She works for the New York Times. She twits under the name Ida Bae Wells. And she won a Pulitzer Prize for making up a story that may be taught to your children, but just isn’t factually true. Her name is Nikole Hannah-Jones and she wants money.

It feels different this time.

And for the moment, it does. Hannah-Jones runs through the litany of black suffering, from being chattel to having a fraction of the accumulated family wealth. She offers studies to show that it’s not because black people are lazy or stupid, squandered their earnings or failed to put in the effort to achieve success. She offers other studies to show how racial discrimination has impacted black people to burden them, to cheat them out of their due, and then burden them some more. Continue reading →

What would you do if you were driving in your car and, without notice, found yourself surrounded by protesters? Suddenly, people you don’t know, who don’t know you, put their bodies in front of your car. Others started banging on your car. Some took objects and struck your windshield in an effort to break it. Your doors were locked, but people were trying to open them.

Your car was being demolished in front of your eyes. What would happen to you if this violent group managed to get into your car? Would they pull you out and beat you? Kill you?

There are some basic principles that apply under normal circumstances. You don’t do harm to a person in defense of property. Lives matter more than things. But then, why are these random people entitled to destroy your car because they’re enraged in general? And it’s not just property, but a step away from your life. Continue reading →

Ed. Note: This is a guest post by Roswell, Georgia, lawyer Charles Landrum.

As lawyers, words are our stock in trade. Words matter. Choosing the right words can make the difference between whether your client wins or loses, whether the judge grasps your argument in the first paragraph or tosses it onto the “denied” pile. And when drafting a motion, words are chosen carefully to avoid traps from—and sometimes to set them for—the other side. And words almost always are at a premium, with page limits constraining every choice along the way.

So I can’t help but analyze these three little words: black lives matter. Continue reading →

A young man who was so brilliant that he was admitted to the best tech university on Mass Ave. at 16 and had a Ph.D. in computer science on his wall by 24 was telling me about the difference between his life and his father’s. We’ve been talking about such things for years, as he comes for Thanksgiving and, sometimes, Christmas at my house. It’s not accidental. He’s another one of my sons.

There was a bidding war over him. He was being flown to interviews in a private jet, and these companies would have done damn near anything to prove their devotion, including mentioning salary packages with a lot of zeroes. You see, they wanted him. Bad. He’s black. He’s brilliant. And he was amazed at how things worked out for him. He told me his father couldn’t understand how it was possible, that they were throwing jobs at him, throwing money at him. He didn’t find it at all surprising.* Continue reading →

Over the years, I get regular calls from newspaper reporters for comments on issues of the moment. Sometimes I’ll talk to them, if it’s a subject that interests me or a reporter I know and respect. Much of the time, I won’t. They don’t really care about informing people anymore, but about getting a blurb to fill in the space between their editorializing. I’m not a fan of being the lunchmeat in their “truth” sandwich. I’m decades past caring about seeing my name in the funny pages.

But then, no mainstream media personality has ever called me to do a profile on SJ. Fair enough. It’s pretty niche, and hasn’t been particularly kind to newspapers or reporters in that tribal sort of way they adore. Continue reading →

Whether cops would react differently if they thought about the Good Guy Curve is unlikely. It’s not that they’re necessarily that dumb or narcissistic, but that they care far more about themselves, their own position on the First Rule of Policing, than they do about the other guy making it home for dinner.

The problem is that when they approach a person, even if there’s nothing beyond rank speculation that the guy might be up to something wrong, they may know they’re cops in plain clothes, but the other person doesn’t unless they display shields or say something. Too often, they don’t. They may lie about it afterward and claim they did, but they didn’t. It just wasn’t on their mind at the moment. That was the case when they stopped Lamar Wright in Euclid, Ohio. Continue reading →

Pat Lynch isn’t a cartoon character, although he does his best to come off that way. As police unions, separate from all other public sector unions, have come under attack as being singularly problematic when it comes to excising the cancer of bad individual cops from the force, Lynch does his best Wile E. Coyote routine by throwing teachers unions, inter alia, under the bus.

For example, a common anti-union talking point is that “police unions have traditionally used their bargaining agreements to create obstacles to disciplining officers.” In New York State, at least, that’s false. Police unions are prohibited from negotiating disciplinary issues. The police commissioner — and, by extension, the mayor who appointed him — have full authority over discipline.

But then there’s mandatory arbitration, Pat. They discipline. You arbitrate. Did that slip your mind? Continue reading →

If a program doesn’t run the way it’s supposed to, there is an array of possible reasons, from an erroneous letter or symbol to a bad line of code to a program replete with errors. If it’s to be debugged, which it is matters. Or maybe the code is so bad it isn’t worth fixing and better to start over and rewrite the program. Or, hold on to your hats, maybe the program will never work, no matter how much effort is put into trying to fix it.

If these distinctions aren’t made, the program doesn’t get fixed and perform the way it’s intended. It’s become fashionable to cry “systemic” as the problem with social ills. It has the virtue of creating the impression that everything is wrong and it allows the screamer to avoid the hard labor of identifying what the actual problem is, what is going wrong, and what can be done to fix it. Continue reading →

The existence of CHAZ, the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone created by protesters, has managed to evade much scrutiny. One story appeared in my hometown paper on June 11, which explained its existence in the simplest of terms.

“This space is now property of the Seattle people,” read a banner on the front entrance of the now-empty police station. The entire area was now a homeland for racial justice — and, depending on the protester one talked to, perhaps something more.

One block had a designated smoking area. Another had a medic station. At the “No Cop Co-op,” people could pick up a free LaCroix sparkling water or a snack. No currency was accepted, but across the street, in a nod to capitalism, a bustling stand was selling $6 hot dogs. It was dealing in U.S. dollars.

Continue reading →

Having read little more than some screen shots of the Bible, Princess Karen version, also known as White Fragility by marketeer Robin DiAngelo, the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t self-flagellate with sufficient vigor. And, I’m told, I should because of my “white privilege.”

We are determined to do that work and determined to let everyone know we are doing it. This work is deemed necessary so we can become better allies for black people in the fight for racial justice. There are so many anguished conversations among white people taking place right now about what to write on our protest signs, about that time we said that thing to a black friend and it changed the energy in the room, about whether rewatching the movie “The Help” counts as progress.

There is a frantic race to catch up, and that’s got to be the correct instinct, right? I mean, look at this moment in history. I swear, if I don’t do it right I’ll ask to speak to my own manager.

Continue reading →