborhood and regularly travel through it for entirely legitimate reasons; presumably, most or all of those 50 families have relatives who might sometimes visit them. Furthermore, no doubt there are non-Black residents who have Black friends (or relatives) who might visit them. The odds that any particular Black person that Zimmerman saw had legitimate reasons to be there were, in fact, quite high.

    Creating a local culture where people are treated as criminals merely for being young black men is wrong. It would be wrong even if it didn’t sometimes lead to tragedy, but it’s even more lamentable given what happened to Martin, and it’s obviously even worse given that sometimes tragedies like Martin’s death do happen.

  7. 407
    Ampersand says:

    “Yeah, I pretty much expected a lazy dismissive response along those lines from you.”

    The irony. . . it buuurns!

    Unless you completely dismiss what a lot of Black people who write about their own experiences have said, AND what a lot of social scientists[*] who have studied the matter in detail say, I don’t see how you can dismiss concern about microagressions as “a lazy dismissive response.”

    In contrast, your “word of the day” comment WAS a lazy, dismissive response. It was a genuinely stupid thing for you to say, it was sneery, and it brought the level of discussion down. That you think it was anything but an exceptionally stupid and poor response is problematic, since it would suggest that you can’t tell the difference between an intelligent remark that adds to the conversation in a positive way, and a stupid remark.

    That I even have to explain this is a painful waste of my time. Please don’t make me go through this again. If you don’t have an intelligent response – and your response to Charles was anything but intelligent – then please don’t post a comment at all.

    [*] Categories overlap.

  8. 408
    Conrad says:

    @&: “The question is, is there any situation in which, ALL ELSE HELD EQUAL, someone here is willing to defend the idea that it matters what race a stranger is? A situation where, given the exact same actions, age, sex, wardrobe, and context, you’d argue that it makes rational sense to be afraid of a Black stranger but not a white stranger?”

    I would say no, with a couple of caveats. One caveat is the situation where (as in the case of Zimmerman, I guess) the stranger’s race either rules him in or rule him out as being a specific person to be afraid of. Let’s say that the police have described a serial killer who’s on the loose as a white guy. In that case, one might rationally fear white strangers over blacks, Asians, etc.

    Another caveat I’d offer is your reference to whether it makes RATIONAL sense to be afraid. Fears exist and can be expected to be acted upon whether or not they are completely rational. I knew an older woman — nice lady and all — once who traveled to Japan as an adult only to find herself really uncomfortable around all the Japanese people. Why? Because of friggin’ WWII! As a child in the 1940s she really internalized the propagandistic notion that the Japanese were these horrible people. And it really creeped her out, decades later, to find herself in that specific racial environment. Obviously, that’s about as irrational as it can get, yet there it is.

    We tend to talk about these things as if they are all matters of simple morality, i.e., a choice someone makes to become a microaggressor, a “racist ass, or whatever pejorative label somebody wants to attach to it. The reality is that a lot of this stuff is plain old human nature. People are very often more comfortable and feel safer around people who look like themselves, come from the same backgrounds, and have the same kinds of experiences. That’s almost certainly hard-wired somewhere into our DNA. Rather than attaching all kinds of moral significance to it, I think it would be more realistic and a lot more practical to just to acknowledge it for what it is. Certainly, any attempt to purge it completely from everyone’s innermost thoughts and minute levels of behavior are bound to disappoint.

  9. 409
    Robert says:

    I try very hard not to profile based on race. I don’t try at all not to profile based on age. Yes, it’s unfair to the young people who I’m unjustly assuming are more likely to bust my sweet wheels or mack on my lady. I don’t care, because I think young people are awful and deserve everything they get. Except when they aren’t and don’t; stupid exceptions making life cognitively more expensive!

    I can’t think of any reasons other than the very narrow types of contingencies mentioned above where the race of a person, as an independent variable, merits differential treatment – other than positively. If I see a black man of middle age and behavioral stolidity and conservative dress walking towards me on the sidewalk, I am probably a little more likely to do the affirmative smile-and-nod – “hello fellow respectable member of society. I see by your social cuing that you are signaling an intention to coexist peacefully with me, or at least to keep your crimes deeply private and far from here, and that you, like me, are here in this environment for innocuous if not outright benevolent purposes. Let us nod to one another, and perhaps even ask for street directions or bus schedules if we are not sure of our locations.”

    Not because the black guy is more or less likely to match his social presentation would I be a little more proactive about it, but because he is likely not getting that affirmation every time that he is socially entitled to it, and it’s beneficial for us all to make those affirmations and stranger connections, and I don’t want to be That Guy. (“This white guy saw me walking out of Slacks and Oxfords Ltd., with my briefcase and my graying hair, and he didn’t even give me a hey-man nod! Like I was a hoodlum!”)

    Even from my admittedly less-than-comprehensive grasp of the statistics, it’s blatant that race is way less predictive of any kind of behavior than age is. Hating on teenagers is a way for us all, black, white, and purple, to come together in the awareness that our subsequent generation has most of the awful people in it. I and my dull suburban black middle-aged peers will shrink together in fear at the sight of young people of ANY race having a good time or not being shackled to a wall. And America will be better for it.

  10. 410
    alex says:

    The question is, is there any situation in which, ALL ELSE HELD EQUAL, someone here is willing to defend the idea that it matters what race a stranger is?

    If it is a literally AEHE, then you’d have a be a really hardcore biological racist to believe that. The milder racist view would be some sort of argument that skin color indicates unobservable culture. Similar arguments are being made to do with gender and age, and no one is really appalled by them.

    I’d also say, street crime is quite common. Common enough to worry about. Most people will likely fall victim at some point in their lives.

    In fact, there’s ample reason to suspect that Zimmerman DID profile Martin based on Martin being a young black male.

    Is there? What do you mean by profile I think you’re stretching it? Common usage is more let’s search such and such people because in general they are statistically more likely to carry weapons. Rather than I have a specific description that such and such a person committed a specific crime, and this guy matches the description.

  11. 411
    Jake Squid says:

    I’d also say, street crime is quite common. Common enough to worry about. Most people will likely fall victim at some point in their lives.

    Do you have a citation to back up this assertion?

  12. 412
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Charles S says:
    Of course, if you are profiling every black person who isn’t a grandmother as a violent threat

    Sigh. Look, can you at least TRY to argue in good faith? Nobody here is saying that.

    , you are committing many, many micro-aggressions…and making the world a worse place on a daily basis

    Huh? Are you defining “microaggression” in a manner which doesn’t require actual aggression? I am aggressive to strangers… well, pretty much never. Since I’m not a cop or other person who is obliged to interact with the public, and since 99% of the people who I see/walk past/ride an elevator with are in the “no interact” category, then how on earth is anyone being “aggressed” if I elect to put them in the “no interact” category?

    Some profiling leads to microaggressions. Like, say, profiling by police, or security guards; or the type of profiling in which women clutch their purses and sneer at you as you go by. But you’re stretching the label way past its edges here.

    (Though in any case: Even if it was an issue, should you be obliged to avoid micro-aggressions, or hurting other people’s feelings, in exchange for a very minimal tradeoff? The answer seems to lie in another question: are they willing to make the equivalent tradeoffs in order to benefit you? Because if they don’t give a shit about your feelings, it would be strange to claim some sort of moral failing if you treat them equally, unless you’re in Christ-mimicry mode.

    But hey, I’m sure your preference for taking not particularly useful steps to prevent violence to yourself is worth engaging in daily acts of racist micro-aggression and totally morally justified. It just requires treating black people as morally nonexistent in your ethics.

    Sigh. Everyone (whites and blacks alike) acts in their own self interest. What, you think blacks don’t profile too? Everyone profiles based on their own preferences, and everyone has different preferences. It’s human nature.

    Schrodinger’s Rapist? Profiling. “Whites are ___;” or “privileged people are ____;” or “men _____;” are all profiling. Predicting characteristics based on group membership is profiling. It is more than a bit bizarre that you seem unable to recognize this–or that you’re pretending it doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as “reverse profiling;” there’s just plain old profiling.

    And hey, to bring this back around to the original topic, what’s a dead innocent kid in the line of avoiding interpersonal violence?

    A dead kid is a dead kid: a horrible outcome. Any dead person (irrespective of race and irrespective of class and irrespective of age) is a bad outcome. So the more reasonable question might be this:

    If you take the two situations “no profiling at all, even if it seems like common sense”** and “profiling, as people wish” then you’ll get two sets of numbers:
    1) If nobody profiles, then the people who suffer violence are “primary victims.”
    2) If people profile
    , then some innocent “primary victims” will suffer violence, and some incorrectly-presumed-to-be-criminal “victims of profiling” will suffer from ill-aimed and incorrect defensive violence. However, there may (or may not) be some potential “primary victims” who are protected from violence as a result of profiling; i.e. profiling may have a nonzero protective effect.

    Since you’re arguing against all kinds of profiling*, then you presumably think that the effect is zero. Or, perhaps, you think the # of people who are “helped” by profiling to avoid violence is smaller than the # of people who are targets of incorrect defensive violence. Or, perhaps you just don’t care, and you’d be willing to suffer a few extra victims if it came to avoiding the risk of micro-aggressions.

    Which is it? In case it’s not the last one, let me help you with some numbers: There are 1000 homicides in Florida every year. There are 16,250 or so homicides in the USA every year. What do you think that they would be if nobody profiled, ever? If everyone profiled? How many people do you think are getting saved, versus getting wrongfully shot because of profiling?

    What is the socially permissible word for people who publicly advocate for engaging in racist actions, anyway?

    *As far as I can tell from your tone, you appear to think that all profiling is horrific racism. Unless, that is, you think some profiling is OK. In which case you should make that clear, and should also be willing to distinguish between “OK profiling” and “not OK profiling”

  13. 413
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Damn. I don’t know why my italics are all screwy. Can someone fix it?

    [Someone can! –&]

  14. 414
    Robert says:

    http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4557

    1.8 million per year, which is a new low. Not an exact analog measurement of ‘street crime’ but as close as we’re likely to get. Given that its a historical low, I wouldn’t say that most people will have the experience, but clearly many will.

  15. 415
    Conrad says:

    I didn’t read the report itself, but the press release indicates that, as everyone might expect, these kinds of stranger crimes disproportionately occur in public places (e.g., streets, parking garages, etc.) and in urban areas. I think that’s important to keep in mind for purposes of this discussion. While 1.8 may not seem like a huge number in a population of 330 million, there are specific situations and settings where the risk of being mugged or assaulted is going to be a lot higher than in others. And those are the situations and settings where prudent people are likely to engage in the avoidant behavior we have been discussing.

    I would also point out to those who would argue that random street crime really isn’t that all that pervasive that the original topic of this thread involved a case of a supposedly white guy shooting a black kid whom the former had mistaken for a potential burglar. This shooting was supposedly an important case nationally as “just another example” of how blacks kids are being slaughtered by white grownups on something like a daily basis. However, if random street crime is a rare event, then what happened to TM is far, far rarer still, isn’t it?

  16. 416
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    However, if random street crime is a rare event, then what happened to TM is far, far rarer still, isn’t it?

    It depends on how you classify it.

    If it’s “black dude shot by an individual who claims self defense” then it’s pretty rare, because that doesn’t happen very often.

    If it’s “black man getting hurt/killed for reasons that probably include the fact that he’s a black man” then it is depressingly common. Police target black men all the time; so do a lot of other folks.

    As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere well to the right of Al Sharpton and somewhere well to the left of Fox News.

  17. 417
    Conrad says:

    @ 407: “Unless you completely dismiss what a lot of Black people who write about their own experiences have said, AND what a lot of social scientists[*] who have studied the matter in detail say, I don’t see how you can dismiss concern about microagressions as ‘a lazy dismissive response.'”

    I think you misconstrue what I wrote. First, I’m not the one who came up with the formulation “lazy dismissive response.” That was actually directed AT me, and was clearly meant as a personal insult insofar as the person who wrote it stated that a “lazy dismissive response” was “pretty much expected” from me. Because, of course, I’m incredibly lazy and dismissive by nature, as can be readily seen be my numerous posts in this and other threads.

    Except it can’t. Or at least the case that my comments are generally and predictably lazy and dismissive has never been made before (that I can recall), and wasn’t in any way supported by examples or other evidence. IOW, Ampersand, I was being gratuitously DISMISSED without an enormous amount of effort being put into the task of demonstrating why I should be dismissed. I found that ironic.

    Moreover, I don’t see how my comment concerning what the other commenter wrote about me equates in your mind to a complete dismissal by me of “what a lot of Black people who write about their own experiences have said, AND what a lot of social scientists” have said on the subject of microaggressions. You may not like my opinion of what the other commenter wrote and you may not like my opinion of the theory of microaggressions, but they are in fact two, separate opinions on two entirely different subjects.

    I’m sorry you felt the need to intercede.

  18. 418
    Conrad says:

    @ 416: I don’t want to belabor the point, but I seriously doubt there are anything like 1.8 million annual cases of a black man getting hurt/killed by a white man because of the black man’s race. There’s a reason the GZ/TM cases are fodder for 24/7 cable news coverage and random street crimes aren’t.

    In any case, where are the statistics to back up your claim that these cases are commonplace? My whole point is that, in regard to the argument that “stranger” street crime is such a rare event that nobody really needs to worry much about it, there are statistics that put the phenomenon into perspective. In regard to the GZ/TM type of cases that supposedly are emblematic of a vast phenomenon of whites hunting down blacks in the streets with impunity, all I have ever hear about are anecdotes (many of which don’t actually resemble the TM case at all, btw).

  19. 419
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Conrad says:
    I seriously doubt there are anything like 1.8 million annual cases of a black man getting hurt/killed by a white man because of the black man’s race. There’s a reason the GZ/TM cases are fodder for 24/7 cable news coverage and random street crimes aren’t.

    Yes, but it’s not just frequency.

    In an ideal society, we would not have any street crime. However, although we do our best to stop it, we have very limited ability to do so. Absent a perfect police state or a unicorn Utopia, street crime exists at the whim of the individual offenders.

    It’s pretty much the reverse when it comes to institutional problems. If we disproportionately stop/frisk/arrest/monitor/charge/jail/convict/execute black men (which we do,) we own that as a society–and because it is 100% preventable, then it’s “worse” from a moral perspective.

    This particular case was IMO a very poor hook on which to hang the “institutional” hat–not just because Zimmerman was a private citizen, but for other reasons. But although the link between Zimmerman and institutional discrimination is weak as hell, the fact remains that institutional discrimination exists.

  20. 420
    Myca says:

    There’s a reason the GZ/TM cases are fodder for 24/7 cable news coverage and random street crimes aren’t.

    Yes. It’s because the cops don’t refuse to arrest the perpetrator of most random street crimes.

    Let’s all remember, that’s why this blew up in the media.

    —Myca

  21. 421
    Conrad says:

    @ 419: ” If we disproportionately stop/frisk/arrest/monitor/charge/jail/
    convict/execute black men (which we do,) we own that as a society–and because it is 100% preventable, then it’s ‘worse’ from a moral perspective.”

    I’m having a problem with your characterization of the disproportionate “attention” (for lack of a better catch-all term) paid to black men as being due to a moral failing by society as a whole. First of all, does the fact that we disproportionately stop/frisk/arrest/etc. MEN (as opposed to women) bother you in the same way? Does the fact that we disproportionately stop/frisk/arrest/etc. YOUNG PEOPLE evidence the same moral failings of society?

    Seems to me the reason young, black men get stopped and arrested so frequently is that, disproportionately, young, black men commit more of the crime. That being the case, I’m not sure why you think this represents some kind of moral failing on society’s part. Or why you consider it “preventable.”

    Granted, there may be cases in which black men are unfairly stopped/arrested/etc. BECAUSE they are black (not simply because, for example, somebody made a mistake or somebody was a psychopath and decided to kill someone and their victim just happened to be black). But I don’t really see those cases as examples of misdeeds by society at large, but rather the misdeeds of whoever is doing the shooting.

    In the case of GZ, even if he was wrong in everything he did that night, what exactly was the preventable moral failure on the part of society as a whole that produced the tragic consequences? Seems to me it’s on HIM (Zimmerman), not society.

  22. 422
    Conrad says:

    Cops refuse to arrest people all the time. Anyway, cops aren’t supposed to arrest people just because people demand it — is that the kind of society you want? And arrests are supposed to serve as a form of punishment. Do you honestly believe that if your neighbors got together and decided you had done something wrong, even if the police looked into it and decided they couldn’t prove you committed any crime, that you should nevertheless be arrested at the neighbors’ insistence?

    The outcome of the trial proves that the police we right in not arresting GZ. For God’s sake he was found not guilty, yet you are complaining about the fact he wasn’t arrested right away!

    I would think anyone concerned with the plight of young, black men in this country would be a little more circumspect in advocating for police and prosecutors to be able to use criminal proceedings to go after people based on racial outrage.

  23. 423
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Seem like the superliberal folks like Charles think I’m a hellbent racist, and the relatively conservative folks like Conrad think I’m a liberal. moderation is fun ;)

    Seems to me the reason young, black men get stopped and arrested so frequently is that, disproportionately, young, black men commit more of the crime.

    Ah.

    Let me put it to you a bit differently:
    We currently live in a society which is making more and more things illegal. The chances are actually pretty high that almost everyone will break at least one law, at least once in their life. Today alone, I jaywalked more than once; I crossed the corner of someone else’s property as a shortcut; I drove about 5 mph over the speed limit; and for all I know I broke some other law. Chances are that many folks own at least one copy of a CD; that they have gambled once ortwice; that they had a drink when they were 20…. shall I go on?

    here’s the result:

    Our government has DISCRETION to arrest/punish almost anyone.

    If they focus that discretion on you personally, you’re pretty much fucked. And if they focus that discretion on your race (because, say, racism, or non-voting status, or voting, but minority, status) then you’re still pretty much fucked. You can’t fight the government and win. So it’s ludicrous to examine the results of years of discretionary focus, without accounting for them.

    To put it differently: if you started doing “stop and frisk” at mostly-white private schools, you would start arresting a lot of people for drugs and illegal downloading and other things. But would not actually represent a vast increase in those crimes; it would simply reflect an increase in surveillance and arrests.

    I would think anyone concerned with the plight of young, black men in this country would be a little more circumspect in advocating for police and prosecutors to be able to use criminal proceedings to go after people based on racial outrage.

    Damn straight.

    A lot of the things that people are pushing for on the TM side are things which will have a horrible effect on all sorts of people, but definitely on young black men.

  24. 424
    gin-and-whiskey says:
  25. 425
    Jake Squid says:

    And arrests are supposed to serve as a form of punishment.

    No they aren’t. Punishment happens after a guilty verdict at trial or after a plea bargain is reached. Arrests are part of the justice process and are not supposed to, in and of themselves, serve as punishment. Which is not to say that arrest is not used as a form of punishment, but that’s not what it’s for.

  26. 426
    Ruchama says:

    To put it differently: if you started doing “stop and frisk” at mostly-white private schools, you would start arresting a lot of people for drugs and illegal downloading and other things. But would not actually represent a vast increase in those crimes; it would simply reflect an increase in surveillance and arrests.

    I went to high school in the nineties, in a mostly white suburb with what’s considered an excellent public school system. I knew several kids who were dealing drugs, and quite a few more who would probably have drugs somewhere in their possession on any given day. The school knew all this, too. None of them were ever arrested for anything, though — they knew that one of the safest places to deal was on school property. There were several times that kids were caught buying/selling drugs on school property, and every single time, the school dealt with it by suspending the kids, without getting the police involved. Getting the police involved would mean that it would show up in the police blotter in the local paper, and that would damage the reputation of the school. The few times that something did get into the papers, people actually wrote to the paper to complain that, by printing it, the paper was bringing down property values. The same thing happened with sexual harassment and assault at the school. I’m sure that the crime statistics for this town were completely inaccurate, since just about NOTHING done by teenagers was ever officially reported, except for parties that got too loud.

  27. 427
    Conrad says:

    @425: You are right, of course. “Are” was a result of typing too fast.
    I meant to say “aren’t.”

  28. 428
    closetpuritan says:

    Amp:
    The weird thing about this discussion is that no one has been willing to give an actual EXAMPLE of a situation in which they’d say that reacting differently because of race is justified.

    Conrad:
    People are very often more comfortable and feel safer around people who look like themselves, come from the same backgrounds, and have the same kinds of experiences. That’s almost certainly hard-wired somewhere into our DNA. Rather than attaching all kinds of moral significance to it, I think it would be more realistic and a lot more practical to just to acknowledge it for what it is. Certainly, any attempt to purge it completely from everyone’s innermost thoughts and minute levels of behavior are bound to disappoint.

    Robert:
    I try very hard not to profile based on race.

    It seems like a significant part of the disagreement on this thread (if I’m reading Conrad right) is about whether it’s enough to merely not try to racially profile, or whether you have at least some obligation to try not to. (If the difference between the two isn’t immediately apparent, here’s an example–when you’re driving, it is enough to merely not try to hit pedestrians, or do you have to try not to? When you walk around in a crowded area, do you just not try to step on people’s feet and bump into them, or do you try not to?) This seems to be a large part of a lot of discussions about racism, actually.

    BTW, I don’t think most people are arguing that it’s possible to “purge [racism/in-group bias] completely from everyone’s innermost thoughts and minute levels of behavior”, but that people should try to keep its influence in check.

    WRT how are my actions ‘microaggressions'” towards people I’m not interacting with? Obama gave one example in his recent speech: people locking their car doors as he approached. (This one is pretty easy to fix: you should lock your car doors when you get in the car anyway; it’s safer during a crash.) Probably others who’ve been on the receiving end of it could think of more examples. I think in many if not most cases the best course of action is to be more cautious of otherwise-similar white people rather than less cautious of black people.

  29. 429
    Conrad says:

    @ closetpuritan: I understand the point you’re making. However, you seem to regard “profiling” as a moral failing we should all strive to overcome. I would argue that stereotyping is a natural and important part of cognition. If you were hiking in the desert and encountered a snake you’d never seen before, you’d probably make a quick judgment to stay clear because it MIGHT be venomous (as a minority of snakes are). You have just “profiled” the snake.

    The related point I would make is that, to the extent human beings seem to generally feel more comfortable around people who look like them, come from the same background, etc., it’s natural to expect this bias to spill over into how people evaluate and stereotype other people. There’s a reason why OJ’s attorneys wanted a lot of black people on his jury: The black jurors could be expected to be more sympathetic to a black man.

    Of course, there are situations in which we hope (and in fact insist) that people try to set aside their biases and be completely objective. However, it strikes me as basically pointless to ask or expect people to do this in circumstances where their personal safety is at issue. (Picture yourself in an all-night Laundromat; the only other person there is a beefy dude with a leather jacket and a “Born to Raise Hell” tattoo on his neck. Oh, and he doesn’t appear to have any laundry. Bet you’re glad you got that CCP now!)

    People stereotype all the time. I don’t see how it’s realistic or even necessarily desirable to try to carve out from this practice any kind of group stereotyping . When Barack Obama referred to his grandmother as a “typical white woman,” that was a racial, sexist stereotype by any modern definition. You may see that comment of BHO’s as a significant moral lapse on his part, but I tend to think it’s the kind of thing people naturally do all the time.

    Also, I do think a lot of people are essentially advocating the general “purging” of racial/group bias at a fairly minute level. How else can we explain microaggressions? I suppose we can argue over degrees, but it seems to me the microaggressions movement assumes there’s a huge undercurrent of racial and sexual bias that in fact needs to be rooted out of seemingly innocuous everyday interactions. I would imagine there are much more efficient ways of improving the world than trying to catalogue all the semi-rude things people say to one another every day, whether rooted in perceived group bias or otherwise.

  30. 430
    closetpuritan says:

    You start out saying that profiling is accurate, then you say that it’s natural and not realistic to not profile, and also that it’s neither realistic nor desirable to set aside race and treat it differently from other forms of profiling (and, again that it’s not realistic). Correct?

    I just don’t think that race-based profiling is accurate. You’ve pretty much admitted as much, in the specific case of race, all else held equal. I DO think that we should treat it differently from other forms of profiling–partly because it’s less accurate (people would be safer if they didn’t rely on racial profiling!), but also because I think that it is one of a few particularly socially harmful forms of profiling. I don’t see why it would be hard to separate racial profiling from other forms of “profiling”. (In fact, I imagine that if you don’t lazily profile based on race, your mind is forced to look at other, more accurate danger heuristics.) But you also say it may not be desirable to separate it from other forms of profiling. Since you said before that, all else held equal, you didn’t think race was an accurate way to profile, I’m having trouble understanding why you think it wouldn’t be desirable.

    As I said before, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect to completely get rid of all forms of unconscious racism. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say that making an effort to minimize racist actions, including microaggressions, will make a difference. I guess there’s no definitive way to prove that microaggressions are important, but when people say they’re bothered by something, I tend to believe them. There’s also pretty strong evidence that unintentional bias has an effect, both on the biased, and the biased-against, though I’m not sure if anyone has studied microaggressions specifically. (Actually, you could make a decent argument against affirmative action by saying that it promotes stereotype threat.)

  31. 431
    closetpuritan says:

    Gin & Whiskey:
    We currently live in a society which is making more and more things illegal. The chances are actually pretty high that almost everyone will break at least one law, at least once in their life.

    To put it differently: if you started doing “stop and frisk” at mostly-white private schools, you would start arresting a lot of people for drugs and illegal downloading and other things. But would not actually represent a vast increase in those crimes; it would simply reflect an increase in surveillance and arrests.

    Just to add to this, at my college (not exactly a safety school, and where probably a majority of the students were white and from upper-middle-class or upper-class families) it seemed like pretty much everyone had at least tried alcohol before 21, and the majority had tried marijuana. Most of them also illegally downloaded music either over the internet or from friends’ CDs. Most of the students not only did not have criminal records, but (not coincidentally) retained the ability to be functioning members of society.

  32. 432
    Conrad says:

    @430: Is this post directed at me? I don’t think I ever said profiling was “accurate” — and I’m not sure what that means in this context. Sometimes the stereotype turns out to be correct. Sometimes it doesn’t. In a lot of cases — like me hypothetical snake, you don’t stick around long enough to find out.

    ” (people would be safer if they didn’t rely on racial profiling!),”

    I’m intrigued. Explain?

    “but also because I think that it is one of a few particularly socially harmful forms of profiling.”

    How so? What is the demonstrated “social harm” that is caused by racial profiling?

    “Since you said before that, all else held equal, you didn’t think race was an accurate way to profile, I’m having trouble understanding why you think it wouldn’t be desirable. ”

    I don’t think that’s what I said. I think I said that I couldn’t think of a situation in which race alone would make me try to keep a safe distance away from a stranger. For example, if I came across a rough-looking young man in a dark alley, I’d be quite alarmed whether he was white or black. (Note that I’m still “profiling” based on age, sex, etc. — but I guess that’s okay with everybody??) But in saying what **I** would do, I’m not declaring that racial profiling in general flat-out would not work as a crime-avoidance technique because it’s “inaccurate.” Someone who lived in an urban setting (let’s say she’s white) who made it a policy of steering clear of young black or Hispanic men she encountered in public places probably WOULD, it seems to me, somewhat reduce her chances of being a victim of street crime. It may not make her safe from ALL street crime and it may make her seem like a jerk in certain situations, but I don’t think it fails as a strategy because profiling is “inaccurate.”

    “I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say that making an effort to minimize racist actions, including microaggressions, will make a difference. ”

    But “make a difference” how? And to whom? ISTM people have the right to use their own judgment in avoiding situations that may make them feel unsafe. It sounds like there’s a sentiment afoot that that person’s desire to feel safe should be subordinated to the desire of black urban youths (which is really the cohort that we’re mostly talking about here) to not be feared by other people. First of all, as I’ve said, I don’t think it’s very realistic to think someone is going to altruistically sacrifice her own sense of personal safety in order to make a stranger — who may in fact BE a criminal — feel better about himself. Second, I’m really not sure the black kid in this example is all that worried about what the white lady thinks. If he were really worried about not looking like a potential mugger to a strange white woman, he could change the image he was presenting in public so as to look less like a potential criminal to total strangers. Now, he may not want to do this simply for the benefit of some random white woman who happens by. So he does his thing and she does her thing. You can call HER thing — crossing the street? — a “microaggression,” but that doesn’t make it wrong and it certainly doesn’t make it a big deal (“micro” means small, right?).

    Of course, these are hypotheticals and we can change the facts to make whatever point we want. I’m just not ready to buy into the general proposition that, even though crime statistics show that young, minority men are more likely to commit criminal acts than any other group, there is simply no practical, rational use a person can make of this information in their daily lives. If people want to look at the statistical disparities and say “So what?,” then that’s fine. I just don’t see the point in lecturing to those who don’t see it the same way.

  33. 433
    Elusis says:

    Profiling is a pretty lousy tool, unless you want to accomplish exactly the thing profiling is best for: radically skewing the pool of whom your actions impact.

    http://kentbrew.github.io/profiling-atherton/

  34. 434
    closetpuritan says:

    Conrad:
    What is the demonstrated “social harm” that is caused by racial profiling?
    We’re talking exclusively about profiling in the context of actions individuals take that make them personally feel safer, not actions taken by law enforcement, security guards, store employees, jury members, etc., right?

    @430: I don’t think I ever said profiling was “accurate” — and I’m not sure what that means in this context. Sometimes the stereotype turns out to be correct. Sometimes it doesn’t. In a lot of cases — like me hypothetical snake, you don’t stick around long enough to find out.

    I thought the snake example was meant to be an example where profiling was accurate–and what I meant by “accurate” was “a good heuristic”. (Of course, in the snake example, the snake will not be offended if you hastily move away from it–in fact, it would prefer it that way.) BTW, I’m not sure how I feel about profiling based on youth, but given that women were responsible for 10% of murders between 1976 and 2005 (but a larger percentage of murders of intimate partners and family members), and also given that men have a great deal of political power, I’m not particularly concerned about profiling based on gender.

    But in saying what **I** would do, I’m not declaring that racial profiling in general flat-out would not work as a crime-avoidance technique because it’s “inaccurate.” Someone who lived in an urban setting (let’s say she’s white) who made it a policy of steering clear of young black or Hispanic men she encountered in public places probably WOULD, it seems to me, somewhat reduce her chances of being a victim of street crime. It may not make her safe from ALL street crime and it may make her seem like a jerk in certain situations, but I don’t think it fails as a strategy because profiling is “inaccurate.”
    OK, so you think that racially profiling is or may be accurate, but you personally don’t do it? Or you think that profiling based on race is less accurate than looking at clothing and behavior, but is better than using no heuristics? Both?

    Actually, I also think that avoiding black and Hispanic young men would keep her safer than not–but less safe than avoiding young men of all races. (Or avoiding everyone, really.)

    It sounds like there’s a sentiment afoot that that person’s desire to feel safe should be subordinated to the desire of black urban youths (which is really the cohort that we’re mostly talking about here) to not be feared by other people. First of all, as I’ve said, I don’t think it’s very realistic to think someone is going to altruistically sacrifice her own sense of personal safety in order to make a stranger — who may in fact BE a criminal — feel better about himself.

    I’m just emphasizing “feel safe” because I think that’s all it is–she may feel safer, but is she? That brings me back to “people would be safer if they didn’t rely on racial profiling!” I think that if Hypothetical Woman focused more on other factors than race she’d do a better job picking the people to avoid. And maybe if she knew more about the level of risk associated with race vs. other factors, she would lose her (false?) sense of security about avoiding people who were the “wrong” race while getting her sense of security elsewhere. I thought it had been pretty well established that racial profiling isn’t a very good heuristic, though looking into it some more just now, there seems to be more debate. Pure racial profiling is still pretty well established to be poor–race combined with other factors has more success, at least when it comes to trying to find terrorists–see Random Screening As Accurate As Racial Profiling. Profiling in the sense of “is this entity a member of a certain group” certainly wasn’t accurate in the case of the Tea Party. Right-wingers didn’t much like it when Janet Napolitano mentioned a possible increase in right-wing terrorism, either, and that was just in a memo; no actual profiling had happened at that point. I suspect that most evangelical Christians wouldn’t like it if they were profiled based on their religion because law enforcement was anticipating an uptick in abortion clinic bombing. Nor would most people appreciate being profiled based on their political or religious group or subgroup. (Do you feel differently, Conrad?)

    Also, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I think that more often than not what people need to do is NOT trust MORE people, but trust FEWER. Locking your car doors as soon as you get in, instead of waiting until a black kid walks by, should not require anyone to sacrifice their sense of personal safety. Avoid ALL the guys loitering at the laundromat who don’t have any laundry, not just the black ones. (And, to pull another example from Obama’s recent speech, how does “clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off” an elevator make anyone safer? You might even be safer if you projected “alert but confident” instead of “fearful”.)

    What is the demonstrated “social harm” that is caused by racial profiling?

    You can call HER thing — crossing the street? — a “microaggression,” but that doesn’t make it wrong and it certainly doesn’t make it a big deal (“micro” means small, right?).

    Individual grains of sand or flour are small, so engulfment hazards aren’t real, right? Straws are light, so they can’t break a camel’s back, right? Small things can build up.

    I don’t think there’s been a lot of study of tangible harms caused by microaggressions, so there isn’t really an “objective” answer to this. A quick Google search found me one study that the authors said showed tangible harms. Part of why I mentioned Stereotype Threat earlier was as an example of how seemingly minor mentions of race, gender, etc. can cause concrete differences in test performance. I’m inferring from what research has been done that microaggressions do make a difference. But mostly I’m relying on others’ and my own experiences. I think the quote below is a good one:

    Does it really make any difference?
    This question was asked despite the fact that several people stated that their feelings had been hurt by this characterization. Interestingly, in the discussion, these statements were almost entirely overlooked or treated as irrelevant. In fact, several discussants noted that no harm had been intended in order to show that no harm had resulted. This was not, they argued, hate speech, and indeed it was not. Totally overlooked in this approach, however, was the assaultive nature of the comments themselves. Suppose, for example, in the course of a discussion, I illustrate my point by sweeping my hand within inches of your face. You recoil; you lose concentration; and perhaps you have a sense of physical violation. Nevertheless, no harm is intended; the conduct is not particularly violent; and no physical contact is made. But even so, the gesture itself invades your space and places you at a disadvantage. It is similar with microaggressions. A microaggression may surprise you, stun you, enrage you or even hurt your feelings. Even trivial microaggressions can put you off balance and distract you from the task at hand.

  35. 435
    Conrad says:

    “We’re talking exclusively about profiling in the context of actions individuals take that make them personally feel safer, not actions taken by law enforcement, security guards, store employees, jury members, etc., right?”

    Right.

    “I thought the snake example was meant to be an example where profiling was accurate–and what I meant by ‘accurate’ was ‘a good heuristic’.”

    I don’t know what “good heuristic” means, so that’s not getting us any closer. I would think “accurate” means the snake really was poisonous.

    ” (Of course, in the snake example, the snake will not be offended if you hastily move away from it–in fact, it would prefer it that way.)”

    Hopefully the snake will understand that, because a few snakes are dangerous to human beings, I need to be careful and not get too close. If not, perhaps the snake needs to not take things so personally.

    “BTW, I’m not sure how I feel about profiling based on youth, but given that women were responsible for 10% of murders between 1976 and 2005 (but a larger percentage of murders of intimate partners and family members), and also given that men have a great deal of political power, I’m not particularly concerned about profiling based on gender.”

    Not sure what political power has to do with it. And the fact remains, if profiling based on one immutable group trait (race) is wrong, then profiling based on another immutable group trait (sex) is also wrong. Either way, you’re engaging in microaggressive behavior against an individual who statistics would suggest represents only a small risk of danger to you.

    “OK, so you think that racially profiling is or may be accurate, but you personally don’t do it? Or you think that profiling based on race is less accurate than looking at clothing and behavior, but is better than using no heuristics? Both?”

    I’m saying it would be a reasonable thing to do for an individual who was trying to minimize his or her risk of being a victim of crime. However, I think such a person would be foolish to use race to the exclusion of any other factors. That would require someone to avoid the suit-wearing, WSJ-reading, middle-aged black guy waiting at one end of the platform and head over to the end where the young, thuggish-looking white guy was hanging out.

    “Actually, I also think that avoiding black and Hispanic young men would keep her safer than not–but less safe than avoiding young men of all races. (Or avoiding everyone, really.)”

    True, but everybody should be allowed to draw the line wherever they think it’s appropriate.

    “I’m just emphasizing “feel safe” because I think that’s all it is–she may feel safer, but is she?”

    I thought you just agreed someone would in fact be safer avoiding young black and Hispanic men?

    “Right-wingers didn’t much like it when Janet Napolitano mentioned a possible increase in right-wing terrorism”

    Um, because there isn’t any? And also because nobody believes that when this administration goes after right-wingers for any reason, that the true motivation behind that isn’t partisan politics? (Just imagine the outcry if Bush and Cheney had announced they wanted to use all the anti-terrorist infrastructure that had been created in the wake of 9/11 to focus on the threat of domestic terrorism posed by liberals.)

    “Nor would most people appreciate being profiled based on their political or religious group or subgroup. (Do you feel differently, Conrad?)”

    No, I would agree. But now you’re talking about government profiling rather than someone personally exercising their right to steer clear of possible muggers, etc. And gov’t profiling along religious/political lines raises obvious 1st Amendment concerns.

    “Individual grains of sand or flour are small, so engulfment hazards aren’t real, right? Straws are light, so they can’t break a camel’s back, right? Small things can build up.”

    I suppose, but doesn’t everyone encounter instances of casual rudeness, insensitivity, and boorishness, like about 40 times a month? When some clerk at the Home Depot looks at me like I’m an idiot, or a bartender seems determined not to take my drink order, I don’t run home and post those experiences on a website. If those minor affronts are somehow piling up in my head somewhere, I think it’s pretty much up to me to make sure the burden of carrying them around doesn’t overwhelm me. Seems like too many people want to wallow in their own sense of victimhood rather than just live their own lives the best way they can.

    Re: your discussion/excerpt of harms caused by microaggressions: It still comes down to subjective feelings of hurt, “invalidation,” etc. for which there is no solution other than soldiering on. I find the entire effort to treat it as some kind of scientific phenomenon that has to be studied and dissected pretty silly. It’s also quite wrong and harmful IMO, to inculcate the belief among impressionable kids who are already, in many cases, saddled with the disadvantages of living in a single-parent household and going to a crappy school, that there is this sort of inherent obstacle they face in life called “white privilege” and they will never truly be accepted as social equals even by apparently well-meaning white people. What poisonous BS that is, IMO.

  36. 436
    Grace Annam says:

    Conrad:

    I don’t know what “good heuristic” means, so that’s not getting us any closer.

    Heuristic.

    Grace

  37. 437
    KellyK says:

    “Right-wingers didn’t much like it when Janet Napolitano mentioned a possible increase in right-wing terrorism”

    Um, because there isn’t any?

    So, George Tiller, what, tripped and fell on a bullet? Several times? And presumably abortions require the use of flammable chemicals, based on the tendency of abortion clinics to randomly explode for no reason. And all the assaults, kidnappings and death threats—totally not terrorism. Must be something unrelated.

    And certainly nobody has stockpiled weapons and bomb-making supplies, planned to kill the President, and murdered people to maintain their conspiracy. And the KKK? The Neo-Nazis? Those guys don’t even exist anymore. Certainly their activities aren’t increasing.

    Yep, no such thing as right-wing terrorism. None whatsoever.

  38. 438
    closetpuritan says:

    @Conrad, KellyK
    Yeah, it’s not like adomestic terrorist flew a FUCKING AIRPLANE into an IRS building in a suicide attack since Napolitano wrote that memo…

    So when profiling is used against black or Hispanic young men, it’s accurate. When it’s used against a group that you like, it’s inaccurate. Got it. (The “it’s different when it comes from the gov’t” part of Conrad’s argument: fair enough.)

    Conrad:
    Hopefully the snake will understand that, because a few snakes are dangerous to human beings, I need to be careful and not get too close. If not, perhaps the snake needs to not take things so personally.
    Well, my point was that the snake would prefer you to stay away from it, regardless of whether it’s poisonous, so we’re actually acting according to its preferences, not offending it. Also, the snake is not part of our society, so we don’t have to worry about it feeling alienated from our society, which I think would lead to increases in crime, decreases in cooperation, and other negative outcomes.

    I suppose, but doesn’t everyone encounter instances of casual rudeness, insensitivity, and boorishness, like about 40 times a month? When some clerk at the Home Depot looks at me like I’m an idiot, or a bartender seems determined not to take my drink order, I don’t run home and post those experiences on a website.
    But do you believe that they’re doing it because of your race, religion, ancestry, etc.? I think that makes a difference in how it affects someone.

    Seems like too many people want to wallow in their own sense of victimhood rather than just live their own lives the best way they can.
    Obviously, that is the goal. Not something concrete like not being profiled.

    It still comes down to subjective feelings of hurt, “invalidation,” etc. for which there is no solution other than soldiering on. I find the entire effort to treat it as some kind of scientific phenomenon that has to be studied and dissected pretty silly.

    Soooo…. When it’s only subjective feelings of hurt, it’s trivial, but trying to prove that there are real, concrete effects and it’s not just subjective feelings of hurt is silly?

    It’s also quite wrong and harmful IMO, to inculcate the belief among impressionable kids who are already, in many cases, saddled with the disadvantages of living in a single-parent household and going to a crappy school, that there is this sort of inherent obstacle they face in life called “white privilege” and they will never truly be accepted as social equals even by apparently well-meaning white people. What poisonous BS that is, IMO.

    Ah yes, the old “Racism isn’t the problem; talking about racism is the REAL problem!” Did you ever think that a large part of the goal was NOT about inculcating beliefs among those affected, but trying to get through to those who are or will be affecting them?

  39. 439
    Conrad says:

    @ 437: First, I reject the characterization of your litany of terrorists as “right-wing.” Being anti-abortion doesn’t make a person right wing, it just makes him/her anti-abortion. A lot of Dem officeholders — and even people like Jesse Jackson, IIRC — were anti-abortion until the 70’s or ’80’s; were they “right wing”?

    Similarly, I don’t see how the KKK qualifies as “right wing.” How does this or any other white supremacist group get classified as right wing? There’s nothing in conservative political ideology that argues for white supremacy.

    “Right-wing” denotes a place along the conservative-liberal ideological spectrum. Neither anti-abortion folks nor white supremacist groups are motivated by political ideology; rather, their causes are based on religious/moral objections to abortion, in the case of the former, and racial animus, in the case of the latter.

    Of course, the original Nazis were political in nature (although it’s debatable whether they should be classified as right wing or left wing); but I’m not sure the Neo-Nazis aren’t simply another white/gentile supremacist movement like the KKK.

    In any event, I don’t see where a serious case can be made that there’s an ongoing domestic terrorism phenomenon taking place akin to what the U.S. is facing from Islamic jihadists. And there certainly isn’t anything of that nature that can be charcterized as authentically right-wing. It’s not as if some Republicans are SO conservative that they are out there blowing up buses and pizzerias, setting off IEDs, etc., thus warranting a redirecting of the government anti-terrorism resources so as to combat the problem of conservatives who blowing up schools and shopping malls.

  40. 440
    Elusis says:

    Similarly, I don’t see how the KKK qualifies as “right wing.” How does this or any other white supremacist group get classified as right wing? There’s nothing in conservative political ideology that argues for white supremacy.

    “No true Scotsman…”

    Also, I’m pretty sure someone posted some good links on the research about the psychological and social effects of microaggressions earlier in this thread, but it’s been a while back and honestly I’ve been building a reader of articles re: families of trans children all day and I’m tired. However, search in the professional literature for “minority stress model” will yield some appropriate research.

    Also, the series “Unnatural Causes” documents the link between racism and negative health outcomes (yes, they controlled for class, education, etc.) such as impacts on pregnancy: http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/video_clips_detail.php?res_id=70

    and infant mortality: http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/video_clips_detail.php?res_id=214

  41. 441
    Conrad says:

    @438: “So when profiling is used against black or Hispanic young men, it’s accurate. When it’s used against a group that you like, it’s inaccurate. Got it. (The “it’s different when it comes from the gov’t” part of Conrad’s argument: fair enough.)”

    Why do continue to attribute to me the belief that profiling is “accurate”? I think I’ve made it clear several times at this point that I don’t agree with this characterization. You don’t have to agree with my opinions, obviously, but would you please not misrepresent them?

    “But do you believe that they’re doing it because of your race, religion, ancestry, etc.? I think that makes a difference in how it affects someone.”

    I don’t think it should, actually. First of all, it’s kind of hard to get inside the head of a stranger who does something you consider unfriendly/insensitive to determine whether they are acting out of some kind of racial bias or whether it’s something else about you that prompted them to act like a jerk. Seonc, what difference does it make, really? Seems like we’re now going out of our way to try to MAKE race as big a factor as possible in how we think about life, society, and our personal identities. It really seems pretty obsessive, IMO. And who benefits? Certainly not the POC children who thought they were at least growing up in America but who are finding out that they live in a tribal society like Iraq or the Balkans.

    “Obviously, that is the goal. Not something concrete like not being profiled.” Two responses: 1. Simply being offended by “profiling” on the part of passing strangers isn’t doing much to reduce such profiling. I sincerely fail to grasp what good is accomplished through the cataloguing of microaggressions. I get that it may make the victims feel better to commiserate with other victims, but it doesn’t strike me as doing much to solve the menace of rude/insulting strangers. 2. I sincerely doubt that the self-proclaimed victims of microaggressions are themselves free of all manner of “profiling” behavior. We’ve already established that it’s ok to profile men and youths. And we all agree (I think) that it’s ok to profile as to things that make somebody look like a thug. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that the very people who are upset that they may have been profiled by a passing stranger for being black are themselves hurting the feelings of perfectly innocent strangers whom they have wrongly profiled for one reason or another. Which gets back to my point that there’s always going to be a certain level of ruffled feathers when you dump 330 million people in one place and watch them go about their business.

    “Soooo…. When it’s only subjective feelings of hurt, it’s trivial, but trying to prove that there are real, concrete effects and it’s not just subjective feelings of hurt is silly?”

    Science isn’t about “trying to prove” anything — and that’s part of what I find silly about microaggressions. And the subjectiveness of the phenomenon also makes this a debious subject for scientific inquiry. Essentially, we have self-selecting people claiming to have taken subjective offense over interactions they had with other people (ostensibly based on race/gender bias — but we can’t really determine this objectively) and social “scientists” are attempting to prove that there are discrete consequences flowing from that particular species of unpleasant human experience that are qualitatively different, more severe, and/or more significant than those that flow from unpleasant interactions NOT involving allegations of racial/gender bias. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t stike me as scientifically valid endeavor. I don’t know what genuine scientific breakthrough could possibly be achieved in this fashion. To the contrary, the whole exercise seems calculated merely to create an aura of scientific legitimacy around racial/gender aggrievement.

    “Ah yes, the old “Racism isn’t the problem; talking about racism is the REAL problem!” Did you ever think that a large part of the goal was NOT about inculcating beliefs among those affected, but trying to get through to those who are or will be affecting them?”

    I think a lot of this is INTENDED to telegraph the message that the deck is stacked against POCs. At the very least, that message is a natural byproduct. I don’t see much, if any, emphasis on altering the behavior of the “microaggressors.” All of the focus seems to be on listening to the victims and validating their subjective perceptions that they have been gratuitously harmed on account of their race or gender.

    Again, I would note that if the goal is to alter social behavior, then this isn’t a scientific inquiry at all but rather advocacy or, if you prefer, social engineering. Clearly, there are a lot of behaviors at issue here that people don’t like, and those people would like to see those behaviors go away (like “profiling”). But the objections to those behaviors are really based in personal morality, ethics, aesthetics, political ideology, etc. Now, it seems, people want to enlist “science” in an effort to establish that those same behaviors are in fact somehow harmful or dangerous to human beings. But it’s simply not credible for people who already openly detest things like “profiling” for a litany of other reasons to suddenly show up wearing lab jackets and claim their objections to it are grounded in science — only to THEN start looking for the data on which to support their supposed science-based objections!

  42. 442
    Harlequin says:

    I suppose, but doesn’t everyone encounter instances of casual rudeness, insensitivity, and boorishness, like about 40 times a month? When some clerk at the Home Depot looks at me like I’m an idiot, or a bartender seems determined not to take my drink order, I don’t run home and post those experiences on a website.

    Sure–but it’s not like groups subject to microaggressions are somehow exempt from the ordinary assholes. Instead, they get both the indiscriminate grumps and the racist/sexist/etc entitled jerks!

  43. 443
    Varusz says:

    “Sure–but it’s not like groups subject to microaggressions are somehow exempt from the ordinary assholes. Instead, they get both the indiscriminate grumps and the racist/sexist/etc entitled jerks!”

    ——-

    I assume the group not subject to micro-aggressions is non-Jewish, maybe non-Catholic white males whose parents both are of Swedish ancestry (certainly not Irish). Some blacks don’t like whites, though, and some women hate men. Some express it. Some are in positions of authority over white men.

    And a female boss can cause trouble for a male employee if she hates men, same with a black attorney general vis-a-vis a white person. In fact, a black person can shoot a white person to death if he really wants to, so the “all men are in charge” argument gets a bit silly sometimes, and I’ll bet homeless men are just slapping their knee over it.

  44. 444
    Varusz says:

    Sorry, “… all white men are in charge”.

  45. 445
    Varusz says:

    I guess I also got the group subject to no micro-aggressions wrong.

    It’s non-Jewish, maybe non-Catholic, straight, non-trans, non-disabled, non-rural, non-short, non-fat white males whose parents both are of Swedish ancestry and who have no discernible accent or speech impediment.

  46. 446
    closetpuritan says:

    Conrad,
    Science isn’t about “trying to prove” anything
    Sorry, people try to prove things in science all the time. They try to prove that GMOs do/do not cause harm (depending on whether they’re working for Monsanto or anti-GMO). Scientists trying to publish generally DO NOT want a negative result for their study. (They’re much less likely to be published then.) “Try to prove” may have been a bad way of phrasing it, but I’m not going to get into a semantics debate.

    I don’t see much, if any, emphasis on altering the behavior of the “microaggressors.”
    Right, there’s been none of that in this thread. I’m sure that people who dismiss microaggressions have a much more accurate idea of the goals of people who don’t, than they themselves do.

    “Since you said before that, all else held equal, you didn’t think race was an accurate way to profile, I’m having trouble understanding why you think it wouldn’t be desirable. ”

    I don’t think that’s what I said…. But in saying what **I** would do, I’m not declaring that racial profiling in general flat-out would not work as a crime-avoidance technique because it’s “inaccurate.” Someone who lived in an urban setting (let’s say she’s white) who made it a policy of steering clear of young black or Hispanic men she encountered in public places probably WOULD, it seems to me, somewhat reduce her chances of being a victim of street crime. It may not make her safe from ALL street crime and it may make her seem like a jerk in certain situations, but I don’t think it fails as a strategy because profiling is “inaccurate.”

    You want to use your own special definition of “accurate” to mean “100% accuracy”? Fine, but don’t get indignant when other people use it the normal way.

    Also, I attempted to confirm your position on whether race was an accurate way to profile, and you objected both when I described it as “race is not an accurate way to profile”, and “race is an accurate way to profile”.

    (When I responded to this bit earlier by saying that someone would be safer if they avoided black and Hispanic young men, but even safer if they avoided white young men, my point was that I think avoiding a subset of a dangerous demographic is better than avoiding none of it, but not as good as avoiding all of it. Depending on the population where she lived, she might be better off avoiding just white young men than avoiding just black and Hispanic young men, even if black and Hispanic young men were more likely to be dangerous. If she frequently encounters white young men and rarely encounters black and Hispanic young men, then she will run across a lot more dangerous white young men than dangerous black young men.)

  47. 447
    closetpuritan says:

    Conrad & KellyK
    So now you [Conrad] are seriously arguing that being anti-abortion is not a right-wing position? White supremacists, debatable, but anti-abortion? In recent years, about 70% of Republicans are pro-life, about 60% of Democrats are pro-choice. This conversation is quickly headed towards eyeroll territory.

    There are also quite a few non-white-supremacist, non-abortion-oriented instances of right-wing terrorism in the SPLC list.

    Maybe you saw this one (from my SPLC link):

    April 25, 2009
    Joshua Cartwright, a Florida National Guardsman, allegedly shoots to death two Okaloosa County, Fla., sheriff’s deputies — Burt Lopez and Warren “Skip” York — at a gun range as the officers attempt to arrest Cartwright on domestic violence charges. After fleeing the scene, Cartwright is fatally shot during a gun battle with pursuing officers. Cartwright’s wife later tells investigators that her husband was “severely disturbed” that Barack Obama has been elected president. He also reportedly believed the U.S. government was conspiring against him. The sheriff tells reporters that Cartwright had been interested in joining a militia group.

    These two have a mix of racist and right-wing motivations:

    April 4, 2009
    Three Pittsburgh police officers — Paul Sciullo III, Stephen Mayhle and Eric Kelly — are fatally shot and a fourth, Timothy McManaway, is wounded after responding to a domestic dispute at the home of Richard Andrew Poplawski, who had posted his racist and anti-Semitic views on white supremacist websites. In one post, Poplawski talks about wanting a white supremacist tattoo. He also reportedly tells a friend that America is controlled by a cabal of Jews, that U.S. troops may soon be used against American citizens, and that he fears a ban on guns is coming. Poplawski later allegedly tells investigators that he fired extra bullets into the bodies of two of the officers “just to make sure they were dead” and says he “thought I got that one, too” when told that the fourth officer survived. More law enforcement officers are killed during the incident than in any other single act of violence by a domestic political extremist since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

    June 12, 2009
    Shawna Forde — the executive director of Minutemen American Defense (MAD), an anti-immigrant vigilante group that conducts “citizen patrols” on the Arizona-Mexico border — is charged with two counts of first-degree murder for her alleged role in the slayings of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter in Arivaca, Ariz. Forde allegedly orchestrated the May 30 home invasion because she believed the man was a narcotics trafficker and wanted to steal drugs and cash to fund her group. Authorities say the murders, including the killing of the child, were part of the plan. Also arrested and charged with murder are the alleged triggerman, MAD Operations Director Jason Eugene “Gunny” Bush, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, a local member of MAD. Authorities say that Bush had ties to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in Idaho, and that Forde has spoken of recruiting its members.

    They don’t just count white guys as right-wing:

    Oct. 28, 2009
    Luqman Ameen Abdullah, identified by authorities as a member of a black Muslim group hoping to create an Islamic state within U.S. borders, is shot dead at a warehouse in Dearborn, Mich., after he fires at FBI agents trying to arrest him on conspiracy and weapons charges. The FBI says Abdulla encouraged violence against the United States, adding that 10 other group members are being sought.

    The next four don’t seem to have any white supremacist ties:

    Feb. 18, 2010
    Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.

    March 25, 2010
    A man later identified as Brody James Whitaker opens fire on two Florida state troopers during a routine traffic stop on I-75 in Sumter County. Whitaker flees, crashing his vehicle and continuing on foot. He is arrested two weeks later in Connecticut, where he challenges the authority of a judge and declares himself a “sovereign,” not American, citizen. Sovereigns typically believe that police have no right to regulate road travel. Whitaker is later extradited to Florida to face charges of assaulting and fleeing from a police officer.

    March 27-28, 2010
    Nine members of the Hutaree Militia are arrested in raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana and charged with seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction. The group, whose website said it was preparing for the imminent arrival of the anti-Christ, allegedly planned to murder a Michigan police officer, then use bombs and homemade missiles to kill other officers attending the funeral, all in a bid to set off a war with the government. Joshua Clough pleads guilty to a weapons charge in December 2011. A federal judge dismisses charges against seven members of the group during a trial in March 2012, saying their hatred of law enforcement did not amount to a conspiracy. Militia leader David Stone and his son Joshua Stone plead guilty to gun charges two days after the trial. In August 2012, a federal judge chooses not to send the Stones back to prison. They are each fined $100 and placed on two years’ supervision. Another member, Jacob Ward, awaits a separate trial.

    April 15, 2010
    Matthew Fairfield, who is president of a local chapter of an antigovernment “Patriot” organization called the Oath Keepers, is indicted on 28 explosives charges, 25 counts of receiving stolen property and one count of possessing criminal tools. Authorities searching his home discover a napalm bomb built by Fairfield, along with a computer carrying child pornography. Fairfield later pleads guilty to explosives charges, but still faces trial on other counts.

    There are more, but I’d better stop, because this comment is already a wall of text.

  48. 448
    Conrad says:

    @ 442: I suspect there’s a lot of overlap between those groups and incidents, however. That’s sort of my point: A lot of unpleasant interactions that people THINK are grounded in race/gender bias probably aren’t. That incident with Oprah in Switzerland comes to mind.

  49. 449
    Conrad says:

    @447: I agree that in our current state of politics, more conservatives count themselves as pro-life than liberals, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that anti-abortion is an intrinsically right-wing position while pro-abortion is a liberal one. First, if you look at the demographics of abortion, I believe there is a far higher rate of abortion amongst people in “liberal” constituencies: POCs, poor people, urban people, young people, etc. So it would be entirely consistent with a liberal political outlook that abortion is bad because it is wiping out a generation of people from those groups. I believe this argument used to be made by folks like Jesse Jackson (at least at one time). Second, it is certainly possible to argue from a libertarian/small gov’t/laissez faire standpoint that the government shouldn’t be involved in restricting or regulating abortion or anything of that nature. On the other hand, insofar as liberals tend to be a lot more comfortable with idea of gov’t involvement in all aspects of life, including medicine (witness Obamacare), one would not necessarily expect liberals to be the ones opposing abortion restrictions on “small gov’t” grounds.

    The reality is that the abortion issue came about mainly as a result of the women’s lib movement, and opposition to abortion was and is overwhelmingly based on religious/moral objections. I don’t need to tell you that there have been tons of otherwise liberal, mainly Catholic, politicians over the years who were pro-life. Eventually it came to be that you really couldn’t be pro-life and remain in good standing within the Dem party. (It is BARELY possible to remain pro-choice and stay Republican — Rudy Guiliani comes to mind). This is just the nature of abortion politics, however; there’s nothing about being “right wing” that requires also being anti-abortion just as there’s nothing in being right wing that requires being a Catholic.

  50. 450
    RonF says:

    closetpuritan:

    So now you [Conrad] are seriously arguing that being anti-abortion is not a right-wing position? White supremacists, debatable, but anti-abortion? In recent years, about 70% of Republicans are pro-life, about 60% of Democrats are pro-choice. This conversation is quickly headed towards eyeroll territory.

    Hm. Based on that link, 34% of Democrats say they are pro-life – a.k.a. anti-abortion. If being anti-abortion is a right-wing position, how is it that 1/3 of all Democrats hold it?

  51. 451
    Jake Squid says:

    Hm. Based on that link, 34% of Democrats say they are pro-life – a.k.a. anti-abortion. If being anti-abortion is a right-wing position, how is it that 1/3 of all Democrats hold it?

    Being that the Democratic Party is a center-right party, one would expect a noticeable percentage of that party to hold right wing views on any number of issues.

  52. 452
    Conrad says:

    also @447: You keep referring me to the SPLC as if it were the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Understand this: I don’t consider the SPLC to be an unbiased source.

    And some of the incidents you are referring to in no way resemble what we commonly think of as terrorism. When a mentally deranged man goes off and kills a couple of sheriffs who were coming to arrest him, that’s not terrorism, it’s simple homicide. The guy who flew his plane into the IRS building was obviously committing a suicidal act of revenge. He wasn’t a terrorist.

    I notice, too, that you (and/or the SPLC) are counting murders committed by white supremacists and even Muslim extremists as examples of right-wing terrorism. Seriously?

    I don’t believe you have addressed my overall point that we do not have a problem in this country of conservatives (or “right-wingers”) waging campaigns of bus bombings, shopping-mall shooting, plane hijackings, etc. in order to force, I dunno, passage of a balanced budget amendment or a reduction the capital gains tax. All of your “data” (i.e., anecdotes) seem to involve either people who weren’t committing acts of terrorism (but rather isolated cases of murders), people who were mentally deranged, and/or people who simply shouldn’t be classified as “right wing” (Muslim fanatics are “right-wing”)?

  53. 453
    Ampersand says:

    The term “pro-life” is a bit ambiguous. Most of the liberal people I know who identify as “pro life,” when I’ve pressed them for details, are in the “I think it’s morally wrong and would never have one myself, but it should still be legal camp.” While I don’t doubt that there are some folks like that in the Republican camp as well (Robert, for example, iirc), it seems to be a more common position among Democrats, while Republicans tend to use “pro-life” to mean that they favor legal banning of all abortion except (possibly) in cases of rape or to protect the mother’s life.

    Realistically, in the US, someone who is so extremely pro-life that they commit terrorism against pro-choice clinics and doctors, is ove.rwhelmingly likely to be right-wing on a number of issues – for instance, it’s a safe bet they’ll be anti-gay-marriage, and that they think climate change is a myth. It’s also a safe bet that the pro-life groups they’ve associated with will not be “Democrats for Choice.”

  54. 454
    Conrad says:

    “Most of the liberal people I know who identify as ‘pro life,’ when I’ve pressed them for details, are in the ‘I think it’s morally wrong and would never have one myself, but it should still be legal camp.’”

    That may be true, I guess, but the very fact that there are liberals who consider themselves pro-life, and see it as a moral issue, demonstrates that it is not an intrinsically right-wing position. A person can be liberal, politically, but hold religious or moral views that compel them to be anti-abortion. By the same token, a person can be politically conservative and oppose government regulations or restrictions on abortion. There’s no intrinsic conflict there: One is a political point of view; the other is essentially a religious belief.

    As far as the political parties are concerned, it seems to be acknowledged by everyone that there are a substantial percentage of Dems who are pro-life and a substantial percentage of GOPers who are pro-choice. They each may represent a minority within their own party, but there’s too much overlap to support the assertion that being pro-life makes somebody “right wing,” politically.

    “Realistically, in the US, someone who is so extremely pro-life that they commit terrorism against pro-choice clinics and doctors, is overwhelmingly likely to be right-wing on a number of issues – for instance, it’s a safe bet they’ll be anti-gay-marriage, and that they think climate change is a myth. ”

    I’d grant you that pro-life correlates with anti-gay marriage, but that tells us nothing because opposition to gay marriage is ALSO grounded in religious/moral beliefs. Sure, if the Catholic church and most protestant ones teach that abortion is wrong and gay marriage is wrong, it’s only natural that the same people who oppose one will also oppose the other. It doesn’t make either belief instrinsically right wing.

    As for climate change, however, you’ll have to show me some proof of that. Keep in mind that the number of people who have actually resorted to bombings and assassination in support of the “pro-life” constitute only a tiny fraction of the whole. I doubt they represent a big enough sample size to draw any conclusions as to their beliefs beyond the narrow issue of abortion. John Brown was an anti-slavery zealot, but I doubt any could infer from that his position on the tariff or other political issues of his day. In any event, who cares? If we were to find out that John Brown supported the protective tariff, would we then seek to link that belief to violent insurrection? It’s such a tenuous kind of connection to try to draw. We can speculate, of course, and perhaps that’s all you are doing. But let’s not treat speculation as fact.

  55. 455
    RonF says:

    It may be problematical to nail down definitions for “pro-life” and “pro-choice”, but the issue here is not to define the terms but how to characterize the position as “right-wing” or “left-wing”. A position that is held by 1/3 of all Democrats (and is NOT held by around 30% of Republicans) is pretty hard to define as “right-wing”.

    Jake, by your lights or by the lights of Social Democrats/Socialists in Europe the Democratic party may be definable as “center-right”, but we’re talking about the American political frame of reference. In the American political frame of reference the Democrats are left-wing and the Republicans are right-wing. If you want further nuance you might say that the Democrats are center-left, the Republicans are center-right, the Tea Party is right-wing and Occupy is left-wing.

    Realistically, in the US, someone who is so extremely pro-life that they commit terrorism against pro-choice clinics and doctors, is overwhelmingly likely to be right-wing on a number of issues – for instance, it’s a safe bet they’ll be anti-gay-marriage, and that they think climate change is a myth.

    Well, that’s a presumption that a lot of people would make – but I’d have to see actual evidence to back it up before I would accept it. Otherwise you’re begging the question, presupposing the conclusion as support for your argument. There have been a number infamous examples of people who have committed some heinous crimes recently that the media have tagged as “right-wing” (such as Rep. Gabby Giffords’ shooter) on the basis of the politics of their victim only to find upon investigation that the criminal held no such views.

  56. 456
    Conrad says:

    The issue also isn’t just about whether pro life should be categorized as “right wing.” There’s also the issue of whether it’s really accurate to take something as rare and as idiosyncratic as anti-abortion terrorism and refer to it by the much broader label “right wing terrorism.”

    Let’s say John Brown had considered himself a Whig. We all know he was an anti-slavery insurrectionist — that label fits him just fine. Technically, he was a “Whig insurrectionist.” But to refer to him by that label is obviously pretty misleading. I doubt anyone here would think it was particularly reasonable if James Buchanan’s Secretary of Homeland Security (work with me here) had announced “We need to focus our efforts on the growing menace of Whig insurrectionism” — when the people he actually had in mind were anti-slavery insurrectionists.

    If Janet Napolitano had said, “We need to address the threat of anti-abortion terrorists,” I would have no problem with that. Likewise, had she said “white supremacist terrorists,” that’s not a problem. The problem is putting those specific type of terrorists in one bucket, labeling the bucket “right wing,” and then announcing that there’s some kind of urgent need to root out the right-wing terrorists. That’s just wrong, IMO.

  57. 457
    Elusis says:

    While we’re cataloging right-wing terrorists, let’s not forget the guy who was heading to San Francisco to shoot up the ACLU and some environmental group from Glenn Beck’s blackboard so he could “start a revolution”:

    http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Alleged-gunman-says-he-wanted-a-revolution-3180744.php

    He’s fresh in my mind because he staged his little shoot-out with the cops right under my bedroom window.

  58. 458
    Hector_St_Clare says:

    The late, great Hugo Chavez and his party were anti abortion, and I doubt anyone would argue that they were ‘right wing’ in any meaningful sense. ‘Liberal’ =/= ‘left wing’.

  59. 459
    closetpuritan says:

    Conrad:

    also @447: You keep referring me to the SPLC as if it were the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Understand this: I don’t consider the SPLC to be an unbiased source.

    Yeah, I kinda figured that out. Before I even mentioned the SPLC. But you don’t seem to be questioning the cases they present, simply whether it fits right-wing terrorism, so I’m not sure what your point is here.

    And some of the incidents you are referring to in no way resemble what we commonly think of as terrorism. When a mentally deranged man goes off and kills a couple of sheriffs who were coming to arrest him, that’s not terrorism, it’s simple homicide. The guy who flew his plane into the IRS building was obviously committing a suicidal act of revenge. He wasn’t a terrorist.

    Joseph Andrew Stack, who had earlier attended meetings of radical anti-tax groups in California, sets fire to his own house and then flies his single-engine plane into an Austin, Texas, building housing IRS offices. Stack and an IRS manager are killed, and 13 others are injured. Stack leaves a long online rant about the IRS and the tax code, politicians and corporations.

    That’s not terrorism, to you? Unbelievable.

    Neither the March 27-28, 2010 (Hutaree Militia) nor the April 15, 2010
    (Oath Keepers) that I excerpted are white supremacists or abortion bombers, and they both had explosives, so they didn’t simply shoot law enforcement officers.

    A few more examples, that fit your criteria that it can’t be a couple people shooting a couple law enforcement officers (even if, without their political beliefs, it would be inexplicable that you would shoot a law enforcement officer during a routine traffic stop [see “March 25, 2010” (quoted in my comment), “May 20, 2010”, “September 4, 2012”, or similarly, “Sept. 19, 2010” a shooting of a law enforcement officer and oil company workers trying to access an oil well]):

    April 30, 2010
    Darren Huff, an Oath Keeper from Georgia, is arrested and charged with planning the armed takeover of a Madisonville, Tenn., courthouse and “arrest” of 24 local, state and federal officials. Authorities say Huff was angry about the April 1 arrest there of Walter Francis Fitzpatrick III, a leader of the far-right American Grand Jury movement that seeks to have grand juries indict President Obama for treason. Several others in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement accuse Huff of white supremacist and anti-Semitic attitudes in Internet postings. He is sentenced in May 2012 to four years in federal prison.

    June 8, 2010
    A bomb packed into a soda can is planted outside Osage Baptist Church in Carroll City, Ark., where a polling station for a Democratic Senate primary runoff between Sen. Blanche Lincoln and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter is located. The device does not explode, although authorities say it was capable of causing death or serious bodily injury. Officials later receive a tip from contractors who hired to clean out the foreclosed home of self-described “Patriot” Mark Krause, where they find bomb-making materials, manuals, and materials related to antigovernment militias. Krause, who earlier posted antigovernment messages to MySpace, eventually is arrested in Seattle.

    July 18, 2010
    An unemployed parolee with two bank robbery convictions, apparently enraged at liberals and what he sees as the “left-wing agenda” of Congress, allegedly opens fire on California Highway Patrol troopers who pull him over in Oakland. No one is killed, but two troopers are slightly injured and Byron Williams is shot in the arms and legs. Williams allegedly later tells authorities that he was on his way to attack offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, a liberal organization that, although little known to most Americans, has been repeatedly pilloried on air by Fox News host Glenn Beck.

    July 21, 2010
    Attorney Todd Getgen is shot to death at a gun range in Cumberland County, Penn., and his weapon, a silenced AR-15 rifle, is stolen. Authorities arrest prison guard Raymond Peake nine days later, saying Peake was trying to accumulate weapons for an unnamed organization that intended to overthrow the government. Fellow prison guard Thomas Tuso is also arrested for allegedly helping Peake hide Getgen’s custom-built weapon. Peake is sentenced in 2012 to life in prison.

    March 10, 2011
    Six members of the antigovernment Alaska Peacemakers Militia, including its leader, Francis Schaeffer Cox, 28, are arrested and charged with plotting to kill or kidnap state troopers and a Fairbanks judge. The group already has a large cache of weapons, including a .50-caliber machine gun, grenades and a grenade launcher. Cox earlier identified himself as a “sovereign citizen.” Cox is convicted in June 2012 on nine counts, including conspiring to kill a judge and law enforcement officials. He is sentenced in January 2013 to almost 26 years in federal prison. Lonnie Vernon, 56, and his wife, Karen, 66, plead guilty in August to charges they plotted to kill a federal judge and an IRS agent involved in a tax case against them. The Vernons are also sentenced in January 2013. Lonnie receives almost 25 years in federal prison while his wife receives 12 years. Another member, Coleman Barney, 38, is found guilty of weapons charges and sentenced in September 2012 to five years in federal prison.

    November 1, 2011
    Four members of an unnamed North Georgia militia are arrested in an alleged plot to bomb federal buildings, attack cities including Atlanta with deadly ricin, and murder law enforcement officials. The men – Frederick Thomas, 73, Samuel J. Crump, 68, Dan Roberts, 67, and Ray H. Adams, 65 – allegedly discussed dispersing ricin powder in a series of cities, “taking out” a list of officials to “make the country right again,” and scouting buildings in Atlanta to bomb. Authorities say the plot was inspired by an online novel, Absolved, written by longtime Alabama militiaman Mike Vanderboegh. Thomas, the accused ringleader, and Roberts plead guilty in April 2012 to charges of conspiring to possess explosives and firearms. Thomas and Roberts are each sentenced in August 2012 to five years in federal prison for conspiring to obtain an unregistered explosive device. Crump and Adams are awaiting trial.

    I notice, too, that you (and/or the SPLC) are counting murders committed by white supremacists and even Muslim extremists as examples of right-wing terrorism. Seriously?

    I think you meant “the SPLC (and/or you)”. I didn’t mention any white supremacist orgs before you started dismissing the idea of calling white supremacists “right wing”, but I did link to the SPLC before you did so. (Afterwards I excerpted a couple that had a combination of white supremacist and anti-government motives.) Oh, and KellyK directly mentioned the KKK and Neo-Nazis. As I said earlier, white supremacists=right wing is debatable. I think you can make a decent case both for calling them right wing and for not calling them right wing.

    I think the only way Muslim fanatics are not right-wing is that, in this country, they don’t represent the dominant religion. They are very socially conservative and socially authoritarian.

    I don’t believe you have addressed my overall point that we do not have a problem in this country of conservatives (or “right-wingers”) waging campaigns of bus bombings, shopping-mall shooting, plane hijackings, etc. in order to force, I dunno, passage of a balanced budget amendment or a reduction the capital gains tax. All of your “data” (i.e., anecdotes) seem to involve either people who weren’t committing acts of terrorism (but rather isolated cases of murders), people who were mentally deranged, and/or people who simply shouldn’t be classified as “right wing” (Muslim fanatics are “right-wing”)?

    I think if you don’t recognize a clear-cut case like Joseph Stack, who was upset about his tax burden and flew a plane into an IRS building in a suicide attack because of it, as right-wing terrorism, I won’t be able to convince you. Maybe Sovereign Citizens, though, since you argued that liberals are the party of big government in every way?

    Second, it is certainly possible to argue from a libertarian/small gov’t/laissez faire standpoint that the government shouldn’t be involved in restricting or regulating abortion or anything of that nature. On the other hand, insofar as liberals tend to be a lot more comfortable with idea of gov’t involvement in all aspects of life, including medicine (witness Obamacare), one would not necessarily expect liberals to be the ones opposing abortion restrictions on “small gov’t” grounds.

    Actually, I think most libertarians describe liberals/Democrats as socially libertarian and fiscally authoritarian, and conservatives/Republicans as fiscally libertarian and socially authoritarian. I think that’s pretty accurate, myself.

    Re: pro-life terrorism [what a funny phrase] isn’t right wing: I guess that no single-issue terrorism is right-wing or left-wing terrorism, then. Eco-terrorism? Plenty of people on the right are in favor of protecting the environment. Haven’t you ever heard of Christian Stewardship? Don’t you know of George HW Bush’s important work on acid rain? George W Bush is an environmental champion.

  60. 460
    closetpuritan says:

    Similarly, @RonF:
    Hm. Based on that link, 34% of Democrats say they are pro-life – a.k.a. anti-abortion. If being anti-abortion is a right-wing position, how is it that 1/3 of all Democrats hold it?

    How can anything be a right-wing or left-wing position, then? The contrast isn’t that much stronger on Obamacare, for example: 25 percent of Democrats oppose it vs 86 percent of Republicans, according to one poll.* 31 percent of Republicans polled support same-sex marriage, compared to 59 percent of Democrats–very similar numbers to abortion. 66 percent of Democrats favor legal residency and path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants; 41 percent of Republicans do–closer numbers than abortion. Democrats and Republicans are actually quite similar to each other on whether they believe in Creationism, evolution guided by a supreme being, or evolution, and the split on whether climate change is caused by humans is similar to the split on abortion.

    *I’ve heard that some of the opposition among Democrats is from people who don’t think Obamacare goes far enough (e.g. would prefer single-payer), but as with the case of “pro-life” meaning something different for Democrats vs. Republicans, it’s not in the raw data of the poll.

  61. 461
    Hector_St_Clare says:

    Re: They are very socially conservative and socially authoritarian.

    So was (in some regard) Stalin’s Soviet Union, are you seriously claiming that they weren’t ‘on the left’?

    I think the real issue is people are mixing up the meanings of ‘liberal’ and ‘left wing’. Take a look at Noah Millman’s post here.

    http://theamericanscene.com/2010/04/26/notes-toward-a-new-political-taxonomy

    Abortion rights are a liberal cause, but not necessarily a left-wing one.

    I wouldn’t consider Muslim terrorism, at least in the West, to be right wing either.

    Re: How can anything be a right-wing or left-wing position, then?

    Because some of us would *define* the left vs. right dimension as being about economics, social class, etc..

  62. 462
    closetpuritan says:

    Because some of us would *define* the left vs. right dimension as being about economics, social class, etc..

    I don’t believe in designating economic issues as “real” issues, or “real” for the purposes of defining left vs. right, and social issues as “not real”. Many people care more about social issues than economic issues (the entire thesis of What’s the Matter With Kansas). Including, of course, many terrorists. Such as people who bomb abortion clinics. I don’t see Muslim terrorists talking a whole lot about economic issues, either.

  63. 463
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    Abortion clinic bombers are terrorists because they are using terror tactics (bombings) against non-government targets, in an effort to change the behavior both of the government and of the citizenry.

    Most of the people on that list are terrorists.

    I think if you don’t recognize a clear-cut case like Joseph Stack, who was upset about his tax burden and flew a plane into an IRS building in a suicide attack because of it, as right-wing terrorism

    Oddly enough, the plane-into-IRS guy may have been a terrorist–or he may have been a crazy dude who was, to use another example, “going postal.” It’s not clear whether he was trying to influence policy or actions (which in my view is a component of terrorism) or whether he was primarily motivated by personal animus.

    Deciding to go kamikaze into an IRS building can be non-terrorist act, just as shooting a single person with a handgun can be terrorist act. Not all bombers are terrorists and not all terrorists use bombs. Etc.

  64. 464
    closetpuritan says:

    As for Stalin, he was economically left-wing and socially authoritarian. If you go with the definition of the left in the US as socially libertarian and economically authoritarian, he’s got the economic policies of the left and the social policies of the right*, so is neither properly left-wing nor right-wing–he just isn’t very well described by calling him “left-wing” or “right-wing” or “centrist” (since he’s not moderate). It’s more accurate to simply call him “authoritarian”, IMO.

    *I’m not sure how well his social policies map onto left-wing vs right-wing as it’s seen in the US, though. Suppressing free speech/dissent seems to be a little more often supported on the right-wing, but it really depends on the particular speech in question–so part of this is due to what speech is even likely to be seen as a possibility for suppression–what speech we’re likely to debate suppressing. The ACLU is usually seen as a left-wing organization, and FIRE is usually seen as a right-wing organization, even though I believe that each of them sometimes defend speech typically disliked by the left or the right.

  65. 465
    closetpuritan says:

    Oddly enough, the plane-into-IRS guy may have been a terrorist–or he may have been a crazy dude who was, to use another example, “going postal.” It’s not clear whether he was trying to influence policy or actions (which in my view is a component of terrorism) or whether he was primarily motivated by personal animus.

    Couldn’t you then argue that the Oklahoma City bombings were not a terrorist act, because they were motivated primarily by revenge for the Waco siege?

  66. 466
    closetpuritan says:

    This will be my last comment for a little while; I’m gonna be kinda busy.

    Just to clarify about political dissent and free speech being a right-wing vs. left-wing issue, I think the perception that the right wing is more willing to infringe on free speech is probably an accident of history and a result of what types of things we’re willing to seriously consider suppressing at a national level. I think there are some semi-recent parts of our history that explain this. The campus free-speech movement. McCarthyism. Concern over sex and violence in movies, TV, music, video games, etc. (As with the recent Iraq War, Hillary Clinton did the bipartisan thing, putting the “center” in “center-right”.)

    If there were any serious proposals in the US to, say, make using ethnic or misogynist slurs a crime, it would probably seem like less of a right-wing issue.

    Also, clarification of my comment to Gin & Whiskey: with politically-motivated violence, we don’t usually wait for the terrorist to explicitly state that they want policy to change, if the violence is in response to a policy or action of the government, before labeling it terrorism. (Besides Oklahoma City, Dzhokar Tsarnaev said the Boston bombings were in retribution for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, rather than specifying actions that he wanted the US government to take, or changes that he hoped for it to accomplish.)

  67. 467
    Hector_St_Clare says:

    Closet Puritan,

    I didn’t say issues like abortion or gay rights weren’t ‘real’ or important, I meant they weren’t useful in categorizing the left-right spectrum. You can be very left wing, in the sense of favoring socialist or communist economics, and be against abortion or gay rights- there is no necessary linkage between collectivist economics and personal freedom. Hobsbawm makes this point in his essay ‘Revolution and Sex.’

    I’d be more comfortable categorizing white supremacists, at least in America , as right whing.

    The nice thing about Millman’s three way taxonomy (though i think i’d replace ‘conservative’ with ‘authorotarian’) is that you can categorize people on a much wider range of dimensions- he gives a bunch of examples. The Soviets, here, would be described as authoritarian left wing progressives, extremely so. Christian socialists would be authoritarian left wing reactionaries. The American Democratic Party would correspond to liberal, centrist progressives (the Democratic Party is not particularly left song, etc.). he does this by separating the economic /class dimension (left vs. right) from ones attitudes towards freedom and history.