Category: Laws in the United States

Waiting for God and Justice

            I heard a very disturbing story on the podcast “Code Switch,” told by Chenjerai Kumanyika, where he related a time when he and a friend, walking home from their school in Baltimore, decided to race each other. “Out of nowhere, a cop car showed up. They did the thing. They put us up against the car, they grabbed us (we were in 6th or 7th grade) and they spread us out and patted us down, looking to see if we had stolen something.” (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/code-switch/id1112190608?i=1000683056935)

            Kumanyika recalls thinking, “How can they do this?” He and his friend were surrounded by multiple police officers with guns and handcuffs, and it was scary, to say the least. The police officers finished the search of their bodies, asking them if they knew anything about some items (not specified) that had been stolen, and they said no. Apparently satisfied, they let the boys go, but the damage was done; they abandoned their desire to race each other and walked the rest of the way home. He recalled that a few seconds after he got home, the police knocked on his front door, explaining that they’d noticed that Chenjerai had just run into the house. His stepfather had answered the door, and when the police gave their reason for their unwanted visit said, “Of course, he ran into this house. He lives here.”

            Kumanyika is the host of another podcast, “Empire City,” a show about the history of the New York Police Department.

            I listened to this story several times and shuddered because I know it is not an uncommon experience for Black males – young and old. The fact that two kids could not engage in a footrace with each other, something kids naturally do, drove home the reality that Black people, regardless of age, profession, or economic class, are not safe in this country. “Law enforcement” looks for reasons to stop and harass Black males, and the system does very little to address it or stop it from happening.

            This country has a history of “law enforcement” targeting and detaining – people of color, especially Black males. The incoming administration’s vow to get rid of immigrants will make these types of occurrences more common; those who are or who have already been deputized to round up undocumented residents have been empowered to wield their power even more than they have in the past.

            Just as police officers use the line “I was in fear for my life,” or give as an excuse for stopping someone, “he looked like …” someone who committed a crime, these deputized persons now will use as a reason for stopping people, “he/she looked like an undocumented immigrant.” 

            What does an undocumented immigrant “look like?”

            In New Jersey last week, federal immigration agents raided a business. Without having a warrant, they entered the business through the back door and detained what they said were undocumented people. At least one of those detained was an American citizen and a military veteran. He reportedly tried to show his ID and veteran’s card to the agents, but they would not look at the documents. (https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/ice-raid-newark-new-jersey-business/) 

            “People were fingerprinted. Pictures of their IDs and faces were taken there,” Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey said, “I was appalled, upset, angry that this would happen here in this state, in this country, {and} that this would be allowed,” he said,

            But his protestations, and those that will come from others as raids increase, are not going to stop the unjust treatment of people who others think may be undocumented. The quest is not seeking justice; the quest is to carry out a political promise to get rid of people this country does not want. (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/immigration-raid-newark-new-jersey-mayor-angry-rcna189100) 

            Before the election, I talked with a few immigrants who drove for Uber, which I use when I travel. Most of them with whom I talked were in favor of getting rid of undocumented persons. They had come into the country the right way, they said, and they believed everyone should do the same.

            When I asked if they thought they would ever be targeted by law enforcement, all of them said they did not, and some lifted up their belief that the incoming president would make sure that did not happen – noting that they had voted for him. “He won’t let anything like that happen to us,” I was told. But again, law enforcement officers, or people deputized to do the work of “catching the bad people” have historically grabbed and detained people, forcing innocent people into the system or robbing them of their freedom. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1554.html) 

            Their reaction communicated to me a naivety and sense of idealism that is not real. Many law enforcement officers seem driven by a willingness to display their power, which seems absolute, not a belief in justice and fairness. They know they can do what they want to do for the most part and get away with it. That has been the case in this country ever since people were deputized to catch enslaved persons who had escaped; they were not kind or fair. The people who are being deputized now to “catch” the undocumented people here will probably act in much the same way.

            The most troubling factor in all that is going on is that faith in a “good” God can waiver. The downtrodden, ignored, unserved, and underserved look to God for hope. In the current situation, the “other side” seems to have claimed God as being behind and in favor of their policies and practices. The avenues for help and vindication feel scarce; Black people and other marginalized groups cannot depend on police, federal or state legislatures, or the courts to protect and support them. Large groups of marginalized people are simply not safe in this country.

The most important work people must do in light of the current situation is to figure out how to hold onto hope when all logical avenues of help are owned, populated, and controlled by forces and systems that favor the wealthy and powerful.

            The vast majority of persons in this country are in a scary place; immigrants, documented and non-documented, face a particularly precarious time, and minority groups seeking protection can expect less of it going forward. The people in power will use that power and authority to ignore, suppress, and oppress whomever they want and there will be little recourse for those who are targeted. The prayer is that “we the people’ will call on a God many are not sure hears or cares about them and live, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, with “infinite hope” and not descend into a place of “finite disappointment.” There is a God who loves justice. That thought and belief, even in the face of gross injustice, will keep us pushing against the forces that want those whom they consider to be “others” to crash and burn.

A candid observation …

“The Law” Is Not the Same for EVERYONE

         I have been anxious and unsettled as I have watched the events surrounding the former president and his friends as they have come to the realization that they will have to answer for what they have allegedly done wrong.

Candid Observations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

            I have been in the process of trying to understand what “the law” is, what “law and order” really means, and in light of that, the definition of justice. I honestly do not understand how this nation or any nation, for example, can have a law or a constitution that allows a person who has been indicted for a number of offenses to run for any public office, especially the president of the United States. I am offended that he is being allowed …that “the law” is permitting him to run.

            Every time I hear that the former president is leading in the polls to become the Republican nominee for president, I literally shudder.

brown wooden tool on white surface

            When I compare the situation with the former president to situations involving other people who have done (or been indicted for) far less egregious offenses, my puzzlement – and perhaps a good amount of resentment – kicks in. I’ve been trying to understand what it is I want to say.

            And I finally got it. I heard a quote by a man named Frank Wilhoit, who said, “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” 

  Although the statement is apparently attributed to the wrong Frank Wilhoit (there was an elder Wilhoit, a politician, to whom the statement is frequently attributed but it was actually spoken by a younger man, a musician, whose name is also Frank Wilhoit. (https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html) its power is the same. Justice under the law is not a given, notwithstanding this country’s claim to being “exceptional.”

            When I heard those words, it was like the lights went on in my mind. I realized I had been trying to unpack what seems to be the norm in this country and perhaps globally. “The law,” is selectively obeyed and respected. The code of behavior and expectations set in place by the government is not intended to apply in the same way to “the least of these” as it applies to the wealthy or the privileged. Those who are not in high places or who have friends in high places operate under an entirely different legal system. There is no such thing as “equal protection under the law.”

            We hear “law and order” when violence erupts after groups of people get fed up with being marginalized and ignored and oppressed by the government. What governments want those who are being oppressed or discriminated against is to be quiet and accept what it doles out.

            During the Nixon administration, we heard the demand for “law and order” from the president and from his vice president, Spiro Agnew. Agnew, and many Americans, resented the anger expressed through violence in the streets of major cities in this country by Black people after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

            Agnew responded with a caustic statement, “Why don’t impoverished white Americans riot? Could it be that they know they will not meet with sympathy, that collective white lawlessness will not be tolerated?”

            He went on, “It is not the centuries of racism and deprivation that have built to an explosive crescendo but the fact that lawbreaking has become a socially acceptable and occasionally stylish form of dissent.” (“Spiro Agnew, the Forgotten Americans and the Rise of the New Right”. The Historian.)

What he did not say was that white-collar crime – the types of crimes he committed that eventually forced him out of office – was considered by those of his ilk to be a “stylish form of dissent.”

            Agnew was stoking the embers of racism and white fear; that remark was directed toward angry Blacks who had converged on the streets and thus assuage the anxiety of white people, but the pushback against anyone who resorted to violence in order to be heard was met with the same insistence that there would be law and order. Anti-war demonstrators bore the brunt of police brutality and were arrested in large numbers because they dared challenge the legality of the participation of the United States in the Viet Nam War, and so did anyone that was fed up with systemic injustice.

            Segregation laws were enforced. Lawless, extra-judicial acts of violence were permitted. Anti -LGBTQIA laws will be enforced. Book bans put in place by law will be enforced. The prohibition of AP African American history courses will be enforced. Gerrymandering will be allowed. Voting laws will be ignored.  Anti-abortion laws will be enforced, which will undoubtedly result in suffering by women and, anxiety on the part of healthcare workers who will be afraid to perform necessary procedures o save the lives of women who are having problem pregnancies. Making those groups of people obey “the law” will be a primary concern of law enforcement, but wealthy white people who can purchase the freedom of accountability will be able to ignore the laws that will put others in jail.

            Police can commit murder – i.e., they can shoot unarmed people and get away with it as long as they say “I was in fear for my life.” For them, only a very few are ever held accountable to the civic and moral law that says, “Thou shall not murder.”

            Perhaps the pinnacle of the wrongness of a universal, equitable practice of law and order can be seen in our local, state, and federal governments. Powerful people are openly flouting “the law.” From the former president to members of his inner circle, “the law” has been ignored, and while there apparently are no laws requiring certain ethical behavior on the part of US Supreme Court justices, the fact that the powers that be seem willing to ignore the flagrant violations that have been reported on the part of some justices is appalling.

            We, the people, are held to a standard of behavior that the wealthy and powerful feel free to ignore.

            It is somewhat comforting that those who worked to overthrow this country have been held accountable. When people see people breaking laws, or when evidence keeps coming up that reveals lawbreaking, it causes real anger when those involved are given a pass and their actions are dismissed. It is good that some of those who participated in the coup attempt on January 6, 2021, have been arrested and sentenced. One needs only recall the anger that erupted in the streets of Los Angeles when the four white officers who were caught on tape beating Rodney King were acquitted, and the uprising that happened after the white officer who shot and killed Michael Brown was acquitted brought about the same kind of anger. It is one thing to think and believe that there is unequal treatment under “the law;” it is quite another thing to see it. The human psyche can only take so much before it breaks under the pressure of injustice.

            It is troubling. Where does one find justice in this country and in this world if one does not have enough money to purchase it?

            This is not a nation of laws. “Law and order” is a catchphrase that says to this culture, “We will stop those people ( Black, Brown, women, LGBTQIA,) who dare challenge the government through violence.

            There is something very wrong with our government and the way “the law” is used, understood, and applied.

           A candid observation