We Changed Our Minds

Everyone thinks we're in for more "racial disturbances" this summer, according to yesterday's WSJ survey.  At least 96% do--and for all practical purposes, that's everyone. Just for comparison purposes, it's more agreement that you get on the question of whether we're being governed by shape-shifting reptiles, or the existence of Bigfoot.

This isn't what we expected a few years ago--at the election of Barack Obama, the percentage of Americans who were optimistic that race relations in America would become a non-issue spiked to 67%.  People generally look for facts that will confirm their expectations, so the decline from general optimism over the past 7 to universal pessimism today is striking.  Something real is happening.

But what?  The current focus is on the police.  Have the police changed over the past 7 years?  There are statistics on police use of force, and here's a useful chart (from Mother Jones!) showing deaths of blacks and whites resulting from "legal intervention involving guns."  The chart shows black deaths declining steeply through the 1970s and then settling into a narrow range and basically flat from the mid-1980s to today.  None of this is enough to say one way or another whether more force is being used today than in days past--but it's enough to say that there's no dramatic jump in police gunning down black men.

There are other theories that focus on poverty, which hasn't changed recently and which was much worse decades and centuries ago, or on irrelevancies such as iPhones and Twitter.

Why did so many think race relations were on the way to resolution in 2009?  Because we'd elected a black President.  Our theory was that racial representation will lead to racial reconciliation.  We had a vague sense that it happened that way in South Africa, so the same should follow here.

It doesn't work that way.

If anyone needed the perfect test case, we have it in Baltimore.  If there was ever a situation in which racial tensions should have been eliminated by the implementation of liberal policies by black leadership, Baltimore is it.  The Police Commissioner is black; the first black police commissioner of Baltimore was appointed in 1984, and the position has been held by several black officers since then.  The Mayor is black (as were two of her three successors; Baltimore mayors have been Democrats since 1967).  The City Council is majority black, including its President.  The state prosecutor is black.  Of the six officers involved with the homicide of Freddie Gray, three are black, including the only one charged with murder.

And yet, somehow . . . somehow all of this moves us to be completely certain that more "racial disturbances" are coming soon.  This is the end of the idea that we can create racial harmony by ensuring that leadership has the same skin color as citizenry.  Ninety-six percent of us have declared ourselves certain that it does not.

The Mayor Has Nothing To Do With It

Unlike most people, I don't know enough about what happened to Freddie Gray to know who, if anyone, is to blame for his death.  Unlike most people, I don't have special insight into the relationship between the citizens of Baltimore and the Baltimore Police Department.

However, I do have enough information to know that this interview with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is proof positive that she should not be mayor.  Her wild careening between allowing "space to destroy" one day, labelling the occupants of that space "thugs" the next, and taking it all back the day after that is unsettling enough, but it's not the fundamental problem.  

Actually, there are two fundamental problems.  The first problem is that the Mayor seems unaware that the Baltimore Police are largely her own creation.  She speaks of wanting answers, of looking for justice for the Freddie Gray family, of working to heal the pain of the community, as if she's somehow outside the system.  She speaks of reforming and retraining the Police Department, as if she just arrived on the scene.

There is no one--no one--who has had more impact on and control of the system that is now of concern to her, than the current Mayor.  The police department reports to the police commissioner, who is appointed by the Mayor with the consent of the City Council.  She has been Mayor for more than 5 years.  Five years.  She appointed the current Commissioner in 2012.  Before she was mayor, she had been a member of the City Council since 1995.  Twenty years.  Who, exactly, has been in a better position to ensure a well-trained police force, to improve its relationship with the "community" and to address the pain of the community, if not the Mayor?


The second problem is the reason she gave for not appearing in public to attempt to calm the situation. Her words:  "I know that my presence can be a calming presence and can be a flashpoint.  I’m not going to risk inserting myself — you know, it might look good to some people — but I’m not going to insert myself in a situation that we know is potentially hostile and very fragile."

I had to watch that bit of the video twice to wrap my head around that.  She's afraid her presence would make things worse?  Really?  But she continues to think that she's the right person to lead the city?  She doesn't want to "risk" a personal appearance because of the potential consequences, but she's also the best person for the task of healing the pain of the community?  How does that work, exactly? 

Maybe Baltimore should just give Governor Hogan the Mayor's office as well.  His presence apparently causes nothing but friendly chit chat and basketball games.