Jeff Mackler writes a long article (3000+ words) published in the July print edition of Socialist Action, entitled U.S. Fight Against Racism and Repression Reaches New Heights (pdf). Despite Mr. Mackler being a talented writer, it's one of those that I've read so that you don't have to. Frankly, it's boring.
Setting the tone, in the lead paragraph he writes,
Unprecedented, multi-racial, daily mobilizations
against the ingrained institutional racism
that permeates every aspect U.S. society
have exploded in scope and intensity.
Recent surveys estimate that 15 million
to 26 million Americans have taken part
in the widespread demonstrations over
the murder of George Floyd. They continue to this day.
The exaggerations are stunning. Taking the obvious first--that 15 to 26 million people have participated in the protests--my back-of-the envelope calculation comes to about 600,000 demonstrators. Perhaps that's a low estimate--multiply by two or three if you want--but Mr. Mackler's is 25 times bigger--in other words, just way out of line.
Then he says the demonstrations were over the murder of George Floyd. That's rather like protesting child abuse--everybody is against it. Everybody from across the political spectrum--from Steve Bannon to Jeff Mackler--agrees that Mr. Floyd was murdered, and that his killer should be brought to justice. Even the police unions--who almost always stand up for cops no matter what they do--agree that he was murdered! So I don't know who the demonstrators are protesting against.
Even Mr. Mackler indirectly admits that the fuss was not about George Floyd's murder, which by all accounts was a once-off crime committed by a rogue cop. But in his view it is symptomatic of "ingrained institutional racism that permeates every aspect [of] US society." He offers some statistics revealing the depth of the problem.
About 63 percent of those shot and killed by police in Minneapolis between 2000 and 2017 – 19 people – were Black, while only 17 percent – 5 people – were white.
So--to fill in the missing data--over a 17 year period 30 people were shot and killed by police in Minneapolis. That's less than two per year--police shootings are not a major cause of death in Minneapolis or the country. Most of those shootings were justified in the sense that the police's mandate to protect public safety sometimes requires them to use force.
On the basis of this small, statistically meaningless dataset, Mr. Mackler infers a giant racist conspiracy. He offers no other evidence.
Though it is true that Blacks are stopped, arrested and prosecuted at a rate exceeding their fraction of the population. Mr. Mackler will attribute that to "racism." Like most Republicans, I think it's because of higher crime in Black communities, as illustrated here.
Though the reasons for higher crime might in part be racism, surely the actual causes are far more complicated than that. Racism is likely only a minor contributor.
Which is not to say there aren't any problems with the police. The police department in Ferguson, MO, for example, was running an
extortion racket. The Black residents of that city had every right to be upset--though burning down stores in your own neighborhood is not an especially helpful tactic. Likewise, a Black woman from Minneapolis interviewed on Fox News was all in favor of the police, but she wished they better represented the neighborhood. According to her most cops didn't even live in Minneapolis, and no matter how good their intentions they didn't really understand what was going on.
While there is certainly room for improvement, polls show that Black people do
not support defunding the police. This
recent Gallup poll reports that 81% of Black citizens want the police present in their community. This makes sense--like the rest of us, Black people are civilized and want to live in a civilized world.
Here is what Mr. Mackler proposes instead of the police:
The right of Black, Brown and Native
American people to control and govern
their own lives and communities, free
from white racist police brutality and
corporate exploitation, can only begin
with a fundamental change in relations
of power. The struggle to disarm, defund, and disband the racist institutions
of police power begins with the emergence of new organs of democratic control of the communities of the oppressed
themselves.
Civil order requires a "well-regulated militia" (as the 2nd Amendment puts it). Today we call that the police department, and it has a monopoly on violence in civil settings. Well-regulated means subject to civilian and ultimately democratic authority, for otherwise it becomes just another street gang (which is always a threat, see, e.g., Ferguson).
Absent the police, chaos ensues. Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of a well-regulated police department, one gets only street gangs. We can call this the Mogadishu solution, in honor of the city which, for the past several decades, has been unable to field a well-regulated militia.
Mr. Mackler definitely has "Trump" on the brain. Indeed, I think The Donald has built a golf course inside his head. The president is mentioned 19 times in the article. Some examples:
"...the posturing, chin up egomaniac President Trump..."
"...the racist bigot President Trump..."
"...fearful, bragging bigot Trump and his family..."
One concludes that Mr. Mackler doesn't like Trump very much, but aside from name-calling he presents no evidence that the man is especially racist. By comparison, George Floyd only earns four mentions.
Nevertheless, let's take Mr. Mackler seriously and take an example of what he would call "racism." Let's consider Chicago--a city I know well, and where my son currently lives. Chicago is really two cities in one--on the North Side it is a wealthy, global, cosmopolitan place--a slightly smaller version of Manhattan or San Francisco. On the South and West Sides it's a mostly Black, very poor, third world city.
My son is part of the global city. He earns six figures working in IT for a major financial institution. His salary is so high because people with his skill set are scarce as hen's teeth and there's a bidding war for his services. The man is entirely self-taught--he never got any formal education in IT--in fact he never attended college at all. Instead he worked toward certifications demonstrating the necessary technical skills. Anybody can do that--there are no admission's criteria, no interviews, nobody cares what race you are, nobody cares where you live or how old you are. Indeed, the certifying companies are often not located in the US.
Get one of these certificates and you will almost certainly get a job--the market is that tight. You'll have to start at the bottom, earning only $80K annually, but after a couple years experience you too will be in the top 10%.
Of course easier said than done. My son worked hard studying for the exams, and then often didn't pass the first time he took them (or even the second time).
So why can't people on the South Side of Chicago do the same? I admit--this is a variant of Hillary's advice to coal miners--that they should all learn to code. And certainly only a minority of South Siders could do what my son did, who is himself only among a small minority of his high school classmates. That said, the number of South Siders working in high-skilled IT professions for major financial institutions borders on zero. Why?
It certainly isn't Trump's fault. Even if the man were a racist, the problem is long-standing and predates him by decades. It's also not the banks' fault--they'd love to hire skilled African-Americans. I actually don't think it's any individual's fault, but if I were to blame one person, that would be Jeff Mackler.
Because my son had the advantage of an at least decent public high school education (nothing fancy--he grew up in small-town Indiana). The Chicago Public Schools, meanwhile, are execrable--basically glorified babysitting clubs. This is substantially the fault of the teachers' unions--who run the schools primarily for the convenience of the teachers and not for the students.
Jeff Mackler is a retired teachers' union hack. So if you gotta blame somebody, he's as good a fall guy as anybody--much better than Trump.
The unions blame parents and the community for their pupils' poor performance. They perennially claim they don't have enough money, despite the fact that Illinois spends
$14,000 per student per year. Effectively, the unions believe that South Side children are ineducable. In other words, the unions--including Mr. Mackler--are racist.
You can't get any IT certifications if you're illiterate and innumerate, thus excluding most graduates of the Chicago Public School system.
The looters--who Mr. Mackler claims were only a "small percentage" of the protesters--destroyed Walmart stores, including those at 83rd St. just off the Dan Ryan Expressway, and in Austin on the West Side. Walmart--as an act of charity--
promises to reopen the unprofitable stores. People do, after all, need to get their groceries and medicines. The city committed to help.
Ensuring competent police protection seems like the least they could do.
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