From March, 2020: Beware the State of Exception

I wrote this back in late March, but was unsuccessful in pitching it to several outlets. It’s messy, and not my best writing. But the main point – and warning – remain as relevant as ever given the Trump administration’s recent attempts to further consolidate power and undermine the rule of law.

Recent reporting reveals that following President Trump’s March 13 declaration of a national emergency in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Attorney General William Barr quietly pushed Congress to expand executive powers. Barr’s request to Congress included the power to pause the statute of limitations for criminal and civil proceedings during this emergency “and for one year following the end of the national emergency.” Barr also asked Congress for the power to request the chief judge of any district court to halt court proceedings, allowing the DOJ to detain a person without trial until the crisis is declared officially over. 

Trump’s administration is not the first to seek to expand executive power through the declaration of a national emergency. Since the National Emergencies Act became law in 1976, over sixty national emergencies have been declared, and the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice finds that more than thirty remain in effect today. Because those previous national emergencies remain in effect, when Trump declares a national emergency today he has over 120 statutory powers available to use at his discretion. Among the many statutory powers available to Trump from prior administrations is the power to assume control over communications facilities, including internet service providers, and the power to freeze Americans’ bank accounts. Under this administration, where cruelty often appears to be the point, this expanse of powers constitutes as serious a threat to democratic rule as we have seen for its potential to usher in a state of exception. 

The state of exception refers to the legal right of an executive to declare a suspension of the legal order in the event of an emergency. In his book of the same name, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben convincingly shows that when invoked, this legal maneuver has resulted in the erosion of the legislative branch by the executive, and the suspension of rights and due process for ordinary citizens. 

In his 1933 inaugural address, and in response to the economic crisis resulting from the Great Depression, then-US President Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked broad executive powers by presenting his economic policies as matters of warfare. Roosevelt declared, 

“In the event that the Congress shall fail to take [the necessary measures] and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” 

Just three months later, the National Recovery Act granted FDR unlimited power to regulate nearly every aspect of the economy. The rising threat of fascism across the Atlantic set the stage for Roosevelt to declare a “limited” national emergency in September of 1939, and then an “unlimited” national emergency in May of 1941. 

Roosevelt used his new powers to issue Executive Order 9066 in 1942, authorizing the US military to designate certain areas as military zones in which “the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion.” Roosevelt’s order cleared the way for the forceful detainment and internment of more than one-hundred thousand men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry, including over seventy-thousand Japanese-American citizens. 

More recently, just a few short months after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, then-President George W. Bush issued a military order authorizing the “indefinite detention” and trial of noncitizens suspected of terrorist involvement. Bush’s order created a new legal status for  legal limbo for suspected Taliban held in US custody, that of “enemy combatants”. As enemy combatants, they were not prisoners-of-war as defined through the Geneva Convention, nor were they accused criminals subject to US law and protections. Instead, they were reduced to what Agamben describes as a condition of  “bare life”, whereby a person is rendered legally unclassifiable. Without legal standing, detainees were subject to inhumane and extra-legal torture. 

What Agamben and others also make clear is that new powers granted under the state of exception often prove difficult to roll back when the actual crisis ends. Instead, the crisis becomes the rationale for a new, more permanent state of authoritarian governance. One year after the September 11 attacks, President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security as part of his declared War on Terror. Since its founding, however, the agency has spent a disproportionate amount of time and effort on securing the US-Mexico border, especially considering that not one of the nineteen terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks entered the US from the southern border. Under the Trump administration, DHS efforts to secure the US-Mexico border have included the expansion of migrant detention centers, the forced separation of migrant children from their parents, and the suspension of due process for detainees. 

To be sure, the novel coronavirus constitutes a national emergency. But we all should be cognizant of the distinction between a state of emergency and a state of exception. For both Presidents Roosevelt and Bush II, the metaphor of war played an important part in justifying extraordinary and extra-legal actions. Already, Trump is leaning into this metaphor to describe his stance against a virus that has no understanding of or care for geopolitical boundaries. Trump and his allies are embracing the title of “wartime president”, even going so far as to suggest that  Americans are now already in something like a state of war. There have been no shortage of warnings against the Trump administration’s quest for consolidated power. Some of us are convinced that a global pandemic might provide the context he has craved to advance his authoritarian agenda. This, then, is my advice to you, dear reader: beware the state of exception. 

James M. Thomas (JT) is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of four books and more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and other essays on the causes and consequences of racism in America and abroad. JT can be reached at jmthoma4@olemiss.edu, or on Twitter @Insurgent_Prof.

What Should We Do With Our Confederate Monuments?

A recent Winthrop University poll across eleven southern states reveals striking differences between whites and blacks’ attitudes on several social issues. The poll’s methodology is scientific and sound. Of particular interest are questions directed at southerners’ opinions on (1) monuments or memorials to Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War; and (2) statues honoring Confederate war heroes.

Visualizing Lynchings in the U.S. South, 1877-1950

Using comprehensive lynching data from the Beck-Tolnay Inventory,  I analyzed Southern episodes of lynching from 1877-1950 using Tableau software.

In the storyboard, you can play around with a few important variables (state, race, sex) to see differences in where lynchings took place, and the demographics of the victims. With the maps, you can identify the number of lynchings in an area down to the county level.

If clicking on the map below doesn’t take you to the story, just click here.

 

Petition to Amend or Retract Mississippi Governor’s Proclamation

The University of Mississippi’s Critical Race Studies Group, for which I am currently co-chair, has created a petition through Change.org demanding our Governor, Phil Bryant, amend or retract his proclamation that April 2016 be Confederate Heritage Month. You can click the above link to sign and share the petition. Below is the full text:

On February 10th, 2016, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant declared the month of April 2016 ‘Confederate Heritage Month.’ Governor Bryant has issued similar proclamations in the past, yet this year carries special significance. The murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a white supremacist with an affinity for Confederate imagery led to protests and calls for the removal of Confederate iconography from public spaces across the nation. In addition, Bryant’s proclamation preceded the Mississippi Legislature’s failure to act upon nineteen different bills proposing a change to the stage flag. It remains the only state flag in the US that bears the Confederate battle flag in its emblem.

In his proclamation, Governor Bryant declares that “it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities that lie before us.”

The 1861 Mississippi Declaration of Secession stated plainly “our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” In spite of this, Governor Bryant’s proclamation makes no mention of the millions of enslaved men, women, and children who suffered and died in captivity, or the Confederate cause to keep them in bondage. As citizens of this State, we ask that Governor Bryant clarify what specifically about our nation’s past he intends that we reflect on; what insight is to be gained from the error of owning other human beings and, in turn, fighting for that right; and to make clear the specific mistakes and successes of the Confederacy, so that we can not only come to a fuller understanding of our shared heritage, but learn from it.

Therefore, whereas the history of the Confederacy consisted of the victimization of state enslaved men, women, and children of African descent in the four-year period of 1861-1865; and

Whereas the influence of the Confederacy allowed the continuation of the victimization of millions of black Americans within Mississippi and elsewhere following their emancipation in 1865; including state-sponsored denial of economic, educational, health, and socio-political rights; and

Whereas Confederate Heritage Month, Confederate Memorial Day, and other commemorative events surrounding the Confederacy and its legacy risk the perpetuation of false values and narratives without well-defined grounds, goals, or necessities for such proclamations;

Now, Therefore, we, as citizens of Mississippi, and friends across the world, call upon Mississippi’s elected officials to recognize the pain and suffering of its enslaved population, and honor their survival; while also recognizing the continued effects of this dreadful past on our present. We call upon Governor Bryant and other elected officials to make good on their claims of civic enlightenment through economic and political support for statewide efforts to tell richer and more factually accurate narratives of our state history, through social science public education, creative arts programs, and cross-racial dialogues. We insist that only a deliberate and intentional reckoning with this shameful legacy of injustice will carry us through to a better tomorrow. Until that reckoning, we reject the validity of Governor Bryant’s proclamation, and call upon Governor Bryant to either (1) clarify his intentions or (2) retract it entirely.

Sincerely,

The University of Mississippi Critical Race Studies Group and The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation

Sharp End: The Sorrid History of Race, Space, and Inequality in Columbia, Missouri

**Note: Much of this history has been covered elsewhere, and much more substantively. I’ve provided links to the sources I consulted while writing this piece. For a strong academic treatment of Sharp End, see Jason Jindrich’s 2002 Master’s Thesis for the University of Missouri’s Department of Geography. This thesis serves as the foundation for how local papers and historians discuss Sharp End and the history of racial exclusion in Columbia, Missouri.[1]

With so much coverage over recent racial unrest at my alma mater, the University of Missouri, I thought it would be appropriate to provide a bit more context—historical and geographical—for those interested in understanding the underlying conditions of racial inequality that many students, faculty, and staff are calling attention toward. However, I want to broaden the perspective, and situate the demands for inclusivity and equity within the larger narrative of Columbia, Missouri.

A few days ago, a Facebook friend declared, “Never in our lifetime have we had any real racism that represented a large portion of our society as a whole…I’ve lived in Columbia my entire life and never has there been a real race problem until now.”

This person is near my age (I’m 33), so I was shocked to hear him claim that Columbia is an exemplar for racial tolerance. I’m a three-time alum from the University of Missouri, and spent roughly twelve years living, working, and going to school in the city. My instincts tell me that this friend’s statement is more a reflection of a failure to understand what racism actually is. This wouldn’t be uncommon. Numerous sociological studies show that often, when people discuss racism, they frame it as individual acts of hatred toward members of a racial or ethnic minority group. Shouting racial slurs, or proclaiming your own individual hatred of a certain racial group, are familiar tropes.

While these acts of intolerance are racist in the sense that they articulate a set of beliefs about a particular group’s inferior status based on that group’s racial membership, racism isn’t just a set of beliefs or attitudes. Racism also refers to the actions and practices guided by these beliefs and practices. Ideologies are the cement from which a whole architecture of policies and practices arise. Democracy, for example, isn’t just a belief in representative government, it’s also how that belief is put into practice. Racism, then, is not just a set of beliefs in the inferiority of other racial groups. It also includes practices at the individual and collective levels that flow from those beliefs.

One set of practices that has received incredible attention among scholars and journalists alike is urban renewal, and the displacement of low-income and nonwhite residents that typically follows. Columbia’s history of redevelopment is no different than that of many other cities, yet I’m surprised it has received so little attention by national and local media, who seem to think the recent racial unrest at the University of Missouri is new, and in sharp contrast to the perceived serenity of this popular college town. So, allow me to introduce many of you to a brief history of Sharp End, a once-thriving black business district in the heart of downtown Columbia, that was completely wiped out by Columbia’s first foray into ‘urban redevelopment’ in the mid 1950s.

Sharp End was located within the historic Douglass neighborhood, an area that was once home to Columbia’s business center—Market Square—in what is now the Flat Branch area. Figure 1.1 shows the approximate location of Douglass, marked by the red square. Within the southern border of Douglass is Sharp End, denoted by the smaller black rectangle. The larger, black shape to the south of Douglass and Sharp End is a rough approximation of the University of Missouri (per 2010).[2]

Figure 1.1: Columbia, Missouri 1950

Around the turn of the 20^th century, city planners recognized that this bottomland was prone to flooding, and relocated Market Square to present-day 8^th and 9^th streets in downtown Columbia. Because Columbia was still highly segregated due to Jim Crow laws, free blacks could not live in white neighborhoods, or frequent many white establishments. The newly deserted area in Flat Branch was one of the few areas in the city where free blacks could live. As whites left, free blacks moved in, and began building what would soon become a commercial and cultural hub for black residents. Sharp End was solidified as a black business district sometime after 1910, and over the next forty years was home to a collection of thriving black-owned shops, bars, and restaurants that stretched along Walnut St., and between 4^th and 6^th streets. During Jim Crow, these were important alternatives to white-owned businesses that blacks were prohibited from patronizing.

Nevertheless, the city’s neglect of the Douglass neighborhood through the first half of the twentieth century was blatant, and had severe consequences. City officials refused to pave or repair roads, and Douglass residents were denied many city services enjoyed by whites. As late as the 1930s, the city was dumping its refuse into Flat Branch creek, which ran through the western edge of Douglass. The city gas plant was also found to have leaked oil into the water of the creek, which accumulated human and livestock waste as it passed between black residences on Park and Ash streets. Finally, intense segregation—both residential and occupational—made for high concentrations of poverty among Columbia’s black residents in the inter-war years.

As a result, many Douglass residences consisted of wooden shacks, often without plumbing or electricity. Few black residents were able to afford city sewage, so their waste from their privies often flowed into the neighborhood creeks. A survey of Columbia’s waste management in 1919 revealed that, city wide, only 5% of black residences were connected to a sewer, compared to 80% of white residences.[3] Landlords often regarded Douglass-area property as a lost cause because it was black-occupied. For example, one landlord is quoted as saying, “Negro property is a fine investment because you don’t have any upkeep expense. All you have to do is pay taxes and insurance, and the taxes are very low on that property. Then besides, the niggers pay their rent, they don’t get behind like other people do.”[4]

As a teaching point, we should recognize that while this landlord’s statement reflects racism, it isn’t racism simply because the landlord uses the word “nigger.” The landlord’s statement, rather, reflects the dominant ideology of the time: blacks are less than human, and therefore do not require humane conditions or treatment. Importantly, this ideology cemented itself through specific actions (or in this case, inaction), resulting in massive racial disparities in the distribution of resources and opportunities. The practice of neglecting predominantly black neighborhoods on account of them being predominantly black—a practice that was institutionalized and supported by local government— is racist with or without the use of a racial epithet.

Importantly, the historical neglect of the Douglass neighborhood by city officials and local realtors alike laid the foundation for justifying the forced removal of its residents and black businesses in the 1950s. Following the 1949 Federal Housing Act, Columbia, like many other cities across the country, took advantage of redevelopment loans and grant programs by the Housing and Home Finance Administrator. Title I of this act authorized local public agencies to purchase or condemn areas of the city deemed “blighted or deteriorating.” Cities were then authorized to clear that land and “make it available, by sale or lease, for private or public redevelopment or development in accordance with predetermined local redevelopment plan for the area.”[5] In the case of Douglass and Sharp End, any ‘blight’ within that neighborhood was a direct consequence of the intentional and explicit denial of basic city services, including proper sewage and road maintenance.

Columbia twice failed to pass an ordinance for the creation of a local housing authority in 1952. However, in 1956 voters approved the formation of the Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority, and its first meeting took place that June.[6] Records from the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, housed at the University of Missouri, show the authority had, as its objective, “slum clearance and urban renewal.” The authority selected 126 acres within the Douglass neighborhood for its first project, including within it the Sharp End district. Under the U.S. and Missouri constitutions, the city of Columbia was allowed to condemn Douglass under eminent domain laws. Though the law requires that the taking of private property must be justified for a public purpose, and that property owners must be compensated fairly, this was not the case for black residents and business owners. In 1958, a consultant hired by the LCR Authority had estimated the total worth of the 126 acres at more than $1 million. Yet, the city managed to only pay $591,000 for the land; or, less than 60 cents to the dollar.[7] Residents who refused to sell had their properties condemned under eminent domain, and were forcefully removed.

The Douglas School Urban Renewal Project began in May of 1959, and was completed by July of 1966.[8] When it was finished, more than three hundred structures were completely eradicated, including at least eighty black-owned businesses. A portion of the Douglass neighborhood was rebuilt as public housing. However, many former black homeowners were not eligible for residency. Yet, because they were black, they were unable to secure loans for new homes. Local lenders still operated under revised models of the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which had pioneered a ‘risk rating’ system that incorporated race as a marker of credit-worthiness as well as property value. By the logic of HOLC, and later FHA, black homebuyers ‘invaded’ neighborhoods, and compromised the value of surrounding properties.[9] Realtors and lenders were discouraged from showing black renters and homebuyers potential properties in predominantly white areas, denying even blacks with capital the opportunity to purchase affordable homes that would retain their value over time.

Consider the following racial dot map of Columbia, Missouri in 1970. Just over a decade after the initial razing of Douglass and Sharp End, we can see the extreme residential segregation of black residents in relationship to whites. Each orange dot in the map represents two black residents; each green dot represents two white residents. According to data from the U.S. Census, there were a total of 3,863 blacks living in Columbia in 1970.[10] More than half (~56%) were concentrated in Tract 8, which encompassed the former Douglass neighborhood. Though, as the map shows, the southern edge of Douglass, including Sharp End, were nearly devoid of residents, indicating this land was in the midst of being redeveloped for primarily commercial interests.

Figure 1.2: Racial Dot Map, Columbia, Missouri 1970

By 2013, the former Douglass area had a lower concentration of black residents. However, if we take into account the two neighboring census tracks directly to the north and the tract directly to the west, those four tracts (including the one that encompasses the historic Douglass neighborhood) accounted for nearly 35% of all black residents in Columbia, Missouri (Figure 1.3).[11]

Figure 1.3: Racial Dot Map, Columbia, Missouri 2013

Complimenting the racial dot map is the following map of average gross rent for black-occupied units in Columbia, Missouri, in 1970 (Figure 1.4). As this figure illustrates, blacks were primarily concentrated directly to the west and north of the former Douglass Neighborhood. Because so few blacks were able to rent in any other area of Columbia at the time, there is no available data for the average amount of money black residents paid in rent throughout the rest of Columbia. Average rent for blacks ranged from $74 per month in the former Douglass neighborhood and encompassing census tract, to $153 per month just to its South, where the current University of Missouri campus now extends.

Figure 1.4: Average Gross Monthly Rent, Black-Occupied Units, Columbia, Missouri, 1970

Now, let’s overlay that with the composite gross monthly rent, irrespective of race (Figure 1.5). Here, the story becomes even more interesting. The blue shaded tracts are spaces where blacks’ gross monthly rent exceeded the composite gross monthly rent of that same area. In the tract directly to the north of the former Douglass neighborhood, the average gross monthly rent for blacks was 1.3 times higher than the composite gross monthly rent ($112 to $99). Directly to the south of the former Douglass neighborhood, overlapped by the south side of the present-day campus, monthly rent for blacks was nearly 1.4 times higher than the composite gross monthly rent ($153 to $112). This data suggests that, despite federal laws prohibiting such practices, Columbia realtors and landlords were still engaging in racist rental practices in 1970.

Figure 1.5: Gross Monthly Rent for Blacks vs Composite Gross Monthly Rent, 1970

Finally, let’s look at the median value of homes in these areas. In 1970, the median value of homes in Columbia, Missouri was $21,900.[12] In the areas in which blacks were primarily concentrated, the median value of homes ranged from a low of $10,824 in the former Douglass neighborhood, to a high of $15,627 just to its west (Figure 1.6). Put differently, the median value of homes in neighborhoods in which blacks were primarily concentrated ranged from 49%-71% of the median home value for the rest of the city.

Figure 1.6: Median Home Value, Columbia, Missouri, 1970

By 2013, not much had changed (Figure 1.7). The median value of a home in Columbia, Missouri was $169,800. In the former Douglass neighborhood, it was $101,400 (59% of the median value). Just to the north, it was $66,500 (39%).

Figure 1.7: Median Home Value, Columbia, Missouri, 2013

My goal with this very brief analysis of the Sharp End District and its demise at the hands of city government is two-fold. First, I want to illustrate that Columbia, Missouri is far from a racial paradise. Like most other cities in the United States, it has a long history of institutionalized racism, clearly identifiable in the local politics and decision-making among city officials, planners, and developers. Second, I hoped to demonstrate with this analysis that the effects of this institutionalized racism do not simply disappear because we wish for it. Without intentional, deliberate anti-racist policies and practices, racism and its effects will continue to fester. In the case of black residents of Columbia, Missouri, a multi-generational community, and its wealth, were nearly eradicated through deliberate practices by local government and developers.

As of 2015, the north side of the former Sharp End district houses the Columbia Post Office. The south side of Sharp End was converted into a parking lot upon the first phase of urban renewal. It remained so for nearly fifty years, until in 2011 it was converted into a ten-deck parking garage.

Footnotes

[1] Jason Jindrich, “Our Black Children: The Evolution of Black Space in Columbia, Missouri” (M.A. Thesis, University of Missouri, 2002), Microfilm, University of Missouri Libraries.

[2] All maps and figures derive from data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and were created using Social Explorer.

[3] August F. Larson, A Housing Survey of Columbia, Missouri (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 1919).

[4] Audrey Nell Kittel, The Negro Community of Columbia, Missouri (University of Missouri, 1938), 44.

[5] United States Senate, “Housing Act of 1949” (United States Government Printing Office, 1949), 2, https://bulk.resource.org/gao.gov/81-171/00002FD7.pdf.

[6] Arcenia Harmon, “Columbia’s Sharp End,” Columbia Daily Tribune, April 4, 2004, http://archive.showmenews.com/2004/apr/20040404feat009.asp.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Phillip Sitter, “Sharp End District Remembered for ‘Togetherness,’” Columbia Missourian, May 19, 2015, http://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/sharp-end-district-remembered-for-togetherness/article_cdb41a50-fe83-11e4-83cf-c715d4cd44fe.html.

[9] Colin Gordon, Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 92.

[10] United States Department of Commerce, “1970 Census of Population and Housing, Columbia Missouri, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce and the Bureau of the Census, 1972).

[11] United States Bureau of the Census. “American Community Survey, 2009-2013 (5 year estimates.” Washington, DC. 2014. Accessed via Social Explorer.

[12] United States Department of Commerce, “1970 Census of Population and Housing, Columbia Missouri, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area.”

April 15th is “Fight for $15” Day!

On April 15^th, workers from around the country are planning a massive rally to support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and union representation for low-wage workers in the fast food, retail, and childcare industries.

There is strong public favor toward raising the federal minimum wage. A 2014 Bloomberg poll, for example, found 69% of Americans were in favor of President Obama’s call to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. But is $10.10 per hour enough? Is the $15 per hour demanded by millions of fast food, retail, and other low-wage industry workers sufficient?

For over ten years, researchers at MIT have been collecting and analyzing several key indicators of economic well-being in order to determine what an actual “living wage” threshold would be for ordinary Americans. Taking into account the cost of food, childcare, housing, health care, and other basic necessities, then adjusting for geographic differences, this research calculates the minimum wage necessary for any household makeup in any area of the country. For a household of two adults and one child in Oxford, Mississippi to have financial independence while maintaining housing and food security, the calculated living wage threshold is $17.26 per hour.

Not surprisingly, few employers in Oxford use this standard for their own workforce, including the University of Mississippi. In combing through the job descriptions and pay rate ranges available through the University of Mississippi’s Department of Human Resources, there are more than 295 job titles, or approximately 25% of all occupations at the University, whose MAXIMUM hourly salary range is below the living wage threshold of $17.26 per hour.

The state of Mississippi has no state minimum wage rate, however, making Mississippi workers subject to the federal standard of $7.25 per hour. Importantly, in March of 2013 Governor Phil Bryant signed into law legislation that prohibits individual counties and municipalities in Mississippi from establishing their own mandatory minimum wages. Despite these obstacles, no law or policy prohibits individual employers from establishing wage standards that exceed the current federal and state minimums. This means that the University of Mississippi, as the economic engine of the Oxford/Lafayette County area, has a real opportunity to lead from the front on the issue of economic inequality in our own backyard. We, as members of this community, implore the University administration to acknowledge, and begin taking steps toward addressing, the issue of a living wage for our campus workforce.

On the Problems with the “Write Clearly” Campaign

I’ve been going back and forth about writing this post for several weeks. Last month, I came across the following tweet from Syed Ali, co-editor of the sociological magazine, Contexts:

What words in academic writing do you abhor? Will collect and put in @contextsmag. I’ll start. Lived experience, interrogate. #writeclearly

— syed ali (@skyedali) January 21, 2015

 

Before going further, let me be clear: I don’t know Syed well, having only met him once. I do sit on the editorial board of Contexts, but since we only meet once a year at the American Sociological Association meetings, I don’t have much personal interaction with the magazine’s leadership. The one time I met him, he was polite and collegial. In addition, Syed has posted a nice essay on the Contexts website explaining what kinds of writing the magazine is interested in, so that more sociologists can adapt their work to the magazine’s conventions.

Syed’s essay, and tweet, are part of a more general movement taking place within sociology, and many other social sciences. I call this movement the “Write Clearly Campaign.” The campaign’s goals are admirable: in the spirit of wanting a stronger and more direct impact on public discourse, certain circles within sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics have encouraged a form of academic writing that is less “jargon-y”, and more accessible to a general, nonacademic readership. The magazine, Contexts, for example, is explicit in its aim is to make “cutting-edge social research accessible to general readers.” In general, this is a great goal for the social sciences, especially given recent debate in The Chronicle of Higher Education on our role (or lack thereof) in public debate and policy discussion. Making our scholarship more widely available, and understandable, to a nonexpert audience has the potential to influence public opinions on a number of important social issues.

Nevertheless, I found Syed’s tweet incredibly naive, especially concerning the line he, and others, draw between “jargon” and “clear writing.” As someone embedded within the larger intellectual tradition from which “lived experience” is located, I feel it’s necessary to explain why this term is far from “jargon”, and how reducing it to just jargon illustrates a serious problem within the Write Clearly Campaign–an underlying assumption that all social science derives from the same epistemological position.

Epistemology, of course, refers to the study of knowledge–how we know what we know, including how that knowledge is produced and distributed and what conditions constrain and enable its production and distribution. The term “lived experience” derives from a specific epistemological position–that there is a complex relationship between our bodies and our awareness of our bodies and our surroundings. Some of this tradition date back to Spinoza’s counterclaim to Descartes classic Mind/Body dualism, but I find aspects of Spinoza’s monist position (i.e. the mind and body are of the same substance) equally troubling. A more contemporary understanding of “lived experience”, I believe, is found in the phenomenological tradition–a tradition extremely influential in the development of sociology, particularly the interpretivist vein which focuses on how social actors make meaning from their experiences. Phenomenological thinkers like Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz, for example, have greatly influenced interpretive sociology for several decades. Though they and others have used the term “lived experience” in different ways, my own understanding and use of the term reflects that of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty understood our bodies as the sites from which our social experiences unfold. He described that our bodies are used for all sorts of things, from the mundane (e.g. sit, stand, walk) to the complex (e.g. create, destroy, and govern). In doing these things, we bring our bodies into relationships with our worlds, and through this encounter, our experiences become meaningful–literally, full of meaning. Our bodies, then, are not merely ‘objects’, in the Cartesian sense. Our bodies, rather, are our point of view in the world–the vessels through which we interpret what it means to sit, stand, walk, create, destroy, and govern.

It’s important to note that, while these discussions were originally matters of philosophical debate and discussion, they are now grounded across several disciplines, including sociology of course, but also anthropology, political science, and cognitive neuroscience.  So when one uses a term like “lived experience”, it’s not a “jargon-y” way of saying “experience”, as if all experience is lived therefore it’s unnecessary to specify. It’s demonstrating–clearly, I might add, for those embedded within the phenomenological canon–that (1) our discipline, along with many others, has not always recognized the inherent problems in Cartesian duality and (2) those of us who use the term write from an epistemology that examines embodiment as subjectivity-in-action/practice.

Is phenomenology complex? Absolutely. Within the canon, there is much debate about the specific relationship between embodied habits and practices and how we make sense of those things. Nevertheless, it’s a significant branch of sociology, and one in which concepts like “lived experience” have great currency. Dismissing it as something to “abhor” fails to recognize this concept, and others, on their own terms. Importantly, it draws poorly thought-out lines between sociology worth bringing to a wider audience, and sociology worth keeping insulated. Look, I’m all for making the knowledge we produce as sociologists more accessible to a non-specialized audience. However, if the Write Clearly Campaign is saying there is no room in their movement for complex discussions on how knowledge is produced and/or situated, then we’re doing a disservice to our potentially broader audience.

Reflections on the James Meredith Symbolic Lynching

Yesterday I was interviewed by the student-run campus broadcast channel, NewsWatch 99. The focus of their story was the one-year anniversary of the symbolic lynching of the James Meredith statue that took place last spring on the University of Mississippi campus.

The clip is short, so I feel the need to elaborate a bit on my comments. I was asked whether I thought the campus reacted at all to the incident when it happened. Though the video doesn’t show this, I responded by saying there was a very strong reaction to the incident by most of the members of this campus community. Many students, faculty, and staff were outraged, and expressed this in private conversations, and in some public forums. However, what I also stated was that the response was far from collective or sustained. Furthermore, what I tried to articulate in the interview is that the “loud” reaction to extreme acts of racism, like the symbolic lynching of the Meredith statue, are rarely situated within the context of an environment where more mundane forms of racism are commonplace. Instead, we treat those incidents as anomalies, as the products of a few “bad apples” in an otherwise “good bunch.” This seems to be fairly common in many other social settings. We, as a society, tend to distance ourselves from the most extreme bigots, racists, and acts of intolerance because they don’t fit with our general ideals about civility and community. However, in doing so, we also perpetuate a culture that does tolerate everyday, microassaults and microaggressions toward people of color. When I stated that our campus policies are ‘missing the boat’, I was referring to policies (like the formation of a Bias Incident Response Team) that, in an attempt to respond strongly against such extreme acts of intolerance, ignore that these extreme acts are the least common instances of racism on our campus.

Watch on YouTube: Changes Since the Meredith Incident

A Brief (and Incomplete!) History of St. Louis Police Brutality

Like many, I was hurt and horrified by the death of eighteen-year old Mike Brown, of Ferguson, Missouri, this past weekend. Growing up in the central city of Kansas City, Missouri, I was not unfamiliar with police violence against black and brown communities of color. However, it appears many Americans are unfamiliar with these experiences. For example, stories about Sunday night’s riot are now being framed as “just another example” for why black and brown communities need policing, rather than as a response to a collective memory of state-sanctioned violence against those communities, including the death of Mike Brown.

Motivated by the ignorance and garden-variety tropes of white racism I’ve seen this morning on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve put together a VERY brief and INCOMPLETE history of St. Louis Police Brutality over the past one hundred years. I used the archives of The Chicago Defender from 1905 through 1975, and the Lexus Nexus database for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1989 to the present, I ran a search for the term “police brutality”. The information below was compiled based on this very narrow search.

I would love for others to help crowd-source more information here, especially if there are any incidents I’ve missed, or failed to accurately summarize.

My goal with the timeline below is to demonstrate that incidents like what happened in Ferguson do not stand on their own. They represent a greater historical narrative, whereby collective memories — and responses — are shaped by the totality of these incidents. A great quote that, I think, captures the response of the rioters last night is from the late Martin Luther King, Jr., in a 1966 interview with Mike Wallace:

I contend that the cry of “black power” is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.

 

May, 1917: Three thousand white men gathered in downtown East St. Louis and began attacking blacks. Nonresponse by the police led to the Illinois governor to call in the National Guard. Some evidence of police participating in attacks.

July, 1917: A car occupied by white males drove through East St. Louis, firing shots at a standing group of blacks. Shortly thereafter, another car driving through the same area was mistaken for the previous car, and black residents shot at it, killing two police officers in the car. Thousands of whites marched into the black neighborhood of East St. Louis and began burning entire sections, shooting residents as they tried to escape the fires. Rioters lynched several black residents, claiming, “Southern negroes deserve a genuine lynching.” National guardsmen who were called in participated in the rioting, rather than helping to squash it. The Chicago Defender, led by Ida B. Wells, estimates between 40-150 blacks were killed that July. Six thousand blacks were left homeless.

November, 1923: Reports emerge that “whenever a crime has been committed and the perpetrator wishes to conceal his guilt, or the authorities are at a loss to solve the riddle,” St. Louis police often report that the crime was committed by a black person.

November, 1928: Grand jury ordered to convene as the result of a fatal shooting of a 20-year old man by a St. Louis patrolman. Three eye witnesses voluntary appeared to testify against the officer.

October, 1929: Black leadership calls upon then-Missouri Governor Henry Caulfield to end the “murdering of our people and the numerous brutalities they suffer at the hands of the police” in St. Louis

September, 1933: Members of the Clothing Workers Union complained to Mayor Bernard F. Dickmann that they had been beaten by police during a parade

September, 1941: A STL cop beats a black hospital patient. This attack led to the STL branch of the NAACP beginning a movement against police brutality against blacks.

July, 1965: About 40 demonstrators paraded in front of a city police station protesting alleged police brutality. The John Birch Society denounced a proposed investigation into the charges.

July, 1967: Dance choreographer Katherine Dunham begins legal action against East St. Louis police charging they “manhandled and arrested” her on false charges.

August, 1971: Joseph Lee Wilson, 37, had been drinking heavily and had passed out shortly after midnight in the back yard of his mother’s house in the Third Police District. After she called for assistance, she and others contend, police beat him. An employee of old City Hospital said that Wilson, already suffering from massive injuries, was even beaten by St. Louis policemen when he was on a hospital table. Wilson was found dead in the holdover at 5:45 a.m. An autopsy showed that he had suffered seven fractured ribs, a punctured lung, a ruptured pancreas and lacerations of the liver. The official police version, adopted by the coroner, was that Wilson had fallen from a stool in a tavern on Chippewa Street. Syndicated columnist Mike Royko likened that to falling from a bar stool atop Chicago’s 100-story, 1,127-foot John Hancock Tower.

March, 1977: Following a car chase, two young men who had been in the car that led the chase were beaten. It was estimated that as many as 50 police officers were on hand to see at least part of the beating. Two Third District police officers were indicted for assault with intent to maim with malice. Other police officers were suspended for not cooperating with a grand jury investigation. Circuit Attorney George Peach was furious with departmental obstruction. He called it a ”conspiracy of silence.” And, in the end, it was impossible to prove who actually had administered the beatings. One of the indicted police officers was later acquitted; he is now a lieutenant in the department.

January, 1989: Seventy five people gather in front of the 6^th District police station to protest a St. Louis police attack on a 15-year old girl.

June, 1991: University City police arrest a man for illegally skateboarding on a sidewalk in the Delmar Loop. Four witnesses report the man was handcuffed and beaten by a group of at least five officers.

October, 1993: Harry B. Hegger, Internal Affairs officer, claims his division handles roughly a hundred or more cases of physical abuse per year.

October, 1993: The Organization for Black Struggle, along with other community groups and activists, charges that for at least 10 years incidents of police brutality are rampant in St. Louis city and the metropolitan area. These allegations include: The continued employment of racist officers on the St. Louis and University City police departments, beatings and Russian roulette games police play with suspects, a special anti-black unit in the Belleville Police Department, and rampant car and property seizures.

October, 1993: In a hearing sponsored by the NAACP, Clarence Harmon, the first black police chief of St. Louis, stated police officers often project fears onto black residents: ‘There are tensions related to sometimes unrealistic fears of officers who traverse high crime areas . . . unrealistic fears as to their safety, which cause for not a great relationship between themselves and the community.” In that same meeting, Joyce Armstrong, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, said 52 percent of the complaints made to her office were against police departments in Florissant, Jennings, Beverly Hills, Breckenridge Hills, Dellwood and Maplewood. She said 30 percent were complaints against the city police.

October, 1993: About a dozen people picketed two St. Louis police stations Sunday night, alleging brutality by police officers in the arrests of three suspects earlier in the day.

October, 1993: Frontenac Police Chief Benjamin Branch has taken an administrative leave to investigate allegations of police brutality and civil rights violations by his department. That June, Branch, 16 Frontenac police officers and five dispatchers were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury to answer questions about police brutality in Frontenac.

January, 1996: Garland Carter Jr., 17., shot and killed, in the back, by a St. Louis police officer.

January, 1997: Post-Dispatch reports that at least 11 people have died in police custody in the St. Louis area since 1990 while in the throes of a mysterious, often violent medical condition called agitated delirium, a review of death records shows. In all, at least 20 people have died from the syndrome here over the last decade – 14 of those after police restrained them.

April, 1997: Gregory Bell, suffering from a developmental disability, is beaten by police officers until bloody. As many as 12 police officers were in his home during the beating, which included five blows to the head with an ASP baton. only one officer was charged with a crime. He was acquitted in May.

May, 1999: Two officers charged with the death of a nineteen year old. The police report — which made no mention of blows to the teenager’s head — is inconsistent with the medical examiner’s report that the victim suffered a massive skull fracture caused by a blow with an object to the back of his head.

May, 1999: A review showed that between 1994 and 1998, sixty people were shot by city officers, with twenty four of them dying. Brutality was charged in many of those cases

March, 2001: The St. Louis County Council on Tuesday appointed a 10-member committee to review two incidents in the past year involving county police that led to the deaths of three people.

June, 2002: Leaving a Coalition Against Police Crimes and Oppression meeting, Victor McKinney, 25, was hand-cuffed and body-slammed to the ground by two officers. Roughly 100 people gather at police headquarters to protest the incident.

September, 2002: A Kinloch police officer said he accidentally shot a motorist during a traffic stop. The officer suspected the motorist, a 24-year-old man from Bridgeton, was involved with a drug transaction. Police did not find any drugs on the suspect. The suspect was unarmed.

November, 2002: Aldermen Terry Kennedy, D-18th Ward, proposed forming a panel to investigate police shootings and allegations of brutality and other misconduct

May, 2003: About 50 protesters gathered outside the Pine Lawn City Hall and Police Department Thursday night, claiming police officers there have abused African-Americans in the city. “They are here to protect us, not beat us,” Brian Brooks told the crowd. “We’re paying their salaries.” Brooks said police beat him with a metal baton or flashlight and sprayed him with Mace in his driveway after he got into an argument with his wife on May 4. He said he was later beaten for several hours at the Police Department, where a gun was pointed at his head by a police officer. Another man, Willie Payne, said he was beaten by officers, including one accused of attacking Brooks, after his car was stopped in Pine Lawn. He said officers choked him, held his mouth open and sprayed Mace into it, pulled his shirt over his head and beat him. Justin Meehan, an attorney assisting the men, said they had made complaints to the Police Department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also looking into the claims, Meehan said.

October, 2003: Protesters demanding better treatment from police blocked traffic on downtown streets Wednesday night and burned an effigy of “white racist power” in a park across the street from St. Louis City Hall. The crowd swelled to about 200 people, as several activist groups led by the Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression called for the city to establish a board to review complaints of police brutality. A bill proposing such a board is locked in a battle between aldermen and Mayor Francis Slay over who would appoint the board members and what powers they would have.

February, 2006: About 40 people gathered outside Maplewood City Hall to seek justice for a man whose beating and kicking by Maplewood and St. Louis police has been televised coast-to-coast.

September 2013: A former Velda City police officer is facing federal charges of excessive force and lying to FBI agents. A federal indictment alleges Stan Lee Stanback, 47, used unreasonable force using a police baton to hit and injure two juveniles and an adult on Sept. 17, 2008. Stanback is also accused of lying to FBI agents by claiming he was surrounded by 15 men in the Velda City Police Department parking lot and was forced to draw his gun. He actually encountered four to five people and he never drew his gun, authorities said. Velda City’s police chief says the two 16-year-olds and one 26-year-old man he is accused of hitting were already in police custody when Stanback struck them with his baton.

August, 2014: Mike Brown, 18 years old, shot multiple times by Ferguson police. Eye witnesses claim initial shots were fired into Brown’s back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diversity in Sports

On March 5th, 2014 I participated in a panel discussion entitled, ‘Diversity in Sports.’

Many of my comments in this discussion drew inspiration from Taylor Branch’s phenomenal essay for The Atlantic, ‘The Shame of College Sports‘. One of the points I tried to make in this discussion (26min mark) is that we can’t expect to have a transformative discussion about diversity if we don’t begin that conversation by interrogating inequality and inequity within the contexts of sports (and this would apply to institutions of higher education, more generally). The hiring of more men and women of color as head coaches, as faculty, and as administrators does not solve the problem of a system that is fundamentally coercive and exploitative. College athletes have no labor rights, yet produce enormous amounts of wealth and value (symbolic, cultural, political) for their universities. While many receive a college scholarship for their efforts, this scholarship is year-to-year, on average it does not cover 100% of tuition and fees, and it can be revoked at any time by the coaching staff for undisclosed reasons. Meanwhile, many other college athletes play competitive sports in exchange for even less than the aforementioned “full-ride”.

I sympathize with some of the comments made by other panelists for the need to have greater representation and retention among men and women of color in the higher ranks of college athletics, and institutions of higher education more generally. Yet, I’m not convinced that a NCAA version of the ‘Rooney Rule’ would do much, and I certainly disagree with the comment made by one of the panelists that commerce and capitalist logic has led to positive changes regarding diversity in pro sports (17min mark). Too often, diversity is employed as a marketing strategy, as a way to re-brand the University as a place of inclusivity because they now have an initiative to become diverse. And, like the federal Affirmative Action initiative, too few of these diversity initiatives have clear goals and timestables to hold parties accountable when they fall short. What we end up with is a diversity initiative that is efficient in changing the perception of the University as a diverse place, rather than an initiative that actually facilitates transformative changes to the University’s structure (see Ahmed’s On Being Included for a great analysis of this phenomenon).

What does a diverse institution look like beyond just representation? Or, how does an institution that truly commits to diversity and inclusivity operate differently from one that does not? How do they restructure their day-to-day operations in order to promote diversity? How do they use diversity and inclusivity to frame new initiatives? These are the questions I would like to see more colleges and universities wrestle with in a transparent way, where students, faculty, staff, and administrators can collaboratively develop the University they want to become.