| Number 81 | August 4, 2000 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, I have received literally hundreds of letters and comments so far in the year 2000. Most are positive, some are not. I genuinely appreciate them all. So, keep those cards and letters (and E-Mails) coming! And, if you haven't written yet, please consider the idea... Welcome to this week's new readers. Sorry you only get one issue before I take a week off. But that's the way it goes, I guess. I'm running out of room, so I'm off to the Lake. See you in TWO weeks, Nygaard |
-- from "Bill of Whites: Historical Memory Through the Racial Looking Glass" by anti-racist activist Tim Wise, July 2000 |
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I will be up at the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior next week (specifically, Gegawewamingo Minniss, as the Anishinabe say) and do not intend to take my computer. Therefore, there will be no Nygaard Notes next week. Issue #82 will appear on August 18th. |
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We have 5 winners, in fact, in our annual(?) Z Magazine Free Subscription Giveaway. We had almost three dozen entries, from 6 different states and the District of Columbia, which is a lot more than we had last year. The hard part was realizing that most entrants did not win. But I guess that's the way these things go. Perhaps the new subscribers will give gift subscriptions to some of their friends, and support this excellent magazine in that way. Many of you sent along very positive comments with your entries, and I appreciate that very much. Thank you. We placed the names of the almost three dozen hopefuls into a hat (actually a bike helmet) and drew out 5 winners at random. They have all been notified, but for the record they are Ellen, Meredith, Paul, Alex, and Rob. Congratulations! |
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On Sunday, July 23rd, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) ran a "Star Tribune Special Report" entitled "Presumed Guilty Until Proved Innocent." This important feature focused on the issue of racism in law enforcement. However, the report never uses the word "racism" (with a single exception, in a direct quote from the police chief saying that he "doesn't tolerate" it). The preferred term these days is "racial profiling." I don't use the term myself, since it seems like a euphemism to me. American chattel slavery was a form of "racial profiling," for God's sake, but the term doesn't quite get the message across, does it? Nevertheless, even such "Minnesota Nice" tippy-toeing doesn't prevent this report from hitting hard. Everyone should read it. Go to your local library, or visit the Star Trib's website at www.startribune.com and search for "racial profiling." What the article described was the phenomenon that many of us call "DWB," or "Driving While Black," in which people of color are pulled over simply because of their race. I discussed this phenomenon at some length in NN #25, "Beyond Basketball: Race and Drugs in the Nineties." Police harassment of people of color has gotten so bad that some of us have expanded this category of "crime" to "BWB," or "Breathing While Black." It looks to many of us as if black and brown and red and yellow people are presumed guilty of something or other by most "white" people in America, certainly including police and other authority figures. All sorts of studies back this up, from studies of drug arrests to incarceration rates to police brutality. Two days before the Star Trib's Special Feature on racial profiling, the paper ran a front-page story on the police stop of Minneapolis resident Ken White. Two narcotics cops pulled Mr. White over and had him get out of his car and "assume the position." They asked him what he was doing there, and "whose car he was driving." Any Black person knows the routine. His granddaughter was in the car, and she was terrified. The police eventually let him go without so much as a "Sorry to inconvenience you." Oh, did I mention that Mr. White is African-American? Since this sort of thing happens every day in the Twin Cities (and elsewhere) one might ask why this got on the front page. It no doubt had something to do with the fact that Ken White is the executive director of Minneapolis' Civil Rights Department. But that couldn't be the only reason, since many prominent African-Americans have been the victims of racist police stops, including B. Todd Jones, an ex-Marine and the U.S. attorney for Minnesota; Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page; St. Paul Police Chief William Finney; William McGee, chief of the Hennepin County public defender's office; criminal defense attorney J. Anthony Torres; and veteran Ramsey County District Judge Salvador Rosas. None of these stops made it into the paper, to my knowledge, let alone to the front page. So what's up with the Ken White story? The Ken White story appeared two days before the Star Trib's racial profiling "Special Report" was scheduled to appear. Could it be that the White story was placed so prominently because it was a good buildup for the "Special Feature?" This is a pretty cynical thing to say, and I don't think of myself as cynical by nature. So what leads me to even suggest it? Well, part of it is the Star Tribune's track record on covering racism in the Twin Cities. A database search of the Star Tribune for the year previous to the Ken White story showed that the number of stories on "racial profiling" by Minneapolis police totaled exactly Zero. Nada. None. Not a word. Police harassment is a huge fact of life for African-American people in these Twin Cities, and my conversations with activists around the country indicate that the Minneapolis police have even acquired something of a national reputation for racist behavior. And there's a lot of competition for distinction in this category! Yet, somehow, this isn't newsworthy to the editors of the state's largest paper (nor to its St. Paul cousin, which has a very similar track record.) How can this be? I have a theory. "Minnesota Ice" I have spent almost my entire life in Minnesota, and have witnessed on many occasions the refusal on the part of "white" people to believe the things that African-Americans tell them about racism. The uneducated "white" person doesn't even notice this behavior. But once you have become sensitized to the issue, it becomes absolutely amazing to watch! I have witnessed many individual cases of this, but a recent story published in the local African-American paper Insight News will illustrate the point well. Insight News has reported on a white-dominated group called the Council on Crime and Justice which is doing a study of the amazing discrepancy in incarceration rates between black and white people in Minnesota. This study was mentioned in passing in the July 23rd Star Trib story (and I mentioned it back in April, in NN #68, when it was announced). The (African-American) head of the local Urban League reports in the July 12th edition of Insight that the Council on Crime and Justice is freezing out local black leadership from participating in their study. The reason? According to the (white) head of the Council, "...if the African American community was involved, the study would lose credibility." He immediately apologized for this Freudian slip, but I think he is actually correct, for the reason I stated above: "White" Minnesotans -- a large majority of the population here -- do not want to believe what Black people tell them about racism, and the head of the Council on Crime and Justice knows it. To freeze out local African American leaders for this reason is a wildly inappropriate response to the problem, but I think his careless comment to the Urban League reveals a reality of Minnesota life. A deplorable reality, but a reality nonetheless. Being stopped by the police for "Breathing While Black" is one of the many realities of American life that is common knowledge to any person of color and yet somehow still has the power to "shock" the average "white" Minnesotan. Notice that I referred to the Star Trib's "Special Report" as "important." Not "excellent," although there was some excellent reporting that went into it. Not "praiseworthy," although we should praise any media outlet for writing about the myriad manifestations of racism that are endemic to American society (even if they can't utter the word "racism.") I think the feature is important because it is unusual for the voices of Black Americans speaking about racism to be placed on the front page. For many white Minnesotans, this Special Report will be one of the few times they think seriously about racism. What would make this Special Report "excellent" would be if it were a part of an ongoing effort by the Star Trib to expose the effects of racism in our state. Unfortunately, it is almost unique in recent Star Tribune history. Note: Remember that I myself promoted the work of the Council on Crime and Justice in Nygaard Notes #68, completely unaware of the racist goings-on which I report this week. So when I put the focus on racism and what we can do about it, that focus is always also on myself and on Nygaard Notes. I invite all of my readers to help me see my shortcomings in this area. That's part of what solidarity is about. |
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I said I would talk this week about "Race, Drugs, Money, and Crime." I spent more time on Race than I expected, so here is a very brief tour of the other three issues. Drugs Is the U.S. concerned about drugs from Colombia? You'd think so, given that we just approved a $1.3 billion package to Colombia for "fighting drugs." Many people apparently believe this, but they haven't heard about the Hiett family. Colonel James Hiett, who was the U.S. Military Group commander in charge of all U.S. Army and anti-drug operations in Colombia, was put in prison on July 13th for conspiracy to smuggle heroin from Colombia into the U.S. One might expect this to be big news, but I saw it in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) in that secret hideaway where many would-be front-page stories are found, the "National Digest." There, in the final paragraph, appeared the headline: "Colonel Sentenced in Smuggling Case." His wife was the one actually doing the smuggling; she was shipping heroin in diplomatic pouches (which are immune to customs searches). Colonel Jim's job was to launder the money. The reason this story gives the lie to U.S. concerns about drugs out of Colombia is the size of the sentences for this high-level conspiracy. The smuggler herself got 5 years. Colonel Jim got 5 MONTHS! These are sentences that the Colombian National Police chief described as "a joke." In New York you can get life in prison for much less than this. Not only that, but the Hiett's chauffeur and bodyguard says that the conspiracy was much bigger and that there is a much higher-level U.S. cover-up. Into this boiling cauldron the our government is pouring $1.3 billion to "fight drugs." Money We hear a lot about HMOs losing money in Minnesota, but they aren't, really. True, they are losing money on providing health care. But they are making money on investments. How this works wasn't made clear in the article that appeared in the Business Section of the Star Trib on June 17th under the headline, "HMOs Profit, But Not From Health Care, Analyst Says." As usual, the big story appeared in the second-to-last paragraph, which points out that "the biggest profits were made on Medicaid HMO plans, which serve low-income and disabled enrollees." To summarize: HMOs are losing money on their supposed business of providing health care, but they have figured out how to overcharge taxpayers (Medicaid) sufficiently to take the excess (public) money and turn a profit anyway. Nygaard Notes Alternative Headline: "HMOs Robbing Taxpayers to Feed Profits." Crime "U.S. Isolated in View of World Criminal Court," read the headline on page 9 of the June 12th Star Trib. It seems that there is an effort underway to establish an International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over such crimes as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The only country opposed to this Court is the United States of America. It seems that our government wants the United States to be "exempt" from the Court's rulings. This leaves the United States "isolated among the nations of the world," in the words of the New York Times. Four days earlier the Times reported on an "extensive report" from Amnesty International accusing NATO (under U.S. leadership) of war crimes in Yugoslavia, charges from which our government wants us to be eternally "exempt." This report was also buried on the inside pages. In reference to the non-exempt among us, the "National News Briefs" reported on July 25th that more than six million Americans are now under the supervision of the criminal (in)justice system, either in prison, on probation, or on parole. That's a new record. |