Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 24

Jean Grae For Christmas

A Merry Christmas to the Horde and a special tip Friend of this blog Jean Grae will be premiering her show "Life With Jeannie" on jeangrae.com tonight. Most of you know Jean for the lyrics (if you don't you should) but she's also has a wicked sense of humor. Somewhere in the vaults there is a tape of me interviewing her, and attempting to keep up with her on the jokes. Didn't work. Watch the promo below. (With friend of the blog, Wyatt Cenac.) Then watch the show tonight.

       

Our God-Given Constitutional Right to a Television Show

The writer Josh Barro has compiled a heart-warming collection of affectionate and supportive notes sent by loving Christians hoping to save him from his sinful and murderous ways. Barro's writings on Phil Robertson provoked this joyous outpouring of excellent news.

Feel the love:

Here's what I know, after having read your column: you're an ignorant, hateful, hate-filled, ill-informed, bigoted, racist heterophobic bully.

Just to be sure, let me repeat that for you: you're an ignorant, hateful, hate-filled, ill-informed, bigoted, racist, heterophobic bully.

Just like the executives at A&E. Just like Bull Connor. Just like Al Sharpton. Just like Barack Hussein Obama. Just like Adolph Hitler.

I like when people repeat things. The rest of these jubilant tidings run the gamut from accusations of treason to physical threats. It warms my heart to see gay men singled out for this particular specimen of affection, because no one needs more love and affection than America's gays and lesbians.

We must love them when they are "full of murder, envy, strife, hatred." We must love them though they "are insolent, arrogant, God-haters." We must love them when "they are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless." And we should especially love them when they strive to "invent new ways of doing evil."

Surely our love shall be questioned by Marxists and Muslims. We should respond by noting that we "would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different," that "We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity." and that "We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other." We, the true followers of God, know that our love should be hot as fire, and bountiful as the flood which might carry the sinners into the earliest possible grave.

We will be called bigots for saying this. But we know that it is the unloving Secular-Shinto-Marxist-Islamo-Kenyan-Liberal-Fascist-Socialists who are the real bigots. We are but the bearers of traditional values and Judeo-Christian heritage, which means we need never be truthful, curious, nor particularly well-informed.

Words mean what God says they mean. How do you know what God says? Ask us. Here is what God says: God says we are right. God says we are love. God says that no one may criticize us without criticizing America. God says we are America. God says we should be on TV.

       

Our God-Given Constitutional Right To A Television Show

The writer Josh Barro has compiled a heart-warming collection of affectionate and supportive notes sent by loving Christians hoping to save him from his sinful and murderous ways. Barro's writings on Phil Robertson provoked this joyous outpouring of excellent news.

Feel the love:

Here's what I know, after having read your column:  you're an ignorant, hateful, hate-filled, ill-informed, bigoted, racist heterophobic bully.

Just to be sure, let me repeat that for you:  you're an ignorant, hateful, hate-filled, ill-informed, bigoted, racist, heterophobic bully.

Just like the executives at A&E.  Just like Bull Connor.  Just like Al Sharpton.  Just like Barack Hussein Obama.  Just like Adolph Hitler.

I like when people repeat things. The rest of these jubilant tidings run the gamut from accusation of treason to physical threats. It warms my heart to see gay men singled out for this particular specimen of affection, because no one needs more love and affection than America's Gays and lesbians.

 We must love them when they are "full of murder, envy, strife, hatred." We must love them though they "are insolent, arrogant, God-haters." We must love them when  "they are heartless, they are faithless, they are senseless, they are ruthless." And we should especially love them when they strive to  "invent new ways of doing evil."

Surely our love shall be questioned by Marxists and Muslims. We should respond by noting that we "would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different," that We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all of humanity." and that We would all be better off if we loved God and loved each other." We, the true followers of God, know that our love love should be hot as fire, and bountiful as the flood which might carry the sinners into the earliest possible grave.

We will be called bigots for saying this. But we know that it is the unloving Secular-Shinto-Marxist-Islamo-Kenyan-Liberal-Fascist-Socialists  who are the real bigots. We are but the bearer of traditional values and Judeo-Christian heritage, which means we need never be truthful, curious nor particularly well-informed.

Words mean what God says they mean. How do you know what God says? Ask us. Here is what God says: God says we are right. God says we are love. God says that no one may criticize us without criticizing America. God says we are America.  God says we should be on TV.

       

Phil Robertson's America

The Milwaukee Journal, January 27, 1935

I've yet to take in an episode of Duck Dynasty. I hear it's a fine show, anchored by a humorous and good natured family of proud Americans. I try to be good natured, and I have been told that I can appreciate a good joke. I am also a proud American. With so much in common, it seems natural that I take some interest in the views of my brethren on the history of the only country any of us can ever truly call home:

I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

That is Robertson responding to a reporter's question about life in Louisiana, before the Civil Rights Movement. I am sure Robertson did see plenty of black people who were singing and happy. And I am also sure that very few black people approached Robertson to complain about "doggone white people." 

I have some idea why:

 The corpse of 16-year-old Freddie Moore, his face showing signs of a severe beating, hands bound, remained hanging for at least 24 hours from a metal girder on the old, hand-cranked swing bridge spanning Bayou Lafourche.

Hanged by the neck the night of Oct. 11, 1933, in a mob lynching, the black youth had been accused in the death of a neighbor, a white girl...

Arrested Oct. 10, 1933, in the slaying days earlier of Anna Mae LaRose, a 15-year-old girl who was his friend, Moore was pulled from the parish jail in Napoleonville the next night by an angry mob of 50 to 200 armed and unmasked people who had the prison keys.

Some accounts say the lynchers were unknown and from out of town, as far away as New Orleans, while others say the mob was known to authorities. A coroner’s jury, impaneled by then-parish Coroner Dr. T.B. Pugh, said Moore “met death by a mob of unknown persons,” according to news accounts.

After being hauled from the jail, Moore was brought to the field where LaRose’s body was found, according to an Oct. 14, 1933, account in the black-owned New Orleans newspaper, The Louisiana Weekly. With a rope around his neck and clothes stripped to his waist, the teen was then marched, while being beaten, from the murder scene to the bridge and subjected to a branding iron whenever he fell.

Hanging from his body, a sign offered the final indignity: “Niggers Let This Be An Example. Do-Not-Touch-In 24 Hr. Mean it.”

As white people reviewed the scene on the bridge and black residents were warned to stay away, Moore’s body remained within sight of a school and the venerable St. Philomena Catholic Church, its spire above the fray.

One should not be lulled into thinking that the murder of Freddie Moore was out of the ordinary in Louisiana. Between 1882 and 1936, only Georgia, Texas and Mississippi saw more black people lynched. For part of that period four of Louisiana's parishes led the nation for counties with the most lynchings.

That is because governance in Phil Robertson's Louisiana was premised on terrorism. As late as 1890, the majority of people in Louisiana were black. As late as 1902, they still lived under threat of slavery through debt peonage and the convict-lease system. Virtually all of them were pilfered of their vote and their tax dollars. Plunder and second slavery was enforced by violence, as when the besiegers of Colfax massacred 50 black freedman with rifle and cannon and tossed their bodies into a river. Even today the Colfax Massacre is honored in Louisiana as the rightful "end of carpetbag misrule." 

The black people who Phil Robertson knew were warred upon. If they valued their lives, and the lives of their families, the last thing they would have done was voiced a complaint about "white people" to a man like Robertson. Ignorance is no great sin and one can forgive the good natured white person for not knowing how all that cannibal sausage was truly made. But having been presented with a set of facts, Robertson's response is to cite "welfare" and "entitlement" as the true culprits.

The belief that black people were at their best when they were being hunted down like dogs for the sin of insisting on citizenship is a persistent strain of thought in this country. What it ultimately reflects is inability to cope with America that is at least rhetorically committed to equality. One can quickly see the line from this kind of thinking, to a rejection of the civil rights movement of our age: 

Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men,” he says. Then he paraphrases Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right

This is not just ignorance, it is a willful retreat into myth. And we must have the intellectual courage and moral strength to follow the myth through. If swindlers, goat-fuckers and gay men are really all the same--disinherited from the kingdom of God--why not treat them the same? How does one argue that a man who is disfavored by the Discerner of All Things, should not be shamed, should not jeered, should not be stoned, should not be lynched in the street?

Further retreat into the inanity of loving the sinner, but hating the sin--a standard which would clean The Wise Helmsman, himself--will not do. Actual history shows that humans are not so discriminating. Black people were once thought to be sinners. We were rewarded with a species of love that bore an odd resemblance to hate. One need not be oversensitive to be concerned about Phil Robertson's thoughts on gay sex. One simply need be a student of American history. 

       

Nicolae Ceauşescu: 'Nimbus of Victory,' Megalomaniacal Tyrant, Friend of America

National Archives

One of the more depressing aspects of last week's appraisals of Mandela was how it revealed a depressing willingness to ignore world history, in general, and American history particularly. The constant harping on Mandela's alliance with communists, ignores this country's alliance with everyone from Louis XVI to Josef Stalin. This would not even be worth mentioning were it not for some peculiar need for some to present America as a beacon of democracy ever untrammeled by statecraft and politics. 

One need not look past living memory to find our partnerships in conflict with our stated ideals:

This morning the people of the United States are honored by having as our guest a great leader of a great country. President Ceausescu comes here from Romania with his wife, Elena, and it is a great personal pleasure for me on behalf of our country to welcome them...

There are differences, obviously, between the United States and Romania, in our political system and also in our military alliances. But the factors which bind us together are much more profound and of much greater benefit to our countries. We share common beliefs. We believe in strong national sovereignty. We believe in preserving the independence of our nations and also of our people. We believe in the importance of honoring territorial integrity throughout the world. We believe in equality among nations in bilateral dealings, one with another, and also in international councils. We believe in the right of every country to be free from interference in its own internal affairs by another country. And we believe that world peace can come—which we both devoutly hope to see—through mutual respect, even among those who have some differences between us.

Our goals are also the same, to have a just system of economics and politics, to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom, and in the benefits to be derived from the proper utilization of natural resources.

We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people. 

That is president Jimmy Carter greeting Romania's communist president Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1978. Again Tony Judt paints the picture of what Ceauşescu's belief in "enhancing human rights" actually looked like:

In 1966, to increase the population—a traditional ‘Romanianist’ obsession—he prohibited abortion for women under forty with fewer than four children (in 1986 the age barrier was raised to forty-five). In 1984 the minimum marriage age for women was reduced to fifteen. Compulsory monthly medical examinations for all women of childbearing age were introduced to prevent abortions, which were permitted, if at all, only in the presence of a Party representative. Doctors in districts with a declining birth rate had their salaries cut.

The population did not increase, but the death rate from abortions far exceeded that of any other European country: as the only available form of birth control, illegal abortions were widely performed, often under the most appalling and dangerous conditions. Over the ensuing twenty-three years the 1966 law resulted in the death of at least ten thousand women. The real infant mortality rate was so high that after 1985 births were not officially recorded until a child had survived to its fourth week—the apotheosis of Communist control of knowledge. By the time Ceauşescu was overthrown the death rate of new-born babies was twenty-five per thousand and there were upward of 100,000 institutionalized children.

One gets some sense of Ceauşescu's reign by looking at the names awarded him--"The Architect," "The Creed-Shaper," "The Wise Helmsman," "The Tallest Mast," The Nimbus of Victory," "The Sun Of The Son." If Nicolae Ceauşescu hadn't been a totalitarian, he surely would have been an MC.

But Ceauşescu's reign did not discomfit a nation pledged to anticommunism, freedom and democracy:

...eight months after imprisoning the strike leaders in the Jiu Valley (and murdering their leaders) the Romanian dictator was visiting the United States as the guest of President Jimmy Carter. By taking his distance from Moscow—we have seen how Romania abstained from the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia—Ceauşescu bought himself freedom of maneuver and even foreign acclaim, particularly in the early stages of the ‘new’ Cold War of the 1980s. Because the Romanian leader was happy to criticize the Russians (and send his gymnasts to the Los Angeles Olympics), Americans and others kept quiet about his domestic crimes. Romanians, however, paid a terrible price for Ceauşescu’s privileged status. 

As you can see from the picture, Carter's decision to receive "The Wise Helmsman" says very little about Carter, individually, and a great deal about American policy, and a great deal more about the nature of states. I love my country. I just wish we could cultivate a broad sense of ourselves wary of sanctimony.

A quick word on Tony Judt. I'm nearing the end of Postwar. This has been a great read. It's just a few steps below Battle Cry of Freedom in my pantheon. I'd add that I greatly appreciate those who read this with me, and were able to contextualize and correct some of the information. This was particularly helpful in Eastern Europe. 

 

       

Nicolae Ceauşescu: 'Nimbus Of Victory,' Megalomaniacal Tyrant, Friend Of America

National Archives

One of the more depressing aspects of last week's appraisals of Mandela was how it revealed a depressing willingness to ignore world history, in general, and American history particularly. The constant harping on Mandela's alliance with communists, ignores this country's alliance with everyone from Louis XVI to Josef Stalin. This would not even be worth mentioning were it not for some peculiar need for some to present America as a beacon of democracy ever untrammeled by statecraft and politics. 

One need not look past living memory to find our partnerships in conflict with our stated ideals:

This morning the people of the United States are honored by having as our guest a great leader of a great country. President Ceausescu comes here from Romania with his wife, Elena, and it is a great personal pleasure for me on behalf of our country to welcome them...

There are differences, obviously, between the United States and Romania, in our political system and also in our military alliances. But the factors which bind us together are much more profound and of much greater benefit to our countries. We share common beliefs. We believe in strong national sovereignty. We believe in preserving the independence of our nations and also of our people. We believe in the importance of honoring territorial integrity throughout the world. We believe in equality among nations in bilateral dealings, one with another, and also in international councils. We believe in the right of every country to be free from interference in its own internal affairs by another country. And we believe that world peace can come—which we both devoutly hope to see—through mutual respect, even among those who have some differences between us.

Our goals are also the same, to have a just system of economics and politics, to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom, and in the benefits to be derived from the proper utilization of natural resources.

We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people. 

That is president Jimmy Carter greeting Romania's communist president Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1978. Again Tony Judt paints the picture of what Ceauşescu's belief in "enhancing human rights" actually looked like:

In 1966, to increase the population—a traditional ‘Romanianist’ obsession—he prohibited abortion for women under forty with fewer than four children (in 1986 the age barrier was raised to forty-five). In 1984 the minimum marriage age for women was reduced to fifteen. Compulsory monthly medical examinations for all women of childbearing age were introduced to prevent abortions, which were permitted, if at all, only in the presence of a Party representative. Doctors in districts with a declining birth rate had their salaries cut.

The population did not increase, but the death rate from abortions far exceeded that of any other European country: as the only available form of birth control, illegal abortions were widely performed, often under the most appalling and dangerous conditions. Over the ensuing twenty-three years the 1966 law resulted in the death of at least ten thousand women. The real infant mortality rate was so high that after 1985 births were not officially recorded until a child had survived to its fourth week—the apotheosis of Communist control of knowledge. By the time Ceauşescu was overthrown the death rate of new-born babies was twenty-five per thousand and there were upward of 100,000 institutionalized children.

One gets some sense of Ceauşescu's reign by looking at the names awarded him--"The Architect," "The Creed-Shaper," "The Wise Helmsman," "The Tallest Mast," The Nimbus of Victory," "The Sun Of The Son." If Nicolae Ceauşescu hadn't been a totalitarian, he surely would have been an MC.

But Ceauşescu's reign did not discomfit a nation pledged to anticommunism, freedom and democracy:

...eight months after imprisoning the strike leaders in the Jiu Valley (and murdering their leaders) the Romanian dictator was visiting the United States as the guest of President Jimmy Carter. By taking his distance from Moscow—we have seen how Romania abstained from the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia—Ceauşescu bought himself freedom of maneuver and even foreign acclaim, particularly in the early stages of the ‘new’ Cold War of the 1980s. Because the Romanian leader was happy to criticize the Russians (and send his gymnasts to the Los Angeles Olympics), Americans and others kept quiet about his domestic crimes. Romanians, however, paid a terrible price for Ceauşescu’s privileged status. 

As you can see from the picture, Carter's decision to receive "The Wise Helmsman" says very little about Carter, individually, and a great deal about American policy, and a great deal more about the nature of states. I love my country. I just wish we could cultivate a broad sense of ourselves beyond "The Nimbus Of Victory" and the "The Son of The Sun." 

A quick word on Tony Judt. I'm nearing the end of Postwar. This has been a great read. It's just a few steps below Battle Cry of Freedom in my pantheon. I'd add that I greatly appreciate those who read this with me, and were able to contextualize and correct some of the information. This was particularly helpful in Eastern Europe. 

 

       

The Gangs of Chicago

Just a gangsta, I suppose. (Photo by Author)

I spent last week trooping through North Lawndale, on the West Side of Chicago, with the Atlantic's video team. We spent much of Friday with some positive folks over at the Better Boys Foundation (BBF) in K-Town. Then we went outside to get some sense of the neighborhood. I've spent a lot of time in North Lawndale over the past year. It is one of the roughest neighborhoods in Chicago. It is also achingly beautiful. Wide boulevards cut through the neighborhood, the old Sears building looms in the distance, and the great greystones mark many of the blocks. If you stand at the corner of Springfield and Ogden, as I have, right next to the Lawndale Christian Health Center across from Lou Malnati's Pizzeria, you can see the great wealth of Chicago, indeed the great wealth of America, looming over all those who long toiled to make it so.

That Friday, it snowed all day and we walked the blocks, Sam, Kasia, Paul and me, with our guides, running mostly on the odd joy one gets imbibes from the kind of exploration that should be what journalism is about. Towards the end of the afternoon we were standing on a corner shooting one of our hosts. Kids were walking home. We were standing on a street designated as a route for Chicago's Safe Passage program. Volunteers, bundled like scientists of the arctic, stood across the way, nodding as children passed.

The afternoon was quiet. The street-lights were just beginning to flirt. There was no sun. A group of older boys, with no books, came aimlessly down the street. Our host called one of them over and hassled him for not having stopped by BBF recently. BBF is a fortress in a section of this long warred upon section of the city. Kids can go to BBF to read, make beats, make video or play table-top hockey. The conversation between our host and the kid was familiar to me. It was the way men addressed me, as a child, when they were trying to save my life. Aimlessness is the direct path to oblivion for black boys. Occupy the child till somewhere around 25, till he passes out of his hot years, and you may see him actually become something.

Catercorner to the volunteers of Safe Passage, two cops sat in an SUV, snug and warm. Our video team was shooting the conversation between our host and the kid. One of the cops rolled down his window and yelled, "Excuse me you need to take your cameras off this corner. It's Safe Passage."

I didn't know anything about Safe Passage and the law. If the program prohibits video footage on a public street, I haven't been able to document any record of it. But it is police, after all, which is to say humans empowered by the state with the right to mete out violence as he sees fit. We backed up a bit. Our host kept talking. The cops yelled out again. "You need to move, bud. This is Safe Passage."  At this point our host yelled back and contentious back and forth began. Things calmed down when one of our cameramen walked down the street with our host to get a few different shots. 

A few months ago, on one of my other trips to Chicago, I was at a dinner with a group of wonks. The wonks were upset that the community, and its appointed represenatives, would not support mandatory minimums for gun charges. I--shamefully I now think--agreed with them. It's not simply that I now think I was wrong, it's that I forgot my role. I mean no disrespect to my hosts. But whenever reformers convene for a nice dinner and good wine, a writer should never allow himself to get too comfortable.  

One of my friends, who grew up on the South Side, and was the only other black male at the table, was the only one who disagreed. His distrust of the justice system was too high.

Perhaps this is why:

During his more than 30 years behind bars, Stanley Wrice insisted he was innocent, that Chicago police had beat him until he confessed to a rape he didn't commit. On Wednesday, he walked out of an Illinois prison a free man, thanks to a judge's order that served as a reminder that one of the darkest chapters in the city's history is far from over...

Wrice, who was sentenced to 100 years behind bars for a 1982 sexual assault, is among more than two dozen inmates — most of them black men — who have alleged they were tortured by officers under the command of disgraced former Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge in a scandal that gave the nation's third-largest city a reputation as haven for rogue cops and helped lead to the clearing of Illinois' death row. Some of the prisoners have been freed; some are still behind bars, hoping to get the kind of hearing that Wrice got that eventually led to his freedom.

The scandal of Jon Burge, which will trouble Chicago police for many years to come, is the worst of something many black folks feels when interacting with police in any city. Police address us with aggression, and their default setting is escalation. De-escalation is for black civilians.

When the officer wanted us to move, there was a very easy way to handle the situation. You step our your car. You introduce yourself. You ask questions about what we're doing. If we are breaking the law, you ask us to move. If we are not breaking the law and simply making your life hard, we are likely to move anyway. You are the power.

The cop did not speak to us as though he were human. He spoke to us like a gangster, like he was protecting his block. He was solving no crime. He was protecting no lives. He was holding down his corner. He didn't even bother with a change of uniform. An occupied SUV, parked at an intersection, announces its masters intentions.

It was only a second day there, and our first real one out on the street. It only took that short period to run into trouble. I was worried about the expensive equipment. But it was the conventions of community that protected us. People would walk up and ask us what we were doing. I would tell them we were shooting the neighborhood, or had just finished interviewing some elder--Mr. Ross, Mrs. Witherspoon--and they would smile. "So Mr. Ross is famous, huh?"

No such social lubricant exists for the police.  If you are young and black and live in North Lawndale, if you live in Harlem, if you live in any place where people with power think young black boys aren't being stopped and frisked enough, then what happened to us is not a single stand-out incident. It is who the police are. Indeed they are likely a good deal worse. 

What people who have never lived in these neighborhoods must get, is that, like the crooks, killers, and gangs, the police are another violent force that must be negotiated and dealt with. But unlike the gangs, the violence of the police is the violence of the state, and thus unaccountable to North Lawndale. That people who represent North Lawndale laugh at the idea of handing over more tools of incarceration to law enforcement is unsurprising.

As we were finishing up, the officer who yelled at us got out the car and asked for the driver of our vehicle. It wasn't me. 

"I happened to notice your sticker is expired," the officer said, handing a ticket to Kasia.

"It's a rental," she replied.

"Well give it to them," he told her walking away. "They'll know what to do with it."

The cop got back in his heated car. On the other corner, Safe Passage stood there, awaiting children, huddling in the cold. 

       

The Gangs Of Chicago

Just a gangsta, I suppose. Photo by Author

I spent last week trooping through North Lawndale, on the West Side of Chicago, with the Atlantic's video team. We spent much of Friday with some positive folks over at the Better Boy's Foundation (BBF) in K-Town. Then we went outside to get some sense of the neighborhood. I've spent a lot of time in North Lawndale over the past year. It is one of the roughest neighborhoods in Chicago. It is also achingly beautiful. Wide boulevards cut through the neighborhood, the old Sears building looms in the distance, and the great greystones mark many of the blocks. If you stand at the corner of Springfield and Ogden, as I have, right next to the Lawndale Christian Health Center across from Lou Malnati's Pizzeria, you can see the great wealth of Chicago, indeed the great wealth of America, looming over all those who long toiled to make it so.

That Friday, it snowed all day and we walked the blocks, Sam, Kasia, Paul and me, with our guides, running mostly on the odd joy one gets imbibes from the kind of exploration that should be what journalism is about. Towards the end of the afternoon we were standing on a corner shooting one of our hosts. Kids were walking home. We were standing on a street designated as a route for Chicago's Safe Passage program. Volunteers, bundled like scientists of the arctic, stood across the way, nodding as children passed.

The afternoon was quiet. The street-lights were just beginning to flirt. There was no sun. A group of older boys, with no box, came aimlessly down the street. Our host called one of them over and hassled him for not having stopped by BBF recently. BBF is a fortress in a section of this long warred upon section of the city. Kids can go to BBF to read, make beats, make video or play table-top hockey. The conversation between our host and the kid was familiar to me. It was the way men addressed me, as a child, when they were trying to save my life. Aimlessness is the direct path to oblivion for black boys. Occupy the child till somewhere around 25, till he passes out of his hot years, and you may see him actually become something.

Catercorner to the volunteers of Safe Passage, two cops sat in the car, snug and warm. Our video team was shooting the conversation between our host and the kid. One of the cops rolled down his window and yelled, "Excuse me you need to take your cameras off this corner. It's Safe Passage."

I didn't know anything about Safe Passage and the law. If the program prohibits video footage on a public street, I haven't been able to document any record of it. But it is police, after all, which is to say humans empowered by the state with the right to mete out violence as he sees fit. We backed up a bit. Our host kept talking. The cops yelled out again. "You need to move, bud. This is Safe Passage."  At this point our host yelled back and contentious back and forth began. Things calmed down when one of our cameramen walked down the street with our host to get a few different shots. 

A few months ago, on one of my other trips to Chicago, I was at a dinner with a group of wonks. The wonks were upset that the community, and its appointed represenatives, would not support mandatory minimums for gun charges. I--shamefully I now think--agreed with them. It's not simply that I now think I was wrong, it's that I forgot my role. I mean no disrespect to my hosts. But whenever reformers convene for a nice dinner and good wine, a writer should never allow himself to be but so comfortable.  

One of my friends, who grew up on the South Side, and was the only other black male at the table, was the only one who disagreed. His distrust of the justice system was too high.

Perhaps this is why:

During his more than 30 years behind bars, Stanley Wrice insisted he was innocent, that Chicago police had beat him until he confessed to a rape he didn't commit. On Wednesday, he walked out of an Illinois prison a free man, thanks to a judge's order that served as a reminder that one of the darkest chapters in the city's history is far from over...

Wrice, who was sentenced to 100 years behind bars for a 1982 sexual assault, is among more than two dozen inmates — most of them black men — who have alleged they were tortured by officers under the command of disgraced former Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge in a scandal that gave the nation's third-largest city a reputation as haven for rogue cops and helped lead to the clearing of Illinois' death row. Some of the prisoners have been freed; some are still behind bars, hoping to get the kind of hearing that Wrice got that eventually led to his freedom.

The scandal of Jon Burge, which will trouble Chicago police for many years to come, is the worst of something many black folks feels when interacting with police in any city. Police address us with aggression, and their default setting is escalation. De-escalation is for black civilians.

When the officer wanted us to move, there was a very easy way to handle the situation. You step our your car. You introduce yourself. You ask questions about what we're doing. If we are breaking the law, you ask us to move. If we are not breaking the law and simply making your life hard, we are likely to move anyway. You are the power.

The cop did not speak to us as though he were human. He spoke to us like a gangster, like he was holding down his block. He was solving no crime. He was protecting no lives. He was protecting his corner. 

It was only a second day there, and our first real one out on the street. It only took that short period to run into trouble. I was worried about the expensive equipment. But it was the conventions of community that protected us. People would walk up and ask us what we were doing. I would tell them we were shooting the neighborhood, or had just finished interviewing some elder--Mr. Ross, Mrs. Witherspoon--and they would smile. "So Mr. Ross is famous, huh?"

No such social lubricant exists for the police.  If you are young and black and live in North Lawndale, if you live in Harlem, if you live in any place where people with power think young black boys aren't being stopped and frisked enough, then what happened to us is not a single stand-out incident. It is who the police are. Indeed they are likely a good deal worse. 

What people who have never lived in these neighborhoods must get, is that, like the crooks, killers, and gangs, the police are another violent force that must be negotiated and dealt with. But unlike the gangs, the violence of the police is the violence of the state, and thus unaccountable to North Lawndale. That people who represent North Lawndale laugh at the idea of handing over more tools of incarceration to law enforcement is unsurprising.

As we were finishing up, the officer who yelled at us got out the car and asked for the driver of our vehicle. It wasn't me. 

"I happened to notice your sticker is expired," the officer said, handing a ticket to Kasia.

"It's a rental," she replied.

"Well give it to them," he told her walking away. "They'll know what to do with it."

The cop got back in his heated car. On the other corner, Safe Passage stood there, awaiting children, huddling in the cold. 

       

How to Read Camus Like a Boss

I haven't written about French in a while, but I'm still studying. Next month will mark the end of my second "official" year at this. Last week I started Camus's L'Etranger. It's the first time I've tried to read a book en français. I wanted to read Du Contrat Social, but my tutor looked at me like I was crazy. At any rate, I think I'm getting about 45 percent of what's actually happening. It isn't because I don't know the words or the grammar. I probably know about 80 percent of the vocabulary and, soon, I suspect I'll have a better academic understanding of French grammar than English.  

Whatever that means. I still speak with the world's ugliest tongue. Try to imagine a three-year-old baby gone senile and you'll have some idea of what it's like to have a conversation with me in French. 

But I delight nonetheless. I was in Chicago last week doing my internship with The Atlantic's incredible video team. Half the people at the front-desk of my hotel spoke French. I eagerly engaged. I was in straight faux pas mode. My brain said "bonne soirée" and my mouth said "bonne nuit."  I am that loud uncle, drunk at your wedding.  I am the dude on the dance floor who refuses to keep it in the pocket. And I have always been that dude. I have gotten a lot of things in my life. Not a one of them came pretty. Life is humiliation and failure, but the way is always up. Until it isn't.

So I'm basically bashing my way through Camus. I plan to read it three times before February. My hope is that it will reveal more of itself each time. Part of the problem is that the French have phrases that can be translated into English, but not on a "word to word" basis. So you may understand every sentence in one paragraph, and every word in that sentence. But then you'll get a phrase like "au beau milieu de" which does not mean "at the beautiful middle of" and you'll be lost again. (Another favorite: "La tradition veut que...")

Someday I am going to do a piece for the magazine on how language is taught—especially to kids who go to the kind of schools I went to as a child. You can't just conjugate all day and get quizzed on your colors. Some of this is rote learning. Some of this is osmosis. To really get the language, you have to not just learn the rules, but hear someone employ them constantly, break them constantly, and then you have to try to imitate. That is what immersion is supposed to be. But we hear that word so much in foreign language education that it's basically more marketing than anything else.

Anyway, I'm committed. Turning back now would be like burning money. How far does this ride go? I can't call it. I gave up on fluency, as a workable concept, some time ago. What I see happening to myself is a slow, grinding acquisition of skills. So two years ago, I could only say "Hi," "Good-bye," "How are you?" and "I am well." Then I could say "I cooked yesterday" and "When I was young, I loved football." Then I could read a simple article. Then I could write a short email. Then I could order from a menu. Then I could give directions to a taxi driver. Et dimanche dernier, je pouvais dire l'homme, "Je voudrais laisser ma valise ici."

Each of these skills overlaps the other, giving birth to new skills until, at some undefined point, you have the ability to have a substantive and deep conversation with another human. Even there, "fluency" doesn't quite capture what's happened. Language can't erase the individual. I have spent a day talking to different people in France, barely understanding what they were telling me. And yet I still understood some more than others. I still enjoyed some more than others. We know that we are all human individuals, underneath. My need to have this repeatedly confirmed is ridiculous. And yet it's one of the most gratifying parts about language. 

       

How To Read Camus Like A Boss

I haven't written about French in a while, but I'm still studying. Next month will mark  the end of my second "official" year at this. Last week I started Camus' L'Etranger. It's the first time I've tried to read a book en français. I wanted to read Du Contrat Social, but my tutor looked at me like I was crazy. At any rate, I think I'm getting about 45 percent of what's actually happening. It isn't because I don't know the words or the grammar. I probably know about 80 percent of the vocabulary and,  soon, I suspect I'll have a better academic understanding of French grammar than English.  

Whatever that means. I still speak with the world's ugliest tongue. Try to imagine a three year old baby gone senile and you'll have some idea of what it's like to have a conversation with me in French. 

But I delight nonetheless. I was in Chicago last week doing my internship with The Atlantic's incredible video team. Half the people at the front-desk of my hotel spoke French. I eagerly engaged. I was in straight faux pas-mode. My brain said "bonne soirée" and my mouth said "bonne nuit."  I am that loud uncle, drunk at your wedding.  I am the dude on the dance floor who refuses to keep it in the pocket. And I have always been that dude. I have gotten a lot of things in my life. Not a one of them came pretty. Life is humiliation and fail, but the way is always up. Until it isn't.

So I'm basically bashing my way through Camus. I plan to read it three times before February. My hope is that it will reveal more of itself each time. Part of the problem is that the French have phrases that can be translated into English, but not on a "word to word" basis. So you may understand every sentence in one paragraph, and every word in that sentence. But then you'll get a phrase like "au beau milieu de" which does not mean "at the beautiful middle of" and you'll be lost again. (Another favorite, "la tradition veut que...")

Some day I am going to do a piece for the magazine on how language is taught--especially to kids who go to the kind of schools I went to as a child. You can't just conjugate all day and get quizzed on your colors. Some of this rote learning. Some of this is osmosis. To really get the language you have to not just learn the rules, but hear someone employ them constantly, break them constantly, and then you have to try to imitate. That is what immersion is supposed to be. But we hear that word so much in foreign language education that it's basically more marketing than anything else.

Anyway, I'm committed. Turning back now would be like burning money. How far does this ride go? I can't call it. I gave up on fluency, as a workable concept, some time ago. What I see happening to myself is a slow, grinding acquisition of skills. So two years ago, I could only say "Hi," "Good-bye," "How are you?" and "I am well." Then I could say "I cooked yesterday" and "When I was young, I loved football." Then I could read a simple article. Then I could write a short e-mail. Then I could order from a menu. Then I could give directions to a taxi driver. Et dimanche dernier, je pouvais dire l'homme, "Je voudrais laisser ma valise ici."

Each of these skills overlaps the other giving birth to new skills until, at some undefined point, you have the ability to have a substantive and deep conversation with another human. Even there, "fluency" doesn't quite capture what's happened. Language can't erase the individual. I have spent a day talking to different people in France, barely understanding what they were telling me. And yet I still understood some more than others. I still enjoyed some more than others. We know that we are all human individuals, underneath. My need to have this repeatedly confirmed is ridiculous. And yet it's one of the most gratifying parts about language.