Why Hillary Clinton Doesnt Deserve the

Black Vote
Michelle Alexander thenation.com February 10, 2016
Hillary Clinton loves black people. And black people love Hillaryor so it seems.
Black politicians have lined up in droves to endorse her, eager to prove their loyalty to
the Clintons in the hopes that their faithfulness will be remembered and rewarded.
Black pastors are opening their church doors, and the Clintons are making themselves
comfortably at home once again, engaging effortlessly in all the usual rituals associated
with courting the black vote, a pursuit that typically begins and ends with Democratic
politicians making black people feel liked and taken seriously. Doing something
concrete to improve the conditions under which most black people live is generally not
required.
Hillary is looking to gain momentum on the campaign trail as the primaries move
out of Iowa and New Hampshire and into states like South Carolina, where large pockets
of black voters can be found. According to some polls, she leads Bernie Sanders by as
much as 60 percent among African Americans. It seems that weblack peopleare her
winning card, one that Hillary is eager to play.
And it seems were eager to get played. Again.
The love affair between black folks and the Clintons has been going on for a long
time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president. He threw on
some shades and played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. It seems silly in
retrospect, but many of us fell for that. At a time when a popular slogan was Its a black
thing, you wouldnt understand, Bill Clinton seemed to get us. When Toni Morrison
dubbed him our first black president, we nodded our heads. We had our boy in the
White House. Or at least we thought we did.
Black voters have been remarkably loyal to the Clintons for more than 25 years.
Its true that we eventually lined up behind Barack Obama in 2008, but its a measure of
the Clinton allure that Hillary led Obama among black voters until he started winning
caucuses and primaries. Now Hillary is running again. This time shes facing a

democratic socialist who promises a political revolution that will bring universal
healthcare, a living wage, an end to rampant Wall Street greed, and the dismantling of
the vast prison statemany of the same goals that Martin Luther King Jr. championed
at the end of his life. Even so, black folks are sticking with the Clinton brand.
What have the Clintons done to earn such devotion? Did they take extreme political
risks to defend the rights of African Americans? Did they courageously stand up to rightwing demagoguery about black communities? Did they help usher in a new era of hope
and prosperity for neighborhoods devastated by deindustrialization, globalization, and
the disappearance of work?
No. Quite the opposite.
***
When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, urban black communities across
America were suffering from economic collapse. Hundreds of thousands of
manufacturing jobs had vanished as factories moved overseas in search of cheaper
labor, a new plantation. Globalization and deindustrialization affected workers of all
colors but hit African Americans particularly hard. Unemployment rates among young
black men had quadrupled as the rate of industrial employment plummeted. Crime
rates spiked in inner-city communities that had been dependent on factory jobs, while
hopelessness, despair, and crack addiction swept neighborhoods that had once been
solidly working-class. Millions of black folksmany of whom had fled Jim Crow
segregation in the South with the hope of obtaining decent work in Northern factories
were suddenly trapped in racially segregated, jobless ghettos.
On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton made the economy his top priority and argued
persuasively that conservatives were using race to divide the nation and divert attention
from the failed economy. In practice, however, he capitulated entirely to the right-wing
backlash against the civil-rights movement and embraced former president Ronald
Reagans agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxesultimately doing more harm to
black communities than Reagan ever did.

We should have seen it coming. Back then, Clinton was the standard-bearer for
the New Democrats, a group that firmly believed the only way to win back the millions
of white voters in the South who had defected to the Republican Party was to adopt the
right-wing narrative that black communities ought to be disciplined with harsh
punishment rather than coddled with welfare. Reagan had won the presidency by dogwhistling to poor and working-class whites with coded racial appeals: railing against
welfare queens and criminal predators and condemning big government. Clinton
aimed to win them back, vowing that he would never permit any Republican to be
perceived as tougher on crime than he.
Just weeks before the critical New Hampshire primary, Clinton proved his toughness by
flying back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally
impaired black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him
that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him for later. After the
execution, Clinton remarked, I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say Im soft on
crime.
As president, Bill Clinton mastered the art of sending mixed cultural messages.
Clinton mastered the art of sending mixed cultural messages, appealing to African
Americans by belting out Lift Every Voice and Sing in black churches, while at the
same time signaling to poor and working-class whites that he was willing to be tougher
on black communities than Republicans had been.
Clinton was praised for his no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to racial politics. He won
the election and appointed a racially diverse cabinet that looked like America. He won
re-election four years later, and the American economy rebounded. Democrats cheered.
The Democratic Party had been saved. The Clintons won. Guess who lost?

***

Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates
of any president in American history. Clinton did not declare the War on Crime or the
War on Drugsthose wars were declared before Reagan was elected and long before
crack hit the streetsbut he escalated it beyond what many conservatives had imagined
possible. He supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder
cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding
for drug-law enforcement.
Clinton championed the idea of a federal three strikes law in his 1994 State of
the Union address and, months later, signed a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens
of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders,
and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police
forces. The legislation was hailed by mainstream-media outlets as a victory for the
Democrats, who were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it
their own.
When Clinton left office in 2001, the United States had the highest rate of
incarceration in the world. Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African
Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though
they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for
drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the
level in 1983. All of the presidents since 1980 have contributed to mass incarceration,
but as Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson recently observed, President
Clintons tenure was the worst.
Some might argue that its unfair to judge Hillary Clinton for the policies her
husband championed years ago. But Hillary wasnt picking out china while she was first
lady. She bravely broke the mold and redefined that job in ways no woman ever had
before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant
influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures. That record,
and her statements from that era, should be scrutinized. In her support for the 1994
crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as
animals. They are not just gangs of kids anymore, she said. They are often the kinds

of kids that are called super-predators. No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about
why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.
Both Clintons now express regret over the crime bill, and Hillary says she supports
criminal-justice reforms to undo some of the damage that was done by her husbands
administration. But on the campaign trail, she continues to invoke the economy and
country that Bill Clinton left behind as a legacy she would continue. So what exactly did
the Clinton economy look like for black Americans? Taking a hard look at this recent
past is about more than just a choice between two candidates. Its about whether the
Democratic Party can finally reckon with what its policies have done to AfricanAmerican communities, and whether it can redeem itself and rightly earn the loyalty of
black voters.
***
An oft-repeated myth about the Clinton administration is that although it was
overly tough on crime back in the 1990s, at least its policies were good for the economy
and for black unemployment rates. The truth is more troubling. As unemployment rates
sank to historically low levels for white Americans in the 1990s, the jobless rate among
black men in their 20s who didnt have a college degree rose to its highest level ever.
This increase in joblessness was propelled by the skyrocketing incarceration rate.
Why is this not common knowledge? Because government statistics like poverty and
unemployment rates do not include incarcerated people. As Harvard sociologist Bruce
Western explains: Much of the optimism about declines in racial inequality and the
power of the US model of economic growth is misplaced once we account for the
invisible poor, behind the walls of Americas prisons and jails. When Clinton left office
in 2001, the true jobless rate for young, non-college-educated black men (including
those behind bars) was 42 percent.
This figure was never reported. Instead, the media claimed that unemployment
rates for African Americans had fallen to record lows, neglecting to mention that this
miracle was possible only because incarceration rates were now at record highs. Young
black men werent looking for work at high rates during the Clinton era because they
were now behind barsout of sight, out of mind, and no longer counted in poverty and
unemployment statistics.

To make matters worse, the federal safety net for poor families was torn to shreds
by the Clinton administration in its effort to end welfare as we know it. In his 1996
State of the Union address, given during his re-election campaign, Clinton declared that
the era of big government is over and immediately sought to prove it by dismantling
the federal welfare system known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC).
The welfare-reform legislation that he signedwhich Hillary Clinton ardently supported
then and characterized as a success as recently as 2008replaced the federal safety net
with a block grant to the states, imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance,
added work requirements, barred undocumented immigrants from licensed professions,
and slashed overall public welfare funding by $54 billion (some was later restored).
Experts and pundits disagree about the true impact of welfare reform, but one
thing seems clear: Extreme poverty doubled to 1.5 million in the decade and a half after
the law was passed. What is extreme poverty? US households are considered to be in
extreme poverty if they are surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person
per day in any given month. We tend to think of extreme poverty existing in Third
World countries, but here in the United States, shocking numbers of people are
struggling to survive on less money per month than many families spend in one evening
dining out. Currently, the United States, the richest nation on the planet, has one of the
highest child-poverty rates in the developed world.
Despite claims that radical changes in crime and welfare policy were driven by a
desire to end big government and save taxpayer dollars, the reality is that the Clinton
administration didnt reduce the amount of money devoted to the management of the
urban poor; it changed what the funds would be used for. Billions of dollars were
slashed from public-housing and child-welfare budgets and transferred to the massincarceration machine. By 1996, the penal budget was twice the amount that had been
allocated to food stamps. During Clintons tenure, funding for public housing was
slashed by $17 billion (a reduction of 61 percent), while funding for corrections was
boosted by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to sociologist Loc
Wacquant effectively making the construction of prisons the nations main housing
program for the urban poor.

Bill Clinton championed discriminatory laws against formerly incarcerated

people that have kept millions of Americans locked in a cycle of poverty and
desperation. The Clinton administration eliminated Pell grants for prisoners seeking
higher education to prepare for their release, supported laws denying federal financial
aid to students with drug convictions, and signed legislation imposing a lifetime ban on
welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offensean exceptionally
harsh provision given the racially biased drug war that was raging in inner cities.
Perhaps most alarming, Clinton also made it easier for public-housing agencies to deny
shelter to anyone with any sort of criminal history (even an arrest without conviction)
and championed the one strike and youre out initiative, which meant that families
could be evicted from public housing because one member (or a guest) had committed
even a minor offense. People released from prison with no money, no job, and nowhere
to go could no longer return home to their loved ones living in federally assisted housing
without placing the entire family at risk of eviction. Purging the criminal element from
public housing played well on the evening news, but no provisions were made for people
and families as they were forced out on the street. By the end of Clintons presidency,
more than half of working-age African-American men in many large urban areas were
saddled with criminal records and subject to legalized discrimination in employment,
housing, access to education, and basic public benefitsrelegated to a permanent
second-class status eerily reminiscent of Jim Crow.
It is difficult to overstate the damage thats been done. Generations have been
lost to the prison system; countless families have been torn apart or rendered homeless;
and a school-to-prison pipeline has been born that shuttles young people from their
decrepit, underfunded schools to brand-new high-tech prisons.
***
It didnt have to be like this. As a nation, we had a choice. Rather than spending
billions of dollars constructing a vast new penal system, those billions could have been
spent putting young people to work in inner-city communities and investing in their
schools so they might have some hope of making the transition from an industrial to a
service-based economy. Constructive interventions would have been good not only for
African Americans trapped in ghettos, but for blue-collar workers of all colors. At the

very least, Democrats could have fought to prevent the further destruction of black
communities rather than ratcheting up the wars declared on them.
Of course, it can be said that its unfair to criticize the Clintons for punishing
black people so harshly, given that many black people were on board with the get
tough movement too. It is absolutely true that black communities back then were in a
state of crisis, and that many black activists and politicians were desperate to get violent
offenders off the streets. What is often missed, however, is that most of those black
activists and politicians werent asking only for toughness. They were also demanding
investment in their schools, better housing, jobs programs for young people, economicstimulus packages, drug treatment on demand, and better access to healthcare. In the
end, they wound up with police and prisons. To say that this was what black people
wanted is misleading at best.
By 1996, the penal budget was twice the amount that had been allocated to food
stamps. To be fair, the Clintons now feel bad about how their politics and policies have
worked out for black people. Bill says that he overshot the mark with his crime
policies; and Hillary has put forth a plan to ban racial profiling, eliminate the sentencing
disparities between crack and cocaine, and abolish private prisons, among other
measures.
But what about a larger agenda that would not just reverse some of the policies
adopted during the Clinton era, but would rebuild the communities decimated by them?
If you listen closely here, youll notice that Hillary Clinton is still singing the same old
tune in a slightly different key. She is arguing that we ought not be seduced by Bernies
rhetoric because we must be pragmatic, face political realities, and not get tempted
to believe that we can fight for economic justice and win. When politicians start telling
you that it is unrealistic to support candidates who want to build a movement for
greater equality, fair wages, universal healthcare, and an end to corporate control of our
political system, its probably best to leave the room.

This is not an endorsement for Bernie Sanders, who after all voted for the 1994
crime bill. I also tend to agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates that the way the Sanders campaign
handled the question of reparations is one of many signs that Bernie doesnt quite get
whats at stake in serious dialogues about racial justice. He was wrong to dismiss
reparations as divisive, as though centuries of slavery, segregation, discrimination,
ghettoization, and stigmatization arent worthy of any specific acknowledgement or
remedy.
But recognizing that Bernie, like Hillary, has blurred vision when it comes to race is not
the same thing as saying their views are equally problematic. Sanders opposed the 1996
welfare-reform law. He also opposed bank deregulation and the Iraq War, both of which
Hillary supported, and both of which have proved disastrous. In short, there is such a
thing as a lesser evil, and Hillary is not it.
The biggest problem with Bernie, in the end, is that hes running as a Democrat
as a member of a political party that not only capitulated to right-wing demagoguery but
is now owned and controlled by a relatively small number of millionaires and
billionaires. Yes, Sanders has raised millions from small donors, but should he become
president, he would also become part of what he has otherwise derided as the
establishment. Even if Bernies racial-justice views evolve, I hold little hope that a
political revolution will occur within the Democratic Party without a sustained outside
movement forcing truly transformational change. I am inclined to believe that it would
be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself.
Of course, the idea of building a new political party terrifies most progressives,
who understandably fear that it would open the door for a right-wing extremist to get
elected. So we play the game of lesser evils. This game has gone on for decades. W.E.B.
Du Bois, the eminent scholar and co-founder of the NAACP, shocked many when he
refused to play along with this game in the 1956 election, defending his refusal to vote
on the grounds that there is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected
despite all I do or say. While the true losers and winners of this game are highly
predictable, the game of lesser evils makes for great entertainment and can now be
viewed 24 hours a day on cable-news networks. Hillary believes that she can win this

game in 2016 because this time shes got us, the black vote, in her back pockether
lucky card.
She may be surprised to discover that the younger generation no longer wants to
play her game. Or maybe not. Maybe well all continue to play along and pretend that we
dont know how it will turn out in the end. Hopefully, one day, well muster the courage
to join together in a revolutionary movement with people of all colors who believe that
basic human rights and economic, racial, and gender justice are not unreasonable, piein-the-sky goals. After decades of getting played, the sleeping giant just might wake up,
stretch its limbs, and tell both parties: Game over. Move aside. Its time to reshuffle this
deck.

Battered cargo: The costs of the police

'nickel ride'
Nancy Phillips and Rose Ciotta
The Philadelphia Inquirer - June 01, 2001

Gino Thompson stepped into the police van an able-bodied man.

He emerged paralyzed from the waist down.
Thompson had been arrested outside a North Philadelphia convenience store
after a drunken argument with a girlfriend over a set of keys. Police put him in the back
of a patrol wagon, his hands cuffed behind his back.
The low, narrow benches had no seat belts. The bare, hard walls had no padding.
As the wagon headed south on Broad Street, toward the 22d District police station, the
driver accelerated - "like they were going to a fire or something," Thompson said.
Then the wagon came to a screeching stop, Thompson and one of the officers recalled.
Thompson was launched headfirst into a partition and suffered a devastating spinalcord injury.
"They took me right out of the store and into the wagon, and that's the last I
walked," said Thompson, father of 11 children. "That wagon changed my whole life."
Thompson was a victim of a secretive ritual in Philadelphia policing: the wild wagon
ride, with sudden starts, stops and turns that send handcuffed suspects hurtling into the
walls.
Top commanders acknowledge that rough rides are an enduring tradition in the
department. The practice even has a name - "nickel ride," a term that harks back to the
days when amusement-park rides cost 5 cents.
An Inquirer investigation documented injuries to 20 people tossed around in
wagons in recent years. Thompson was one of three who suffered spinal injuries, and
one of two permanently paralyzed.
Most of the victims had clean records. They were arrested on minor charges after
talking back to or arguing with police. Typically, the charges were later dismissed.

Those wagon injuries have cost taxpayers more than $2.3 million in legal settlements,
but the Police Department has responded to the problem with a conspicuous lack of
urgency.
No Philadelphia police officer has ever been disciplined for subjecting a
passenger to a wild ride. A four-year-old plan to make the wagons safer has moved at a
crawl - until now.
Those injured in wagons are of widely varying backgrounds and were arrested in
different parts of the city. Yet they described their experiences in strikingly similar
terms.
They spoke of roaring starts, jarring stops and other maneuvers that sent them
rolling across the floor or slamming into walls. With their hands cuffed behind the back,
they could not right themselves or cushion the falls.
The injured include:
A disabled postal worker who had argued with a police officer over access to a
parking lot. She aggravated a hip injury rolling across the floor of a wagon.
A pastor who saw police subduing a suspect and complained that they were hurting him.
She was arrested and loaded into a wagon, where she fell to the floor during a swerving,
bumpy ride.
A fish merchant arrested after arguing with a Parking Authority worker over a
ticket. He was thrown from a wagon bench and broke his tailbone.
Thompson, 40, has relied on a wheelchair since that night in April 1994. The city paid
$600,000 to settle his lawsuit.
But his was not the worst injury in a Philadelphia police wagon.
Calvin Saunders, arrested in South Philadelphia in 1997 driving a stolen car, was
propelled from his seat in the back of a police van and rammed his head against a wall.
He ended up a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. To this day, Saunders
cannot feed, bathe or dress himself and depends on others for his most basic needs. The
city paid him a $1.2 million settlement to help cover his lifetime medical care.
There is no official tally of wagon injuries, no way to know exactly how many
people have been hurt.

The 20 cases documented by The Inquirer were culled from court files and
records of city legal settlements. They likely represent a fraction of all wagon injuries those in which the victims hire lawyers and win financial compensation.
Some cities - responding to injuries far less serious than those documented here have phased out wagons or added safety restraints and padding.
Philadelphia officials have studied the latter idea for years, but not until December did
new wagons with seat belts and padding hit the street.
Only 10 of the department's 86 wagons have those safety features. The rest,
which transport tens of thousands of suspects every year, are identical to those in which
Thompson and Saunders suffered their paralyzing injuries.
Police Commissioner John F. Timoney said he knew of the injury to Saunders but was
not aware that officers intentionally subjected prisoners to jolting wagon rides.
"Such behavior - if it does exist - certainly isn't condoned by myself or anybody else in
this department," Timoney said.
He added: "We are making efforts, as much as humanly possible, to reduce . . .
the number of incidents where prisoners get hurt in the back of these vans."
Timoney's top deputies say that wild wagon rides are mainly a thing of the past.
"We've had some where the person goes flying and hits their head," said Deputy Police
Commissioner John J. Norris, head of the Internal Affairs Bureau. "They get taken for a
ride."
Norris, a 30-year veteran of the force, said such abuses had diminished greatly
and were now "minuscule" in number.
Yet many wagon injuries go undetected by Internal Affairs - even some that resulted in
legal settlements.
Of the 20 cases documented by The Inquirer, 11 were never investigated by the Police
Department. Norris said he was not aware of the injuries until reporters asked about
them.
Of the nine cases that were scrutinized by Internal Affairs, the department took
disciplinary action against the wagon officers in only one - the Thompson case - and
then for infractions committed after the wagon ride, not for the injury itself.
The punishment: a three-day suspension for the driver, Officer Demetrius Beasley.

A year later, Beasley was promoted to sergeant.

Police wagons - white Ford cargo vans with two-person crews - are ubiquitous on
Philadelphia streets. They patrol neighborhoods and also serve as the department's
transport arm, ferrying suspects to district police stations or Police Headquarters for
booking.
Police like the wagons because suspects ride in a rear compartment, with a wall
separating them from the officers in front. That is considered safer than transporting
prisoners in squad cars, which typically are staffed by just one officer.
Wagons are considered especially useful in dealing with combative prisoners or with
disturbances that could require numerous arrests.
The passenger compartment is a hard, spare, windowless space - a shell of
fiberglass and plastic about 4 feet high, 5 1/2 feet wide and 14 feet deep. The sides are
lined with low benches barely wide enough to sit on.
Police commanders say the department purposely did not install seat belts in the older
models so that prisoners could not harm themselves with the straps.
Riding in the darkened back, handcuffed passengers have trouble steadying themselves
or balancing on the narrow benches.
The practice of cuffing suspects' hands behind the back creates a heightened risk
of spinal injury, as Internal Affairs acknowledged in its report on the Calvin Saunders
case.
A physician told investigators that Saunders' injury resembled those caused by
diving accidents. In such cases, the doctor said, the victim hits a hard surface headfirst,
with the head tilted slightly forward.
"This is the natural position of the body when the arms are handcuffed behind
the back," the Internal Affairs report said.
The department says its officers are trained to drive wagons with care and that
most do.
Officer Paul Costello, who drives a wagon in Center City's Ninth Police District, said he
was aware of the risks to passengers and took pains to avoid injuries.

"If somebody gets hurt in the back of that wagon, you have to deal with the
consequences," Costello said.
But an officer with a different attitude can turn a wagon ride into a frightening
and dangerous experience.
John DeVivo says it happened to him.
On March 31, 1995, he was behind the counter at Ocean City Seafood, his family's
fish market on Lancaster Avenue near 41st Street, when he noticed a Parking Authority
worker ticketing his wife's car.
An argument ensued. The parking-enforcement officer called police and accused
DeVivo of throwing bottles at her. He denied it.
He was arrested, handcuffed, and taken by wagon to the Southwest Detective Division.
"We went two blocks, and they slammed on the brakes," said DeVivo, now 36.
He was thrown from the seat and landed on the floor, fracturing his tailbone, medical
records show.
DeVivo, who had no criminal record, sued and collected $11,000. As in all the
legal settlements, the city did not admit police wrongdoing. The assault charges against
DeVivo were later dismissed.
When the ride was over, DeVivo said, he asked the wagon officers why it had been
so rough. He said they told him a dog ran in front of the wagon.
"They were laughing," he said.
Robert Schwartz Sr. broke one of the vertebrae in his neck during a wagon ride. His
spinal cord was not damaged, but he said he still suffers pain and discomfort.
Schwartz was arrested April 15, 1998, at Unruh and Bustleton Avenues on a charge of
drunken driving - to which he later pleaded guilty.
Officers put him in a wagon and headed south on Interstate 95, toward Police
Headquarters in Center City.
"All of a sudden, the brakes were applied very sharp," Schwartz said in a
statement to Internal Affairs investigators. "Since I wasn't strapped in or anything, I fell
to the floor onto my back."
Schwartz, 44, said he was "propelled forward very quickly" and smashed his head
into a wall.

"I heard a loud snap," he said. "I knew something happened."

Officer Thomas A. Walker Jr., the wagon driver, said in an interview that he made
no abrupt stops and had no idea how Schwartz was injured.
The city nonetheless paid Schwartz $110,000 as settlement.
"There is no dispute that the plaintiff suffered a neck injury," a deputy city
solicitor wrote in an internal memo obtained by The Inquirer. "A Philadelphia jury could
return a very large negligence verdict against police officers based on their alleged
driving."
Bernadette Moore was stunned to find herself in the darkened back of a patrol
wagon, lying handcuffed on the floor.
Moore, a postal worker from Southwest Philadelphia, had quarreled with a police officer
on the night of Sept. 29, 1996.
He had blocked access to the parking lot of a strip mall at 61st Street and
Passyunk Avenue as part of a crackdown on drag racing.
Moore, 34, wanted to drive into the lot to bring dinner to her boyfriend, who worked
nearby.
She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. The charge was later
dismissed and a city lawyer wrote that the rookie officer "overreacted."
But that was of no help to Moore that night. She was handcuffed, and a patrol wagon
was summoned.
Moore, who suffers from degenerative arthritis and had had a hip replacement,
had trouble getting into the vehicle. So two officers picked her up and put her inside on
the floor.
Moore described the ride to the 12th District police station as terrifying.
"They started swerving and slamming on the brakes, and I started flipping all
over - and I'm handcuffed," she said. "I was petrified. . . . I couldn't believe it was
happening."
Moore, who injured her shoulder and back, collected a $15,000 settlement.
The Rev. Carlice Harris got acquainted with Philadelphia police wagons Feb. 21, 1999. It
was a Sunday morning, and she was on her way to church.

Miss Harris, who lives in Edgewater Park, was driving through North Philadelphia,
headed for Christ Temple Baptist Church at 16th Street and Girard Avenue, where her
congregation was waiting for her to deliver the morning sermon.
She never made it to the pulpit.
In the 5200 block of Montour Street, Miss Harris saw four police officers
struggling to subdue a suspect. She said a plainclothes officer kicked the man while the
others held him down.
She jumped out of her car and demanded the officer's badge number. Police
arrested her. They said later that she was interfering with the arrest and drawing a
crowd.
Wearing a mink coat and high heels, Miss Harris was handcuffed, put in a patrol wagon,
and taken to the 15th District police station.
"I ended up sliding all over the place," she said. "It was a very rough ride - bumpy, up,
up and down hills. They seemed to be just rushing, and I wasn't no murderer."
Miss Harris, 44, injured her face, knee and wrists. She later received a $22,500
settlement from the city. The disorderly conduct charge against her was dismissed.
"I didn't look like a derelict. I'm a pastor," she said. "I thought, 'I can't believe this is
happening in America.' "
The "nickel ride" has been around for decades, winked at by generations of police
commanders and commissioners.
Rookies learn about it as "part of your street training," said Norman A. Carter Jr.,
a retired Philadelphia police corporal whose 25 years on the force included a six-month
stint as a wagon officer.
When the arresting officers wanted to punish someone in custody, Carter said,
they would tell the wagon crew to "take him for a ride."
The practice persists, current and former officers say, because it is a nearly
foolproof way to get back at someone who resists arrest or otherwise angers police.
Officers out to settle a score need not use their fists.
Because there usually are no witnesses, injuries can be attributed to busy traffic, bad
roads, or a sudden stop made to avoid a cat or dog.

A nickel ride is a way for officers to assert their authority when someone
challenges it, said James B. Jordan, a lawyer who reviewed numerous wagon injuries as
the Police Department's in-house corruption monitor from 1996 through 1999.
"What better way to show who's in control than stopping at a light and slamming on the
brakes, knowing that they're going to go flying?" Jordan asked. "And maybe the prisoner
was yelling, and maybe this will shut him up."
Chief Inspector Frank M. Pryor, head of the department's patrol operations, said
rough rides were once a common method of punishing recalcitrant prisoners.
In the 1970s, he said, the police ranks included wagon officers who were eager to lash
out at uncooperative suspects.
"If you pissed them off," he said, "you were going to get the ride of your life . . .
and nobody did anything about it."
But Pryor said such behavior was no longer tolerated.
"If we see that happen, we're on it now."
Gino Thompson remembers that it was dark in the back of Emergency Patrol Wagon
2202.
Police had arrested him about 1:40 a.m. on April 10, 1994, at the A-Plus Mini
Market at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue.
Thompson has a record of petty offenses, but he was not charged with a crime that
night. Police records state he was taken into custody because of "intoxication."
The wagon headed for the 22d District police station, about a mile away.
"They rolled down Broad Street . . . and they slammed on the brakes, and I slid from the
back all the way up to the front," Thompson said in an interview. "When I hit my head, I
saw a flash of bright light, and I couldn't feel my hands anymore.
"As soon as my head hit the wall, boom, I heard them laughing."
An Internal Affairs report and a summary of the case by city lawyers describe what
happened next:
When the wagon arrived at the police station, the driver, Demetrius Beasley, told
Thompson to stand up.
"I can't walk," Thompson replied.

Beasley and his partner, Kevin Powell, dragged Thompson out of the wagon and put him
in a holding cell, facedown on the floor.
He lay there, sleeping, for more than an hour, without medical attention. Then, an
attendant heard him shouting: "Officer, officer, I'm hurt!" and complaining that he had
no feeling in his legs.
An ambulance was summoned.
At Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, doctors determined that Thompson had
dislocated two vertebrae at the base of his neck, injuring his spinal cord.
Questioned months later by Internal Affairs, Beasley said he drove the wagon safely,
never exceeding 20 mph, and made no abrupt stops.
Powell had been dismissed from the force by then. A woman had accused him of rape - a
charge of which he was later acquitted. Powell declined to talk to Internal Affairs about
the Thompson case.
Beasley was sanctioned for "neglect of duty" - for failing to get medical attention for
Thompson as soon he complained of paralysis. Beasley was suspended for three days.
But no one was held accountable for causing Thompson's injury. Internal Affairs
investigators wrote that they "could not prove or disprove that the wagon came to a
sudden stop."
Months later, after Thompson sued, the City Solicitor's Office did its own investigation
and reached a different conclusion.
The city lawyers interviewed Powell, now a defendant in a lawsuit and depending on the
city to represent him.
Powell told the lawyers that Beasley speeded down Broad Street that night and then
slammed on the brakes, just as Thompson had described.
Beasley and Powell declined to be interviewed for this article.
An internal memo from a lawyer in the City Solicitor's Office explained why the city paid
$600,000 to settle Thompson's lawsuit:
"The plaintiff is likely to be able to prove that the officers gave him a 'nickel ride' of
exactly the kind that he described."
The damage inflicted
can last a lifetime

Today, Thompson relies on a wheelchair to get around his tiny Northeast Philadelphia
home. He spends much of the day on the living-room sofa, where the television offers a
welcome distraction from lingering pain.
After nine operations, he said, he still suffers pain in his right arm and neck.
Thompson once did odd jobs. Now, the family depends on the income of his wife,
Shelby, a nursing-home aide.
On good days, Thompson is able to maneuver himself into a specially equipped van and
drive her to work.
"That [police] wagon changed a lot," said Thompson, whose 11 children range in age
from 5 to 19. "I can't play football with my kids. I can't play basketball. I was a gymnast,
a singer, a dancer. I did it all."
Thompson said he was still angry at Beasley. He was furious to learn of the officer's
punishment.
"You think a three-day suspension is justifiable for what he did?" he asked. "That isn't
even a slap on the wrists."
Thompson said he was saddened to learn that wagon injuries had continued.
"I wish it wouldn't happen to the next person," he said. "I wouldn't wish it on a rat."

Radicalcritique.org

IntJ of Radical Critique 1:1 (2012)

Black Out: Michelle Alexander's Operational Whitewash

The New Jim Crow Reviewed
Osel, Joseph, D.
Alumnus, Seattle University, Graduate Dept. of Psychology
The Evergreen State College, Dept. of Society, Politics, Behavior & Change
______________________________________________________________________________
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By Michelle Alexander, The New Press, 1st edition: January 5, 2010; Paperback 2012;
IBSN-10: 1595581030; ISBN-13: 978-1595581037

Michelle Alexander's new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness is strange and omnipresent, coming to us under the often co-opted
banner of the noble cause. I first stumbled onto Alexander's book by accident,
finding a mention of it somewhere and following up to satisfy my own curiosity.
After my initial discovery I found the likable, knowledgeable and well-meaning
Alexander speaking about her book on various radio and television programs,
finding most of her stand-alone statements accurate, important and worthy of
discussion.
Upon finishing her book I recently attended a rally in Seattle in support of the family
of Trayvon Martin where references to "The New Jim Crow" were abundant, the
signs and chants of the "No New Jim Crow Coalition" ringing throughout the event
-- the strangely backward chant of "no peace, no justice" adopted quickly by the
crowd. When visiting the home of a white hippy friend who lives in the city's
gentrifying Central District a pristine copy of Alexander's book sat proudly on her
living-room bookshelf. During a chance encounter with a local civil rights attorney,
upon exposing myself as a sociologist, Alexander's book was recommended right
on cue, "The New Jim Crow is our new Bible!" the young lawyer told me.
An Analysis for the "Colorblind"
These recommendations aside, The New Jim Crow is "not for everyone," that is,
according to Alexander. So who then is The New Jim Crow for? According to the
preface, the target audience for the book is well-meaning middle-class+ liberals
who, for various reasons of privilege (or "lack of information"), have failed to grasp
how and why racialized policies of social control persist in the so-called "age of
colorblindness." Of course, the irony here is that the "age of colorblindness" does
not exist, save for the theoretical ideals of Alexander's audience (i.e. the non-racist,
enlightened, multiculturalist readers). Moving forward in this sense, then, the entire
book operates on a falsehood designed to massage the reader's "enlightened"
sense of self -- and this is where things begin to go wildly awry.
Alexander's preface makes the liberal-humanist, bourgeois framework of her
anemic structural analysis clear. In turn, as the astute social philosopher might

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IntJ of Radical Critique 1:1 (2012)

expect, the most striking feature ofThe New Jim Crow is not found in its analysis of
"mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness" or in its repudiation of the cleverly
named "war on drugs," but rather in the stark limitation that Alexander imposes on
her critical discourse -- her first ideological gesture to bar the framework of
liberal-humanism from her critical-ethical-historical scope. This limitation (imposed
for the comfort of her expected audience and perhaps for Alexander herself) is why
The New Jim Crow offers no serious or sustained discourse on the harder and larger
issues that are, in-fact, central to her subject(s) [1].
Alexander's analysis emphatically and categorically ignores the systemic violence
endemic to the socio-economic order, its origins and persistence in contemporary
society. She provides this order, this undeniable defining critical context -- which
informs and perpetuates the logic of mass incarceration, whose sole function it is to
reinforce and protect the interests and sensibilities of the upper-classes -- with
anonymity and exclusive critical immunity.
The symptom of this critical immunity and the analytical result of The New Jim Crow
is exemplified by the well-known expression cant see the forest for the trees. To
illustrate this one need go no further than to point out that while Alexander's book
claims to be concerned with exposing and describing the history and mechanisms of
mass incarceration or the American "caste system," which affects the poor and
people of color systematically and disproportionately, her work systematically,
strangely, and emphatically excludes these voices.
That said, the content of Alexander's well-researched, tip-toeing book may be
enlightening or nauseating depending on the reader's existing understanding of
mass incarceration in the United States and their ability to think critically and
contextually about complicated social issues. Privileged or sheltered progressive
liberals, or for that matter any individual with the garden variety college education,
as well as the vast majority of progressive academics, will likely find The New Jim
Crow stimulating, maybe cathartic and probably worth recommending. On the other
hand, those with any kind of serious background in Black philosophy, history,
criticism, or even a passing interest in self-determination should brace themselves
for the all too familiar: a breathtaking descent into the nether regions of
Eurocentrism, in all its clever disguises.
Black Out / Operational Whitewash
Although Alexander offers some insightful analysis about the American drug war,
policy making and various other things, the entire contextual frame of her work can
be characterized by two words: bizarre omission.
According to Alexander's history, there is no Malcolm X or George Jackson, no
Frantz Fanon, no Richard Wright, no Eldridge Cleaver, no Angela Davis, no Huey P.
Newton, no Bobby Seale, no Black Panther Party, no Black Power Movement, no
self-determination, no prison-struggles, no political prisoners. Suspiciously there is
almost no 1960's, no 1970's, no Black History, no Black Criticism, no Black
Radicalism, no radicalism, no class struggle.

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There is no serious or sustained critique of colonialism, imperialism or capitalism.

There is no discussion of international law, implicit racism, of privileged ignorance or
prosperity, no acknowledgment that the likely champions of the text are the direct
and continued benefactors of the "caste system" they so deplore. There is no
connection to any of this. None.
All of this: the radical voices of America's black and brown inmates, the strong
voices of anti-oppression, anti-imperialism, anti-exploitation, the voices of revolt,
rebellion, revolution, Black and Brown power, the most salient historical texts,
speeches, time-periods, and philosophies -- all these things have been miraculously
purged from Alexander's lens in a sort of operational whitewash, a black out,
apparently unnoticed. How is this possible given the subject of her book? How is it
even passable? Could one write a book about the rain, but never mention the
weather? Could one write a book about the weather and never mention the
atmosphere, its history or defining patterns? Here we have an instant classic:
whitewashed language, whitewashed social relations, whitewashed history,
whitewashed brutality, a vast rhetorical and historical facelift where the most
relevant and affected voices on the topic at hand are safely expunged from the
discussion, from relevance, from history.
With all this precluded for the comfort of Alexander's readers (or for some other
reason) while the bulk of The New Jim Crow is dedicated to the logical treatment of
these very subjects, her thesis, however luxuriously poignant and possibility useful,
ultimately fails. Its logical conclusions simply cannot be drawn without producing
internal contradictions that are endless. The function of the rhetorical limitation in
The New Jim Crow is to obscure these contradictions and the repercussions of
these strange obfuscations, and subsequent maneuvers of concealment produce
analytical limitations that render Alexander's overall analysis demonstrably
ahistorical, and thus inconsequential in any seriously critical sense. Put simply, The
New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in Age of Colorblindness sadly is a book that
happily implies the annihilation of its own thesis.
Notes
[1] In this case subject(s) refers both to Alexanders topic as well as those groups
and individuals most affected by the issues (situation) under consideration.
Joseph D. Osel is a sociological researcher and writer. His impending book is called
Revolutionary-Antiracism: Resistance & Camaraderie In Theory & Praxis.

American Views on Race Relations

by David A. Graham, theatlantic.com

July 22

White Americans are increasingly gloomy about the state of race relations, but that may just reflect increased attention to
longstanding problems.

Protesters jeer at a Ku Klux Klan march through Columbia, South Carolina, on July 18. Chris Keane / Reuters
Photo by: Chris Keane / Reuters

You dont need a pollster to tell you that race relations are not especially good at the moment in the United Statesall you need is a
quick survey of headlines. But a new CBS/New York Times poll confirms it.
Fifty-seven percent of Americans believe race relations are bad, versus 37 percent who disagree. (Among whites, 56 percent think
relations are bad; among blacks, its 68 percent.) Four in 10 Americans, among both black and white respondents, believe things are
getting worse. The last time polls showed results this bad was immediately after the Rodney King riots in 1992.
Polling is an important barometer for whats going on in the nation, but its a second-order tool. A poll measures whether people feel
race relations are getting worse, not whether race relations are actually getting worse. Its possible that what this poll actually shows is
less a material change in race relations, than greater awareness among white Americans of racial divisions that were previously
invisible to them. This poll offers some strong evidence for this theory.
From the many instances of killings of and violence against black Americans by police, to the Charleston massacre, to the increasing
awareness of disparate treatment of blacks by the criminal-justice system, the news is suddenly full of evidence of racial divisions,
which are being covered nearly constantly and with new sophistication. One of the most interesting graphs the Times included is this
one, showing the changing number of blacks and whites who think race relations are good:

Do you think race relations in the U.S. are good or bad?

The New York Times

The portion of black Americans who think race relations are good has reverted to where it was in July 2008 (28 now versus 29 then),
after a number of years of increased optimism. Compare that to the trend in the white population. Theres been a nearly 20-percent
drop in the number of whites who think race relations are good.
Black Americans didnt need the media to tell them that policing was unequal in their communities, that disproportionate numbers of
blacks were behind bars, or that economic outcomes for whites and blacks were widely divergent. They knew it in 2008, and they
know it today. White Americans were, until the recent spike in media coverage, largely shielded from these realities. As the pollster
Robert Jones has noted, most white people have only other white people in their closest social circle.
Most of the change here isnt in the actual substance of race relationsthough, to be sure, debates over issues like the Confederate
battle flag do inflame tensions in the short run. Most of the change is in how much more white Americans see those tensions every
day.
The poll offers even more evidence that this is about a dawning consciousness. For example, as they have in every CBS and CBS/NYT
poll since the 1990s, a strong majority of people of both races believe that race relations are good in their own communities. The
number of people who think theres been racial progress since the 1960s has remained mostly constant.
The Times frames this poll as an age of Obama question, using the now rather clich point that many people thought the presidents
election would herald a new age of racial harmony; as the poll shows, it has not come. Trying to disaggregate Obamas impact on
perceptions of race relations in the poll from other factors is tough. Half of whites disapprove of how hes handling race, versus 40
percent who approve, while nearly three-quarters of blacks approve. A quarter of whites think the Obama administration favors
blacks over whites; only 2 percent of blacks agree. An African American woman in Georgia told the Times she expected this: Im not
surprised its gotten worse under President Obama, because hes black, and so he already had that strike against him once he got into
office.
But about half of respondents, a clear plurality of both whites and blacks, thought that Obamas presidency had had no effect on race
relations. That makes a great deal of sense. The highly publicized cases of race tension have been largely outside of Obamas control,
and until recently he has tended to take an extremely muted approach to racial issues. It seems plausible, and maybe likely, that
Michael Brown is a bigger factor here than Barack Obama.
This theorythat whats driving these bleak impressions about race relations is whites awakening to realities that were always extant
but had been invisible to themsuggests that the results may actually be cause for optimism. Actively grappling with racial tensions is
crucial to solving them; ignoring them may obscure the wounds, but it wont heal them. Although more bleakly realistic perceptions of
race relations may not lead to improvement, they are a prerequisite to bridging the divide and producing a more positive view of
relations between blacks and whites.

Self-Segregation: Why It's So Hard for Whites to

Understand Ferguson
by Robert P. Jones, theatlantic.com

August 21

One reason for the racial divide over Michael Brown's death is that white Americans tend to talk mostly to other white people.

The shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the anger poured out in
response by Fergusons mostly black population, has snapped the issue of race into national focus. The incident has precipitated a
much larger conversation, causing many Americans to question just how far racial equality and race relations have come, even in an
era of a black president and a black attorney general.
Polls since the incident demonstrate that black and white Americans see this incident very differently. A Huffington Post/YouGov poll
finds that while Americans overall are divided over whether Brown's shooting was an isolated incident (35 percent) or part of a
broader pattern in the way police treat black men (39 percent), this balance of opinion dissipates when broken down by race. More
than three-quarters (76 percent) of black respondents say that the shooting is part of a broader pattern, nearly double the number of
whites who agree (40 percent). Similarly, a Pew Research Center poll found that overall the country is divided over whether Browns
shooting raises important issues about race that need to be discussed (44 percent) or whether the issue of race is getting more
attention than it deserves (40 percent). However, black Americans favor the former statement by a four-to-one margin (80 percent
vs. 18 percent) and at more than twice the level of whites (37 percent); among whites, nearly half (47 percent) believe the issue of race
is getting more attention than it deserves.
Clearly white Americans see the broader significance of Michael Browns death through radically different lenses than black
Americans. There are myriad reasons for this divergence, from political ideologieswhich, for example, place different emphases on

law and order versus citizens rightsto fears based in racist stereotypes of young black men. But the chief obstacle to having an
intelligent, or even intelligible, conversation across the racial divide is that on average white Americans live in communities that face
far fewer problems and talk mostly to other white people.
A 2012 PRRI survey found that black Americans report higher levels of problems in their communities compared to whites. Black
Americans were, on average, nearly 20 percentage points more likely than white Americans to say a range of issues were major
problems in their community: lack of good jobs (20 points), lack of opportunities for young people (16 points), lack of funding for
public schools (19 points), crime (23 points), and racial tensions (18 points).

Disparities in Reported Community Problems, by Race

Public Religion Research Institute, Race, Class, and Culture Survey, September 2012
These incongruous community contexts certainly set the stage for cultural conflict and misunderstanding, but the paucity of
integrated social networksthe places where meaning is attached to experienceamplify and direct these experiences toward
different ends. Drawing on techniques from social network analysis, PRRIs 2013 American Values Survey asked respondents to
identify as many as seven people with whom they had discussed important matters in the six months prior to the survey. The results
reveal just how segregated white social circles are.
Overall, the social networks of whites are a remarkable 91 percent white.* White American social networks are only one percent black,
one percent Hispanic, one percent Asian or Pacific Islander, one percent mixed race, and one percent other race. In fact, fully threequarters (75 percent) of whites have entirely white social networks without any minority presence. This level of social-network racial
homogeneity among whites is significantly higher than among black Americans (65 percent) or Hispanic Americans (46 percent).

Racial and Ethnic Makeup of White Social Networks

PRRI, American Values Survey, 2013

For me, a white man, hearing accounts of how black parents teach their sons to deal with police is difficult to grasp as reality.
Jonathan Capeharts Washington Post column after the Brown shooting contained a personal and poignant account of his mothers
lessons to him as a young black man:

How I shouldnt run in public, lest I arouse undue suspicion. How I most definitely should not run with anything
in my hands, lest anyone think I stole something. The lesson included not talking back to the police, lest you give
them a reason to take you to jailor worse. And I was taught to never, ever leave home without identification.

And national survey data suggests that the need for this kind of parental coaching persists in the black community today. When given
a choice between two traits that respondents believe their child should have, a 2012 PRRI survey found that African Americans are far
more likely than white Americans to favor obedience over self-reliance. By a margin of three to one (75 percent to 25 percent),
African Americans preferred obedience to self-reliance; among white Americans, only 41 percent preferred obedience, compared
to 59 percent who preferred self-reliance.
In discussing these survey findings during a panel discussion, Michael McBride, an African-American pastor who directs Lifelines to
Healing, a campaign to prevent neighborhood violence, related his personal story of being beaten by two white police officers in
March 1999. He described it this way:

This happened because they felt like I was not being obedient enough. The way they saw the world and me in
their world created a certain kind of fear and reaction to my actions that caused me harm. I live with that

experience as many folks of color live with that experience.

But these are not stories most whites are socially positioned to hear. Widespread social separation is the root of divergent reactions
along racial lines to events such as the Watts riots, the O.J. Simpson verdict, and, more recently, the shootings of Trayvon Martin and
Michael Brown. For most white Americans, #hoodies and #handsupdontshoot and the images that have accompanied these hashtags
on social media may feel alien and off-putting given their communal contexts and social networks.
If perplexed whites want help understanding the present unrest in Ferguson, nearly all will need to travel well beyond their current
social circles.
Updated, November 25, 2014: Since I wrote this post, PRRI gathered new data that shows a few other dimensions of the racial divide
over Browns shooting. PRRI's American Values Survey was in the field before and after the shooting, and it captured a snapshot of
divergent white and non-white reactions. Before the shooting, there was a 15-point gap between the attitudes of white and non-white
Americans: 44 percent of whites agreed that blacks and other minorities receive equal treatment in the criminal-justice system,
compared to 29 percent of non-whites. In six days of interviews conducted immediately after Brown's shooting (from August 10 to 15),
the gap had doubled to 32 points, with 48 percent of whites, compared to just 16 percent of non-whites, agreeing that the criminaljustice systems treats blacks and other minorities fairly. Theres more information on the results here.

* This post originally stated that the social networks of whites are 93 percent white. We regret the error.