What would be just?

[Tahlvin]

So, here's a little background before I get to the question:

On the UW-Madison campus, near where I live and where my daughter is currently attending, there have been a number of racial incidents this year. And not just against African-Americans, but against Native American groups and at least one anti-Semitic incident as well. Despicable incidents, done (I hope) by a small group of students who do not represent the attitudes of the majority of the student body, and the victims have every right to be upset about them.

Over the course of a few months, graffiti has appeared on a number of campus buildings. The graffiti contained anti-racist messages, and in a couple cases contained messages which might be considered anti-white. They were all signed "God". There were 11 graffiti incidents in all, resulting in $4,000 damage/cleanup costs.

Last week, the suspected graffiti artist was arrested by campus police. The arrest took place while the suspect was in one of his college classes, with the police officers interrupting the class and removing the individual in the middle of the class. While certainly a legal arrest, it could have been much more tactfully, rather than arresting him in front of classroom full of his peers. That has triggered a number of protests from the "Black Lives Matter" and other organizations on campus. This culminated today with a large protest where they blocked one of the major roads through the city.

This brings me to my question. The protestors are asking that the suspect be released, all charges dropped, and that the officers and administrators involved in the arrest be terminated, among a number of other demands. In a situation such as this, what would you consider to be justice?

[Tahlvin]

For my part, I don't think the officers should be fired. They were doing their jobs. If you want more community oversight of the police force, or more diversity, I'm all for having those discussions.

I'm not sure about dropping the charges. If they could work it out so he wasn't prosecuted but he made some form of restitution, that would be nice, in my opinion. I don't want to see his academic or professional prospects harmed because of these specific incidents, but he did cause damage to property, so he should help with the cost of the cleanup. And if the protestors want to collect money to pay those costs, I think that's a great idea.

And give the kid a voice! Give him a way to express his views and his feelings without causing damage. Provide him some canvases so he can spray paint all the messages he wants and put them on display around campus. For that matter, collect stories from other students, current and former, students of all colors, genders, and orientations, whether letters, videos, pictures/paintings/drawings, and put together a display so they can be shared.

[Elle]

I'm big on following procedure in situations like this. If you break the law, even if you have a good reason for civil disobedience, then you broke the law. That's what civil disobedience is! Maybe your punishment depends on assessment of why you did it, but you can't just let people break the law and vandalize property.

At the same time, I'm guessing this isn't the first time a student at that university has been accused of property damage, and I'm also guessing the campus security did not follow their normal procedures in this case, which is bad. Whoever made that decision does need to be fired or disciplined, not so much because it was the wrong decision, but because the school can't afford to employ officials who expose it to that kind of legal/financial/publicity problem. That ends up costing them more than cleaning up spray paint. That's not really about "justice" but it's about "prudence", at least.

As to what the university should be doing about the overall problem, I'd have to know more details.

[Tahlvin]

This has me thinking about racial justice in general, and how do we move beyond it.

Is it part of the price we need to pay to move beyond the racism of the past, that the pendulum needs to swing the other way for a bit? That we say African-Americans will not be charged with certain misdemeanor charges for the next X years, to make up for the injustices of the past Y years?

What about reparations for slavery? Would that help move things forward? How would we even do that? For example, I'm a bit of a genealogy nerd, and I've tracked most branches of my family back to the 1700's, and some to the early 1600's, and so far have not found any proof that any of my ancestors benefited directly from slavery: they did not own any slaves, according to the census records I have located, there's nothing regarding slaves in any of the wills I have found, etc. If there are reparations for slavery, would I be required to pay into it? In order for someone to receive reparations, would they need to be able to trace their ancestry back to a slave? Or is the goal really reparations for racism, so I would pay into it as a white person, whether or not my ancestors held slaves, and any African-American can draw from it, whether or not they are descended from slaves? Or is it a government payout, taken from tax funds? If it's the latter, it seems weird that taxes paid by African-Americans are being turned around and paid back to them as part of the reparations. Or would it be better to handle it as a tax credit of some sort instead: if you report as African-American on your taxes, you can claim a "slavery reparations" deduction of $X?

What about other groups besides African-Americans who have been victims of racism? Native Americans? Latinos? Chinese workers who came over to work on the railroads? Irish Catholics who were discriminated against in the 1800s?

I am genuinely interested in serious ideas for how we move forward and make progress in racial relations. Not just platitudes about equal opportunity vs. equal outcomes, but genuine ideas for how we address and move beyond the systemic racism that present for far too long.

[Elle]

It interests me too but I don't have any great solutions. I think reparations are kind of a nonstarter. We have trouble even treating Native American tribes appropriately, which seems like it would be easier to accomplish. But I also think our country systematically engaged not only in violence against black people, but a whole host of other bad things designed to prevent them from ever being able to create and transfer generational wealth. So we could start by making our best effort to stop doing those things, at a minimum. Have real accountability for our militarized police forces whose dangers affect black and poor people more than anyone else. Stop the penalties for driving while black, or for being a black child in a school system that is set up to accomplish the exit of both white people and their tax dollars. And then maybe invest in efforts and policies that help low income families across the board, in everything from taxes to economic stimulus to zoning laws, so that the surplus wealth isn't all in the hands of one relatively tiny group and actually gets reinvested in common goods. But I'm a Sanders person, already convinced that his proposals would help. Then we need to decriminalize (though in my view, not legalize) things like drug possession and concentrate as much on gun trafficking and human trafficking as we do on drugs. We need to actually support veterans, because for a whole generation of white people that was a means of moving into the middle class and encouraging stable families. But we haven't supported black families that way (just like we stopped supporting veterans adequately coincidentally about the time a greater proportion of them were African American), even though the loss of stable family structures in low income black communities has been devastating. We helped that happen with policy; it wasn't just a random cultural accident, and it's also part of the lasting legacy of slavery.

So there's one longish rant about it, probably less appealing to anyone who doesn't incline to a bit of socialism, and I'd have to write a separate rant about universities. But suffice to say, I think both that black students are often treated unfairly and wiith shameful disrespect in universities and in the whole associated financial and broader educational system attached thereto, and that affirmative action is a stupid way of putting a Bandaid on it, and that the demands I've seen in some of these recent college protests are unbelievable stupidity. Babying and patronizing people is a dumb idea; actually devoting resources to help all good students from low income backgrounds get and most importantly stay in college without setting themselves up for financial ruin is a good idea, by contrast. I have seen both approaches, and the latter one works and is respectful of human beings. But it takes money, so it's easier to fight about dumb identity politics shit.