Here’s something I don’t often say: hats off to Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump.
As fans of TGS are no doubt aware, I’ve taken a dim view of Sharpton and Crump in the past. I think they’ve acted irresponsibly in promoting mistaken ideas about the police and black communities. I think they’ve sometimes fanned the flames of racial hysteria when they could have used their platforms to exert a moderating influence. And let’s not even talk about the Tawana Brawley fiasco.
But it seems that Sharpton and Crump may be changing their tune. Last month, a white teenager, Hunter Brittain, was shot and killed by a police officer in Beebe, Arkansas under murky circumstances. Hunter’s family asked Crump and Sharpton to take their case, and the pair agreed, despite their having been involved almost exclusively in issues involving black families.
It’s hard to know what this will mean going forward, and it’s possible that this is merely cynical calculation on Sharpton and Crump’s part. Even if it is, their acknowledgment that police violence is not a specifically “black problem” is a step in the right direction. John and I discuss why below. And as always, I’d love to know what you think—let me know in the comments.
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GLENN LOURY: What are we talking about, John? We're always talking about this race stuff. And this race stuff seems never to go away. I pick up my newspaper this morning, and I find that Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump are attending, in Beebe, Arkansas, small town in Arkansas, the memorial service for one Hunter Brittain. I hope I pronounce his name correctly. Unfortunately now deceased, killed by an Arkansas police officer who stopped him at 3 A.M. a few weeks ago and shot him dead and did not turn on his body camera, so there's no video of the killing. A white guy. A white guy. Hunter Brittain, a white guy killed by an Arkansas police officer.
And the family invited Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump—that's Al Sharpton of Al Sharpton fame and Benjamin Crump of “witness fraud in the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case” fame—to the memorial service at a high school and Berebe, Arkansas. And they went! They went and are now quoted in the newspaper—this is CNN—they're quoted saying—I think it's Crump who was literally quoted, but Sharpton is also quoted—as saying that there are white victims of police violence as well, and that if they were, that is Crump and Sharpton and others, to take up the cause of such victims, they might increase the likelihood that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would get past the Congress and get signed into law by President Biden. And they could further their cause.
I read that, and I said, “Duh.” I've been saying that for like five years or something. I mean, there are way more whites than blacks, twice as many at least, who are killed by police officers in any given year. I've been saying it's not a racial thing. It's a thing about policing and citizens and accountability and the maintenance of order and so on like that. I've been saying that for a long time, but it looks like Brother Al and Brother Ben are waking up to that reality.
JOHN MCWHORTER: Yeah. It's interesting, that one is a beautiful indication of how complex social history actually is as opposed to the way many people seem to think. Because talk about, what's that expression, “circle of empathy”? That it's easier to have empathy for people of your own kind.
There are concentric circles, and you go further out, you're less and less attached to the people the further they are from you.
Yeah. I would say that it is more likely that there could be meaningful legislation about what the cops do to people if it were not seen as something that happens only to young black men who, as often as not, are in some kind of trouble. Not always. Philando Castile is one kind, but then as often as not something was up and it went wrong.
If it was shown that this was a white as well as a black thing, then I think more people would be more moved to do something. And next thing you knew, you would have something that is seen as a black problem vastly lessened, close to eliminated, hopefully. And a lot of people will then walk away thinking that something had been done about a black problem. And even if they didn't, that black problem wouldn't exist and after exactly one generation of black men not seeing the cops as their enemy, we could move on from a great many things.
But it's interesting, when you think about the statements from Sharpton/Crump, for them this is just cynicism. They figure, call attention to this happening to a white boy or two or three and most Americans will be more moved. I'm imagining that in Crump's mind—I don't know what's going on in Sharpton's mind—but in Crump's mind, the idea is still that this is something that happens mainly to black people. There are these exceptions, these white exceptions. Let's call some attention to these white exceptions, because if we hold them up and make some noise, that'll make racist white people interested.
But I doubt if either one of them understand that, one, it happens more white people, and, two, that very simple fact is not negated by the fact that it happens to a disproportionate amount of black men. Because poverty also makes you more likely to come in contact with the cops. And the disproportion with black people is 2.5 and black people are 2.5 times more likely to be poor. That's a very simple statistical correlation.
So, no, it's not about race. You taught me that. And I know, still, if you say that now, if you say, "You know what, it's not about race. The numbers make it clear. And that means that, wait for it folks, George Floyd did not die because of his color." You can see people just shuffling and not wanting to process it. And then you say Tony Timpa was white, and he died the same way. You talk about the nature of humanity and cognitive dissonance, I've noticed that for many people, you say Tony Timpa and that can't be gainsaid. There's nothing you can say. And they just shut down. There's just nothing to be done. I don't mean they're mean, but the subject has to change. They don't have anything to say. They just can't go further than that.
I'm sure that that's what Sharpton and Crump are like. They're just not going to hear that this is not a racial problem. But you know, maybe if they do call attention to more people like this white kid, maybe that will get more things to happen. And what you and I think about how it went versus what Benjamin Crump thinks, nobody will care about that in 50 years.
But let's try this. And you know something Glenn, just maybe us talking about this and some other people who followed us, maybe it made a difference? Just imagine, they're actually calling attention to the thing that happens much, much more than it happens to black men. Sharpton and Crump. They're doing it cynically, but I wonder if there's been a meme that's gotten out there that white people get killed, too. And I'm not trying to flatter us. My inclination is to think, no. But yeah, this is a good thing for many reasons, however different people are going to interpret it.
Well, I'd say, look, give 'em credit for doing the right thing, whatever the reasons. That's the first thing I'd say. It's a positive development. So hats off to Benjamin Crump, hats off to Al Sharpton for taking up the cause of a white victim of police violence and for understanding that doing so is probably a positive step to trying to achieve the goals that they want to achieve, whatever the reasons might be.
I am inclined not to extend the benefit of the doubt about the cynicism. I'm inclined to think, yeah, they put their calculator on and they've done a calculation and they figured out that this is the optimal way of playing their hand. So they're playing their hand this way. I don't think their deeper values and commitments have changed that much. They are who they are. On the other hand, whatever the reasons, they're doing the right thing.
And I don't want to give us any more credit than we're due. We're probably due more than zero, but you know, it's a sign of the times, isn't it, that the the race card is wearing thin? Isn't it? I mean, look at the pushback against critical race theory that we're seeing all the time around the country. I don't know ... I was about to say something I'm not sure that I believe, which is that maybe the long dark night of the obsessive race-mongering is waning. Maybe that's getting tired. Maybe they can see that it's getting tired.
The Democrats are getting a lot of pressure from the right wing of the party about how to position themselves for the 2022 midterms or the worry that Defund the Police is just a losing play. That some of the more radical members of the House of Representatives who have gotten elected from constituencies that are very, very left and very, very woke are pulling things down. You've got the Fourth of July being treated with a lack of reverence by some prominent spokespeople. I saw a piece in Grio, this is not a prominent spokesperson, this is Touré, the American writer …
I don't think he would like you referring to him as “not a prominent spokesperson.”
Amongst African Americans, he is widely followed. He's got a piece in Grio that he entitled “Fuck Fourth of July.” And he says, “Juneteenth is my holiday.” But I think smart Democrats, not just the James Carville types, I think people who are more to the center-left of the party than James Carville understand that you can't win elections in America running around, talking about fuck the Fourth of July, talking about I don't give a damn about the flag, burning the flag at your barbecue. You can't succeed like that. You can't succeed by ignoring criminal violence that's spiking in cities around the country. You can't succeed by telling white people across the board that they're all racists. “You all put your children on one side of the gymnasium and we'll put the children of color on the other side of the gym.”
They know that that's a losing hand. I mean, the people in the universities don't know it, but the people who run political campaigns know it. So maybe this is the early indications of a shift in the general tenor of the discussion about race.
I hope that that's true.
"... we know that all black life matters and must not be reduced to just black and brown interactions with law enforcement." - Black Lives Matter Foundation, Mission Statement (2019)
Glenn Loury scores another point for the left!
"Because talk about, what's that expression, “circle of empathy”? That it's easier to have empathy for people of your own kind."
Circle of Sympathy. Adam Smith. From his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
I really like his moral theory. One of the best I've come across.
And, in this particular scenario I do not suspect Crump or Sharpton's circles of sympathy have transformed; I suspect that, by bringing attention to this incident, they see potential gain for whatever circles they have in fact sympathy with.
Unfortunately, it is common for black people and black public figures to have a very strong sense of racial solidarity. In other words, one of their circles of sympathy is random black people; and random white people,or even random Americans are not in a circle of sympathy at all. The racial solidarity is so great that Tony Timpa like events do not matter to them morally. If white people manifest the same kind of racial solidarity, it is commonly viewed as racist. White nationalism, for example, is one expression of white solidarity that is unfortunately mirrored by many black people and many black public figures, but when black people express it, it is not only tolerated, it is celebrated by many of the same people who denounce the white variety. Such celebration of black racial tribalism is poisonous to the culture of black people in general. It creates obstacles to embracing culture that should be universally virtuous such as the pursuit of rational objectivity, attention to detail, and time management; stuff that -- because of racial tribalism -- has been erroneously classified as "Whiteness" by the Church of the Awoken and internalized by many black people in general.