My guest this week, Heather Mac Donald, coined the term “the Ferguson Effect.” In this clip, she talks about how continuing reductions in policing and fewer cops are harming black communities.
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This question would not be necessary IF:
1. Economic conditions in minority/black communities were equal to white communities.
2. Discrimination by whites, especially by racist cops, ceased.
3. Public education were equal among ALL neighborhoods, in spending, rigor & expectations.
4. The judicial process & justice dispensed were equal for all.
How a city's fathers structure such components determines greatly how lives are lived by the various groups within it, and how those lives turn out. That said, individual attitude and volition matter. Old story: Do right, prosper, or at least stay afloat. Do wrong, expect punishment and/or retribution. Easier to say or do when society's unwritten rules do not favor Group A while disfavoring Groups B or C in unseen or subtle ways. Easy to fault antisocial behavior by discrete groups while remaining silent about the invisible forces are structured to disadvantage said groups. In a city such as Chicago, we need only examine how lending patterns over the past 50 years have favored some groups while disfavoring blacks as to real estate transactions. As orchestrated by Mayor Richard J. Daley, the real estate brokerage industry & the mortgage lenders were in cahoots for the purpose of suppressing free and equal access to housing to blacks on the same terms as whites. This is documented in many communities from the end of WWII to when federal anti-discrimination/equal housing laws were passed in the 1960's, which finally corrected the situation. But the harm created during those years has taken longer to correct. Government was guilty in instituting and maintaining the discrimination to start with. Corrective government action was thus necessary to end it.
The same pattern has been true concerning employment & job advancement.
It is important to note that none of the fears of economic reversal or loss of rigor or efficiency have come to pass after the barriers to equality were removed. Open Housing and Equal Employment Opportunity have not led to any of the downturns voiced as justification for perpetuating discrimination. Hopefully America has matured in that sense, though, quiet as it's kept, vestiges remain. Equality must be nursed and protected. Hate is self-perpetuating, absent outside force, sad to say. It has taken lifetimes to reach today's modus vivendi.
Hopefully backsliding won't occur, restarting the whole painful process anew. Today's status quo says anyone may live anywhere his/her income enables, absent deleterious behavior or habits which may generate irresistible, justified opprobrium.
Notions of superiority/inferiority are attitudes. Attitudes cannot be legislated, pro or con. Only artificial barriers can be outlawed, as is mostly the case nowadays, with none of the dire warnings having materialized.
Love and/or hate cannot be legislated; only behavior. Fortunately, as a nation, we seem to have reached that state of equilibrium without coming apart at the seams again as we did in 1862. We needn't love one another; just not put one another at economic disadvantage based on false notions of superiority/inferiority. In this sense, Nirvana may never be attainable, with neighborly love dominant. But we seem to have achieved what was once thought impossible: The absence of outright hostility and societal disruption on the ground, with the force of government to guarantee peaceful coexistence. Nowadays such behavior has been replaced by brutal political maneuvering, which may be even harder to bring to heel, being subject to the lust for power, always a threat to peaceful coexistence. For that there seems no cure in sight, sorry to say. To quote Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and it is US!"
It's quite interesting you don't factor in how the CIA under Reagan helped to traffic cocaine into the hoods inorder to fund the Nicaragua Contras, a right-wing group. And the Iran-Contra scandal involving Oliver North. CIA history of assassinations in foreign governments after democratic elections? Why are American taxpayers required to spend billions on Israel's defense when they're capable of funding their own protection? Why am I as as a Black man helping to fund a Jewish zionist state that discriminates against African refugees and has practiced chemical eugenics with Ethiopia Jews?