The Counterpublic Papers vol. 3 no. 8

November 22, 2017

I haven’t written about this at all, but Baltimore’s been dealing with a spike in homicides that goes back to the uprising and has been dropping a bit. In 1993 there were 353 homicides and then a sharp decline—the city didn’t come close to 350 homicides again until 2015 when we had 344. Last year we had 316 and currently we stand at 309. It’s important to note that the drop between 1993 and the present moment (even with the spike, it’s unlikely we hit the 344 mark much less the 353 mark) was supposed to coincide with an increase in homicides. The super predator predicted by John Delilulo and then later by both the democratic and republican party—Clinton didn’t just sign the welfare bill, remember, he also signed the Omnibus Crime Control Act, and Hilary Clinton was a firm believer in the super predator myth—never came. Many thought that we’d be looking back at that 353 number thinking those were the good old days. Hell, I wish I had time to dig into the archives—I distinctly recall a government agency giving a group of University of Maryland researchers money to study the genetic predictors of violent crime. (No wonder that The Bell Curve was one of the bestsellers that year.)

Anyway, to the extent we are looking at a spike I’m thinking that it’s due to a work stoppage—“besieged” police have stopped performing police work because they serve populations that don’t believe they’re worth the trouble. They take a “we’ll show you” approach and simply stop working. They then send a signal to the people who are most likely to use violence as a means of conflict resolution, and we’re off to the races.

Except.

There’s one exception to this case.

When a police officer is killed.

The 309th homicide this year was Det. Sean Suiter, shot in the head while investigating a homicide in Harlem Park (a neighborhood adjacent to the one in which Freddie Gray encountered police). His murder was not only swiftly condemned by police and by political officials, a $190,000 award was announced on his behalf. The police put the block (perhaps the neighborhood) he was murdered in on lockdown as police refused to let anyone into the neighborhood who didn’t live there and aggressively went door to door looking for information on the culprit. Officials, activists, and community members have already had several meetings and conferences about this issue, with the word “crisis” being bandied about consistently.

Baltimore has so many scars now, and so many inflicted in just the last three years: the shooting death of little McKenzie Elliott in Waverly in 2014, the rioting of April 2015, the opioid epidemic, the escalation of gun madness and the insane per-capita rate of killing, with 300-plus homicides per year. Now, the death of a detective, married with five children. God help us. 

The entire column is worth reading. The fear leaps off of the page. And yes, we are in a crisis. But it isn’t a crime crisis. I fully expect the number of homicides by the end of this year to be lower than it was last year. I expect the number of homicides next year to be lower than this year. The police are going to gradually get back to work, and once they send that signal the types f homicides that we’ve been witnessing are going to decrease.

As the real crisis continues unabated.

….

The GOP’s new tax bill, if passed, will make it incredibly difficult for people without resources to attend grad school, as graduate school tuition benefits will be taxed as if they were income. This isn’t a feature, it’s a bug. On the one hand one could argue that given the poor market for PhDs, perhaps having less PhDs would be a good thing. The market can handle what it can handle right? But I think there’s something else afoot—the white nationalism the GOP supports is an upwards distribution game. Any attempt to distribute resources—like education—more broadly is a loser.

….

Perhaps the most tragic-comic thing I’ve read today would be Caitlin Flanagan’s piece on “the witch-hunt debate”. I didn’t really think there was a debate to be honest…but there’s this:

One reason the “witch hunt” argument falls flat is because the person advancing it, on behalf of Harvey Weinstein, was Woody Allen. Asked about Weinstein, he told a BBC reporter, “You … don’t want it to lead to a witch hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself. That’s not right either.”

    Besides the fact that it’s Woody Allen, it reminds me so much of Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing quote 26 years ago about “high-tech lynching”. No black man had ever been lynched for any type of interaction with a black woman, few men (approximately 30 out of 150) were even tried of witchery in the Salem Witch Hunt.

    Again, there should be a debate on what change looks like. If all we do is punish the individuals and change the institutions to bring in more women we’ll solve the problem in the short but not the long term. But as long as this is a thing, there shouldn’t be a debate about whether this will lead to anything like what happened in Salem.

Working on a few projects, and reading a few books you’d be interested in. Next time, because you’re getting this later than I’d like. Eat well. Love the ones you’re with.