With 7 percent of the student body at the University of Missouri being African American, some students took matters into their own hands and started to protest the lack of action from the administration. They called for the president and the chancellor of the university to step down. Some students even went to extreme measures by going on a hunger strike. All of this was to no avail: no one listened. Neither students’ protests nor their own health mattered.

The administration did not listen until the Missouri University football team refused to take the field during their next game if nothing changed. Within 24 hours, the president and Chancellor of the university put in their slips for resignation. That abrupt change caused people to ask why it was that angry protesters and hunger strikers got no attention at the university, but the football team did.

I have to assume that the answer is money. College football is a major source of income for such major universities. They generate billions of dollars each year. So when you hit them in the pockets, you get their attention. Many college football teams are under contracts with television networks and have endorsements from various companies.

During the civil rights movements, African Americans boycotted buses and all white-owned stores to get the attention of the people who were treating them unfairly. African Americans showed discipline and unity, and from that came a change. The University of Missouri football team and student body may be on to something. Minorities are big consumers in this country, and also those who are most oppressed and discriminated against. I could say African Americans should go back and take a page from the Civil Rights movement and hit the oppressor in the pocket. Let’s let history repeat itself.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
  • Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
  • Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
  • Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson
  • Post prison services would stem system’s revolving door – Michael Wheelock
  • You’re vote doesn’t matter as much as your money – David Brown
  • How schools emulate prisons, and prepare students for them – Richard Pimiental
  • Cars that are good for society – David DeGrasse
  • PTA involvement instead of prison mentality in schools – Mustapha Bojang
  • Prison is about re-socialization, not corrections – Christopher Marsich
  • ACI administrator praises Prison Op/Ed Project – Ralph Orleck
  • Alcohol, incarceration and what it means to matter – Laura Baumgardner
  • Was Myron Magnet a genius or just a Republican? – Danny Mercure
  • Ike was right: Military industrial complex corrupted economy – Christopher Marsich
  • Second Chance Act deserves second chance at full funding – Christopher Rocheleau and Adrian Rojas
  • Who poses a bigger threat to US: Ben Carson or Ahmed Mohamed? – David Brown

Rhode Island’s Democratic Speaker on race: “I don’t think anybody in society views any particular nationality as having any privilege over any other.”

This denies the experiences of many minorities. They know whites have greater privileges in education, employment, housing, banking and criminal justice.

Hardships perpetuate one another: Poor education leads to poor job prospects—and these impoverish housing opportunities. Payday lenders scam often poor minorities who also suffer increased arrests, bail, sentences and fines.

Rhode Island’s fourth-grade reading proficiency is 48 percent for whites; 18 percent for blacks; 17 percent for Latinos. Should we blame minority kids? No, students from low-income families score 19 percent, so poor minorities rank far lower than students from white families with better schools.

Financial health varies widely by race: The Census Bureau reports black median income for 2013 is $34,600; Latino, $41,000; white, $58,300. Lasting low income affects resources: Pew Research Center reports 2013 median household wealth for blacks is $11,000; Latinos, $13,700; whites, $141,900. The wealth of one white family equals ten Latino or thirteen black families.

White privilege is powerful. Minority disadvantages are painful—and keep accumulating.

Consider housing. Poor neighborhoods are often minority while upscale neighborhoods are overwhelmingly white. Public housing projects built in poor areas preserve segregation.

Also, mortgage discrimination continues long after redlining. For example, though whites had similar credit ratings, Wells Fargo steered 4,000 blacks and Latinos into subprime mortgages and charged 30,000 minorities increased fees averaging more than $2,500. Predatory mortgage brokers often targeted minorities and schemed foreclosing quickly on the first late payment.

The cycle of poverty is vicious: Poor housing reflects poor income, and these deficits lead to children’s destitute education. Mass incarceration often penalizes offenders’ families with costly travel expenses, bail, attorney’s fees, and phone surcharges. Payday lenders’ outrageous tactics intensify poverty. Thus, poor communities remain perpetually impoverished.

Mattiello affirms the adage, “high tide lifts all boats,” but this comparison fails: While the rich get richer, everyone else’s economic boat has not lifted for 30 years. Indeed, Financial Times reports income distribution so favors the wealthy that, if 1979 levels held, the bottom 80 percent of families would now earn another $11,000 a year.

Could your family use another $11,000 each year? Now consider the even greater loss to many minorities who, compared to whites, already have immense disparities in income and wealth.

Mattiello states, “To a certain extent we have to give particular attention to the minority community,” but also asserts some don’t “take advantage” of opportunities—“and that’s something that I quite frankly don’t understand.” But the disadvantage is understandable: Equal opportunity is a fiction.

It’s not that only some minorities take advantage of opportunities. Instead of implying victims of systemic discrimination are callous or lazy, we must accept that opportunities available to whites are often unavailable to minorities. Need more convincing?

A 2002 Harvard study found whites and blacks, controlled for similar qualifications, had vastly different employment prospects. The callback rate from job applications for whites was 34 percent; blacks, 14 percent. Moreover, whites with criminal records received callbacks 17 percent of the time; blacks, 5 percent.

This is shocking: Whites with criminal records received more callbacks than blacks who committed no crimes.

The Harvard study confirmed 1994 results by Sociologist Marc Bendick, Jr., et al.—but the disparity between blacks and whites without a record was 24 points, not 20.

Many arrested—but not convicted—are also treated as criminals. Harvard study authors indicate these unjust employment denials afflict millions of low-income Americans, especially people of color.

Blacks and Latinos need more than a high tide of nearly nonexistent opportunity: Mass incarceration must be remedied; banking scams need reform; and enormous gaps in income, wealth, education and housing require ‘affirmative action.’

Let’s hope Speaker Mattiello opens his eyes: The evidence for white privilege is overwhelming.

Rev. Harry Rix has 60 articles on spirituality and ethics, stunning photos, and 1200 quotations for reflection available at www.quoflections.org. ©2015 Harry Rix. All rights reserved.

• Late night racist literature drop blights East Side of Providence

The killing of nine people in the church in Charleston South Carolina was perhaps the most virulent face of the racism that lurks barely beneath the surface, a legacy of our history in the U.S., but there are many smaller ways it is expressed every single day. The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that works to address the root causes of violence and oppression in communities worldwide, works to help communities face that legacy and to address the many faces of hate and fear.

Arresting the people who are pushing their agenda of hate and fear will arrest a person, but not the problem. We will make no progress as a society if we believe that justice is done simply by punishing one or more white supremacists. Racism is not just a historic problem or the work of a few individual “bad apples.” Racism – whether by direct intent or deeply entrenched structural factors – is a problem in all aspects of American life, including economics, housing, health care, criminal justice, policing, education, media coverage, among others.

We are living in a moment when many people in this country and abroad are seeing our nation’s addictions to racism and violence for what they are: social ills woven deeply into the tapestry of our society. This is a vital social challenge for all of us, and one that white people have particular responsibility to address. None of us will be truly secure until our systems are built to protect the wellbeing of all people.

Whether facing the actions of a gunman propelled by racist philosophies and a culture of violence that our society as a whole is accountable for, or the distribution of flyers drawing on the imagery of the Ku Klux Klan, each of us must recommit to ending these evils at their root. Acknowledging the effects of generations of racism and violence on our current condition is a first step. Taking concrete actions to transform our society, institutions, and relationships to end racism and violence is the next. We each have a part to play. And white people in particular need to step up, break the silence that can be understood to be complicity, stand with our neighbors who have been targeted, and say “no, this is not ok. Not in my neighborhood. Not in my state.”

David R. Carlin recently shared his life experience through his September 20th commentary in the Providence Journal, as a youth growing up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in the 1950s and recounted what it was like to live in a tenement on Beverage Hill Avenue, with no hot water, and having to sacrifice having a car in order to pay for a sick sibling’s medical bills.  Unfortunately too many Americans of all backgrounds have similar stories of struggle, and today the widening of gaps between the classes is a pervasive societal issue.  I have to admit I had nowhere near as arduous a life growing up in Rhode Island. My siblings and I were born and raised in a family of color in Newport with two educated, hardworking and loving parents.

Mr. Carlin recounted his experience as a youth without privilege to explain his belief that there is no “white privilege” in the greater American society.  He contends that the conception he and other white Americans have been afforded certain opportunities solely based on their race, and that black Americans have been denied such opportunities, is mistaken.  The whole of his essay can be summed up as this: white privilege is an excuse and black American’s are solely responsible for their current destructive experience and station in society.

As Mr. Carlin explains “if the average black is worse off than the average white in almost every category of well-being — health, wealth, income, education, high culture, gainful employment, etc. — this is chiefly because of an appallingly dysfunctional subculture that is pervasive among the black lower classes.”

What Mr. Carlin fails to understand is that white privilege is not explicit, and when you are the beneficiary, it is even harder to recognize its existence.  Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that drug use rates between white and black users are incredibly comparable.  Yet while black people make up only 14 percent of regular drug users, they account for 37 percent of those arrested (via Human Rights Watch).  Jeffrey Fagan, a Columbia University Law professor found that under New York’s controversial Stop & Frisk policy between 2004 and 2009 less than 1 perncet of stops recovered weapons, and of those found they were more frequently recovered from white people.  But still, black people were disproportionately stopped as compared to whites and were 14 percent more likely to be subjected to force.  It should not be lost on anyone as to why Stop & Frisk was recently ruled unconstitutional.

These are just some of the many data points which corroborate the fact that the United States has always had and continues to perpetuate a very real and dangerous problem when it comes to the lack of equality between the races. A fantastic source is Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which details the history of our current criminal justice and prison systems and how they function to continually oppress Black and Brown citizens of this country.

I think the unfortunate reality is that people like Mr. Carlin too often are misinformed on what white privilege actually is, and also severely lack day to day contact with people of color.

Someone who denies white privilege is not necessarily racist, they are just ignorant to the reality we live in due to the privilege bubble in which they conveniently exist.  So in the spirit of educating over arguing, I have made a quick reference list for Mr. Carlin and the others in denial so they too can be better informed and therefore, better equipped to discuss race in America.

• White privilege is being sentenced to rehab for drug use because you’re “sick” and need to be treated, not incarcerated because you are deemed inherently dangerous.
• White privilege is reminding people to always remember Pearl Harbor, The Alamo, The Boston Tea Party and both World Wars, but then asking why Black people can’t seem to put slavery behind them.
• White privilege is not having people ask you why you “speak so well”.
• White privilege is no one assumes your success in education or your career is due to athletic scholarships or affirmative action.
• White privilege is sharing an opinion and not having it used as representative of all the other members of your race
• White privilege is not having the justice system routinely incarcerate the men of your race at astronomically disproportionate rates for decades and therefore crippling your family structure for generations.
• White privilege is having an interaction with law enforcement and being able to walk away with your life.
• White privilege is David Carlin getting to tell an entire group of people that their centuries long struggle due to systematic social and political disenfranchisement is essentially their fault and their problem alone, and certainly not a problem that the greater society should tackle together.

Unfortunately it is the Carlins, Carsons and Trumps of the world that perpetuate the ongoing racial bias that divides our nation.  If more time and effort was spent actually engaging people from the disenfranchised communities and trying to find a common goal of equality among races and classes, rather than finger pointing and victim blaming, we might actually have a chance at progressing as a society and as a human race.  In 2015 it is terrifying to see how little has actually changed for black and brown people in America.  What has changed is how the injustices are perpetuated and the true intentions camouflaged behind voting rights restrictions, public policy and policing.

What we cannot allow to go unnoticed is when a person abandons scholarship for rhetoric and then tries to pass the latter off as the former.  The real issue here is that black and brown people in America are largely invisible to most whites. Like Mr. Carlin’s opinion piece, they talk about our lives, history and culture in a second person narrative, with little or no personal interactions or observations to validate their viewpoints.  Today more than ever, there needs to be more sound discussions on how to move forward together; black, brown and white, and less of the guilt ridden, victim blaming that only serves to further divide us.

First came the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, ensuing protests and videos of other unarmed black people around the country dying at the hands of police.

Then came white supremacist flyers delivered to some driveways in East Greenwich in June (“Earth’s most endangered species: the white race”).

Then came Sunday’s March for Racial Justice, which literally made a loop around my East Greenwich neighborhood.

This stuff is getting close to home!

East Greenwich is 92 percent white. That’s pretty pale. It’s easy to feel like we are not racist – maybe because we don’t have any race to bump up against. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past 14 months, racism isn’t just white supremacist flyers. In fact, the most dangerous racism is living in a bubble where you don’t see there’s a problem.

Most of us moved to East Greenwich to live in that bubble, whether we did it overtly or not. We moved for the schools, we moved for the nice neighborhoods … we moved to be removed from the other. That’s the American way, the human way even. But it’s not the best way to live as one nation, united.

So it was good when, on Sunday in East Greenwich, about 200 people – mainly white – gathered at the Westminster Unitarian Church and marched down to Main Street and back (about 2 miles) chanting things like “What will we do for racial justice? Today we speak for racial justice.”

On Main Street. In my town.

Most of the marchers came from other places, but it was great to see many East Greenwich residents. Maybe a quarter of the marchers were from EG. That’s not a triumph. But it is a start.

It is sad how some people cannot seem to let go of their irrational hatred of other people. In recent months we have seen a faceless outfit called Voice of the Renaissance litter East Greenwich with their flyers calling to preserve the White race, as if people of color who are building themselves up are a threat to White people everywhere (it’s not). Last February the Islamic School of Rhode Island was vandalized by someone who spray-painted Islamophobic messages on their building, one making his intentions very clear: “Now this is a hate crime!” And we all know by now how Donald Trump refused to rebuke a supporter who went on an anti-Muslim rant at his town hall event in Rochester, New Hampshire. Thing is, these things left unchecked may lead to even more extreme actions towards a community in the future, be it acts of violence or legislation that stifles rights. That is why when it happens those communities come out to build a resistance against it.

• [Editor’s note: There will be a march against the racist flyers on Sunday, September 20 leaving from the Westminster Unitarian Church (119 Kenyon Ave, East Greenwich) at 12:30 pm. “In response to white supremacists fliers recently distributed in East Greenwich and to ongoing racial injustice in our state and across the county, Westminster Unitarian Church’s Social Responsibility Committee, the White Noise Collective, and concerned East Greenwich residents are organizing a march to mobilize people across RI for racial justice. We are calling on white people in particular to stand up and support the growing Black Lives Matter movement.“]

Those that engage in such behavior however are not going to be content with just tagging a school, throwing around flyers or ranting at a presidential candidate. That doesn’t get results. They still have to organize and network with people who can advance their hatred to the point that they see things happen for them, and they are able to reclaim a position they once had over the people they hate just a few short years ago. When they do that, it takes even more vigilance to fight back because this is when they are at their most dangerous.

On Saturday, Oct. 31 (Halloween) a group with a rather benign name called the National Policy Institute (NPI) will hold a conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. While not directly connected to the Voice of the Renaissance, they share the same ideals. NPI is a promoter of eugenics, believing that blacks are genetically inferior to whites, has waged campaigns to make the Republican Party exclusively white, and is trying to build alliances with white supremacists and fascists in Europe. In fact, their leader, Richard Spencer, who has called for a white ethno-state, is not allowed to enter much of Europe for the next two years after he attempted to hold a similar conference in Budapest, Hungary. Undaunted, he continues to hold conferences in the DC area, often during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where he tries to build outreach to attendees, many of them young people, with some success. That means he is attempting to create a new generation of racist legislators who will keep his brand of hatred alive.

The speakers at the NPI conference include anti-Semites, Islamophobes and Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) that will speak to political operatives, academics and others in a setting that unlike the average neo-Nazi rally, will give them the opportunity to network and organize behind closed doors. One of the speakers is part of a group that has the slogan “Ni keffieh, ni kippa”.(“Neither [Palestinian] keffieh, nor yarmulke”). They are only one of several similar conferences happening all around the country. Another one happening just one week later in Baltimore is sponsored by the H.L. Mencken Club, which is, curiously enough, one of the groups co-founded by NPI’s Richard Spencer.

They very seldom get opposition, mostly because they make themselves look like nothing more than your average conservative organization that doesn’t set off any alarms unless someone delves into what they are about, but unfortunately for them, that is what is beginning to happen. There are people mobilizing to oppose the NPI conference by calling the National Press Club – where NPI has held two other events – and sending them letters calling for them to shut this hate conference down. Failing that, they plan to be out there on Halloween, letting the hatemongers know that they are not welcome.

Regardless of what face hate puts on, we need to recognize it for what it is, and once we do keep it from hurting the greater society. We have seen what it has done to generations in this country and abroad, and although it is cliché, there is something to be said for how in this day and age this approach to life is still something palatable to some circles.

Let’s break those circles.

[Check out the One People’s Project here.]

Black Lives Matter made sure we didn’t miss this moment – reminding us that we as a country have acted as if black lives don’t matter quite as much as white lives and that we have failed to come to terms with the terrible racial injustices upon which we have built our nation.

It’s against that backdrop that I noticed some ceramic “mammys” and “sambos” in the window of a consignment shop the other day in my town of East Greenwich. I was startled. Can these caricatures of happy slaves actually be for sale – at 20 percent off no less – right there on Main Street?

“You treat them as a precious thing. It’s a part of history, a part of American history,” said  Lynda Peters, owner of Consignors, the shop on Main Street. Peters said about half of the people who buy black memorabilia from her are African American.

“What are we supposed to do with it – throw it all away?” she said. “Then it’s lost forever.”

Her store is hardly an outlier. This kind of mass-produced racist kitsch can be found everywhere it turns out.

“It’s a huge market,” said Nanci Thompson, owner of Briarbrook Antiques, an auction company in East Greenwich. “Just check eBay.”

Indeed, a search on eBay for “Black Americana” turned up 15,853 items.

Thompson likened the mammy ceramics to Nazi memorabilia – shocking but a reminder of where we’ve been.

“We should not forget that this happened,” she said. She said she has sold lots of African American memorabilia over the years, but said she draws the line at Ku Klux Klan items, which she referred to as “nasty.”

There are those who think all such items are nasty. In her book from 1994, “Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture” (Anchor), Patricia A. Turner refered to such items as “contemptible collectibles.”

Turner is black; Thompson and Peters are white. 

Jim Vincent, head of the Providence branch of the NAACP, is black. For him, it’s the context that counts.

“If the person is trying to sell this artifact because of its historical nature … I see no problem with that. If someone is trying to ridicule a whole group of people, I do have a problem with that.”

Vincent does not own any of these mass-produced items but he acknowledges that “people might want to purchase it as a part of history, as negative a history as it may be.”

He added, “There are numbers of collectors, black and white. I don’t know white collectors but I do know black collectors. They’re trying to educate the public to our sordid past.”

James Alexander of West Warwick isn’t having it.

“To me it’s inexcusable for this type of, ah, ‘memorabilia’ to be displayed and or sold in this day and age. There’s no excuse for people to still cling to that as a memory,” said Alexander, who is black and has worked in community development for 50 years. “From my background, having grown up in the segregated South, that’s not how I would react to something like that.”

It’s more about what’s not been saved or memorialized that troubles Providence writer and producer Reza Clifton, who is black.

“One example I can think of, with roots in Rhode Island, is Sissieretta Jones, a famous opera singer who traveled the country and world, but for whom there is no archived recording, and who died ‘penniless.’ She was certainly alive at a time when talented white singers were being recorded and archived, so why not Jones? Why is it that ‘Black Americana’ art, with its racist intents and depictions, could be archived, restored, and passed around even today, while a talented singer – who represents something we can be proud of – was either denied access or deemed unworthy of salvage?”

Clifton said she thought black people might collect Black Americana because there is nothing else to collect (i.e. the nonexistent recordings of Sissieretta Jones). “What else are we to collect if we want to memorialize ourselves, our families, and our history?” she said.

And she equated the collection of mammys and sambos by some black people to the use of the n-word and bitch by others.

“There are many people who feel like, in using these words, they’ve reclaimed what have historically been negative terms. At the same time, there are some people who still feel like the words have strong, derogatory meanings because of their original uses and users,” she said. “I feel it’s important to leave room for both philosophies – especially when the work has been done to understand their origins.”

Phillip J. Merrill, who is black, is a historian, writer, appraiser and collector from Baltimore. He has made it his life’s work to use historical objects to teach Americans about our slaveholding and racist past. Merrill laughed when I explained my discomfort upon seeing the black ceramics.

“All of this material reaches the audience in different ways,” he said. “It’s shocking when you see it in a shop window, but this is an old conversation. It’s an old conversation with new meaning, because of the Black Lives Matter movement and because we have a black president and a black first lady.”

And Merrill thinks that’s a good thing even if it makes some people uncomfortable.

“I meet people who are furious – ‘How dare you want to show and talk about stereotypical artifacts from the past!’ In order to understand how we got here, we’ve got to go back and look at the past. So many of us don’t want to tell it like it is,” he said. “All of these artifacts play a tremendous role in helping us deal with the past.”

As for me and my own personal awaking, Merrill had this to say: “You were sleeping like Rip Van Winkle and now you are awake. You should have been awake a long time ago. You were intimately involved with this.”

“I speak as a governor and as a mother of two small children,” Raimondo said, “and I think we’ve all been troubled by the recent headlines all around this country about law enforcement.”

The governor added that this is a significant step in addressing a much larger problem, but said that she believes this will help keep communities safer, and make law enforcement more effective.

“Although this is an important piece of legislation, and one that is going to deliver real results, you all know this one bill isn’t enough. We must be actively engaged in our communities, and be committed to keeping our families and communities safe,” she said.

Representative Joseph Almeida (D- District 12), the main sponsor for the House version of the bill, said that it is a product of working for, and with, the people.

“You have two choices when you get elected,” he said. “You can be a politician and tell people what they want to hear, or you can be a legislator and tell them the truth. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

Senator Harold Metts (D- District 6), who was the Senate sponsor, spoke on how the bill will allow Rhode Island communities to heal with one another, and promote togetherness between communities and police officers.

“We were challenged to take our heads out of the desert sands of denial, and drink from the wells of equality, justice, and brotherhood,” he said. “Instead of having separation, and having the parties be polarized, they decided to work together. Instead of separation, we had collaboration.”

The act requires that law enforcement officers include in the ethnicity of the driver stopped, the reason, whether or not there was a search, and whether or not there was contraband taken from the vehicle in their traffic stop reports. It also prohibits officers from subjecting juveniles or pedestrians to a search without probable cause, and requires them to notify a driver why they are being stopped.

Colonel Steven O’Donnell, the superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, said that the practices laid out in the Act are already happening.

“Almost all the information in that bill is something that State Police already do by policy. We’ve been doing it for years, so it didn’t take much to sit down with the community, and most of them we know very, very well,” he said. O’Donnell also gave credit to the House and Senate for being open minded about the subject of policing, particularly Senator Metts, who took part in the State Police Training Academy several years ago.

“Better training, better understanding, and better communication is really why that bill passed,” he said. “Everybody sitting down, some people losing some of their egos on both ends of the table, and coming to an agreement.”

Over the next 48 months, data will be collected from every traffic stop to determine whether or not there are racial disparities in Rhode Island’s policing system. Governor Raimondo said this data would be used to make informed decisions concerning the system.

“I think it’s clear there’s more that has to be done in Rhode Island and all around the country. You can’t look at what happened in Ferguson and South Carolina and think we’re doing enough, so what this bill says is that we’re committed to making changes based on facts, and making sure that our streets are as safe as possible, and that we’re protecting everybody’s civil rights in the process,” she said.

Mental illness is neither uncommon nor separate from physical illness. People with conditions like schizophrenia are not necessarily acting much different from the rest of us, especially if they are getting effective treatment. Whether we know it or not, all of us know people who are dealing with serious mental health challenges.

People who are truly disengaged from reality may do things that are self-injurious and have no gain or rationale that others can understand.

In my own urban neighborhood there are people who are driven to wander the streets in their own purgatory. A family member is lost to us, out of contact. Mental illness causes immense suffering and it’s a shame that it’s used as a slur or a joke. It’s a disgrace that so many influential voices are using a cowardly attack on the mentally ill to avoid admitting that we all have a social disease. Worse, they prefer to deny and spread it around rather than come clean and seek a cure.

Different cultures have different kinds of crazy. During the European witchcraft hysteria of the 1400’s a book was published that warned men about – a belief that got a lot of women killed. Insane by our standards, but not in that society. Is The Hammer of Witches really so different from The Turner Diaries, a book that inspired racist mass-murderer Timothy McVeigh?

Does mental illness explain a pattern of crime where the perpetrators dress up, shout slogans and for the most part target the same kinds of people repeatedly? Does it explain why so many violent men seem to believe they are part of a community of right-thinking patriots? Does it excuse our leaders for failing to demand that anyone who wants to own a lethal weapon owes the rest of us some accountability?

Mental illness may explain the derelict masturbating in public on a park bench, but it does not explain the serial rapist. The kind of premeditated violence driven by hateful ideas is not simply sick individuals and will not be solved by locking them up after the damage is done. There will only be more to replace them.

What is needed is a clear assessment of the cultural delusions that enable bigotry to hide in plain sight. As someone described the latest mass killer:

“I never heard him say anything, but just he had that kind of Southern pride, I guess some would say. Strong conservative beliefs,” he said. “He made a lot of racist jokes, but you don’t really take them seriously like that. You don’t really think of it like that.”

South Carolina still flies the Confederate flag at its Statehouse. The governor expresses her regrets with care not to offend her supporters invested in denial about racism and guns.

America is gun-crazy. Every child grows up watching hundreds of dramas where guns bring power and respect, the bad guys are eventually out-shot and other ways to resolve conflict are ignored or disparaged. They don’t see the damage, the wounds that don’t heal, the bereavement that is never outlived. Nurses see that but it’s not entertaining and there’s no happy ending.

Mass shootings boost gun sales. Fear is good for the industry.

A gun carries the magic power of every movie cowboy and TV hero. Having one demands a high level of responsibility and good judgment, or else the gun owner is no longer the ‘good man’ but a menace. In spite of this, any attempt to ‘well regulate’ our self-appointed militia is met with outrage. In the wake of many decades of political assassinations it’s an act of physical courage to stand up to the most extreme of the gun lobby.

Only 21 years old, and given one moment to turn away from atrocity-

Roof, 21, has told police that he “almost didn’t go through with it because everyone was so nice to him,” sources told NBC News.
And yet he decided he had to “go through with his mission.”

Why? Who gave him his mission? Who armed him? He had his problems but he was not some lost soul wandering aimlessly and hallucinating. He had a script and he was armed. The adults in his life enabled him to get a lethal weapon and no one thought his indoctrination into racism was a problem. When America is racist and gun crazy, how will we even know who is a threat? The problem is in plain sight but requires letting go of delusion.

Easier to blame mental illness and the disempowered people who struggle with it.

Image from Good Magazine.

For one, both the United States and Rhode Island prisons are full to overflowing (I know—I teach community college classes in the RI Adult Correctional Institution). As a nation, we also know that we have a problem with mass incarceration. In fact, it is one of the few bipartisan issues that currently has any traction. Filling more prison beds with nonviolent activists does not help.

Designating people felons disenfranchises them—in some ways formally and directly, and in other ways informally and indirectly. Convicted felons can vote in Rhode Island, but that is not the case everywhere, and there are almost universal employment and housing consequences for those with felony convictions. If every Rhode Islander who participated in blocking highways during the Black Lives Matter protests was convicted of felonies, a substantial portion of the activists in our state would not only be locked away for some time, but permanently relegated to second-class citizenship. To suggest that the bill has another purpose is to engage in delusion.

The threat of felony convictions would, of course, discourage activism, which is a grave mistake. Activists—indeed, civil disobedience—is responsible for some of the greatest social transformations in history, including the suffrage and civil rights movements, to name just two. Activism and civil disobedience have an important place in American democracy.

Third, ambulances are routinely deterred from highways for reasons unrelated to protest. Several months ago President Obama visited Providence, and the highway was shut for several miles during his stay, necessitating a full detour around the city for many of us to get home. There was no outcry about closing highways for such an occasion.

Fourth and finally, because of the bill’s language and the great degree of police discretion it implies, the legislation could scoop up the homeless, further criminalizing poverty. The bill targets anyone that “stands, sits, kneels, or otherwise loiters on any federal or state highway” and that “could reasonably be construed as interfering with the lawful movement of traffic”—meaning, of course, that those who live on the streets would be prosecutable for simply being there.

The First Amendment protects our right to free speech. To turn over the decision of determining when a protest has become “interference” effectively passes off that right to free speech to the discretion of the officers patrolling the event. The bill is on the table in Rhode Island, but it has tremendous implications for freedom of speech elsewhere, and could powerfully affect the climate of activism in the entire country.

Senator Raptakis, for example, thinks that highway blockades are “not the best way to protest.”

Hearing this, I am reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous remarks from the Birmingham Jail about the “moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who,” King concludes, “paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”

Let’s let this bill die.