.. A consensus soon formed that the Batson remedy was toothless. In a 1996 opinion, an Illinois appellate judge, exasperated by “the charade that has become the Batson process,” catalogued some of the flimsy reasons for striking jurors that judges had accepted as “race-neutral”: too old, too young; living alone, living with a girlfriend; over-educated, lack of maturity; unemployed, employed as a barber; and so on. The judge joked, “New prosecutors are given a manual, probably entitled, ‘Handy Race-Neutral Explanations’ or ‘20 Time-Tested Race-Neutral Explanations.’”
To state the obvious, black people are more likely to have been targeted or abused by police; to be affected by the extreme racial disparities in arrests, incarceration, and the death penalty; and to understand that crimes against black victims are prosecuted less vigorously than those against whites. All things being equal, a prosecutor has reason to think that a black juror is less likely to side with the government against a black defendant than a white one.
.. Richard Bourke, who has worked on Batson appeals as the director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, suggested that the most powerful, realistic reform would be to have states track the racial makeup of jury selection in the same way they track the racial statistics of traffic stops.
Of Bikers and Thugs
Does the violence in Waco say something universal about white culture or Hispanic culture? Even the question sounds ridiculous — and yet we don’t hesitate to ask such questions around black violence, and to answer it, in the affirmative. And invariably, the single-mother, absent-father trope is dragged out.
But a father in the home is no guarantor against violence. By the way, is anyone asking about the family makeup of the bikers in Waco?
No? Exactly.
Israel Cancels Project Barring Palestinians From Some Buses
The bus plan was conceived by the Israeli Defense Ministry, apparently in response to pressure from Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who have long demanded separate transportation for the Palestinians.
The plan called for Palestinians who work in Israel to return to the West Bank at the end of the day through one of four designated Israeli checkpoints, and then take Palestinian buses to their towns and villages. They would no longer have been allowed to take Israeli buses traveling in the direction of West Bank settlements, which cuts down on travel time for Palestinians who live along the way.
.. Representatives for the settlers had complained that the buses were overcrowded and unpleasant, in addition to the concerns about security.
Mordhay Yogev, a legislator from the Jewish Home party, was quoted in Haaretz at the time saying that the situation was “unreasonable” and that “the buses are filled with Arabs.”
Molefi Kete Asante: Why Afrocentricity?
Let me remind you of a recent event. A white policeman in New Richmond, Ohio, refused to shoot a white man begging to be shot. The policeman, Jesse Kidder, is praised for demonstrating restraint in refusing to shoot the man, Michael Wilcox, who had been accused of killing his fiancée. Pundits and commentators announced gleefully that Kidder’s action was exceptional and certainly an example of good police behavior. Few would dispute the fact that the police used restraint, but the lesson to the white child and to the black child, I should add, is that police can show restraint when the suspect is white, even if he is suspected of murder.
.. Thus the white child finds three aspects of privilege immediately in a racist society. They are secure in their physical and psychological situations; they are protected in their living spaces; and they have the freedom to explore every conceivable adventure without fear or trepidation. On top of this they are granted audacity that is condemned in black children.
.. Young black boys must know their power and learn to respect it, to be amused by the fear that they cause in those who reflect on the violence they have measured against us.
.. The ancient African philosophers such as Amenhotep, the son of Hapu, Imhotep, Ptahhotep, Amenemhat, Merikare and Akhenaten lived hundreds, even thousands of years before Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Why is it that children do not learn that the African Imhotep built the first pyramid? Our children do not know that Hypatia, Plotinus and St. Augustine were born in Africa.