Response-Ability: Privilege, Police Brutality, and Andy Lopez

Responsibility. Response-ability. It begs the question: What kind of response should white people have to the heart-breaking assassination of 13 year-old Andy Lopez? There is of course no one answer to that question. However, my hope is that the response would create some solidarity with a community of color that has a long history of police harassment and brutality. In mentioning race I may be accused of “playing the race card.” However, in not considering race and the history of race in this community as a significant causal factor to this tragedy, I would being playing a different race card—the white supremacy race card. By not mentioning race, we blind ourselves to a deep and painful reality and in doing so, prevent ourselves from being response-able. Further, in looking at racial implications, as white people we have the opportunity to learn about ourselves and the culture we live in and thus become more capable of acting in solidarity with people of color.

Currently, there are many questions specific to the police shooting of Andy Lopez. Many are asking if the deputy acted out of fear or aggression, why young Andy had such a realistic looking toy gun, why he didn’t put down his gun, etc. These questions may or may not be answered. However, looking at the shooting in the context of U.S. history, and even just Sonoma County history, reveals a pattern that sheds some difficult clarity on the situation at hand. The important questions are questions about a manifestation of a larger disease. The ability to respond effectively requires asking questions about the underlying disease. Some local examples, that are but a few of countless national examples, can help us do this.

Sujey Lopez is not the first mother to be grieving the death her teenage son at the hands of Sonoma County deputies. In March of 2007 Jermiah Chass, a 16 year-old African–American boy with mental health struggles was shot dead by deputies despite being cornered and alone in a mini-van with a knife.  Other men of color have also been killed by local law enforcement. A month after Jermiah Chass, Richard DeSantis, and unarmed man with mental health struggles was shot dead in his drive way by SRPD. In 1997 Kuanchung Kao was shot dead by Rohnert Park Police who believed that because he had a broom handle and was Asian that he was experienced in martial arts. And yes, white people too have been killed by local law enforcement. However, a second example illustrates a disturbing discrepancy.

Just two weeks ago a startling incident took place in the upper-class Sonoma County neighborhood of Fountain Grove.  A white man named James Carl Provost fired four bullets out his window at his wife and a locksmith. An 11-hour stand off proceeded and eventually he was arrested. Not only was he not shot dead (despite having a REAL gun), he was not even charged with attempted murder. I do not mean to imply that James Provost should have been killed. However, did not his social position as a white, wealthy man possibly save his life? He was given roughly 11 hours to drop his gun. Andy Lopez was given roughly 11 seconds.

The obvious implication is that if you are white you are simply less likely to be killed by law enforcement. There is quantitative and qualitative support for this. Researcher Arlene Eisen in solidarity with the Malcolm X Grassroots Committee created a 2012 report on extrajudicial killings in the black community. In her report Operation Ghetto Storm, she highlights the fact that every 28 hours someone inside the United States, employed or protected by the U.S. government kills a Black child, woman or man. We can also look to the Stolen Lives Project which publishes annual lists and pictures of US Citizens killed by law enforcement. Overwhelmingly these faces are black and brown. The Stolen Lives project is a project of the October 22nd Coalition. October 22nd is the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality. It is also the day Andy Lopez was killed.

One question being asked is why was Andy was walking around with such a realistic gun? This question implies that Andy was somehow at fault, not so different from a rape victim being asked why she wore such a short skirt. The same system that creates rape culture creates gun culture. And sadly, the same system that killed Andy Lopez blatantly encouraged his interest in guns. In August of 2011 the Sonoma County SWAT team held an event that amounted to a gun show for kids. This took place in South Park, a low-income neighborhood of mostly Latino, Native-American, and African-American families (Press Democrat article). Children of all ages had the chance to pick up and play with unloaded firearms, including assault rifles. One would think in a country in which the right to bare arms is held more sacred than the right to food, health care or education, that Andy would be rewarded for his interest in firearms. While it is not known if Andy himself was there, it doesn’t matter because Andy lived in a culture in which the police encouraged people like him to be interested in firearms, an interest he paid for with his life.

So what does this say about us as white people and our ability to respond? I propose that white privilege makes us white folks unsafe. In viewing communities of color as potential danger (and thus increasing police presence, bias sentencing laws, and inaccurate stereotypes) we scapegoat violence onto those communities. After all, it is usually white men who are the triggermen in school shootings and other mass shootings.  As well, most violence committed by Latino or African-American males is committed against someone of their own race. Our white privilege insulates us from response-ability, thus compromising our own humanity. When we do not effectively respond to situations like this we allow these situations to continue. No response is itself a response. If we do not take response-ability for creating a community that is safe from racialized police violence then we perpetuate that violence. If we see ourselves as compassionate and just people but do not act to address the disease, not just the symptoms (that is to say the system and not just the individuals in it), then our humanity and our community are compromised.

What to do? In 2000 the United States Commission on Civil Rights admonished Sonoma County to create an office, independent of the D.A.’s office, to investigate police abuse. This did not happen. It is not a surprise to some that the system again failed to hold itself accountable. Individuals have taken action. Local activists have set up a Police Accountability Helpline (542-7224). As well, Cook Middle School students and other of Andy’s peers are actively organizing a response.  Some have organized Copwatch patrols, some have held community dialogues. We can support these events by attending, spreading the word and talking to those students and asking what they need from us. We can be looking inward at how even our previous responses to police violence have allowed the system to continue. We can be acting by supporting communities of color as they need to be supported.  We can do this by questioning the very systems that protect us but harm others—the sheriff, the police, the mental health system, the firearms industry.

HOUSING and PRIVILEGE by Will Fagle

Housing, White Privilege, and Wealth Inequality By Will Flagle As a social justice issue, housing seems simple and relatively bland: people need shelter, what else is there to talk about? A lot, actually. Housing issues are related to a complex web of social justice concerns. Two related concerns that are particularly relevant to housing are white privilege and wealth inequality. In fact, understanding the history of discrimination in America—particularly housing discrimination—is indispensable to understanding contemporary economic inequality. What’s the connection between housing, white privilege, and wealth inequality? Here’s a statistic that might surprise you: The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration financed more than $120 billion worth of new housing between 1934 and 1962, but less than 2% of this real estate was available to nonwhite families—and most of that small amount was located in segregated communities.[1] In other words, for almost three decades the U.S. government backed $120 billion worth of home loans and 98% (!) of those loans went to whites. How did this institutionalized racism become possible? Spurred on by massive mortgage foreclosures during the Great Depression, the federal government […] began underwriting mortgages in an effort to enable citizens to become homeowners. But the mortgage program was selectively administered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and urban neighborhoods considered poor risks were redlined—an action that excluded virtually all the black neighborhoods and many neighborhoods with a considerable number of European immigrants. [2] More important than this shocking history, however, is the relationship between home ownership, wealth, and opportunity—a relationship that links past discrimination to economic inequality today. To begin with, a home is one of the most important assets that a family can own. As Dalton Conley—associate professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University—explains in the PBS documentary Race—the Power of an Illusion, “The majority of Americans hold most of their wealth in the form of home equity.”[3]Therefore, because of the significance of housing as an asset, discrimination in housing directly contributed to inequality in wealth accumulation. Wealth, in turn, is an important determinate of the opportunities that a family can provide for their children. As Larry Adelman has written, “a family’s net worth is not simply the finish line, it’s also the starting line for the next generation.”[4] A family can take out a second mortgage on their home, for instance, to finance their child’s college education or job search. Indeed, because of the way that wealth creates opportunity, “Economists have shown that about 50-80% of our lifetime wealth accumulation is really attributable, in one way or another, to past generations,” writes Conley. It is this intergenerational link between wealth and opportunity that explains why the effects of long past institutionalized racism—such as FHA housing discrimination—are still felt today. Wealth, in other words, provides a mechanism that transfers opportunity (or its absence) from one generation to the next. [*] How are the effects of historic discrimination still felt? Take the “wealth gap,” for example. Thomas Shapiro, in The Hidden Cost of Being African American, writes that “The net worth of typical white families is $81,000 compared to $8,000 for black families.”[6] That’s a 10:1 difference! This present day racial inequality in wealth, however, must be understood in light of the history of institutionalized racism and privilege. And housing discrimination is a fundamental part of that history. As previously mentioned, a home is often a family’s most important asset or source of wealth. Housing discrimination, therefore, created inequality in the accumulation of wealth. Moreover, wealth has two distinct characteristics: 1) it creates opportunity and 2) is it inheritable. The combination of these characteristics produced a dynamic whereby inequality in wealth—initially caused by discriminatory practices—was often passed down and maintained from one generation to the next. So long past discrimination in housing affected the wealth and opportunities of later generations. In short, past housing discrimination is an important factor in explaining economic inequality today. Conley writes: Today, the average Black family has only one-eighth the net worth or assets of the average white family. That difference has seemingly grown since the 1960s, since the Civil Rights triumphs, and is not explained by other factors like education, earnings rates or savings rates. It is really the legacy of racial inequality from generations past. No other measure captures the legacy – the cumulative disadvantage of race for minorities or cumulative advantage of race for whites – than net worth or wealth.[7] Thus, the reverberations of long past institutionalized racism are still felt today. As a primary example, housing discrimination creates inequality in wealth and opportunity that is often inherited by succeeding generations. Tracing back the linkages between present day inequalities in wealth and past housing discrimination demonstrates that—as a social justice issue—housing isn’t simple. Yet these linkages also show that, in spite of their complexity, contemporary housing issues remain as important as ever. [1] George Lipsitz. 1998. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Philadelphia:Temple University Press. [2] William Julius Wilson. (2005 [1996]) “When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor,” in Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology. ed. by Susan Ferguson. New York: McGraw Hill. [3] Dalton Conley. 2003. Interviewed in Race the Power of an Illusion. PBS Transcript available athttp://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-03.htm. [4] Larry Adelman. 2003. A Long History of Racial Preferences – For Whites .http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-02.htm. [*] Note that wealth, not income, has been the touchstone for economic status throughout this discussion. This is no accident. For wealth, not income, is a much better indicator of opportunity: “Even when families of the same income are compared,” explains Adelman, “white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families. Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of one’s home, and how much one inherited from parents.” [6] Thomas M. Shapiro. 2004. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press. [7] Dalton Conley. 2003. Interviewed in Race the Power of an Illusion. PBS Transcript available athttp://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-03.htm.