Challenge for the next mayor

Early this afternoon, I had an unpleasant interaction with a City of Boston Parking Enforcement officer.  To be honest, it was pretty horrible.  It started out almost funny when I was threatened with a ticket while I was still parked on the correct side of the street and then told that there would be "no one I could complain to." 

Image source: http://www.guystuffcounseling.com/counseling-men-blog/bid/22929/Married-to-an-Angry-Man-A-Wife-s-View-of-Her-Husband-s-Anger

 As a law and policy scholar, the claim is laughably absurd.  When the individual's aggressiveness escalated, I was on the phone with the Mayor's hotline immediately.  When I was told that the individual also resorted to using gender based epithets and racist comments, I became angry. All of this was reported to the Mayor's hotline, Facebook, and Twitter.  Thanks to a neighbor whose connections are more direct than mine, I was soon after contacted by someone who can do something about this and was promised that there will be follow up.  For that I am grateful, as is my blood pressure.

This is the kind of incident that really diminishes our quality of life.  It is the kind of incident that makes people wonder whether they want to live here or not.  I've lived in Boston for more than a decade and this is one aspect of the city that hasn't changed much.  Which gets me to the race for mayor.

Image source: http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2013/06/14/meet-the-12-confirmed-candidates-for-bostons-2013-mayoral-election/

Most of the candidates have focused their platforms around issues like education or community and economic development.  This makes sense.  The city has more control over these than other important issues that affect Boston residents and workers (like immigration or public transportation).  And they are really important issues.

Quality schools and sustainable development are the big issues that shape our city.  But our daily interactions with city workers shape our quality of life. This issue is what is missing from our discussions about the next mayor.  We've all had interactions or run-ins with police officers, school staff, planning department personnel, or ISD inspectors that were made unpleasant because of the bad attitude of the city worker or because of rules that make no sense.

To be clear, I believe most of the workers in our city are good people.  Some of them are trying to do their job with too few resources (a shout out to Graffiti Busters).  Some of them simply need better guidance or leadership.

But there seems to be something about working for the City of Boston that allows poor service and/or bad attitudes to go unchecked.  I've heard some complain that the problem is the union rules.  Or that people have been there too long.  Or the history of patronage hiring. 

Image source: http://tripleespressoshots.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

 To be honest, I don't care what the problem is. I just want it changed. 

I want a system put in place that ensures that residents, no matter who they are, where they live, or what language they speak in their dreams, are treated with dignity and respect.  City rules and regulations need to be enforced.  But you don't have to be a jerk about it.  And you certainly shouldn't be a prejudiced ass in a city that is majority non-white.

It was that parking enforcement guy's bad luck to pick a fight with an over-educated person who isn't afraid to use social media and has neighbors willing to help.  But my brown skinned neighbor shouldn't be belittled by school staff for not speaking English very well.  And my low-educated white neighbor who doesn't know how to tweet about a twat making his life miserable shouldn't have to suffer this either. 

Image: "Digital Divide" from http://www.flickr.com/photos/schnaars/2586457836/

City workers should treat everyone in my neighborhood the same as the folks who live in the mayor's neighborhood, where ever that may be.

So, my challenge to the mayoral candidates and the next mayor: what are you going to do to ensure that our interactions with city workers and officials is constructive and respectful?  What are you going to do to prevent the kind of interaction I had today?

"I want my America back"

By now we have all heard and possibly seen the widespread disruption that has been occurring in health care reform forums and town halls across the country. The nuttiness of it all makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. The claims about death panels are so patently ridiculous that you can only wonder how many tin foil hats these folks have in their closets.

We all know by now too that these antics have been carefully and widely promoted by the conservative organizations FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. The "best practices" memo distributed by these organizations gives its supporters the strategies for disrupting the meeting. Participants are supposed to "yell back" and have someone else follow up with a "shout out". I'm not sure how they are supposed to reconcile this with the very next instruction: "Don't carry on and make a scene - just short intermittent shout outs." Yell at people out of turn, but don't make a scene. If the descriptions of these events are any clue, it seems like people are having a hard time doing that.

Nevertheless, this woman, at an town hall meeting with Arkansas Representatives Mike Ross and Vic Snyder, followed this advice to the letter:

"At this point in my life, I have never seen my America turned into what it has turned into, and I want my America back. And I don't think the Representatives and Senators are gonna be able to do it. I'm scared!"
(click here for the video; this woman's comments start at 1:16)

Let us set aside the fact that these boisterous, "spontaneous" expressions of opposition have been carefully orchestrated by well funded astro-turfing organizations. I have no doubt that this woman is sincerely afraid. The question is, what has America turned into that she is so afraid of? An America where everyone has the option of obtaining health care? An America where insurance companies cannot deny necessary care? Or is she afraid of an America that elects black presidents? An America that, as the Daily Show "correspondent" put it, is becoming darker?

When I first saw this particular clip (admittedly on the Daily Show) I could not help but think about the crowds taunting and screaming the Little Rock Nine as they tried to go to high school.

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

It seems to me that fears expressed by this woman in Arkansas (and others) are the same kind that prompted Hazel Bryan Massery (and others) to harass Elizabeth Eckford back in 1957. The kind of bigotry that has haunted Massery since this photo came to symbolize the challenges we faced as a nation in overcoming racism. Her apologies to Eckford later in life, and her apparent life long quest to make amends were, in the end, never totally accepted by anyone. She will likely always be remembered as the person in the picture above.

Hazel Bryan Massery's transformation was possible in large part because she was aware of her racism. Her actions captured in the photo above were clearly intended to maintain a position of racial supremacy. It is this conscious racism that has likely allowed her to rethink her views, change her attitudes, and attempt to make amends (however clumsy and self-serving).

I believe that the fear that the woman in Arkansas expressed at that town hall meeting has nothing to do with health care reform. We know that the misinformation and hysteria seen in the health care forums and town halls is orchestrated by conservative organizations fronting for lobbyists of the health care and pharmaceutical industry. We know that it is fomented by greedy media pundits like Glenn Beck, Britt Hume, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Newt Gingrich, and supported with the forehead slapping stupidity of weekday morning mainstream media TV shows. Unfortunately, the lies peddled by these info-tainment whores obscure the underlying bigotry on which they are based.

The fear expressed by many of these protesters has everything to do with racism and bigotry. Sadly, I doubt the woman in Arkansas is even aware of the racism inherent in her fear.

And he was arrested in his own home

So here's the new hot topic in Boston. A prominent Harvard professor arrested for disorderly conduct. His crime: mouthing off to a police officer. He was having a bad day and he took umbrage at the police officer's line of questioning. He claims that the whole affair was one of racial profiling. The charges were dropped.

Since the story originally broke, but unfortunately before the positions hardened, the story of what happened at 17 Ware Street in Cambridge got a lot more complicated. It is increasingly looks like the entire brouhaha isn't entirely about race, except insofar as Professor Gates' own racial narrative informed his reaction. Indeed, it appears that this is mainly an issue of class, privilege, and who should have shown deference to whom first. It is also likely an issue of a lack of understanding of what police officers do.

With that said, much of the earlier (and some of the continuing) outcry against the Cambridge Police is that he was arrested "in his own home." Go ahead and do a Google search. Tens of thousands of articles, blog postings, and commentary (informed and otherwise) are upset that this man was arrested in his own home. The violation of the sanctity of property is enough to cause the vapors, make one have to find a seat, put the back of one's hand to the head, and swoon.

Let us put aside that this is an inaccurate portrayal of what happened (he was arrested when he continued to berate the police on the porch for all of the world - or at least several other police officers and allegedly 7 witnesses to see). Let us put aside the obvious implication that certain people (famous academic entrepreneur intellectuals, for example) should not be held to the same standards of conduct or common sense as the rest of us.

What strikes me is that the outrage over Gates' arrest "in his own home" is that there is no similar outrage over recent report by the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic, over the exact same thing occurring routinely in the immigrant community. This is Day 7 of the Gates tempest. Lexis Nexis reported 372 stories about it and Google News came up with 10,436. Do a Google News search of the Constitution on Ice report and you'll get exactly 17 unduplicated stories. Lexis Nexis returns a grand total of 11 stories.

This study analyzed several hundred records of arrests that occurred in the course of home raids conducted by ICE. These raids are supposed to have targeted criminals but instead, an earlier study by the Migration Policy Institute found that 73% of the people arrested in these raids have no criminal history.

The Constitution on Ice study reports that ICE officers regularly enter homes without obtaining consent, as they are required to do under our Constitution. The analysis shows that in only 14% of Long Island and 24% of New Jersey arrests was consent to enter given. In addition, the authors claim that some of the consents that the officers claim they were given in the arrest records in the New Jersey sample appear to be fabricated. The report provides over 2 dozen accounts of law enforcement misconduct, including illegally seizing non-targeted individuals, breaking down locked doors, entering through closed windows, or otherwise illegally entering and searching homes, and targeting individuals on the basis of their racial or ethnic appearance or lack of English proficiency.

The report also describes a pervasive cowboy mentality among many ICE agents. As reported in the NYT, ICE agents have conducted home raids in Nassau County "wearing cowboy hats and brandishing shotguns and automatic weapons," endangering the lives of the families subjected to this harrasment, and the larger community.

So, I expect that those who are upset about Gates "unreasonable" arrest "in his own home" will be writing to Janet Napolitano to demand that the home raids conducted by ICE cease until the agency adopts the recommendations in the Constitution on Ice report. Here's the address in case you are interested:

Director Janet Napolitano
Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

I do more writing than is obvious here

Now that I've finished the dissertation and have graduated, I can think about writing about other things besides theory, method, and regulatory law. We've decided to take a break from home remodeling after living for almost 3 months in our guest bedroom. I find that my writing has been mostly in response to something else as of late. My most coherent pieces are emails I send to Boston Globe journalists/columnists. So, I've decided to start posting those here.

This is an email I sent today to Derrick Jackson. In his editorial A Welcome Shade of Gray, he writes that Obama has "persuaded Americans to see race in shades of gray." He goes on to discuss how Obama is trying to do the same with the issue of abortion and the American approach to the Middle East.

I am not disputing his overall claim that Obama is attempting to add nuance to our understandings of each other in the hopes that it might lead to more productive rhetoric and action where we do have common ground. My problem is that his thesis sees race relations entirely in terms of black and white. Indeed, the color gray is a shade of black. Or, if you prefer, a mix of black and white. This ignores the fact that "race relations" involves other groups, including Latinos, which I attempted to call to his attention with the following email:

Mr. Jackson,

If you only look at race relations as an issue between African Americans and White Americans, than your claim that race relations in the US are on their way to starting to improve may be accurate.

However, the recent acquittal of three white teenagers in the beating death of a Mexican migrant worker in Shenandoah, PA, the beating death by white teens of an Ecuadorian in Patchogue, Long Island, New York, and scores of socially (as well as legally) sanctioned attacks against Latinos belies your claim that race relations may be on the mend. FBI crime statistics show that between 1995 and 2007, the number of anti-black hate crime incidents and victims have been declining (by 11% and 13% respectively), the number of anti-Latino hate crimes incidents and victims have been increasing (by 15% and 19%). And these are only the reported crimes. We both know that many immigrant Latinos do not often go to the police when they have been victimized. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently published a report showing that low income Latinos living in the South are "routinely targeted" for abuse and discrimination.

Please remember that race relations is not simply a matter of shades of gray. There are also shades of brown too.

Personally, I am happy to see anti-Black hate crimes on the wane (although we're still waiting for the 2008 FBI report on Hate Crimes). However, if we continue to see race only in terms of black and white, when Latinos and Asians are the fastest growing non-white groups in the country and are increasingly targeted for racial animosity, we will only have taken one step forward and 2 steps back.

Michelle Obama

I haven't written in a while. I've been focused on my dissertation, as I promised my husband. The opportunity costs are mounting and I need to get this done.

But I couldn't let this one slip by.

I read an article today about Michelle Obama in the NYT. Overall, I think it was about as honest and positive portrayal of Ms. Obama as we can expect. Newspapers these days do not do a very good job of talking about smart people who have complicated views of the world. It is all that much harder when they are generally good and nice people. Regardless, there are two things in the article that bothered me.

First, this quote from Senator Claire McCaskill:

All she has to do is be likable

Apparently, she doesn't have to be smart. Or tough. She doesn't need to have her own mind, her own story, or her own opinion. She just needs to not offend anyone. Lest we have another uppity woman in the White House -- and a black one at that! To hear this coming from a woman senator is as heartbreaking as it is disgusting. I can only hope that the quote was taken out of context.

But the more difficult issue that I think the article highlights is the tension between trying to move towards a "post-racial" America and the reality that while many things have changed, many things remain the same.

I admire Obama's position that we need to move beyond the past, as he famously stated in that speech in Philly earlier this year. I also believe that it is naive. You cannot move beyond racism and bigotry without confronting it. Michelle Obama's story, as told in this NYT article, demonstrates the continuing need to point out the elephant in the room. If someone didn't do that, there might have been vaccine experiments in Chicago that focused exclusively on black teenage girls. Apparently no one saw the parallel to Tuskegee. Hmm, I wonder why?

The Democratic primary race clearly showed that this country still has issues with race. We all know that the rumors implying that Obama was Muslim and many of the other race-baiting comments (like implying that he might have been a drug dealer) came from the Clinton campaign. Let us not forget the "hard working Americans, white Americans" slip up. I really do not believe that Hillary Clinton is racist. She may feel entitled but I do not for a second believe it is because she believes that, because she is white, she deserved the nomination more than Obama. But once you starting going down that road, it is a slippery slope.

The more recent attacks on Ms. Obama also point to a country that has yet to move beyond race. Why else would there be the effort to portray her as an "Angry Black Woman"? Apparently for some people, there's something offensive about angry black women. Not quite sure why angry white women are less offensive, unless you believe that if a white woman is angry there must be a good reason. Why should a highly educated, wealthy black woman be angry? It must be because she resents white people and wants to oppress all white people and take their jobs. There goes that slippery slope again.

I agree with Senator Obama that white working class anger is real. But we cannot ignore that this country's largest social failings fall disproportionately on non-whites. We also cannot ignore the reality that the biggest obstacle to helping poor and working class whites is the objection that many people, especially those in leadership positions, have to providing any assistance to non-whites. Remember what many Southern states did when it was forced to integrate their schools? They shut them down. They did this despite the fact that it would hurt poor white children as much as it would black children. Welfare reform under Reagan was made using images of the "welfare queen," a black woman with a full closet, jewelry box, and a Cadillac paid for through her several children. Did cutting back on AFDC under Reagan, and further under Clinton, hurt white folks? Sure did. But it was intended to hurt non-whites. Until angry, working class whites understand this, this country will never be able to move beyond the past.

As Michelle Obama's story shows, we cannot get over the past until we start talking about it. As she put it:

Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable.

That might require being a little less likable. Unfortunately, it doesn't make for easy campaigning. And isn't this what this campaign is about - change?

Racialized views of undocumented immigrants

When I talk about immigration in my classes, one of my favorite questions to ask is: who is an "illegal" immigrant. Most of my students think all undocumented immigrants are Latin American. I then show them a group picture of undocumented immigrants receiving assistance from a local immigration center here in Boston. With only a handful of exceptions, the group of about two dozen people are white. I would imagine that they are probably Irish. My students are usually dumbfounded. Depending on the time available we discuss whether it changes their view of the issue. Most of my students need more time to think it through. Or at least time to forget what they just saw.

Today in the Boston Globe, Kevin Cullen wrote about a local undocumented immigrant who died of pneumonia. As he states, no one will ever know if the young man didn't go to the hospital because of fear of getting caught and deported, "stubborn pride", or simple lack of knowledge. The young man in the article is Irish.

I give Cullen credit for humanizing the often overheated rhetoric around immigration. If you listen too much to the likes of Lou Dobbs, it would be very easy to forget or ignore the fact that immigrants are human beings. Strategically, Cullen's article is helpful in showing people, mainly white Americans, that undocumented immigrants are not some unknowable "other". Undocumented immigrants are, and look, just like them.

And that is also why I find this article discomfitting. Human beings have a knack for rationalizing contradictory rules in order to reduce cognitive dissonance. This means that behavior that is considered unacceptable for some is excused for others. This happens in race relations all the time. Even today, it is o.k. for white men to have sexual relations with women of color, however there is widespread discomfort when black men have sexual relations with white women. Studies of the sentences given to white men versus black men who have committed murder find that the harshness of the sentence is significantly related to the race of the victim; black murderers of white victims get considerably longer sentences and are more likely to receive capital punishment than white murderers of black victims. In this case, Cullen's article may simply lead white people to forgive the undocumented status of this Irishman but continue to view undocumented Latinos and Asians as criminal.

The Irishman in the article was hardworking, skilled, and employed. There is no mention of whether he paid his taxes, or whether his employers made their Social Security and Medicare contributions as they are supposed to. I would bet that most would assume that he did, if only because he is white. I would also bet that an equally sympathetic portrayal of a hardworking, skilled Latino immigrant would be met with accusations or at least assumptions of not paying taxes and taking jobs away from people who are allegedly "entitled" to those jobs.

Cullen's article is necessary in order to inject a little bit of rationality and understanding in this discussion. It is may also unfortunately have the effect of reifying racialized understandings of which "illegal" immigrants deserve sympathy. It is time to see the immigration debate as one based primarily on race. An undocumented Irishman faces the same risks and likely harbors the same fears as an undocumented Latino. Except that I doubt that South Boston or Dorchester is on ICE's list of next likely places to raid. I would bet that if an ICE agent walked into the Eire Pub, it would be to have a beer after coming from community sweeps of Chelsea or New Bedford.

Why I might vote for Obama

I realized the other day that I have become inclined to vote for Obama, despite some reservations I have about some of his positions, because I have become more conscious of the racism in this country. When I lived in California, I was a member of the largest non-white group in the state and the large demographic group in So.Cal. Almost everyone I went to school with at CSULA was non-white. Everyone I worked with was Latino and, if I wanted to move up in my profession, others would see me as white and I would still be Latina. Granted, I lived in L.A. during the governorship of Pete Wilson, which I see now as the beginning of the contemporary wave of anti-Latino sentiment. But I don't think I felt the level racism that his policies embodied because when I looked around, I saw my people everywhere. They were definitely in low paying janitorial jobs at my college and they were picking strawberries in Ventura County. But they were also reporters on the news, they were sitting on the city council, they were teachers, doctors, lawyers and business owners.

Moving out to the East Coast where I was truly in the minority really opened my eyes to this thing called racism and the issue of race relations. It also made me more aware of my white skin privilege. Here people took it for granted that I was white and would say things to me or in front of me that they would never say in front of my darker skinned parents or my long-haired, mustachoed, Mexican American husband. Moreover, many white people here are so racist they don't even see the racism in their words and deeds. In California, white racists owned their racism. Here, they don't see the prejudice in making assertions about who deserves to have access to a college education, to be able to get health care, to be provided the same rights in the criminal justice system, to even be in this country. And pointing it out to them just makes them either really uncomfortable or really angry. They aren't racist. They have friends who are brown. They give scholarships to brown people all the time. They don't necessarily want too many them sitting on the board of directors of local organizations, but they are happy with providing them with social services and other benefits. We aren't racist, they say, because we give them free after school tutoring and basketball uniforms.

I also think my experience with a friend's campaign for the state legislature this last summer reinforced to me that we have a long way to go to improve race relations. This became clear not just because the campaign brought out the racism that I already knew existed in this neighborhood, but because of the blindness to racism among these white "progressives" who were assisting us. These folks, although clearly understanding and sympathetic to the issue of racism and prejudice, had also clearly never seen it. They not only did not know how to handle racist comments when confronted with them, they still could not get themselves to see that people still do believe these things. Whenever confronted with it, it was treated as a fluke and not a norm. In fact, it is the norm in this neighborhood and in many others. It may be more overt here and more subtly pernicious elsewhere. But racism and prejudice is alive and well and I see that more clearly today than ever before.

I suppose I hope that if Obama were to be elected president, maybe, just maybe, it might start to change the way white people think about non-white people. Maybe they would see us as less of a threat. Maybe they would be willing to open up their neighborhoods, their loan funds, and their play groups to us. Maybe the teachers, school counselors, and administrators will be less likely to write so many of us off. Maybe, just maybe, it might inspire black and brown folks to believe that things could actually be different for them. Maybe the lack of hope that pervades our brown and black neighborhoods would ebb just enough so that there is one less excuse for believing that doing well in school is "acting white", one less excuse for the drug dealing, gun slinging, gang banging way of life. Maybe the apathy will subside just enough to get people out to vote and involved in their local schools, local non-profit organizations, or at least involved with their neighbors.

Yes, it is a vote for the symbol. But, no more so than voting for Clinton because she is a woman. When there is little difference between candidates on the issues, don't we then vote on ideology? Don't you then vote for the person who symbolizes, and hopefully will put into action, a world that you would like to see made into reality? Obama symbolizes the hope that maybe this country can get past the specter of race so that brown and black peoples can finally have the freedoms and opportunities promised to us.