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"Will I Die Before They Get To Know Me?"

2010-07-29T14:30:33Z

"Will I Die Before They Get To Know Me?" From J. Cole to Oscar Grant III

"Will I live or will I die before they get to know me? If I go, I know the ones that's pourin' liquor for me ... "

-J. Cole, "Can I Live?" The Warm Up

While rappers from Kanye West to Jay Z have celebrated Obama's ascent to the US Presidency as a victory for black people and for the prospect of democracy in the US, more broadly, J. Cole remains unconvinced that we have entered the age of Hope, as he makes clear on "I Get Up," the sixth track from his standout mixtape, The Warm Up:

We raisin' babies in Hades, where it ain't no Hope...Politicians hollerin' 'bout problems,
but I ain't gon' vote. Keep talkin' 'bout Change, we floatin' in the same ol' boat.

Like the Notorious B.I.G. and Nas before him, J. Cole's lyricism centers on the unlikely prospect of individual success in a gothic underworld defined by corrupt social institutions ("like a corpse six feet, shit's deep," "Grown Simba"; "My mind's elsewhere: my mom's health care. To get out this hell, here," "I Get Up"). J. Cole specializes in elaborating an unruly cityscape where death is familiar, making fantasies of bling desirable (where social reproduction lies in the slim possibility that some of the "seeds" he and members of his cohort manage to help produce might survive to see a brighter tomorrow; where he and his peers might live on in legends told by the women they too often reduce to accessories and vehicles for sexual satisfaction, despite the longing they routinely express for a partner who could appreciate the social and psychological suffering that defines their plight). Precisely because J. Cole doesn't consider himself to be much interested in electoral competition or protest politics, I was struck by a single line from, "Can I Live," that echoes ominously in the aftermath of Oscar Grant III's tragic death: "He didn't even get a chance to run before the bullet hit his lung."

In the first few hours of 2009, Johannes Mehserle stood over, shot and killed, Grant, as the twenty-two year-old father lay face down on Oakland's Bay Area Transit platform, while another officer kneeled on the young man's neck. The bullet passed through Grant's torso and hit the ground before bouncing back into his lung, ending his life some hours later. In courtroom testimony, Mehserle maintained that he meant to reach for his taser but mistakenly drew his semi-automatic handgun, although he was wearing his taser on the left side and his .40 caliber on the right side of his body, and despite the fact that the former weighs about half as much as the latter.

On July 8, 2010, Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, marking the first time in the history of the state of California that a police officer has been convicted for shooting and killing an unarmed African American man, although it happens at an alarming rate. What some onlookers view as a just conviction was met with widespread disappointment and diverse methods of protest. Supporters of Grant, legal experts, and grassroots activists hoped the jury would return a verdict of second-degree murder or, perhaps, voluntary manslaughter. But then, Mehserle's defense team had insisted in pretrial correspondence, apparently with far-reaching effects, that the presiding judge should instruct the jury to limit its deliberations to either second-degree murder or acquittal. Even more unsettling, Michael Rains, counsel for the defense, managed to have each potential African American juror removed from consideration for the trial based on the dubious rationale that Oakland's black residents cannot be expected to deliver an unbiased verdict in a criminal trial involving a police officer suspected of violent conduct. The kind of shooting J. Cole writes about (involving miscellaneous "niggas" and rival drug crews) would seem wholly different from police violence wielded by a state employee, except that we are too often discussing "accidental shootings," in either case.

Particularly in the 1990s, when hip hop began to enjoy unprecedented commercial success, rap lyrics became increasingly preoccupied with the violence that derived from urban narcotics firms that used high-powered assault weaponry to eliminate competition from prized blocks and alleyways. While this violence is structural in scope, an offshoot of the dramatic increase in potential profits associated with crack cocaine (which required little investment compared to its promised dividends) was that innocent people sometimes got caught in the crossfire when rival drug crews went at it. Recall: the innocent honor student cut down in a hail of stray bullets became a familiar media archetype during this period.

But, while people easily become irate when faced with the fatal consequences of drug violence, they are not always as outraged by police violence. This tension is especially acute in cases like the one involving Oscar Grant, where suspicion too often falls on the young people who fit a particular profile and not the police officers who exhibit questionable behavior. If lazy law enforcement officials see fit to harass, detain, and abuse young African Americans who are statistically more likely to commit certain kinds of crimes, it's worth asking how we might view and assess Johannes Mehserle's behavior on January 1, 2009 given his own documented history of violence. Here's a Freakonomics question worth pondering: what is the statistical probability that a police officer alleged to have beaten one African American man, Kenneth Carrethers, in an unprovoked attack so severely that he required hospitalization would kill another African American man some weeks later under troubling circumstances?

Since so many scholars remain convinced that apathy defines the political ethos of the hip-hop generation, it's worth asking if J. Cole's lyricism might help enrich discussion about the implications the Oscar Grant case will have for people in his demographic category. What does it mean for members of an entire demographic to worry about being murdered in cold blood by the police? What is your perception of politics when you feel like there is little difference in being killed by a stray bullet, a drug dealer, and a law enforcement official? Elsewhere in "Can I Live," J. Cole promises to keep "rhyming until his heartbeat drop[s]" like the "phone" that falls from the hand of his street protagonist's mother "when she heard the news," as he favors lyrics that are riddled with elegies for fallen comrades ("More blacks singin' more blues. More niggas pourin' more brews. Pour dude, he was young, like, twenty-one. Straight up out that city that I'm from"). His swagger is defined by tales of masculine conquest, sexually and lyrically; still, in the aftermath of a fatal gunshot, the characters in his scenes convey an anguish that is even more acute than their audacity:

"Breathe, nigga," his nigga screaming, "Don't you fuckin' leave, nigga!"

He took off his shirt, tryin' to stop the bleedin', nigga

One wonders what went through the mind of Grant's friends who watched him plead with Mehserle not to fire, as the Oakland police officer's partner derided him as a "bitch-ass nigga." Here hip-hop meets a different genre of masculine violence, leading us to wonder whether Grant shared J. Cole's critique of Obama. Did Grant help to elect the President who claimed victory two months before he was tragically killed, and who was inaugurated several weeks after his untimely demise? I can't help but wonder whether Oscar Grant shared J. Cole's skepticism, whether he was more hopeful.

And whether it matters anymore.

Michael Ralph teaches in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. His scholarship on crime, economics, political transformation and urban youth culture has been published in Public Culture, Social Text, Souls, Transforming Anthropology, Afrique et Développement and South Atlantic Quarterly.

Read more about the shooting of Oscar Grant and watch the press conference held by Oscar Grant's family here.

Photo by Thomas Hawk.

The Decision

2010-07-29T14:28:42Z

As a scholar who is deeply intrigued by both the ingredients and political consequences of public opinion, I often gauge public sentiment by simply reading the status messages and posts of my friends on Facebook and Twitter. These social media tools are excellent indicators of what people are angry about, intrigued by, and concerned with. While most of the country came to a halt waiting to hear Lebron James publicly announce which city would become the new home to his basketball greatness, I chatted with a small group of fellow scholar activists who work on the politics of punishment waiting to hear about a different kind of decision. Our discussions often focus on how the nexus of race, crime, and the law structures the political experiences of people of color in the United States and increasingly, across the world. Yet on this day we waited to hear the verdict in the case of former Oakland BART police officer Johannes Mehserle who was charged with killing an unarmed African American man named Oscar Grant III. Much like prominent media outlets CNN, ESPN, Fox News, and MSNBC, most of the Facebook status messages barely mentioned the Mehserle verdict. Most debated what it would mean to Lebron James's legacy if he left his hometown of Cleveland, how it would boost the party scene in the host city, and how much money a "vintage" Lebron jersey could bring on ebay.

An all-white jury deliberated for less than six hours before finding Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter, a conviction that can carry an enhanced sentence of two to fourteen years. Two years for a tragic murder that was captured by multiple cellphones and transmitted across the world via YouTube. Two years for shooting a twenty-two year old man who lay facedown. As the verdict came down my husband reminded me that a year earlier former NFL wide receiver Plaxico Burress received a two year sentence for accidentally shooting himself at a New York nightclub. Two years.

This video shows the shooting of Oscar Grant as recorded by witnesses.

As Oakland residents took to the streets decrying what they viewed as another incident in a long history of police brutality, national media outlets focused on the outrage of Cleveland residents who burned jerseys, shouted obscenities, and questioned Lebron James's integrity.

Even the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who has built a career championing the rights of disenfranchised people, chose not to address the verdict. Jackson and others remained silent, missing a chance to comment on the alarming number of unarmed civilians who die at the hands of police officers each year. Instead, Reverend Jackson spoke out against Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert for treating Lebron as a runaway slave who had escaped the control of his master. On the surface it appeared that America's thirst for entertainment exceeded its appetite for justice.

Perhaps we have become so immune to this state-sanctioned violence that it no longer captures our interest. Perhaps we are so overwhelmed by the stories of Tyrone Brown, Sean Bell, Robbie Tolan, Amadou Diallo, Rodney King, and now Oscar Grant that seeing a successful young African American man like Lebron James take control of his future and excel on his own terms provides an opportunity to exhale and enjoy the comfort of possibility. But the juxtaposition of these two announcements is too great to ignore. It is a signal that even in this mythical "post-racial" era racialized acts of violence and injustice are deeply entrenched in the American experience. The reality is that race has and will continue to shape interactions between citizens and police officers. The task now comes in determining how it will matter and what measures must be enforced in order to protect members of our communities from the overwhelming fear that seems to structure interactions between the two.

It is a fear that prevents community members from respecting law enforcement and silences suffering under the admonition to "stop snitching." It is a fear that leads police officers in post-Katrina New Orleans to murder unarmed civilians whose only crime was attempting to cross a bridge to escape death, only to meet it at the hands of the very people sworn to protect and serve them. It is a fear that leads state legislators to devote more resources to controlling criminals than educating children. The murder of Oscar Grant III reminds us that we must commit ourselves to doing the work in the present that will ensure a fairer, more equitable and violence free future for our children where they won't grow up fearing police officers who see Black and think criminal.

Part of that work involves renewed dedication on the part of the Department of Justice and its Civil Rights Division to aggressively enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1871 that punishes state representatives who deprive Americans of their rights. Chief among those rights must be freedom from injury and death at the hands of judicial officers who abuse their use of force powers. As the US continues to grapple with economic downturns, rising anti-immigrant sentiment, and increased concerns over domestic terrorism, we can expect a steady increase in interactions between police officers and communities of color. What we should not expect and cannot tolerate is a justice system that continues to stratify the life chances of young people based on race.

Khalilah L. Brown-Dean teaches in the Departments of Political Science and African American Studies at Yale University. Brown-Dean has been featured as a political analyst, advisor, and commentator for CNN, PBS, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Crisis Magazine, Democracy Works, and The Sentencing Project.

Old Wounds and New Pain

2010-07-29T14:26:43Z

The past can be like an old wound that never heals, especially when the scab keeps being picked. In the wake of Oakland transit cop Johannes Mesherle's recent involuntary manslaughter conviction for the on-duty shooting death of unarmed, 22 year-old Oscar Grant, the injury of his death and so many black men before him is as raw and bloody now as it was the day they were killed.

The pain runs deep not just because another mother lost her son to a quick-triggered cop, or because no black jurors were yet again allowed to stand in judgment of a white man, or because some observers claim that Grant's prior trouble with the law made him a willing partner to his own summary execution. The hurt runs deep because at the root of the outcry over the failure to get a murder conviction for another willing executioner of a black man is the painful reminder, and concurrent denial, of the cheapness of black life in America.

Just remembering the horrors of slavery or the tragedy of Scottsboro in this context is enough to make many want to scream, holler, burn, and pillage. And yet such hot memories are too often soothed by the cool comfort of our post Civil Rights, post Jim Crow triumphalism. However, by the measure of police brutality outside of the South, not much has changed.

In a 1929 Illinois Crime Survey, researchers found that African Americans made up 30 percent of the recorded police killings but only 5 percent of the population. In one case, for example, a manhunt for a sixteen-year-old Chicagoan accused of breaking a restaurant window, ended with police entering his home without a warrant, guns blazing. Alfred Lingle died in a hail of thirty-five bullets.

North of the Mason-Dixon Line unlawful police violence has produced long suffering in silence. In response to a 1930 federal report of police brutality, Lawlessness in Law Enforcement, which highlighted conditions in the Jim Crow South, members of the Philadelphia black press cried foul. They told officials that the report prominently covered brutality in the "uncivilized wilds of Mississippi," but had ignored several alarming cases in the urban North: the local beating of a sick elderly black woman; the torture of a man "choked, hung upside down, his joints twisted and told that Negroes should be treated like dogs; and the "drag net" arrests and beatings of blacks on the "steps of their own homes."

There is a thin blue line separating the past from the present, as evident by the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on the steps of his own Cambridge home last summer; the perjury and obstruction of justice conviction last month of Jon Burge, former Chicago Police Commander, accused along with dozens of other officials in the abuse or torture of nearly 200 African Americans arrested between the 1970s and 1990s; and the recent federal indictment of six New Orleans officers charged in connection with the execution-style shootings of six unarmed Katrina victims, two of whom died.

Society's enduring denial of police repression in black communities inflicts the most harm, ripping off the scab of racial injustice every time an officer's humanity is affirmed by the presumption of innocence and little to no punishment. In Mesherle's case as was true for the officers acquitted in the killings of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, it is the innocence of fear of black men that decriminalizes murder in police killings, rendering them tragic "accidents."

Fear affirms the shared humanity of all who presume the guilt of black men. The burden of blackness is to prove one's innocence, to justify one's humanity; the privilege of whiteness is to take both for granted.

Recall New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's smear that the slain Patrick Dorismond was "No altar boy" after he was goaded into a fight with undercover narcotics agents (later acquitted) while innocently and soberly minding his own business.

"Again? Again? Again?" were the anguished cries of Dorismond's mother as she mourned, side by side, with Kadiatou Diallo at Sean Bell's funeral in 2006.

Wanda Johnson, the mother of Oscar Grant, now feels the sharp sting of the scab pulling from an old and festering wound. We hear her cries of pain, "my son was murdered," linking her to a troubling past and present.

As for the future, in order for wounds to heal scabs must not be allowed to form. Wounds must be thoroughly cleaned, properly treated, and vigilantly monitored for healthy tissue to grow.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad teaches in the Department of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Harvard).

Photo by Ayesha Walker and Youth Radio.

Justice for Oscar Grant

2010-07-29T14:24:50Z

"Justice for Oscar Grant!" As I sit in front of these keys I know that I could have written this essay 100 times before and will likely need to write it 100 more times before I die, simply because I knew there would be no justice for Oscar Grant. Justice for most would have been a conviction of Officer Mesherle on a second degree murder charge, but that still would not equal justice -- that would simply be a small step on the path towards justice. Justice is larger than the Oscar Grant case, the Sean Bell case, or any of the host of assassinations of unarmed Black men by the police. Justice is about their totality and the space that lies between popular unshakable belief in state innocence and Black male criminality. Justice is knowing and doing something about, as Mos Def said, "the length of Black life [being] treated with short worth." When Oscar grant was killed nearly 2 years ago at the age of 22, he would exit this planet knowing that this society had done him no justice and his family was reminded of that when the jury deliberated for 8 hours, about the misery they will have to cope with the rest of their lives. So many will wonder, is the judicial system even the place to look for justice?

When I found out a verdict was reached quickly, I knew that the charges they found would not be the maximum and prayed that they would find some guilt, but that was a weak prayer. I wanted partial justice, but there is no such thing as partial justice. While we casually throw around the term justice, few of us take time to grapple with its meaning at its core. I've come to my own conclusions on justice that draws sources ranging from John Rawles to George Jackson. At its core, I think justice is the equal distribution of tragedy and triumph. Reading some people's thoughts on Oscar Grant and others reminds me that loss and pain exist, but Black people, particularly poor Black people, get an extra helping of it. What would be more justice than all sharing in suffering? More pressing than that, are we willing to accept what at just society would look like? We will have justice when a child born in Detroit is as likely to go to Harvard as a child born in Greenwich. We will have justice when a twenty-two year old Asian woman is as likely to be executed at point blank range as a twenty-two year-old African American man. It may sound extreme, but the stifling and loss of human life is extreme.

When it comes to daily criminal activity, the judicial system is more concerned with retribution than with rehabilitation. When we look at the justice system as it comes to their own agents, police officers, suddenly the scales are tipped towards reform and away from reality. The increased video monitoring of police abuses seems to matter little in courts where criminality is silently embodied by poor Black men. So where does this leave us? How do I teach my Black brothers and our community that justice is available in this country? We must continue to teach our community so they know their rights when engaged by police so that they can remain safe and strong. We must continue to pressure local municipalities to develop civilian oversight programs. Even as we do this, we have to realize that these are all small scaled and collective action across race, class and gender lines is mandatory. Collective dissatisfaction must be so loud that the mainstream media can no longer ignore the Oscar Grant case or any of the many cases that paint the innocence of the state and the guilt of victims.

I want justice in the courts. I want justice in the community. We will know that we are closer to justice when my unborn children's life paths are determined by their own volitions, not the discretion of police with guns and tasers.

R. L'Heureux Lewis teaches in the Department of Sociology at City College in New York City. His scholarship on race and education has been featured in media outlets such as US World News Report, Diversity in Higher Education, National Public Radio, theRoot.com and the Detroit Free Press.

Photo by Youth Radio.

New from a Social Text Author: The Citizen Machine

2010-07-29T00:51:22Z

The Citizen Machine:

Governing by Television in 1950s America

by Anna McCarthy

Formed in the shadow of the early Cold War, amid the first stirrings of the civil rights movement, the idea of television as a form of unofficial government inspired corporate executives, foundation officers, and other members of the governing classes to imagine TV sponsorship as a powerful new form of influence on American democracy in the postwar years. The Citizen Machine tells the story of their efforts to shape U.S. political culture, uncovering a dense web of fantasies and rationalizations about race, class, and economic power that have profoundly shaped not only television, but our understanding of American citizenship itself.
Published by The New Press and available here.

MediaShift . Your Guide to Next Generation 'Content Farms' | PBS

2010-07-27T19:24:42Z

The future of online publishing? Content farms.

Kabul War Diary

2010-07-26T13:37:02Z

WikiLeaks has released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.

Yes Men Release their World Fixing Movie to the World

2010-07-25T02:11:49Z

I don't believe in One Licensing Model for creative works but I do think that the documentary, especially the political documentary, is meant to circulate as far and wide as possible, otherwise what is the point?

It might make sense not to throw it into the wind right away. It might make sense to hold it under copyright while it makes it way through the the festival circuit, hopefully garnering attention but once it is done traveling through the circuit, then it makes sense to open the cage and let the documentary go. So I am really happy to see that the Yes Mean have followed this model. They have not only Fixed the World but Released it to the (Internet accessible) World. I hope this inspires other documentary film makers to follow in their footsteps.

Anna McCarthy: Mad Men, Big Business

2010-07-22T22:33:58Z

Do you like Mad Men? Social Text Co-Editor Anna McCarthy blogs about the show on Huffpo.

Penitenciarul de Femei Tirgsor | punctum.ro

2010-07-22T00:10:01Z

Inmates in a Romanian women's prison photograph their lives.

David Harvey on the Crises of Capitalism Illustrated by RSAnimate

2010-07-19T03:25:54Z

An illustrated version of David Harvey on the crises of capitalism courtesy of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

What if the Tea Party was Black?

2010-07-15T14:14:34Z

What if the Tea Party was Black? Answer here

Great Moments In Cursing On Live Television

2010-07-15T01:27:17Z

Jezebel compiles a clip of foul mouthed women on TV. The occasion? A Supreme Court ruling declaring the FCC's indecency policy unconstitutional.

Washington's Blog

2010-07-13T02:04:49Z

A depressing photographic archive of wildlife affected by the Gulf spill.

covers

2010-07-13T01:01:53Z

A number of people have made analog covers of Aphex Twin tracks, but this one is undoubtedly the best.