And now we have to admit...

One week ago, a man named George Floyd died at the hands of four policemen in Minneapolis.  On camera. 

On the same day, May 25, 2020, in Central Park, New York City, Christian Cooper, a birder, asked a woman with an unleashed dog to leash her dog.  This was in an area clearly marked "dogs must be leashed."  The woman refused to comply and became abusive, so Mr. Cooper began recording the incident, during which the woman called the police and told them she was being "threatened" by an African-American man - who had done nothing worse than ask her to obey the park rules.

Christian Cooper and George Floyd were both African-American.  The policemen, and the woman with the dog, were white.  That's the point. 

These two incidents, on top of a series of other incidents in various states where black people were killed by police, have set off a firestorm of largely peaceful protests, unfortunately sometimes accompanied by violence and looting, in major cities all over the country.  For the last 6 nights.  My county (Alameda) in California was put under curfew last night because of disturbances all over the county, including such largely white towns as Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill.  In my entire life I've never been aware of so many large public protests, in so many different places all over the country, all at once.

I attended public school, and a public university, in the United States (California, specifically).  Apart from being told about slavery in the South and about the civil war generally, I don't recall any emphasis on the fact that the U.S. is a racist society.  I came out of my schooling believing the legends of a free, democratic society, where everyone had a chance to succeed.  This despite the fact that I got into a major fight with my father when I was in high school, because I signed an Open Housing petition circulated by the local Methodist minister.  My father was from southern Missouri, but had never really talked about his attitude toward African-Americans.  But we had the Open Housing petition because Napa, CA in the 1950s was "redlined."  Black people couldn't buy there.  I'll never know, because Dad is gone; but I've recently wondered if that was why we moved from Vallejo (very racially mixed) to Napa in 1950, when I was 4. 

I've always been a student of history, and the more I've learned about American history in the years since I left university, the clearer it is that the basic assumption of our social arrangements is that people of color are inferior to white people.  Even, occasionally, when they are well educated and well-to-do.  And this is still so.

I think we all have to admit now that the society we live in is racist, and values or devalues its members based on the color of their skin.  It saddens me; I thought we were better than that.  I was wrong.  I don't think I'll detail here all the reasons this is so; as an aging white woman, I have no direct experience of them, and there are memes all over social media which include them in excruciating detail.  They start with inferior education and go on to low paying job opportunities, lack of access to health care, and housing options in food deserts, but the real issue is the treatment of people of color by the police.

I don't know what we do to fix this.  But it's becoming clear that we have to do something, probably starting with major changes in policing attitudes and approaches.

It's also becoming clear that white people are realizing we must do something.  The policeman who knelt on George Floyd's neck has been fired, and arrested for 3rd degree murder (whatever that is).  The woman in the park has lost her job (she was fired when the story went viral) and the dog (the rescue operation where she got it took it back). 

There were times when nothing would have happened to either white person; in fact the policeman had a record of 18 complaints, none of which had ever led even to a reprimand.

Ironically, I think we owe the last week of demonstrations to social media.  If those incidents hadn't been recorded, and shared widely on social media, it's possible that nothing would have happened, again. But they were, and there were consequences.  We've complained a lot about social media the last few years.  But in this case it may be the driving force pushing us to look at our racisim - and fix it.  So we don't have to look at any more terrible videos.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty?

I am appalled and disgusted by the furor that has blown up over the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.  The flap began when people started complaining that President Obama shouldn't have traded 5 top Taliban leaders for him.  I put that down to the fact that if President Obama were responsible for the sunrise, the Republican and Tea Party idiots would refuse to get up in the morning.

Now we have a whole load of manure dumping on Sgt. Bergdahl and his family and his neighbors, based on what looked to me like an unsupported set of rumors that he had deserted his post and therefore didn't "deserve" to be brought home because men died searching for him.  His home town has had to cancel a homecoming celebration because the Internet trolls have flooded the town with threatening emails and letters.

My first response was to say, we don't even know who these people are who are saying this, since the Internet is full of anonymous trolls.  Today, however, the New York Times editorial board published a detailed analysis of the situation, The Rush to Demonize Sgt. Berdahl, in which they say they've established that yes, the accusers were in Berdahl's unit.  But read this excerpt (read the whole thing, but especially this):

"Republican operatives have arranged for soldiers in his unit to tell reporters that he was a deserter who cost the lives of several soldiers searching for him. In fact, a review of casualty reports by Charlie Savage and Andrew Lehren of The Times showed there is no clear link between any military deaths and the search."

And a classified military report shows that Sergeant Bergdahl had walked away from assigned areas at least twice before and had returned, according to a report in The Times on Thursday. It describes him as a free-spirited young man who asked many questions but gave no indication of being a deserter, let alone the turncoat that Mr. Obama’s opponents are now trying to create. 

If anything, the report suggests that the army unit’s lack of security and discipline was as much to blame for the disappearance, given the sergeant’s history.

We're all sadly used to the fact that on the Internet, you're guilty if anybody says you are, no matter the actual facts and no matter whether you know who the accusers are or not.  But the NY Times account raises an even nastier set of suppositions.  In my studies of military history, the U.S. military has always made every effort to bring missing soldiers home, even if all they could find was bones (and, as the Times points out, even if the soldiers had in fact deserted before being captured).  Ask the people still looking for remains in the jungles of Vietnam.  But here we have a man who walks away from camp and is captured - and 5 years later the men he served with accuse him of desertion and say or imply that he shouldn't have been rescued.  If you follow the link about the Republican operatives arranging the interviews, you'll find that some people didn't like him because he "wouldn’t drink beer or eat barbecue and hang out with the other 20-year-olds.”  Apparently his "buddies" found it particularly offensive that he was trying to learn Dari and Arabic and Pashto.

What happened to the concept that the soldiers in the units had each other's backs?  In today's army, do the guys in the unit have your back only if they like you??  How do you ensure unit cohesion under fire if your "buddies" are willing to dump on you for no obvious reason?  I don't know that's what was going on, but from what the Times has unearthed, I think we have to ask the questions.

If the Army thinks there's cause to suspect he deserted, let's have a court-martial. Let's get witnesses under oath and have a decision made by a military judge, and find out what happened.  This has gotten so bad that nothing but the facts will clear it up, if it's still possible to establish what the facts are.

When I was growing up I was taught that you are innocent until proven guilty.  Sadly, even in our courts that's no longer true.  But if we reach a point where you are guilty when social media - or mass media, a lot of this is coming from Fox News - say you are, we are in even worse case than I feared.