Page 2 The Skanner April 18, 2018
Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now
Waiting While Black in Philadelphia Can Get You Arrested
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2017
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Opinion
ate last week, two Black
men in Philadelphia were
doing what people do ev-
ery day in this city — they
waited in a coffee shop to meet
an associate. While they were
engaged in this mundane
activity, they were removed
from the Starbucks cafe at
18th and Spruce Streets in
handcuffs by Philadelphia po-
lice officers.
This is another example of
the kind of daily indignities
that African-Americans face
every day in Philadelphia and
around the country. We can’t
even wait in a coffee shop for
a friend without the possi-
bility that someone will call
the police. Two days after the
news broke of the incident,
I’m angrier now than I was
when I first heard about it.
The neighborhood where
this incident occurred is
known
as
Rittenhouse
Square. For those not famil-
iar with Philadelphia, it’s a
tony neighborhood of beauti-
ful townhouses and high-end
apartment buildings.
It’s also the neighborhood
with the highest rates of ra-
cial disparities in stops and
frisks by police in all of Phil-
adelphia. In 2010, the ACLU
of Pennsylvania sued the
city because the Philadelphia
Police Department’s use of
stop-and-frisk was discrimi-
natory. Our data showed that
Reggie
Shuford
Exec. Dir.,
ACLU of
Pennsylvania
African-Americans were far
more likely to be stopped and
frisked than their white coun-
terparts. Making matters
worse, those stops were often
without any justifiable cause.
A year later, the city agreed
to a consent decree to settle
the case. That agreement re-
quires the city to collect data
on the PPD’s use of stop-and-
frisk — including the demo-
graphic information of people
who are stopped and the rea-
sons why they were stopped
— as well as to train officers to
eliminate bias-based policing.
The police service area
where the Starbucks is locat-
ed has a Black population of
just 3 percent. But 67 percent
of the stops that occurred
there in the first half of 2017
were of African-Americans.
The two other police service
areas in this district — known
as District 9 — show similar
lopsided disparities. In one of
the bordering police service
areas, a whopping 84 per-
cent of pedestrians stopped
were African-Americans in
a neighborhood with a Black
population of 16 percent.
Seven years after the city
agreed to do better, we still
see consistent racial dispari-
ties in stops and frisks. Yet, in
a video statement in response
to the incident, Philadelphia
Police Commissioner Richard
Ross had the nerve to say that
his officers “did absolutely
nothing wrong.”
“
Black people,
men in par-
ticular, are
not allowed
the full range
of emotional
expression in
public spaces
His statement, the data the
city has collected on stops,
and this incident all lead me
to wonder if Ross and his de-
partment leaders in this dis-
trict and this police service
area, Capt. Danielle Vales and
Lt. Jeffrey Rabinovitch, are se-
rious about ending racial pro-
filing in this neighborhood
and throughout the city.
There was no need for a
Starbucks employee to call
911 because two men were
waiting for an associate in
their store. And even after the
police were called, the police
did not have to end the situa-
tion by arresting these men.
If Commissioner Ross is right
that these officers followed
policy, then the policy needs
to change. Starbucks may
be able to decide who sits in
its store, but only the police
could decide to arrest these
men.
Racial bias and discrimina-
tion are so steeped in Amer-
ican culture that those of us
who experience it on a regu-
lar basis have learned to live
as second-class citizens in the
country of our birth. Many
folks have expressed pride
or relief because the two men
remained calm. I get that. I am
glad, too. We have seen far
too many incidents that have
quickly spiraled out of con-
trol.
But there is an ugly side to
that as well. Black people, men
in particular, are not allowed
the full range of emotional
expression in public spaces.
Even when an emotion other
than being calm is warranted,
we have been taught and have
learned to police our emo-
tions. No matter how badly
we are being treated or how
much our dignity is being as-
sailed, we have to be the ones
maintaining control and be-
ing responsible for de-esca-
lating these situations.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
No Need to Look Farr for Racism in Trump Court Nominees
O
ur decision to protest
President Trump’s vis-
it to the opening of the
Mississippi Civil Rights
Museum wasn’t simply about
the insult of his presence to
the legacy of civil rights, it
was also about his ongoing
war to recreate the barriers
and protections so many gave
their lives to tear down.
We began to understand the
challenges that the civil rights
community would face under
the Trump Administration af-
ter he nominated U.S. Sen. Jeff
Sessions (R-Ala.) to head the
Department of Justice. With-
in a few weeks of becoming
attorney general, Sessions
would engage in a strategic
undermining of civil rights
laws and enforcement, in-
cluding backing away from
the enforcement of consent
decrees as a verifiable means
to reign in police brutality
and reneging on its previous
support in key legal battles
against racially-targeted vot-
er suppression in Texas.
Through his refusal to con-
demn white supremacy and
his policies to dilute the vot-
ing strength and political
power of the poor, the middle
class and communities of col-
or, Trump has frightened civ-
il rights communities in ways
they have not felt in a long
time. It is with this same fear
and dread that we look upon
his current nominations to
Derrick
Johnson
NNPA
Interim
President &
CEO
the federal courts.
To our dismay, Thomas Farr,
a nominee with ties to segre-
gation and voter suppression,
eased his way through the
Senate Judiciary Committee
on a vote along party lines
“
...the cam-
paign mailed
125,000 post-
cards, mostly
to black vot-
ers, suggest-
ing they were
ineligible to
vote
and now stands a Senate vote
away from a lifetime judicial
appointment to the U.S. Dis-
trict Court for the Eastern
District of North Carolina.
Despite the Eastern District
being composed of numer-
ous counties located in what
many consider North Caroli-
na’s “Black Belt,” this federal
court has never once had a
black judge. President Obama
twice tried to desegregate the
court by nominating two Af-
rican American women with
stellar credentials, but they
were not confirmed due in
part to the state’s Republican
U.S. senators, Thom Tillis and
Richard Burr, both of whom
backed Farr’s nomination.
In a September letter to the
Senate Judiciary Committee,
Rev. William Barber II, then
NAACP’s North Carolina
State Conference president,
said: “The North Carolina
NAACP takes serious excep-
tion to this nomination and to
the efforts by Senators Tillis
and Burr to advance the nom-
ination of an individual who
has repeatedly demonstrated
open hostility to the protec-
tion of the constitutional and
civil rights of African Ameri-
cans, Latinos and the poor in
this state.”
Rev. Barber’s letter failed
to derail Farr, whose long ca-
reer has continually found
him on the opposite side of
the civil rights community. In
1984 and 1990, Farr served as
the legal counsel for the U.S.
Senate campaigns of Repub-
lican Jesse Helms, a staunch
segregationist. They ran no-
torious political campaigns
that sought to suppress black
political participation. The
Justice Department under
President George H.W. Bush
filed voting-rights charges
when the campaign mailed
125,000 postcards, mostly to
black voters, suggesting they
were ineligible to vote and
threatening jail time.
Farr also played a key role
in developing and defend-
ing what the North Carolina
NAACP called a “monster”
voter suppression law. Ac-
cording to the federal appel-
late court which blocked the
law after the NAACP chal-
lenged it in court, the law
had targeted “African Amer-
icans with almost surgical
precision,” and was “the most
restrictive voting law North
Carolina has seen since the
era of Jim Crow.”
We are not alone in our con-
demnation of Farr, whom the
Congressional Black Caucus
places “at the forefront of an
extended fight to disenfran-
chise African American vot-
ers in North Carolina.”
In 1930, the NAACP opposed
the U.S. Supreme Court nom-
ination of John J. Parker, a
federal appellate judge from
North Carolina, and won.
Parker believed black people
had no role in our democratic
process. NAACP leader Wal-
ter White testified against
Parker at his hearing, and
the organization mobilized
its branches and members to
urge Senators to vote against
the nominee.
Read the rest of this commentary at
TheSkanner.com
nt •
lo c a l n e w s •
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