tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/freddie-gray-16504/articlesFreddie Gray – The Conversation2020-07-07T16:48:27Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1418072020-07-07T16:48:27Z2020-07-07T16:48:27ZThe paradox of (de)commemoration: do people really care about statues?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345002/original/file-20200701-159785-11ewcni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">file f mzvp</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Since the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston in Bristol, England, was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52954305">pulled down on June 7</a>, the presence of public memorials to controversial figures – even those that are essential forgotten – has become a subject of heated debate. In this context, it can be enlightening to look at the social effects of public calls for remembrance in contemporary society, an approach known as the <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/GensburgerNational">sociology of memory</a>. This doesn’t look at what should or should be commemorated, or how, but calls on us to consider why we tear down statues that are of almost no interest to anyone.</p>
<h2>Tearing down statues as (de)commemoration</h2>
<p>The toppling of statues is a practice that has been around for a long time – for example, it was a major phenomenon at the end of the Soviet Union. In 1991, in Fort-de-France in the French overseas department Martinique, <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472099399-prologue.pdf">a statue of Empress Josephine</a> was decapitated in protest against the re-establishment of slavery in 1802 by her husband Napoleon I, and the fact that Josephine herself was the daughter of one of the island’s landowners.</p>
<p>The term <a href="https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198749356.001.0001/oso-9780198749356-chapter-6">“de-commemoration”</a> is sometimes used to describe the practice of withdrawing reminders of the past from the public space. The term recognises these acts as forms of commemoration – not politically authorised and sometimes violent, but commemoration nonetheless. Several commentators have asserted that tearing down statues is a result of reading the past through the lens of the present, <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/06/24/deboulonnage-des-statues-l-anachronisme-est-un-peche-contre-l-intelligence-du-passe_6043963_3232.html">which they condemn as anachronistic</a>. Yet commemoration is always amended and above all appropriated by those who experience it into the present. That a society transforms a previously established commemoration is therefore neither new nor unique.</p>
<p>However, this practice has accelerated since the beginning of the 21st century. In this dynamic it is not exclusive to popular demonstrations or social movements, and is not particularly associated with the history of slavery or colonisation – far from it. For example, where the French state had established only four new <a href="https://www.cairn.info/l-iInstrumentation-de-l-action-publique--9782724614565-page-345.htm">commemorative days</a> over the half-century between 1954 and 2000, since then (so in only 20 years), it has created at least 12 more, each time involving a rereading of the past in light of the present.</p>
<h2>The indifference of passers-by</h2>
<p>Generally, most of these commemorative days, statues, plaques, and other monuments go unnoticed. As an experiment, ask people around you to list the statues in their neighbourhood. Most of them won’t be able to. And even if they remember the presence of a statue, they probably won’t be able to tell you who the figure is, what that person did, or the meaning of the inscription.</p>
<p>This is the case even when the past commemorated in the public space refers to a recent event. In January 2016, a “Memory Oak” was planted in Paris to pay homage to the victims of the 2015 terrorist attacks. Since then, an <a href="https://lup.be/products/108162">ongoing sociological study</a> has shown that it is extremely rare that inhabitants or passer-by are aware of the existence of the tree, not to mention its specific meaning.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344098/original/file-20200625-33524-1uwm2nw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344098/original/file-20200625-33524-1uwm2nw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344098/original/file-20200625-33524-1uwm2nw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344098/original/file-20200625-33524-1uwm2nw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344098/original/file-20200625-33524-1uwm2nw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344098/original/file-20200625-33524-1uwm2nw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344098/original/file-20200625-33524-1uwm2nw.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ‘Memory Oak’, Place de la République, Paris…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Gensburger</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344097/original/file-20200625-33557-1e1f28a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344097/original/file-20200625-33557-1e1f28a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344097/original/file-20200625-33557-1e1f28a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344097/original/file-20200625-33557-1e1f28a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344097/original/file-20200625-33557-1e1f28a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344097/original/file-20200625-33557-1e1f28a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344097/original/file-20200625-33557-1e1f28a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">… and its commemorative plaque.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Gensburger</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This indifference often persists even after the statues are toppled. In 2017, New York City set up the <a href="https://www1.nyc.gov/site/monuments/index.page">Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers</a>. The cases examined ranged from the figure of Christopher Columbus to Marshal Pétain, head of the French collaborationist state during World War II. </p>
<p>The statue of doctor J. Marion Sims, then in Central Park, was among them. Sims was a gynecologist who practiced experimental medical procedures on enslaved black women. The commission recommended that the base of the monument be preserved, with an explanatory plaque, but that the figure itself be taken down and replaced by a new statue commemorating black women. The statute of Sims was moved to his tomb, where it took a private status. As of spring 2019, the new statue has not yet been erected.</p>
<p>My students at the Institute for French Studies at New York University, with whom I was studying de-commemoration in Paris and in New York, conducted a series of interviews with people using this part of Central Park. This empirical fieldwork demonstrated that only the few people who had supported the removal of the statue of Sims were aware that it had been removed. The overwhelming majority of those we spoke to, including several Afro-American respondents, had at best noticed that “a statue” was gone and that its now-empty base gave children somewhere new to play.</p>
<h2>What is the true impact of memory policies?</h2>
<p>The question is no longer simply whether a particular statue should be kept or not, but rather what the monuments to the past in the public space are really for. Studies call on us to be cautious about the impact of such statues and other vectors of commemoration.</p>
<p>Contrary to what might be commonly believed, the transmission of memory rarely if ever transforms the representations of those at whom it is aimed. The <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030342012">studies available</a> suggest that the intended messages essentially reach only those already convinced. Sometimes they may even reinforce stereotypes that they had sought to transform.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344103/original/file-20200625-33533-1rh4z5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Gensburger</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344107/original/file-20200625-33533-1upud10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Gensburger</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344108/original/file-20200625-33511-1ua30lp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Gensburger</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344110/original/file-20200625-33546-nuewis.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Commemorative signs in Paris, January to June 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Gensburger</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of those defending the causes of victims of racial, sexual, gender, or religious discrimination seem to consider that commemorating their heroes or heroines in the public space is an effective way to promote their cause. Thus, over recent months, fictitious commemorative plaques have been plastered on walls around Paris as a symbolic gesture.</p>
<p>Thus, and unlike what is suggested in most political commentaries – for example, the <a href="https://www.elysee.fr/emmanuel-macron/2020/06/14/adresse-aux-francais-14-juin-2020">speech made by the French president on June 14</a> to President Trump, who considers those pulling down statues as <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-combating-violence-protecting-americas-monuments-memorials-statues/">“violent extremists”</a> – the demands of this de-commemoration do not come from people who would want to separate themselves from the rest of their fellow countrymen. Instead, they are proof that those making these demands are fully part of the country. They share with their opponents the use of memory as a shared political language. The primary efficacy of <a href="https://link.springer.com/journal/10767/32/2">contemporary memory policies</a> is not to change the representations of the past and thus guide future behavior, but to mobilize an increasing number of social actors and create a shared political space – even if that space is conflictual.</p>
<p>Western countries and international organizations have constantly connected the transmission of violent pasts with the contemporary fight against racism and anti-Semitism. It is thus not surprising that the claims made in the fight against racial discrimination are expressed through memorial demands in which statues and plaques are just one example. This situation is the perfect demonstration of the participation of these actors in the political field that Western states have constructed with their public policies. The recognition of this fact is an essential precondition to a constructive public debate on these questions. It is thus from this paradoxical relationship between indifference and activism that memory policies draw their strength.</p>
<h2>The need to implement systemic changes</h2>
<p>It is thus futile to seek to bring about systemic change through the promotion or removal – both being sides of the same coin – of individual figures.</p>
<p>Changing society is not about transforming individuals from “bad people” to “good people”. Instead, it involves transforming the relationships that bind us together. The study of the effects of memory policies has shown that transforming the representations of individuals is far from enough to change their behavior. Similarly, wanting to reduce past situations of domination or future emancipation to the exemplary nature of a few people is ignorant of the mechanisms that are at the root of these same dominations, discrimination and inequalities.</p>
<p>To cite a tragic example, three of the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36904409">six police officers</a> charged in 2015 after the death of the young African-American Freddie Gray were black men. In the United States, police forces are structured by racial issues, and the officers may have acted in a racist manner even though in civilian life they bear the stigma of skin color that makes them potential victims.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"594572376513388546"}"></div></p>
<p>Sociology has likewise <a href="https://theconversation.com/comment-atteindre-plus-degalite-entre-hommes-et-femmes-en-europe-114095">highlighted</a> that to change the status of women, the creation of compulsory paternity leave or the implementation of binding rules on working hours is likely to be more effective than, say, promoting female heroines or establishing programs to combat stereotypes.</p>
<p>In the coming months, citizen and expert commissions will no doubt be set up in countries around the world to discuss the form that “memory” should take in the public space, be it in regard to colonialism, slavery or the place of women. As in the J. Marion Sims statue in New York, they will no doubt give rise to stimulating recommendations, but working toward ending discrimination and achieving true political, social and economic equality should not be confined to discussions of taking down this or that statue. Indeed, the heated media coverage can push a full, open debate over the <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2020/06/16/confronting-racism-repairing-history/">structural and economic consequences of slavery as well as its abolition</a> into the background. Reparation cannot only be symbolic. What is at stake today is the systemic transformation of the present.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Translated from French by Katharine Throssell and Leighton Kille.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Gensburger ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>As the Black Lives Matter movement has , statues of figures linked to slavery have been removed. Such actions are just symbolic, however. What is at stake is the systemic transformation of the present.Sarah Gensburger, Chercheuse en sciences sociales du politique, CNRS, ISP, ENS Paris Saclay, Université Paris Nanterre – Université Paris LumièresLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659342016-09-23T21:06:43Z2016-09-23T21:06:43ZHow the Jim Crow internet is pushing back against Black Lives Matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139038/original/image-20160923-29902-cvncmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A still image captured from a video from the Tulsa Police Department shows Terence Crutcher with his hands in the air. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tulsa Police Department Handout via REUTERS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Police killings of African-Americans on social media have become the visual hallmark of our time. This decade will be recalled through blurry cellphone and dash-cam videos of shootings. But how will it be remembered?</p>
<p>From my scholarship on <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/196428/how-to-see-the-world/">visual culture</a>, most recently on the visual tactics of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/opinion/what-protest-looks-like.html?_r=2">political protest</a>, it is clear that this marks a transition that I call the rise of the Jim Crow internet. It’s not all of the internet, of course, but a self-referential, wide-ranging and increasingly influential slice of it, from <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/">Breitbart</a> to <a href="http://bluelivesmatter.blue/">Blue Lives Matter</a> and all over Twitter.</p>
<p>Visible on cable TV, Google searches, Twitter and other social media, the Jim Crow internet is challenging the way race in general and police violence in particular are understood, pushing back against the gains made by Black Lives Matter.</p>
<p>Who wins this struggle over cultural and political meaning may determine our political future.</p>
<h2>Cameras don’t stop violence</h2>
<p>Because there is a political and cultural divide as to how we see and what we make of it, cameras in themselves solve nothing. </p>
<p>Terence Crutcher, 40, was shot in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Sept. 19. In the official account, Police Officer Betty Shelby describes getting scared when he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/us/man-killed-by-tulsa-police-posed-no-threat-his-family-says.html?partner=rss&emc=rss">“locks his eyes on her.”</a> Under Jim Crow, the allegation of “reckless eyeballing” meant any look from a black person at a white person, especially a woman. It was used <a href="https://wp.nyu.edu/howtoseetheworld/2015/05/30/auto-draft-46/">to justify deadly force</a>. </p>
<p>Looking a police officer in the eye also got <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-brutality-of-police-culture-in-baltimore/391158/">Freddie Gray</a> into trouble in Baltimore, leading to his still unexplained death in a police van. </p>
<p>The dash-cam video in Crutcher’s case suggests that the windows of his car were closed. The indicted shooter claims they were open, causing her to fear that he was reaching for a weapon. Her case depends on how we interpret what she thought she saw, against what the video shows. </p>
<h2>Video is just data</h2>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DbJMo7bn7xw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">ABC News reports on the Rodney King beating, 1991.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lawyers representing police officers have learned how to handle video footage to exploit these different interpretations and present their clients in the best possible light.</p>
<p>In the 1992 trial of Rodney King, accused of abusing drugs as Crutcher has been, defense lawyers <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1992-05-18/local/me-15_1_real-time">slowed down the video</a> of his beating to make it seem as if he was responsible. More recently, when Tamir Rice was killed in Cleveland, prosecutors <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/22/us/24cleveland-tamir-shooting-listy.html">edited the few seconds of video</a> into hundreds of stills to make his movements seem more dramatic than they appeared when played at normal speed, as if he was reaching for a gun.</p>
<p>Video is data, not truth. It can be presented in any number of ways.</p>
<p>The second case of police shooting demanding attention this week is that of Keith Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina. A dash-cam video exists but the police are not releasing it. Police Chief Kerr Putney <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/us/charlotte-protests-keith-scott.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=us&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&pgtype=article">admits</a>
“the video does not give me absolute, definitive, visual evidence that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun.” He nonetheless claims that witness accounts and physical evidence will do so. Putney’s statements seem to imply that video only counts when it shows what you want it to show. </p>
<p>The cumulative effect of over 25 years of official skepticism of video evidence since the Rodney King case is to undermine what is seen in favor of what is said by police and other people in power.</p>
<h2>The Jim Crow internet</h2>
<p>Online, images originally circulated as evidence of police brutality are seen by others as depictions of African-American violence and pathology. In short, the internet has created its own form of the <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/">New Jim Crow</a>, to adapt the phrase coined by writer Michele Alexander.</p>
<p>This section of the internet has created its own meanings for the notorious videos of police violence. The third result on Google for “Alton Sterling video” sends you to the website Blue Lives Matter. It claims to “vindicate cops” in the <a href="http://bluelivesmatter.blue/second-alton-sterling-video-vindicates-cops/">shooting</a>.</p>
<p>Character demolition goes hand-in-hand with this new video analysis. Conspiracy theorist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Dice">Mark Dice</a> appears close to the top of Google searches for Keith Scott. Presented as a “media analyst,” he <a href="http://truthfeed.com/video-the-truth-behind-keith-scott-and-the-charlotte-riots/25136/">denounced</a> the “black thugs who are rioting over this black thug.” </p>
<p>Terence Crutcher is being accused online <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/264259/was-terence-crutcher-pcp-daniel-greenfield">of using drugs</a> when he was shot. The “evidence” is a previous conviction and an unconfirmed allegation of drugs found in his vehicle. A frame-by-frame <a href="http://bearingarms.com/bob-o/2016/09/20/terence-crutcher-shot-hands-heres-definitive-proof/">breakdown of the helicopter video of Crutcher</a> claims to demonstrate that he was not shot with his hands up. Less than three seconds of video are broken into seven stills that appear to support the idea that he’s reaching for a gun. But the moment of the shooting itself was not recorded, so we do not know exactly where his hands were the instant he was shot.</p>
<h2>The Jim Crow internet is now viral</h2>
<p>The paranoid patterns of association used by the extreme right online are entering the mainstream. Yesterday, Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Republican of Kansas, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/us/politics/congress-recess-paul-ryan-democrats-huelskamp.html?ref=politics&_r=0">called</a> North Carolina protesters “hoodlums” on Twitter. On the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW6t3gk3xqs&list=PLJxnQXiytA_Qc0B57aViue2G3DPet1Z0L&index=2&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnewsnight&ns_source=facebook">BBC</a>, Rep. Robert Pittenger, Republican of North Carolina, claimed “they hate white people because white people are successful and they’re not.”</p>
<p>When Hillary Clinton tweeted that the the shooting was “unbearable,” CNN at once gave a platform to the race-baiting ex-NYPD cop <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/07/12/meet-harry-houck-cnn-s-resident-race-baiter-and-police-brutality-apologist/211509">Harry Houck</a>, who denounced Clinton on Twitter for “playing [the] race card for black votes.” <a href="https://twitter.com/harryjhouck/status/778357896748863488">This tweet</a> garnered a mere four likes and four retweets and yet was covered on a supposedly respectable news channel.</p>
<p>Some media corporations are only too happy to host this kind of analysis, despite the <a href="http://www.altright.com/2016/09/22/the-alt-right-has-been-vindicated/">alt-right calling them</a> #LyingPress and worse. The Trump campaign is led by Stephen Bannon, an executive from Breibart News, who <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news">describes</a> it as “the platform for the alt-right.” </p>
<p>While the media concentrate on Monday’s ceremonial presidential debate, it’s this online debate that will in the end matter most.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65934/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas D. Mirzoeff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar of visual culture sees a transition happening online as the alt-right reinterprets images of police shootings to push back against the gains made by Black Lives Matter.Nicholas D. Mirzoeff, Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/636262016-08-24T02:06:24Z2016-08-24T02:06:24ZWho dies in police custody? Texas, California offer new tools to find out<p>How many people die in our criminal justice system each year? </p>
<p>It turns out it is hard to tell, and it depends who you ask.</p>
<p>Following the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and many others at the hands of the police, this lack of information has emerged as one of the most pressing issues in criminal justice reform. Reading media reports of these deaths would lead one to suspect that dying in police custody is a widespread problem. But hard data have been hard to come by. That’s why I believe new initiatives in Texas and California could be game changers, and deserve to be replicated in other states.</p>
<p>The federal government has acknowledged that federal data initiatives, which rely on law enforcement self-reporting, have failed to provide accurate information. In 2015, the Bureau of Justice Statistics <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/acardp.pdf">found</a> that data collection under the Arrest-Related Deaths program, which was in place for most of the 2000s, identified only about half of the expected number of homicides by law enforcement officers. </p>
<p>The most comprehensive information has come from watchdog groups and media sites like <a href="http://www.fatalencounters.org/">Fatal Encounters</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database">The Counted</a> which track deaths in police encounters through open-source data mining of news accounts. But these websites are also incomplete. Fatal Encounters estimates it has tracked 62 percent of deaths since 2000. The Counted only began its tally in 2015. Further, watchdog sites cannot alone restore the trust in government institutions that has been lost in police shootings and lack of accountability.</p>
<p>Reliable information on deaths that occur during arrests and while in jail and prison is important. Such data allow us to identify problems in the criminal justice system and come up with solutions based on evidence. It also provides greater transparency and accountability, and ultimately can help gain communities’ trust. </p>
<p>In response to its own findings in 2015 and the national upheaval around homicides by law enforcement, BJS this month <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2016/08/04/2016-18484/agency-information-collection-activities-proposed-collection-comments-requested-new-collection">announced</a> an improved nationwide data collection plan. The plan recognizes that “accurate and comprehensive accounting of deaths that occur during the process of arrest is critical for [law enforcement agencies] to demonstrate responsiveness to the citizens and communities they serve, transparency related to law enforcement tactics and approaches, and accountability for the actions of officers.” </p>
<h2>State involvement is key</h2>
<p>The improved data collection will provide better nationwide statistics. But states also have an important role in collecting and disseminating data. </p>
<p>State agencies and local law enforcement are more likely to respond to state directives and initiatives than to additional federal oversight. And programs to build public trust in local law enforcement and state agencies must come from within those institutions.</p>
<p>Two states are leaders in arrest-related and custodial death reporting – Texas and California. These two states have the nation’s largest incarcerated populations. Combined, they have more than 425,000 people locked up in prisons and jails. Each state has been collecting state custodial death data for decades. Under California and Texas law, law enforcement, jails and prisons must report to their state attorney general when a person dies in custody. </p>
<p>But just because the data existed didn’t mean they were publicly accessible – until recently. Last year, California’s attorney general debuted <a href="https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">Open Justice</a>. And this summer, as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, I launched the <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/">Texas Justice Initiative</a>. Both websites publish state custodial death data since 2005.</p>
<h2>The Texas Justice Initiative</h2>
<p>I created the Texas Justice Initiative after a friend sent me a spreadsheet with thousands of entries and more than 100 columns, a collection of more than 10 years of custodial death data assembled by the attorney general. This data set was virtually unknown to people except for a handful of journalists and advocates. I was surprised the information was technically publicly available, but not accessible in a meaningful way. Thus, I began to create a public, online interactive database of these deaths.</p>
<p>Users visiting our website can download the data and toggle through demographic data, cause of death and year options. We also included incident-level information, such as the name of the deceased and the official narrative provided in the official report. </p>
<p>Our project revealed stunning figures. <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/deaths-in-custody.pdf">Nearly 7,000</a> people died in police, jail and prison custody in 2005 to 2015. <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/deaths-in-custody.pdf">More than 1,900</a> of them were not convicted of a crime, many of whom were being held in jail pretrial. And black people were disproportionately represented, <a href="http://texasjusticeinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/deaths-in-custody.pdf">comprising 30 percent</a> of the custodial deaths, but only around 12 percent of the Texas population. </p>
<h2>California’s Open Justice</h2>
<p>The California attorney general described Open Justice as “a tool that embraces transparency and data in the criminal justice system to strengthen public trust, enhance government accountability, and inform public policy.” In addition to custodial death information, Open Justice provides criminal justice statistics such as crime rates and arrest rates. </p>
<p>The Open Justice numbers are also jarring. <a href="http://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">An average of 684</a> people in California die each year in police encounters and jail and prison custody. <a href="http://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">Thirty-four percent</a> of the people who died were not convicted of a crime. Black people are six percent of California’s population, <a href="http://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/death-in-custody/overview">but represented 24 percent of deaths</a>. </p>
<p>Since we launched the Texas Justice Initiative, I’ve received responses from people across the nation calling for other states to provide similar information publicly. I’ve also received emails from people seeking to correct information about people they knew who are in the database. </p>
<p>The Texas and California collections and publications are not perfect, but together they provide a guide for other states to improve arrest-related and custodial death data collection. As other states follow Texas’ and California’s lead, they should publish the data in ways that allow for public engagement, greater transparency and data verification. </p>
<p>Better data – which means broad, detailed and accurate information – are vital to realizing the changes our institutions so desperately need. With more accurate numbers and information on custodial deaths, we can begin to identify who is dying in police custody and why, and also address the jail and prison conditions that contribute to high mortality, such as access to health care and the incarceration of people with mental health issues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Woog receives funding from the France-Merrick Foundation. </span></em></p>No federal database provides reliable info on deaths that occur in police custody. It’s the same situation in 48 states. But now California and Texas are offering new models of accountability.Amanda Woog, Postdoctoral Fellow at Institute of Urban Policy Research and Analysis, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639852016-08-18T02:54:05Z2016-08-18T02:54:05ZDOJ report on Baltimore echoes centuries-old limits on African-American freedom in the Charm City<p>African-American rights in Baltimore have always been in jeopardy. The recently released <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/09/us/baltimore-justice-department-report/">report</a> from the Department of Justice on the Baltimore Police Department is sobering, but not surprising.</p>
<p>As a scholar of early African-American <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09612025.2012.661158">history in Maryland</a>, I see similarities between laws regarding enslaved and free blacks living in Baltimore prior to the Civil War, and the overpolicing of African-Americans today. African-Americans in antebellum and contemporary Baltimore share the same problem: limits on black freedom.</p>
<h2>Antebellum foundations for unequal treatment</h2>
<p>On the eve of the American Revolution, Maryland was second only to Virginia in the number of people it held in bondage. By the beginning of the 19th century, the number of free blacks began to rise. Baltimore had a significant free black population well before the <a href="http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-xiv">14th Amendment</a> made blacks citizens. According to the 1790 <a href="http://www.censusfinder.com/maryland.htm">U.S. census</a>, 927 free blacks resided in the county that included Baltimore city. By 1830, Baltimore city and the surrounding county was home to some 17,888 free African-Americans.</p>
<p>Historian Barbara Field <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300040326/slavery-and-freedom-middle-ground">notes</a> that the increase of free blacks in Maryland was a direct result of replacing tobacco harvesting, which required a full-time labor source, to wheat. Harvesting wheat did not require a year-round labor supply. Between the change in labor demands and African-Americans protesting their condition, the free black community in Virginia and Maryland grew.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/134347/original/image-20160816-13035-t3hqqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arrival of freedmen and their families at Baltimore, Maryland – an everyday scene.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress/Frank Leslie</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was a concern for lawmakers. <a href="http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc2900/sc2908/000001/000204/html/am204--458.html">Laws</a> such as the 1790 Act Related to Freeing Slaves by Will or Testament were designed to extract the maximum amount of labor from the enslaved before they were awarded freedom, or their free black relatives could purchase it for them. This meant enslaved men were freed only when they ceased to be in peak physical condition, and enslaved women were freed after their childbearing years.</p>
<p>Once freed, African-Americans <a href="aomol.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000204/html/am204--269.html">had to show</a> “proof of a sufficient livelihood,” affirming their ability to care for themselves, or otherwise end up in the city jail or re-enslaved. The irony of this proclamation was that once freed, African-Americans found ways to stave off poverty by working in trades similar to the jobs they had while enslaved. If they avoided the county jail, free blacks were subject to curfews and sanctions against traveling. Many counties in Maryland passed laws requiring free blacks to move out of the state for fear they would incite the local enslaved population to rebel.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most alarming attempt to address the problem of black freedom was the <a href="http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/html/casestudies/mscscountycs.html">development</a> of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and its chapters in antebellum cities such as Baltimore. Under the guise of Christianity and missionary work, the ACS promised enslaved African-Americans all the rights and privileges of freedom, so long as they relocated to Liberia. Organized by white slaveholders, politicians and religious organizations, the ACS offered a solution to both slavery and the rise in free blacks in the United States – resettle blacks outside the country.</p>
<p>Black intellectuals of the time were divided over resettlement campaigns. Abolitionist newspapers <a href="http://www.accessible-archives.com/2014/02/realities-american-colonization-society/">published</a> countless articles protesting the efforts of the colonization society. Historian Robert Brugger <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/maryland-middle-temperament">notes</a> that a group of free blacks surrounded the gangplanks in the Baltimore harbor in an attempt to stop the forced removal of their friends and family to Liberia.</p>
<p>As these 19th-century examples demonstrate, policing African-American freedom has a long history in Baltimore. African-Americans could escape slavery, but they were not truly free. New laws were continually passed to limit, if not completely dismantle, the very few rights they possessed.</p>
<h2>Baltimore today: DOJ report documents violations of civil rights</h2>
<p>The findings in the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download">DOJ report</a> echo the restrictions on lives of antebellum free blacks in key ways. African-Americans were arrested in greater proportion than their nonblack peers. According to the report: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>BPD made roughly 44 percent of its stops in two small, predominantly African-American districts that contain only 11 percent of the City’s population. Consequently, hundreds of individuals — nearly all of them African American – were stopped on at least 10 separate occasions from 2010–2015. Indeed, seven African-American men were stopped more than 30 times during this period.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>African-Americans were frequently arrested for loitering. If their presence became a problem, whether real or perceived, Baltimore police exercised a zero-tolerance policy when it came to African-Americans resulting in unlawful searches, seizures and arrests. As in the 19th century, the mere presence of African-Americans provided grounds for arrest. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, attempts were made to remove blacks from society by, among other means, sending them to Liberia or forcing them to move away. Today, arresting and detaining African-Americans quarantines them from the rest of society. If the arrest sticks and the individual is prosecuted and found guilty, he is incarcerated. If convicted of a felony, he is not allowed to vote.</p>
<p>African-Americans make up 44 percent of the Baltimore police force and 63 percent of the population of Baltimore city. As the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/03/us/the-race-gap-in-americas-police-departments.html">New York Times</a> points out, “Baltimore’s police department has a lower percentage of blacks than the population it serves. But in contrast to other cities that have been wracked by tension and protests over police confrontations with black men, the city’s mayor, its police commissioner, the state’s attorney are all black, giving a somewhat different tenor to clashes between the power structure and its critics.” Indeed, arguments about policing that exclusively point to racism or bias among officers as the root of the problem don’t hold for cities like Baltimore. I believe the problem is also tied to anti-black aspects of the laws they are tasked with enforcing.</p>
<p>The DOJ report provides a critical opportunity to assess and reform disparities in the legal system, especially as we continually bear witness to the almost <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fire-this-time-is-in-milwaukee/2016/08/15/da3f9a3e-632b-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html?utm_term=.4bf97e1d3d70">daily death dance</a> between African-Americans and the police. It makes clear that African-American rights are in jeopardy. The key difference between African-Amerians in Baltimore then and now is that blacks are now citizens. They are entitled to, among other things, the right to due process under the law. </p>
<p>However, the DOJ findings make clear that African-Americans in Baltimore are disproportionately harassed, searched, detained and, in the case of Freddie Gray, murdered. The fear is not that the DOJ report has unmasked truths that we prefer to deny. The fear is that there will be a failure to reform the system in light of these findings. Greater than the fear is the reality that policing black citizens will continue to include practices that are eerily reminiscent of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63985/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Millward received funding from the American Association of University Women. </span></em></p>The Baltimore Police Department is found to have violated the civil rights of poor blacks. A historian explains why those findings are eerily similar to how the city treated blacks in the 1800s.Jessica Millward, Associate Professor of History, University of California, IrvineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/440652015-07-22T18:19:34Z2015-07-22T18:19:34ZCould ‘Insight Policing’ have saved Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray and others?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89371/original/image-20150722-1487-18c41ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sandra Bland (left) died in jail after a routine traffic stop in Texas. Freddie Gray died after suffering a spinal injury while in police custody.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikipedia.org">Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The disturbing <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/us/sandra-bland-was-combative-texas-arrest-report-says.html?ref=us">video</a> released earlier this week of the stop and arrest of Sandra Bland highlights once again the excessive and inexcusable use of force by police officers in this country. The 28-year-old’s death in police custody after a routine traffic stop is currently being investigated as a murder. </p>
<p>Both ordinary citizens and experts have been calling for police departments to ramp up efforts to stop these kinds of abuses, but tragically, they continue. </p>
<p>Why they continue is perplexing and complicated – from history and power to the role of implicit bias. But one answer, as a Memphis cop put it to me in an interview for the <a href="http://www.insightconflictresolution.org/retaliatory-violence-insight-project.html">Retaliatory Violence Insight Project</a>, is what police officers call the “tricky part”: maintaining trust with citizens while enforcing the law.</p>
<h2>The tricky part</h2>
<p>Part of what is tricky, I found talking with police officers, is that traditional policing practice uses deterrence methods – force and the threat of punishment – to motivate compliance. </p>
<p>Most of us are familiar with these methods. Perhaps we have gotten a speeding ticket, or been subject to stop and frisk. The principle is the same – obey the law or face consequences. </p>
<p>Deterrence policies may stop crime in some cases, but they are counter to most people’s conception of <a href="http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1876&context=amcis2000">trust</a>, which depends on the belief that another person will not cause harm. </p>
<p>Because of this trust deficit, <a href="http://courses.washington.edu/pbafhall/514/514%20Readings/tyler%20justice.pdf">deterrence methods can fail</a> to produce compliance; and instead, produce <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/30/ferguson-protests-police-response_n_7698548.html">conflict</a> between the public and the police. Just watch Sandra Bland’s arrest video, or the public reaction to the high-force police response during last year’s <a href="http://boingboing.net/2014/08/14/video-standoff-in-ferguson-a.html">Ferguson protests</a>. </p>
<p>Research from the Retaliatory Violence Insight Project into the challenges police departments face curtailing retaliatory violence in high crime communities has produced an alternative: Insight Policing.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.insightconflictresolution.org/insight-policing.html">Insight Policing</a> is a community-oriented, problem-solving policing practice designed to help officers take control of situations with the public before conflict escalates. By doing so, the police maintain trust and enhance the probability of cooperation in difficult situations of enforcement.</p>
<h2>The role of Insight Policing</h2>
<p>Insight Policing helps officers recognize and defuse conflict behavior when they see it – both their own and the public’s. Often, conflict behavior resembles such stress-based behaviors as fight, flight and freeze; these are the actions people take when they feel threatened.</p>
<p>The thing about conflict behavior, and what Insight Policing pays particular attention to, is that when we feel threatened, we are <a href="http://scar.gmu.edu/book-chapter/explaining-human-conflict-human-needs-theory-and-insight-approach">reactive</a>, not reflective, in how we respond. We do not take time to think about what we are doing, we simply <em>do,</em> in hopes that we will successfully stop the threat.</p>
<p>Sandra Bland refused to get out of her car (conflict behavior), responding to the threat the officer posed when he ordered her to. The officer pulled a taser on Bland (conflict behavior) in response to the threat her refusal posed to him as an agent of the law.</p>
<p>While clearly there are more dramatic instances of conflict behavior in police–citizen encounters – the high speed chase, the standoff – the more mundane conflict interactions are what are undermining police legitimacy.</p>
<p>When conflict behavior manifests as noncompliance, when citizens refuse to cooperate, as was the case with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/nyregion/staten-island-man-dies-after-he-is-put-in-chokehold-during-arrest.html?_r=1">Eric Garner</a>, <a href="http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/doj_report_on_shooting_of_michael_brown_1.pdf">Mike Brown</a>, <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bal-charging-documents-for-freddie-gray-20150420-htmlstory.html">Freddie Gray</a> and most recently <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/us/sandra-bland-was-combative-texas-arrest-report-says.html?ref=us">Sandra Bland</a>, what begins as mundane can become lethal when conflict behavior escalates. </p>
<p>Insight Policing, which has been piloted in two American police departments, Memphis, Tennessee, and Lowell, Massachusetts, is a promising tool for helping officers get a handle on the “tricky part.” Eighty percent of officers trained agreed that Insight Policing enhanced their ability to defuse the feelings of threat citizens have about their encounters with police officers. </p>
<h2>An example of Insight Policing</h2>
<p>Take an example from Memphis. Three Memphis officers trained in Insight Policing responded to a call for shots fired. They arrived on the scene to find a crowd of young men behind a house. They asked them the kinds of questions they always ask at the scene of a crime: “What happened?” “What did you see?” “Who did this?” The young men refused to cooperate: “We didn’t see anything.” “Leave us alone.” “We don’t know what you’re talking about.” </p>
<p>The officers suspected otherwise. And ordinarily, they reported, they would have arrested the young men on gang-related charges and questioned them down at the station – to delay any retaliation that might have been brewing as well as to get the information they were after. Instead, having been trained in Insight Policing, they recognized the young men’s resistance as conflict behavior. They dropped, for the moment, their crime investigator hats, and put on their conflict investigator hats. They used Insight Policing techniques to become curious about what was motivating the young men’s resistance. </p>
<p>What the officers found was not that the young men were protecting somebody or hiding something or breaking the law in some way, but that they had had trouble with police in the past. They did not want to speak because they were afraid of incriminating themselves.</p>
<p>Getting this information allowed the officers to delink the threat they posed by assuring the young men that they were not after them, they were after the shooter. They were able to build enough trust in the moment that the young men gave them the information they needed to catch the shooter later that night. </p>
<p>Had the officers used their power to arrest the young men, just for hanging out together, they would have played into the young men’s fear of incrimination. They would have escalated a situation, and who knows how it would have turned out. </p>
<p>By engaging the men in terms of their conflict behavior, the officers were able to build trust, garner cooperation and effectively enforce the law. </p>
<p>What if the officers who stopped Sandra Bland and Freddie Gray and Mike Brown and Eric Garner had been trained to recognize conflict behavior and defuse it? Perhaps history would be different.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Price is Director of the Insight Conflict Resolution Program at George Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. She contributed to the development of Insight Policing through the Retaliatory Violence Insight Project, funded by the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance. </span></em></p>Police in Lowell, Massachusetts and Memphis, Tennessee are using a new approach designed to help them build trust while enforcing the law.Megan Price, Director, Insight Conflict Resolution Program at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437392015-06-24T10:08:19Z2015-06-24T10:08:19ZLet’s talk race: a teacher tells students not to be ‘color-blind’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86138/original/image-20150623-19371-2jm7yv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If you can't see it, does race not exist?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=143507156883316950000&search_tracking_id=AjelgxbkwTX3tWv0bDqE0w&searchterm=eyes%20coverec&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=89337400">Woman image via www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following the recent events featured in the media such as the riots in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/baltimore-police-credible-evidence-of-gang-threat-to-officers/2015/04/27/68aca83a-ecf3-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html">Baltimore</a> that came after the fatal shooting of Freddie Gray, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/16/us/rachel-dolezal/">Rachel Dolezal</a> stepping down as the Spokane Washington NAACP president, and the tragic shootings in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/17/white-gunman-sought-in-shooting-at-historic-charleston-african-ame-church/">Charleston, South Carolina</a>, public discussions have primarily focused on issues surrounding individual responsibility and mental illness.</p>
<p>I read these conversations with disappointment and frustration. </p>
<p>The dominant approach to understanding racial inequality in the US today is “color-blind racism.” This is the belief that racial inequality can be attributed only to issues considered to be <a href="http://www.miller3group.com/Articles/What_Does_It_Really_Mean.pdf">“race-neutral”</a>. In other words, because racial discrimination is now illegal, everyone is born with an <a href="http://ann.sagepub.com/content/634/1/190.full.pdf">equal opportunity</a> to achieve the “American Dream,” no matter their race.</p>
<p>In comparison to the overt and legal racism prior to the Civil Rights movement, this “new” transformed type of racism is seemingly invisible, making meaningful societal discussions near impossible, and in turn <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442220546/Racism-without-Racists-Color-Blind-Racism-and-the-Persistence-of-Racial-Inequality-in-America-Fourth-Edition">perpetuating</a> racial inequality, which then expresses itself, as we have seen, in these recent incidents. </p>
<h2>Conversations with students</h2>
<p>What about classrooms? Are adequate conversations around race taking place in that space? And how can scholars shape some of the discussions?</p>
<p>A clear example of “color-blind racism” unexpectedly arose my first year as an assistant professor of sociology at Birmingham-Southern College (BSC) in Birmingham, Alabama.</p>
<p>Being a “Yankee,” I was warned in advance that my students at BSC would be more politically and socially conservative than what I was used to (coming from the University of New Hampshire).</p>
<p>However, midway into my first semester, I found that the majority of my students were able to critically engage in potentially controversial topics such as LGBT rights, health care reform and the legalization of marijuana. We also discussed the class inequality between them as middle- or upper-class students living within the gated “hilltop” campus and the surrounding lower social class neighborhood immediately outside of the campus gates.</p>
<p>The real challenge arose when it came to discussing race in the classroom.</p>
<p>I struggled to get my students to address the “elephant in the room” – that the majority of the surrounding lower social class neighborhood comprised racial minorities, whereas the majority of my students and BSC professors, including myself, benefited from “<a href="http://ed-share.educ.msu.edu/scan/ead/renn/mcintosh.pdf">white privilege</a>,” the often unacknowledged advantages with which whites are born, based solely on the color of their skin. </p>
<h2>Challenges of talking about race</h2>
<p>I had incorrectly assumed that teaching in Birmingham, Alabama, with its rich social and <a href="http://www.arcadiapublishing.com/9781467110679/Civil-Rights-in-Birmingham">cultural history</a> of the Civil Rights movement and racial heterogeneity, would make discussing racial inequality one of the most engaging and meaningful discussions in the course.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86139/original/image-20150623-19411-c8xuuz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How can students discuss race in classrooms?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/claremontcollegesdigitallibrary/5097239229/in/photolist-8LqFCZ-cEJChm-cEJrdJ-9sPbkW-4aadNf-nR3LCj-nEMQQK-nELLhN-22UAA8-ni3Aga-6hRRXf-cEHtUN-cEJLoJ-9wrdaK-bxHR3Q-9GNHEB-cEHqS1-9wucEC-9wrd9Z-cEJH2A-MdEE2-aM4MWP-qWSLKX-9GRAoW-9P6yte-nzfebX-k63mSD-k64FHd-9wuMSm-cEJ1Zs-8ETDVC-9PPW9U-82MUon-65BrWg-8phpkD-9wrd8D-cEJDC3-9Puh2K-6s7wWN-8ETDSC-noiki2-63trkz-65BWrb-7d9fg1-8aDAXc-ds1Rsy-cEHT61-nNXqJW-kyPYG-9PNMWA">Claremont Colleges Digital LIbrary</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My students refused to discuss race beyond a superficial level.</p>
<p>I found the majority of my students, primarily from the South, have been “socialized” to not discuss race because “race doesn’t matter” and we are (or should be) a “color-blind” society.</p>
<p>This was illustrated by student responses such as “there is only one race: human” and “only racists see race” when asked in class whether race still matters. The responses were consistently given by students across my four classes. </p>
<p>Conversations with several of my faculty colleagues across disciplines also revealed that this was a common theme.</p>
<p>What I learned was that in order to get students to more effectively discuss issues of race, I needed to first address one of the most dangerous <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442220546/Racism-without-Racists-Color-Blind-Racism-and-the-Persistence-of-Racial-Inequality-in-America-Fourth-Edition">social myths</a> perpetuating <a href="http://ann.sagepub.com/content/634/1/190.full.pdf">racial inequality</a> in today’s society — that we are a “color-blind” society.</p>
<h2>How to teach race</h2>
<p>I have modified my lesson on race to begin, not end, with a discussion of “color-blind racism.” What I have found to be most critical to this discussion is challenging my students to apply their <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-sociological-imagination-9780195133738?cc=us&lang=en&">“sociological imaginations,” </a> which can enable them to look at underlying social issues behind some recent news events. </p>
<p>As good sociologists-in-training, my students are asked to consider the larger social structural concerns (eg, poverty, institutional racism, the criminal justice system) instead of focusing on individuals (eg, Baltimore police officers, Rachael Dolezal, Dylann Roof).</p>
<p>My experiences in the classroom are by no means an isolated incident. Research consistently indicates this “color-blind” ideology <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/new-jim-crow">permeates</a> education, politics, the criminal justice system, the media, etc. </p>
<p>This “color-blind racism” is as dangerous as, if not more dangerous than, the overt racism during <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/new-jim-crow">Jim Crow</a>. It is for the most part invisible and easily overlooked in public discussions on social issues and therefore very effectively perpetuates racial inequality. </p>
<p>If the majority of my college students believe it is wrong to even “see” race, how can they be expected to meaningfully discuss larger issues of institutional racism and inequality? How can we as a society expect more meaningful social discussions and solutions? </p>
<p>As scholars, we need to emphasize to our students that race is a real thing, with real consequences. As long as we as a society continue avoiding “seeing” or meaningfully discussing race, we will continue to have Baltimore riots and Charleston shootings.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meghan L Mills has received funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>Do academics need to change the way they teach race? What is the impact of students having been socialized to believe that “race doesn’t matter”?Meghan L Mills, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Birmingham-Southern College Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/410722015-05-02T13:11:58Z2015-05-02T13:11:58ZThe slow poisoning of Freddie Gray and the hidden violence against black communities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80128/original/image-20150501-23838-1iv6d65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesting in West Baltimore.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/87films/17125640489/in/photolist-s6kogB-s6kok4-snBGzL-snJMX4-rqYaYe-rqYQPR-snJM9a-s6coZq-rqYafv-soTLoE-sp2gpR-rsfnun-s6N5bW-sp2fr8-rqMwMb-skuNay-snMLHP-rqYQR4-s6dy35-socNT9-soTNEJ-rrmUtS-s7sSzE-soTNkf-socHm7-soTKBE-sm5fB5-rgqoXt-socJMy-s52Y2x-rqLSkb-s6jGg6-sku765-s4rWQT-snJMEa-s6cp2u-s4rWux-s4rW6r-sku7CN-s4rWCD-s6korM-s6a7QA-snJMk2-snJMre-skuN6W-snJMXK-snM6Sx-s6dyd5-rqLRYQ-s6jGv4">Arash Azizzada/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The life of Freddie Gray, and of so many others, was endangered many times over by numerous forms of systemic racism before it was finally taken in the custody of police – an event that has sparked protests in Baltimore this week. Among these forms of endangerment was the lead that poisoned Gray as a child.</p>
<p>Reports indicate that Freddie Gray, like too many children – especially children of color and those in poverty – experienced significant <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-freddie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=1">exposure to lead as a child</a>. </p>
<p>In 2008, Gray’s family filed a lawsuit against Stanley Rochkind, the owner of a home they rented for four years, arguing their children’s exposure to lead “played a significant part in their educational, behavioral and medical problems,” according to <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/04/27/3651505/freddie-gray-and-childhood-lead-exposure/">reports</a>. </p>
<p>In six tests conducted between 1992 and 1996, Freddie Gray and his siblings had lead levels between 11 micrograms per deciliter and 19 micrograms per deciliter, according to an <a href="http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/freddie-gray-and-sisters-suffered-lead-poisoning-family-said-in-2008-lawsuit/ar-AAbB3l3">article</a> citing court documents. </p>
<p>Those levels of lead in Gray’s blood far exceeded the upper limit of five micrograms per deciliter deemed safe by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). </p>
<p>Extensive research has <a href="http://www.nchh.org/Portals/0/Contents/Childhood_Lead_Exposure.pdf">demonstrated</a> that childhood lead exposure can cause life-long and very serious developmental, cognitive, medical, and psychological issues. </p>
<p>These harmful effects can happen from the womb, even at low levels of exposure. Researchers point out that exposure to lead and other environmental toxins can have <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/">significant effects</a> on the developing brains of babies, even at levels far lower than those that would be toxic to adults. </p>
<p>So as we examine the problems of systemic racism, economic injustice, and state misconduct, we should be careful not to leave out hidden forms of violence, including environmental injustice.</p>
<h2>Invisible violence</h2>
<p>Exposure to environmental toxins is extremely widespread. </p>
<p>Children’s health advocates <a href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/philippe-grandjean/">Philippe Grandjean</a> and <a href="http://www.mountsinai.org/profiles/philip-j-landrigan">Philip Landrigan</a> <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/">told the Atlantic</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Our very great concern… is that children worldwide are being exposed to unrecognized toxic chemicals that are silently eroding intelligence, disrupting behaviors, truncating future achievements and damaging societies.”</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80130/original/image-20150501-23863-srnvh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peeling lead paint or lead dust causes developmental and cognitive problems in children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.freestockphotos.biz/stockphoto/16324">CDC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This poisonous lead exposure, and the possible developmental harm it causes, is just one example of the invisible violence inflicted on so many individuals through absorption of environmental toxins and through other harmful and unequal environmental conditions.</p>
<p>Environmental issues are not often described in terms of violence, at least not violence against humans. But the environmental injustice that slowly poisons poor and minority individuals and deprives them of access to healthy food and healthy living environments in the US and globally is, in my view, most certainly a form of violence. </p>
<p>Rob Nixon, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, calls this type of harm to vulnerable populations “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072343">slow violence</a>.” </p>
<p>Environmental injustice may seem like a secondary issue in the face of massive police brutality, poverty, and civil uprising, and I don’t suggest that it should preempt conversations about other forms of systemic racism. </p>
<p>But as we talk about the <a href="http://rhetoricraceandreligion.blogspot.com/2013/07/zimmermantrial-persistent-devaluation.html">devaluing of black lives and black bodies</a> that has taken place in Baltimore and across the country and the world, we cannot ignore the ways that this manifests in a subtle and constant disregard for the health of marginalized communities.</p>
<h2>‘Food deserts’</h2>
<p>Lead poisoning may sound like a small issue or one that is primarily in the past, but this is not the case. It is a far-too <a href="http://kidshealth.org/parent/firstaid_safe/home/lead_poisoning.html">common event</a> in many regions in the US. </p>
<p>Combined with this are conditions in which black and poor individuals often have <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/news-room/our-stories/2012/food_desert.html">limited access</a> to <a href="http://archive.baltimorecity.gov/Government/AgenciesDepartments/Planning/BaltimoreFoodPolicyInitiative/FoodDeserts.aspx">fresh food</a> and <a href="http://www.csd.org.uk/uploadedfiles/files/value_of_green_space_report.pdf">green space</a>. </p>
<p>These communities also experience <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollution-racial-disparities">disproportionate proximity</a> to garbage incinerators, factories, and other sources of toxic emissions, according to a number of studies from <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094431">academics</a>, <a href="http://www.ejnet.org/ej/">advocacy groups</a> and <a href="http://archive.gao.gov/d48t13/121648.pdf">government agencies</a>. </p>
<p>Freddie Gray serves as an example of the issue of food deserts as well; he lived in a community with limited access to fresh food (see the map <a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/news-room/our-stories/2012/food_desert.html">here</a> from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), as do <a href="http://archive.baltimorecity.gov/Government/AgenciesDepartments/Planning/BaltimoreFoodPolicyInitiative/FoodDeserts.aspx">one in five residents</a> of Baltimore City and one in four school-aged children in Baltimore. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80131/original/image-20150501-23842-15bfxxf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Red areas indicate ‘food deserts’ in Baltimore, areas where the distance to a supermarket is more than a quarter mile and the median income is below the poverty level and other factors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/johns-hopkins-center-for-a-livable-future/news-room/our-stories/2012/food_desert.html">Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.csd.org.uk/uploadedfiles/files/value_of_green_space_report.pdf">Research</a> also indicates that “in areas where residents are almost entirely white, there is 11 times more green space than areas where more than 40% of residents are black, Asian or minority ethnic.” And while class and income level are factors in these types of environmental injustice, race remains a major factor <a href="http://astro.temple.edu/%7Ejmennis/Courses/GUS_0150/readings/downey98.pdf">even when isolated from class</a>.</p>
<p>Outside the US, we see these same phenomena playing out among many poor and non-white populations. And this inequity is exaggerated even further when we consider that those populations most affected by climate change are likely to be in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/sep/27/climate-change-poor-countries-ipcc">poor countries</a> with predominantly black and brown people. </p>
<p>Indeed, many have <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/192801/what-does-blacklivesmatter-have-do-climate-change">argued</a> that the delay among wealthy nations to significantly curb climate change is motivated by a lack of interest in or respect for the lives of people of color. </p>
<h2>Environmental racism</h2>
<p>Issues of systemic racism like widespread poverty and police brutality deserve much more attention than white America has given them. </p>
<p>I don’t wish to draw any attention away from these issues, or from a full examination of police misconduct in cases like Gray’s and many others. </p>
<p>But to fully demand any justice for Freddie Gray and other victims of systemic violence, we have to reject all forms of systemic racism, including the subtle but devastating forms of <a href="http://www.ejnet.org/ej/">environmental racism</a>.</p>
<p>Freddie Gray’s life ended violently and tragically in the custody of police. This tragedy, and so many others like it, must be answered for. But the tragedies of Gray’s life started long before this, not only with underfunded schools, income inequality, and myriad egregious denials of institutional support for his community, but also with the slow theft of his potential caused by his exposure to toxins like lead. </p>
<p>This country is denying huge numbers of black and brown children their chance to achieve untold levels of cognitive potential by quietly poisoning them. We then compound this denial by providing deeply unequal educational opportunities. And, finally, we disregard their civil rights as well. </p>
<p>Addressing any one piece of this picture while leaving the others in place guarantees continued injustice.</p>
<p>The call that #blacklivesmatter means that black bodies and minds matter. It means that it matters when black individuals are killed by police, and it also means that it matters when black individuals are slowly and invisibly stripped of their health.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>For more coverage on the Freddy Gray and the Baltimore riots, see <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/baltimore-riots">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rita Turner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Freddie Gray had high levels of lead as a child, one of the environmental injustices suffered by poor and minority groups.Rita Turner, Lecturer in American Studies, Sustainability, and EcoJustice, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409142015-05-01T15:49:33Z2015-05-01T15:49:33ZFrom Tottenham to Baltimore, policing crisis starts race to the bottom for justice<p>West Baltimore, 8.39 am April 12: Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, stood on the street talking with friends. Police officers approached on bicycles and made “eye contact” with Gray, who then attempted to leave. The police chased him and video footage shot on neighbours’ mobile phones shows police holding Gray face-down on the pavement. One witness described how an officer pressed a knee into Gray’s neck as he was handcuffed, while another bent his legs upwards: “<a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-video-moore-20150423-story.html">They had him folded up like he was a crab or a piece of origami</a>”.</p>
<p>By the time the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/the-mysterious-death-of-freddie-gray/391119/">police van</a> arrived with Gray at the Western District police station some 45 minutes later “he could not talk and he could not breathe”, according to a police officer <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gray-rough-rides-20150423-story.html#page=1">quoted in the Baltimore Sun report</a>. It was only then that police called medics who transferred him to hospital. Doctors determined that Gray had three fractured vertebrae and a damaged larynx, his spinal cord 80% severed at his neck. Gray died of his injuries a week later on April 19.</p>
<p>“No Justice, No Peace” has echoed through the streets as thousands of people have protested Gray’s death. Protest marches on April 25 and walk-outs of students on April 27 were followed by what some call rioting, others unrest or rebellion. Officials and mainstream news coverage have decried property destruction, including burning of police cars, and theft. </p>
<p>Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, declared that “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2015/apr/28/baltimore-freddie-gray-riots-live-updates">violence will not be tolerated</a>” and the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, called city residents “lawless gangs of thugs roaming the streets” before declaring a state of emergency, suspending habeas corpus, implementing a 10pm curfew, and deploying National Guard troops.</p>
<h2>Crisis over policing</h2>
<p>Gray’s death at the hands of the police was the latest to provoke protest. Natalie Finegar, the deputy district public defender <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/25/freddie-gray-death-triggers-frustration-baltimore-police">said that</a> it was a “daily occurrence” for her clients to describe some sort of mishandling by the police. These range from “jump outs” where officers spring from patrol cars and shake down a suspect, to serious assaults. The city of Baltimore has paid out more than <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-state-damage-cap-20150330-story.html">US$5.7m in undue force lawsuits</a> between 2008 and 2011.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/29/you_can_replace_property_you_cant">Baltimore resident Kane Mayfield</a> the conflict has: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>been mis-characterised pretty much by mainstream sensationalists who come down here to soak up the angel dust of civil unrest and sell it to white America. It’s fun. I get it. You know? Look at them. Black rage. It’s nice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But property destruction is not equivalent to death – particularly in a context where so many black people are killed and harmed by police with near impunity. It is telling that there are no comprehensive data on homicides by police in the US. A partial snapshot from <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/police-killings-data/14060357/">recent FBI data</a> reveals a white police officer killed a black person in a “justifiable homicide” about twice a week between 2005-2012.</p>
<p>The protests communicate a legitimation crisis over policing in the United States. A cycle of renewed dissent against state racial violence has become increasingly visible since July 2013, following the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html">acquittal of George Zimmerman</a> for the murder of Trayvon Martin. “Black Lives Matter”, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”, “I Can’t Breathe” and “Shut It Down” have become protest slogans after the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City.</p>
<h2>Stop-and-search</h2>
<p>Across the Atlantic, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/10/mark-duggan-family-rallying-cry-no-peace-no-justice">“No Justice, No Peace</a>” was also the cry of protesters gathered to hear a verdict of “lawful killing” in the case of the police shooting of Mark Duggan in London, 2011. </p>
<p>Duggan’s death sparked the most extensive riots in recent British history. As with recent events in the US, the English summer riots of 2011 raised serious concerns about policing within inner-city communities. The findings of the 2011 Guardian-LSE research project, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/interactive/2011/dec/14/reading-the-riots-investigating-england-s-summer-of-disorder-full-report">Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s summer of disorder</a>, suggested that the riots were motivated by a sense of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/video/2011/dec/05/reading-riots-video">“poverty, injustice and a visceral hatred of the police”</a>. Some 73% of people they interviewed said they had been stopped and searched by the police at least once in the previous year.</p>
<p>Time and again, anger over perceived misuse of “stop-and-search” has been one of the causes of rioting in Britain. In 1981, riots in Brixton sparked three months of rioting by black, Asian and white youths across most of the country’s inner-cities. The Brixton uprising was triggered by <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4854556.stm">Operation Swamp 81</a>, which saw the police employ ancient vagrancy legislation, called “sus laws” (<a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1689103">suspected person</a>) laws’, in a mass stop-and-search operation. </p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/3631579.stm">The Scarman Report</a> into the causes of the 1981 riots stated that the black population of Brixton had been subject to “disproportionate and indiscriminate” policing. Sus laws were repealed yet stop-and-search substantially increased.</p>
<p>An estimated 1m stop and searches are carried out in the UK each year and in 2009-2010, according to the <a href="http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/publication/briefing-paper-5-race-disproportionality-stops-and-searches-under-section-60-criminal">Equality and Human Rights Commission</a>: “Black people were stopped 23.5 times more frequently than white people and Asian people 4.5 times more frequently. </p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27224887">a revised code of conduct</a> on stop-and-search was introduced; recent figures show <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales-2012-to-2013/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales-2012-to-2013">a 12% reduction</a>, but more <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/203873/abolish-police-instead-lets-have-full-social-economic-and-political-equality">radical reform</a> is required.</p>
<h2>Race to the bottom</h2>
<p>Stop-and-search is a day-to-day expression of violent relationships between police and communities. People interviewed by <a href="http://www.stop-watch.org/">StopWatch</a> detail the enduring stigma affected by these policing practices. Police harassment of black citizens communicates authoritative messages about the place of ethnic minorities in society.</p>
<p>Racial discrimination <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/oct/11/how-fair-is-britain-data">intersects with other inequalities</a>: poverty, rising economic inequality (between the richest and the poorest and between ethnic groups), joblessness (in 2012 the unemployment rate for black youths in the UK was 55.9%, double that of their white peers), high levels of incarceration, inadequate housing, unequal access to education and healthcare.</p>
<p>Fifty years since the civil rights movement and the ostensible end of state-sanctioned discrimination, austerity and welfare retrenchment has created even deeper divides. A recent special issue of Feminist Review on the politics of austerity details the multiple ways in which ”<a href="http://www.palgrave-journals.com/fr/journal/v109/n1/full/fr201459a.html?hc_location=ufi">divides of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and class</a>“ are intensifying. The UK and US are relying on the same forms of policing to resolve the resulting economic and political conflicts. Racial and economic inequality fuelled the riots in London 2011 and the same thing has sparked the unrest we see in Baltimore and other US cities today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Imogen Tyler receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust and her research has previously been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Her views are her own.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenna Loyd is affiliated with Critical Resistance, a member-run grassroots movement which aims to end the Prison Industrial Complex.</span></em></p>Provocative, violent and discriminatory policing has sparked riots in both the UK and America.Imogen Tyler, Senior Lecturer, Lancaster UniversityJenna Loyd, Assistant professor, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/409902015-04-29T18:06:45Z2015-04-29T18:06:45ZBaltimore’s toxic slum housing and its part in the violent death of Freddie Gray<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79791/original/image-20150429-6236-1tl0ajh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The house in which Freddie Gray grew up in the Baltimore neighbourhood of Druid Heights.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-freddie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=1">Kim Hairston, Baltimore Su</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The unexplained death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, after his arrest on April 12 has spawned two days of intense riots in Baltimore following his funeral on April 27. </p>
<p>Gray, who was carrying a switchblade, was arrested on suspicion of drug activity on the grounds of the Gilmor Homes social housing development in Baltimore’s notorious Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood. </p>
<p>A video surfaced of Gray’s arrest that showed him screaming in pain as a police officer pressed his knee against his neck; later in the video several police officers dragged a listless and unresponsive Gray into a police wagon as on-lookers shouted that Gray was clearly in need of medical attention. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m7TZaLpHJhU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>What happened <a href="http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/freddie-gray/">in the 45 minutes after his 8.39am arrest</a> has sparked protest. After being loaded into the police wagon, Gray was not fastened into a stationary position with a seat belt. While the Baltimore Police Department has conceded that its officers <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3054694/Baltimore-police-admit-Freddie-Gray-got-medical-attention-van-ride-commissioner-won-t-resign-death.html">failed to follow proper procedure</a>, many suspect malicious intent; the city police department is renowned for its use of the intimidation tactic of “rough riding”, or failing to secure suspects in transport in order to cause discomfort and instill fear. </p>
<p>The practice of rough riding can be particularly dangerous and suspects are usually handcuffed, which prevents suspects from bracing themselves from injury. At some point during transit, Gray suffered a medical emergency. Gray’s spine was severed severely from his neck and he sustained three fractured vertebrae. Although Gray was rushed to the University of Maryland Medical Center, he died seven days later on April 19.</p>
<p>While protests began peacefully on April 27, they quickly descended into rioting, and a state of emergency has now been declared in Maryland. By April 28, 235 arrests had been made (including 34 juveniles), 144 vehicles had been burned along with 15 buildings and 20 police officers wounded. More than 400 Maryland state troopers and 1,700 Maryland national guardsmen were deployed to restore order to the city, which is under a strict curfew from 10pm to 5am. </p>
<p>Even the city’s storied baseball club, the Orioles, has been affected by the riots; two games against the Chicago White Sox were postponed. Put simply, Baltimore is <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-riot-aftermath-20150429-story.html#navtype=outfit">under a level of duress</a> that is disconcerting for such a large city.</p>
<p>Yet while the riots are attributed as a reaction to the death of Gray (similar to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ferguson-riots">events in Ferguson</a>), the truth is much more complicated. Indeed, there are many dissimilarities between Baltimore and Ferguson. While Ferguson had little black political representation and a police force that didn’t reflect local demographics, Baltimore has a black mayor and several black city councillors – and while the police force is majority white, nearly 45% of officers are black. </p>
<p>So, if black Baltimoreans have made great strides in <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121667/black-cops-black-mayors-didnt-save-baltimore-police-abuse">achieving political power in the city</a> (in contrast to Ferguson), what then explains such acrimonious rioting? I believe that the historical legacy of the city’s institutionalised racial housing segregation covenants and their impact on slum housing in the city have contributed to the systemic poverty and geographic isolation of the city’s majority black population. </p>
<p>In fact, there is a direct causal relationship between Gray’s death and the environmental condition of Baltimore’s slum housing.</p>
<h2>How they built Baltimore’s ghettos</h2>
<p>Ever since 1910, when a black lawyer attempted to purchase a home in Baltimore’s affluent Edmonson Village, the city relied on what came to be known as “<a href="http://sundaymagazine.org/2010/12/baltimore-tries-drastic-plan-of-race-segregation/">housing covenants</a>”. These covenants were legal ordinances enacted by the city to prevent black encroachment on white residential neighbourhoods. </p>
<p>Regardless of the level of black population growth, the covenants prevent black neighbourhood expansion – by the 1940s black people constituted more than a third of the city’s population but occupied only a fifth of urban space. While several Supreme Court cases invalidated Baltimore’s housing covenants, the covenants continued to be <em>de facto</em> law into the early 1970s, as Baltimore politicians and real-estate interests colluded to restrict the growth of black neighbourhoods. This process resulted in black Baltimoreans crowding into already sub-standard slum housing districts. </p>
<p>Although white flight eased tensions over neighbourhood expansion that began in the 1960s, the housing that was left was in particularly poor shape. Baltimore has been a majority black city since the mid-1970s, but the legacy of its racial housing policies continue to affect public health in the city to this day. One of the most striking examples of how housing policy has damaged black health is the example of lead paint poisoning.</p>
<h2>Lead poisoning</h2>
<p>Lead-infused paint was <a href="http://www.peoples-law.org/lead-paint-law-maryland">commonly used in Baltimore’s working class row-houses</a> built in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most of Baltimore’s private housing stock derives from this period. After several epidemics of lead-paint poisoning and lead-induced meningitis in Baltimore’s children in the 1920s and 1930s, the Baltimore City Health Department attempted to ban the use of lead-based paint in Baltimore homes. </p>
<p>The BCHD found that lead paint poisoning was particularly acute among children, who were apt to eat sweet-tasting lead paint chips that peeled off the wall. Lead-paint poisoning in children was found to induce neurological problems, and children with lead-paint poisoning suffered in school. Despite the dangers of lead-paint, the lobbying efforts of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/30/obituaries/felix-wormser-86-dies-a-consultant-on-mining.html">Felix Wormser</a> and the Lead Industry Association ensured that lead paint remained a staple of Baltimore housing construction and refurbishment. </p>
<p>It was not until Richard Nixon signed the <a href="http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a066187.pdf">Lead Based Paint Poisoning Prevention Act (LBPPPA)</a> in 1971 was there an effective legal tool to combat the continued use of lead paint. But tens of thousands of Baltimore row-houses remained encrusted with lead paint. Coincidentally, <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-freddie-gray-lead-paint-20150423-story.html#page=1">Gray grew up in one such toxic row-house</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79778/original/image-20150429-23361-1mg8k3e.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poisonous legacy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Langsdale Library</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gray spent the first years of his life at 1459 North Carey Street, in the impoverished Druid Heights neighbourhood, less than ten minutes’ walk from the Gilmor Homes projects where he was apprehended. While the Gilmor Homes development suffers its fair share of social problems, Gray would have had a much better chance of surviving his scuffle with the police had he had the benefit of social housing tenancy. Literally. </p>
<p>Gray’s mother Gloria Darden filed a lawsuit in the early 1990s against the landlord of her row-house, Pikesville resident <a href="http://www.mde.state.md.us/programs/PressRoom/Pages/143.aspx">Stanley Rochkind</a>, in protest of his failure to remove lead paint from the home, for which Darded paid US$300 a month. All three of Darden’s children, older daughter Carolina and twins Freddie and Fredericka, tested with abnormally high levels of lead in their blood (technically, any amount of lead in the blood is hazardous). </p>
<p>As a child, Gray had his blood tested six times between 1992 and 1996. On one occasion, he tested as having 19 micrograms per decilitre (mg/dL) of lead in his blood; the state of Maryland permits lead levels lower than 10 mg/dL. </p>
<p>While the trial was set for late 2009, it was postponed by the state to make room for four other lead paint poisoning suits: all direct against Rochkind. The case eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. </p>
<p>Additionally, Gray received treatment as a youth at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Baltimore hospital that treats children with illnesses of the brain, spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system. His medical treatment did not prevent the onset of negative health effects, however. In addition to being born two months premature, Gray was diagnosed with ADHD and later dropped out of high school after failing several grades. He started using heroin, had been arrested 24 times before his final arrest and had served time in prison for a drug possession charge. </p>
<h2>All-too common</h2>
<p>Yet what makes Gray’s story so tragic is not its uniqueness, but rather its commonness.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of slum houses in Baltimore are encrusted with poisonous lead paint. Furthermore, lead paint is just as pervasive in abandoned houses, and this lead contributes to an environment deleterious to public health. </p>
<p>In the Sandtown-Winchester neighbourhood where Gray was apprehended, 30% of private stock houses are either vacant or abandoned. Some 7% of young children in the neighbourhood have elevated lead levels in their blood. The connection between Gray’s death and lead paint might seem far-fetched if it weren’t so blatant. </p>
<p>While it is possible that Gray might have lived a longer, healthier life if he had lived in Gilmor Homes rather than a lead-laden row-house, the fact remains that Baltimore’s history of institutionalised racial segregation has contributed to the dereliction of the city’s row-housing slum districts. </p>
<p>Given that so many people are compelled to live in these unhealthy homes due to a lack of supply of adequate social housing – it is not surprising that Gray’s death has incited indignation. While riots cannot be condoned, their root causes must be considered if they are to be prevented in the future. </p>
<p>Gray’s death tipped Baltimore into turmoil, but his death is not the cause of the rioting. Rather, the city’s municipal legacy of racial segregation and its failure to provide healthy, affordable housing for its working-class Black population have cultivated feelings of anger and hopelessness in much of the city’s young people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40990/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Sharrer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Racial segregation and poisonous living conditions played a large part in determining the young man’s fate.Nicholas Sharrer, Post-Graduate Researcher, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.