Ta-Nehisi Coates's Blog, page 50

How To Be An Opinion Journalist Cont.

I'm working on a story right now that is rooted in the racial wealth gap and New Deal era public policy--mostly housing policy. One of the problems with writing about racism is that even though the public is shamefully ignorant of its effects and its foundational role in America, academics have produced reams of excellent research on the subject. In my explorations of slavery and the Civil War, I only skimmed the surface, and I know it. (Never read any David Brion Davis. Shameful, I know.) It's the same for public policy and the black/white wealth gap. There is just a ton of great research on the subject. Moreover, the excuse that "academics can't write" doesn't really hold water. A lot of this stuff is really compelling--but very few people ever read it.
At the end of the day, the writer is charged with sifting through a great deal of information and deciding what to present. He may not have ever taken a basic statistics class. He certainly has not sat through the various symposiums on his subject. If he is doing his job he is familiar with the important debates (Did racism precede slavery or did slavery precede racism?) But at the end of the day, he is an amateur, pulling from various sources. And various disciplines.  The sociology bleeds into history and statistics, and the history bleeds into economics and anthropology, and the anthropology bleeds into philosophy and the philosophy takes you right back into history. And so on.
This is largely a vent. Or rather it's an attempt to distract myself from the tons of academic papers I have currently sitting in my dropbox. There is just so much to know. It really is ridiculous. I think Yoni Applebaum gave the best advice some years back:

Choose the things about which you genuinely care, and come to know them deeply and well. Form your own judgments, and constantly question them. In other matters, attempt instead to ascertain the consensus of expert judgment. It will be right far more often than not. The only alternative is to form your own judgment upon every question, and I can assure you that you will be correct far less frequently. 
 If you encounter an attack upon a conventional piety that troubles you, first assess its source. Has its author taken the time or trouble to know his subject deeply or well? Then, assess its content. Does it seem sophisticated and convincing? If it meets those two tests, ask yourself how much you care to know about the matter. You can always add it to the list of things you wish to know deeply. But if you feel that you simply don't have the time, because of the realities of your life, then bracket your concerns and set them aside. The regnant consensus will do.

Great advice. You simply can't know everything, and you can't always be right. But you can be honest and you can be brave.
       

Social Power and the Central Park Five

If you haven't seen Ken and Sarah Burns' Central Park Five documentary, I'd urge you to check it out. At the moment there's a small furor erupting over a petition calling for Elizabeth Lederer, who prosecuted the case, to be dismissed from her position at Columbia Law School. 

Jim Dwyer, who is a sobering and clarifying presence in the film, objects:

The petition against Ms. Lederer, in part, reduces her life in public service to a single moment, the jogger case. In fact, she has a lengthy résumé of unchallenged convictions in cold cases, having pursued investigations of forgotten crimes. No one lives without error. And designating a single villain completely misses the point and power of the documentary. The jogger case belongs to a historical moment, not any one prosecutor or detective; it grew in the soils of a rancid, angry, fearful time.

Ken Burns added "It is just simple retribution, and we are appalled by it," he said. "We don't subscribe to any of it."

You can read Frank Chi, who started the petition, and Raymond Santana, one of the accused and subsequently exonerated responding here.

For my part, I'm a little puzzled by Dwyer's defense. Before she scrubbed her bio, Lederer proudly advertised her role in the prosecution of the Central Park Five. Ledere did not simply fail to live "without error." She sent a 16-year old boy to Riker's Island on the basis of coerced testimony. She sent four other boys off to prison, and she did this even after it was revealed that no DNA from any of the attackers was found on the victim. The real rapist was not found because of the investigative efforts of the police or Lederer, but because of his own need to confess. If not for that confession the Central Park Five would still be considered rapists. By that time the rapist had gone on to rape other women, killing one. 

The notion that someone who played a principle role in this travesty should be training lawyers at one of the best schools in the country is rather amazing. We are not suggesting that our prosecutors must live "without error." We are suggest that those who participated in one of the most dubious cases in the city's history, and have never apologized for it, should not be in the business of educating the next generation of lawyers. 

From the petition of the text: 

Today, Lederer is still an assistant District Attorney in New York, and she also teaches at Columbia Law School. No individual who is responsible for locking up innocent boys for years should ever step foot in a classroom to teach students. Ever.

I am struggling to see what is so absurd or vengeful about this standard. 

I suspect this ultimately boils down to power -- Lederer has enough so that her errors do not affect her position. Mike Nifong did not. Today Nifong is disgraced and bankrupt -- as well he should be. But by the system's lights, his mistake was not prosecutorial malfeasance, so much as picking on the wrong people. 

I think Chris Hayes had it exactly right:

Along with all of the other rising inequalities we've become so familiar with -- in income, in wealth, in access to politicians -- we confront now a fundamental inequality of accountability. We can have a just society whose guiding ethos is accountability and punishment, where both black kids dealing weed in Harlem and investment bankers peddling fraudulent securities on Wall Street are forced to pay for their crimes, or we can have a just society whose guiding ethos is forgiveness and second chances, one in which both Wall Street banks and foreclosed households are bailed out, in which both inside traders and street felons are allowed to rejoin polite society with the full privileges of citizenship intact. But we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.

Indeed. 

       

Social Power And The Central Park Five

If you haven't seen Ken and Sarah Burns' Central Park Five documentary, I'd urge you to check it out. At the moment there's a small furor erupting over a petition calling for Elizabeth Federer, who prosecuted the case, to be dismissed from her position at Columbia Law School. 

Jim Dwyer, who is a sobering and clarifying presence in the film, objects:

The petition against Ms. Lederer, in part, reduces her life in public service to a single moment, the jogger case. In fact, she has a lengthy résumé of unchallenged convictions in cold cases, having pursued investigations of forgotten crimes. No one lives without error. And designating a single villain completely misses the point and power of the documentary. The jogger case belongs to a historical moment, not any one prosecutor or detective; it grew in the soils of a rancid, angry, fearful time.

Ken Burns added "It is just simple retribution, and we are appalled by it," he said. "We don't subscribe to any of it."

You can read Frank Chi, who started the petition, and Raymond Santana, one of the accused and subsequently exonerated responding here.

For my part, I'm a little puzzled by Dwyer's defense. Before she scrubbed her bio, Lederer proudly advertised her role in the prosecution of the Central Park Five. Ledere did not simply fail to live "without error." She sent a 16-year old boy to Riker's Island on the basis of coerced testimony. She sent four other boys off to prison, and she did this even after it was revealed that no DNA from any of the attackers was found on the victim. The real rapist was not found because of the investigative efforts of the police or Lederer, but because of his own need to confess. If not for that confession the Central Park Five would still be considered rapists. By that time the rapist had gone on to rape other women, killing one. 

The notion that someone who played a principle role in this travesty should be training lawyers at one of the best schools in the country is rather amazing. We are not suggesting that our prosecutors must live "without error." We are suggest that those who participated in one of the most dubious cases in the city's history, and have never apologized for it, should not be in the business of educating the next generation of lawyers. 

From the petition of the text: 

Today, Lederer is still an assistant District Attorney in New York, and she also teaches at Columbia Law School. No individual who is responsible for locking up innocent boys for years should ever step foot in a classroom to teach students. Ever.

I am struggling to see what is so absurd or vengeful about this standard. 

I suspect this ultimately boils down to power--Lederer has enough so that her errors do not affect her position. Mike Nifong did not. Today Nifong is disgraced and bankrupt--as well he should be. But by the system's lights, his mistake was not prosecutorial malfeasance, so much as picking on the wrong people. 

I think Chris Hayes had it exactly right:

Along with all of the other rising inequalities we've become so familiar with -- in income, in wealth, in access to politicians -- we confront now a fundamental inequality of accountability. We can have a just society whose guiding ethos is accountability and punishment, where both black kids dealing weed in Harlem and investment bankers peddling fraudulent securities on Wall Street are forced to pay for their crimes, or we can have a just society whose guiding ethos is forgiveness and second chances, one in which both Wall Street banks and foreclosed households are bailed out, in which both inside traders and street felons are allowed to rejoin polite society with the full privileges of citizenship intact. But we cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.

Indeed. 

       

The Lost Battalion

It is yours...        

Some Quick Thoughts on The Atlantic

Last night The Atlantic won two awards. The first was for best website. The second was for essays and criticism. The essay in question was written by me. In my mind, these awards are linked. Writing for the website has fundamentally changed how I write in print.

If you crawl back through the archives of early to mid 2012, you will find me writing this story, on this blog, with some assistance from you. (The Trayvon coverage, for instance.) If you crawl even further back to the summer of 2010, you can find me writing this story with some assistance from you. (The Shirley Sherrod coverage, for instance.) And if you crawl back to the archives of 2008, you will see the same thing.

This space is my notebook. But in the borders and outside the margins you can see the added scribblings and post-its authored by The Horde. You can read through the current housing coverage in Chicago and see the same thing happening right now. People often praise this site for its comments community. They speak to me as though I am doing a public service. In fact, my aims are wholly selfish. This is my notebook. The scribblings and post-its have to actually help me.

So I want to thank The Horde. I want to thank The Horde for telling me to read Confederate Emancipation.  I want to thank whoever it was that told me to read Making The Second Ghetto. I want to thank all the philosophy-heads who dive into my naive and infrequent discussions of Hobbes. I want to thank everyone of you who endures and corrects mon pauvre français. 

Thank you all. For the Horde.

       

A Good Reason to Leave New York

I should be blogging more about the travesty that is Stop and Frisk. I'm sorry about that. In the meantime, here is a quote from Ray Kelly that should shiver any African American in New York:

"It makes no sense to use census data, because half the people you stop would be women," Kelly said. "About 70 percent to 75 percent of the people described as committing violent crimes -- assault, robbery, shootings, grand larceny -- are described as being African American."

"The percentage of people who are stopped is 53 percent African American," he continued. "So really, African Americans are being under stopped in relation to the percentage of people being described as being the perpetrators of violent crime. The stark reality is that crime happens in communities of color."

There's are many problems here. Stop and Frisk isn't simply wrong because of the high number of black people caught its net, it is wrong because of what happens afterward. And while the number of marijuana arrests resulting from Stop and Frisk are appallingly high, the number of actual gun arrests are appallingly low:

Stop-and-frisk has removed thousands of guns from the city's streets -- but the NYPD detained millions of innocent New Yorkers to find them.

A Columbia law professor testified Wednesday that just one gun was recovered for every thousand people stopped from 2004 through June 30, 2012.

"The NYPD hit rate is far less than what you would achieve by chance," Jeffrey Fagan said in Manhattan Federal Court.

Testifying in the federal class-action lawsuit against the city and the NYPD's controversial tactic, Fagan said his analysis of paperwork from 4.4 million stops found guns were confiscated at a rate of roughly one-tenth of 1 percent, or 5,940 firearms.

Knives and other contraband were nabbed in about 1.5% of stops, taking 66,000 weapons off the street, the professor said.

And 12% of the 4.4 million stops during that time period -- roughly 528,000 -- led to an actual arrest or a summons, Fagan said.

Almost 90 percent of African Americans and Latinos stopped and frisked on the street were guilty of no crime at all. Effectively Kelly is saying that innocent black people should simply carry the weight, because a small minority of people who happen to have roughly the same amount of melanin have decided not to. This is precisely what racist policy is -- you create a group and then punish all of them for the sins (sometimes real, sometimes imagined) of a few of them. It is Barbara Fields' Racecraft in action -- the concealing of actual racism beneath a banal heading of race.

One could just as easily say that about 70 percent to 75 percent of the people described as committing violent crimes, could also be described as generational victims of racist policies, like the ones Kelly and Bloomberg are promoting. One could just as easily say the vast majority of violent criminals in New York city hail from neighborhoods that have -- over many generations -- been the victims of a national wealth transfer, the remnants of which are with us even today.

We don't say that. Writers and intellectuals on the Left would much rather talk about class. Same as it ever was. But this isn't going away. We aren't going away.

       

How to Be a Political-Opinion Journalist

In response to David Brooks's column on how to write about politics, Jonathan Chait offers some ideas of his own. It probably won't surprise you that I like Chait's a little better. Here's a pretty good rule:

Don't debate straw men. If you're arguing against an idea, you need to accurately describe the people who hold them. If at all possible, link to them and quote their argument. This is a discipline that forces opinion writers to prove that they're debating an idea somebody actually holds. And quoting the subject forces them to show that somebody influential holds it -- if the best example of the opposing view is a random blog comment, then you're exposing the fact that you're arguing against an idea nobody of any stature shares. This ought to be an easy and universal guideline, but in reality, it's mostly flouted.

You'd be shocked how many professional writers don't do this. Much like a boxer who wants to fight the best in the world, you want to take on the best of your opposition, and their most credible arguments. (My neighbor James Fallows excels at this.) 
This is not only for the benefit of people who read you, but for your own. To paraphrase Douglass, a writer is worked on by what she works on. If you spend your time raging at the weakest arguments, or your most hysterical opponents, expect your own intellect to suffer. The intellect is a muscle; it must be exercised. There are cases in which people of great influence say stupid things and thus must be taken on. (See Chait on George Will's disgraceful lying about climate change.) But you should keep your feuds with Michelle Malkin to a minimum. 
In the interest of exercising that intellect, I would add something else: Write about something other than current politics. Do not limit yourself to fighting with people who are alive. Fight with some of the intellectual greats. Fight with historians, scientists, and academics. And then after you fight with them, have the decency to admit when they've kicked your ass. Do not use your platform to act like they didn't. Getting your ass kicked is an essential part of growing your intellectual muscle.
To do all of that, you have to actually be curious. You have to not just want to be heard, but want to listen. Brooks makes the point that the detached writer's role should be "more like teaching than activism." I would say that it should be more like learning than teaching. The stuff you put on the page should be the byproduct of all you are taking in -- and that taking in should not end after you get a degree from a selective university. Keep going. You must keep going.        

How to Be an Opinion Journalist

In response to David Brooks' column on how to write about politics, Jonathan Chait offers some ideas of his own. It probably won't surprise you that I like Chait's a little better. Here's a pretty good rule:

Don't debate straw men. If you're arguing against an idea, you need to accurately describe the people who hold them. If at all possible, link to them and quote their argument. This is a discipline that forces opinion writers to prove that they're debating an idea somebody actually holds. And quoting the subject forces them to show that somebody influential holds it -- if the best example of the opposing view is a random blog comment, then you're exposing the fact that you're arguing against an idea nobody of any stature shares. This ought to be an easy and universal guideline, but in reality, it's mostly flouted.

You'd be shocked how many professional writers don't do this. Much like a boxer who wants to fight the best in the world, you want to take on the best of your opposition, and their most credible arguments. (My neighbor James Fallows excels at this.) 
This is not only for the benefit of people who read you, but for your own. To paraphrase Douglass, a writer is worked on by what she works on. If you spend your time raging at the weakest arguments, or your most hysterical opponents, expect your own intellect to suffer. The intellect is a muscle; it must be exercised. There are cases in which people of great influence say stupid things and thus must be taken on. (See Chait on George Will's disgraceful lying about climate change.) But you should keep your feuds with Michelle Malkin to a minimum. 
In the interest of exercising that intellect, I would add something else: Write about something other than current politics. Do not limit yourself to fighting with people who are alive. Fight with some of the intellectual greats. Fight with historians, scientists, and academics. And then after you fight with them, have the decency to admit when they've kicked your ass. Do not use your platform to act like they didn't. Getting your ass kicked is an essential part of growing your intellectual muscle.
To do all of that, you have to actually be curious. You have to not just want to be heard, but want to listen. David Brooks makes the point that the detached writer's role should be "more like teaching than activism." I would say that it should be more like learning than teaching. The stuff you put on the page should be the byproduct of all you are taking in -- and that taking in should not end after you get a degree from a selective university. Keep going. You must keep going.        

The Ghetto Is Public Policy

I spent the last week interviewing men and women, and the children of men and women, who bought their homes on contract in Chicago during the 1950s. Contract buying sprang up in Chicago after the federal government effectively refused to insure mortgages for the vast majority of black homeowners, even as it was insuring the mortgages of white homeowners, and encouraged banks to redline black and integrated neighborhoods. The import of mid-20th century housing policy -- along with private actions (riots, block-busting, contract lending, covenants) -- has been devastating for African Americans. 
Buying on contract meant that you made a down-payment to a speculator. The speculator kept the deed and only turned it over to you after you'd paid the full value of the house -- a value determined by the speculator. In the meantime, you were responsible for monthly payments, keeping the house up, and taking care of any problems springing from inspection. If you missed one payment, the speculator could move to evict you and keep all the payments you'd made. Building up equity was impossible, unless -- through some Herculean effort -- you managed to pay off the entire contract. Very few people did this. The system was set up to keep them from doing it, and allow speculators to get rich through a cycle of evicting and flipping.

I spent some time talking to a 90-year-old man who'd come up from Mississippi. His family had been reduced to sharecropping after the county government took their land. "In Mississippi, there was no law," he told me. There was no law in Chicago either. The gentleman purchased his home for $26,000. He later found out that the deed-holder had purchased the same home -- only weeks before -- for $9,000. 
Above is a picture I took of a chart showing how the scheme could work. The chart was produced by activist lawyers in the late 60s trying to demonstrate the effects of contract buying. There are four columns "Documented Price Paid By Speculator," "Documented Price Change To Negro Buyer," "Markup," "Approximate Additional Interest," and "Total Additional Charges." In that chart you can literally see black wealth leaving one neighborhood and migrating to another. It was not just legal. It was the whole point.
Jim Crow -- Northern or Southern -- is usually rendered to us as an archaic system in which people irrationally decide to separate from each other just based on skin color. There's a reason that so many of us remember Martin Luther King's line about little white boys and little black boys holding hands. It's comforting to us. Less comforting is that fact that Jim Crow amounted to the legal pilfering of resources from the black communities to advantage white people across generations. In Mississippi, it meant the right to reduce someone to sharecropping, or to benefit politically from their census numbers while not giving them any representation, or to tax them for services they did not enjoy equal access to. In Chicago, it meant the legalized theft of black wealth by white agents. 
It is very hard to accept this -- the wealth gap is not a mistake. It is the logical outcome of policy and democratic will. From the streets of Cicero on up, the point was to imprison black people in the black belt and then exploit them. The goal was pursued through public policy, private action, and open terrorism. The goal was accomplished.
If you want to know more, see the reading list here, specifically Beryl Satter's Family Properties .        

Postcard From Chicago

I'm not going to be able to get in my run for today, but I did manage to squeeze a couple in during my days here in Chicago. The picture above is about halfway through my Saturday run. This is silly and self-evident but one of the best things about running is how it acclimates you to the native powers of your body.
I'm the kind of runner who makes for his astonishing lack of speed, with an astounding lack of endurance. No matter. Even a herb like me can start off in the midst of sky-scrapers, move my legs, and with the aid of Cherelle and Alexander O'Neal (Sugar, shu, shu, sugar...) turn, and see it all behind me. I'm used to this sort of transformation in cars, trains, and now bikes. But to do it solely by the locomoting that which your Momma gave you is a kind of magic.