Comments

1. Jess wrote:

   I don’t think Turner and Nixon are all that comparable, honestly. Your first reaction of being upset at the comparison was right, IMO.

   There is a difference between politically directed revolutionary violence and straight-up criminal behavior. It’s really that simple. When you look at ‘armed struggle’ movements all over the place, you notice that for anyone to support them, they have to have not only a grievance that people can understand but have to act in ways that gain support. That way the local people won’t snitch on you to the FBI (or equivalent).

   This is why a successful revolutionary doesn’t just steal stuff and shoot random people and claim he’s trying to bring down the system. Even if it is oppressive.

   There is a reason that the successful armed groups — and here, I am defining success as having a wide, deep well of popular support that allows them to operate and perhaps even overthrow governments (or get independence or whatever political goal) — try to avoid random violence, and why the unsuccessful ones degenerate into being thugs and criminals and are eventually wiped out.

   Take Abu Sayyaf. The group numbers less than a hundred, probably. and is not known as a liberation group for Muslims in the Philippines — they are just criminals who kidnap people. They might have been the former, but they managed to alienate everybody. There are real, concrete issues to be dealt with in Mindanao, but if your ‘representative’ is a bunch of thugs it doesn’t help.

   Other groups in the Philippines — MLF and MILF, for instance, went the political route after dropping violence, and while it ain’t perfect, it’s a start. They did that because they knew they couldn’t win a military confrontation and weren’t going to get the support of enough people to do armed struggle.

   Or to look at the more successful armed struggles: In Cuba and Nicaragua, for instance, the revolutionaries made a point of being a disciplined group that didn’t engage in random atrocities or theft.

   Nat Turner was leading an armed struggle, (in the modern Marxist sense) but the circumstances were such that it wasn’t going to work. Martin Luther King famously explained why it wasn’t an option for black people, even if every black person were to sign on.

   Mixon was a criminal. A man whose choices had been constrained by the system, yes, and a man who was deeply affected by the racist nature of the system. But that doesn’t make him any kind of revolutionary a la Turner.

   This is why, I think, people see Samhita’s post as apologism for criminal behavior. Mixon wasn’t targeting police officers to stop them from oppressing his community. He was possibly targeting women and just got in the cops’ sights largely as a result of that.

   Yes the system is oppressive. Yes it can make criminals out of people who might not otherwise be. But Mixon isn’t your poster boy for police brutality.

   Again, your first, gut reaction was the right one.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 8:07 am ¶

2. Celeste wrote:

   I would say no, they are not linked at all. I’ve got dogs in both fights in this situation. I have relatives than are gone to prison, then gone back but fortunately there was never any violence. I also have relatives and friends that are police officers. I acknowledge that the world is really stacked against parolees, however, I’ve personally seen parolees throw away their second chance by making insanely dumb, self- destructive choices.
   Mixon was not a community organizer or freedom fighter, his motivation for murdering those police officers was completely selfish. He wasn’t trying to uplift his community or free them from police brutality, he just didn’t want to go back to prison. Period.
   I’m fine with property crime, especially when commited by smart criminals that don’t hurt anyone. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather not be robbed but it beats the hell our of a home invasion. However, this joker consistently demonstrated a disreguard for human life. Carjacking, raping and then finally killing police officers. If he was willing to kill society’s representatives of civil order then I don’t think he’d have too many qualms about killing one of his neighbors. It’s people like him who do the lion’s share of the killing in poor communities. I generally don’t believe in the death penalty because it seems to have an interesting way of being applied more to POC’s. However, if someone get’s shot in the process of killing a cop(s) then good riddance. It’s not tragic to not live to tell the tale after killing 4 people!

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 8:27 am ¶

3. Patrick wrote:

   I read the Feministing article several days ago, along with many of the comments. My personal feeling was that this particular event provides a less than optimal jumping-off point for a discussion on the criminalisation of race. As noted, Mixon made his own choices and acting for himself (if reports regarding his motivation are to be believed). While I agree that systematic prejudice and a failed penal system played a role, using such an unsympathetic figure to start the discussion makes it difficult to convince people not already on your side. It makes it all too easy to twist a discussion on the evils of a system into a justification for the horrific actions that prompted the discussion.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 9:10 am ¶

4. Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! wrote:

   This is why I no longer call myself a feminist– so many white feminists are racist and ignorant! They don’t even realize how privileged they are.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:03 am ¶

5. atlasien wrote:

   I’m a bit wary of jumping into the subject of police violence but I’ll go ahead and do it. As a disclaimer, since I’m an Asian woman I’ve got “non-black privilege” in that I’ve never had to worry about police targeting me violently… that’s just not in my stereotype. I understand that the perspective of someone who grew up in the crosshairs is going to be very different.

   However, aside from some close calls when I was a cocky teenager, I’ve experienced a lot more problems from not having police around when they’re really needed. I’ve also lived in majority-black areas off and on for a long time, and the experience of most of my neighbors is the same. Robberies and murders in richer and predominantly white neighborhoods get investigated immediately, ones in poorer and majority-black areas go to the bottom of the barrel. When I lived in Miami it was even worse. A German tourist gets shot? Call out the National Guard. Someone in Overtown? Worth a few sentences in the back pages.

   One of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had recently was watching a woman (black) being violently beaten across the street from me, calling 911 and being put on hold for five minutes, by which time she had already went back into her abuser’s truck.

   Last year, not too many miles away from where I live, two policemen (black) were shot to death in an ambush in a parking lot where they were working as security guards. The case did receive local publicity, but nothing compared to a few months ago when a bartender (white) was shot during a robbery in a white-majority neighborhood. I don’t want to demean his death, just remarking that the response to it has been truly unprecedented, including massive anti-crime demonstrations and the formation of a lobbying group.

   I wish there was more linkage made between the problems of 1) racist police brutality and 2) racist criminal justice inequity that means that people living in the wrong kind of communities have to live in constant fear of drug violence, and can’t count on police protection. And that police who are recruited from these same communities are given the lowest wages and have to work part-time jobs to support their families. Stopping police brutality has got to focus on positive solutions as well as negative ones. That means paying police more, holding them to a higher standard at the same time, and working together with communities who need, want and ask for police protection.

   Getting back to the original post and the linked post, I think cases like Mixon are the combination of many things…

   - Economic. Lack of education and job opportunities make criminal enterprise more appealing.

   - Cultural problems stemming from economic causes. The breakdown of the family in generational poverty, positive values not being passed down to the next generation.

   - Gun culture. I think this deserves it’s own heading because it’s so horribly powerful in the U.S. It’s a complex of gun ownership, masculinity, militarism, fear and violence that’s infectious and self-perpetuating.

   - Police brutality… when police act like thugs, it encourages a climate where they are seen as the enemy in a war, and criminals are not criminals but “soldiers”

   - Genetic. People who are just plain sociopathic and don’t have a conscience. And there’s a lot of them out there. When they’re born into middle-class or more privileged families, a lot of them don’t encounter the criminal justice system. They grow up to be vicious, abusive jerks, and we end up working for them if we’re really, really unlucky. But if they’re born into a poorer environment they will probably wind up as vicious, abusive criminals who murder people and terrorize their communities. A lot of people like Mixon are simply sociopaths. I’m not saying he definitely was. Maybe he could have turned his life around with better support… I just believe that not every violent abuser can be “saved”, and that’s the major reason we need a responsible police force.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:04 am ¶

6. Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist! wrote:

   I have to agree with #1 and #2, though. This man was a criminal, plain and period. I have no sympathy for rapists/murderers who just wanted to shoot cops, because it was clear he had no regard for human life.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:07 am ¶

7. Medea wrote:

   One thing I objected to in Kevin Weston’s article was this:

   “Depending on your politics, all of these men are cold-blooded murderers or heroes in the human rights struggle for black people in America.”

   It’s not an either-or thing. Some might be cold-blooded killers, some might be heroes, but most of all, some might be both. Any violent act, even one deemed “heroic,” displays in some way a rejection of morality. I dislike the way way he implies that you must love or hate both Turner and Mixon, as part of a bundle.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:12 am ¶

8. ron wrote:

   I wish it was that simple to compartmentalize this tragedy. Mixon indeed is a tragic figure. While no sane and/or reasonable human being can condone the killing of those who protect us from social deviants, we still must consider the complexity of individuals like Mixon.

   Mixon’s motive and intentions will never be known and cannot be assumed based upon the surronding circumstances of these killings. We do know that he is a certified murderer but we will never know what was in his heart and mind when he decided to pull the trigger.

   I would have to know more about Mixon’s to say the his motives were purely self-serving. His motive could have been 90% self-serving and 10% misguided idealism.

   Mixon is no Nat Turner or Gabriel Prosser or Denmark Vessey – we all can agree on that though.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:14 am ¶

9. Lisa J wrote:

   @atlasien, cosign, especially the part about genetics and how people with white privilege who have sociopathic traits often are abusive and mean or even sadistic but rarely wind up in jail, but blacks, some who are and some who aren’t born sociopathic, have those issues exaccerbated or just participate in anti-social behavior b/c they were never given a chance and even when they have loving and supportive parents, society, in essence, threw them away at birth. Some of the gang leaders and high level drug dealers from the ghetto might have been on Wall Street at high levels (like the jokers who have destroyed our economy) if they had the same exact personality traits and intelligence but were born with white skin and middle class values and education and some of those Wall Street hot shots and CEO’s would probably be leading gangs, running numbers, etc etc if they had been born in a ghetto, with rotten schools and a society that told them they were monsters from birth. Most people don’t see it that way though. Also, in a larger sense world wide, who is currently doing more harm, those white collar criminals who have taken down the world economy or some gangbangers who only terrify and immobilize one or two neighborhoods. Intent is the same, impact is different.

   Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:20 am ¶

10. Just A Thought wrote:

    Mixon is not a good jumping off point for discussions of the systemic oppression and racism that poor blacks face (as well as other POC). Mixon is branded a criminal. Violent. Predatory. He did unspeakable things. He chose to kill multiple people because he didn’t want to go back to jail. He made horrible choices. These choices killed people and stole them from their families and communities.

    However, while I am loathe to align him with Nat Turner, I do wonder about the comparison. I am very certain descriptions of Nat Turner’s revolt that were written immediately after it happened did not glorify his attempt to free himself from slavery. The ENTIRE country believed slavery was OK, justified, and even divine. At one time, this ENTIRE country believed that blacks were less than human and deserved to be enslaved – that it was their NATURAL condition. It was not until economic interests prevailed, shellacked with a superficial coating of religious morality, that slavery became wrong and evil. Even after slavery ended, the dehumanization of blacks continued. We weren’t considered people, equal with whites. We were just put up with because they couldn’t send us all back to Africa.

    So, how does that compare to today? Having grown up in a poor urban community, it most definitely is a system of slavery. The only difference is the majority of Americans will not think of it as evil. Everyone, especially because of our new president, wants to tout the old bootstraps line. But you need more than hard work to not only escape the physical constraints of poverty, but the mental ones as well. You need a support system of people who will educate you, push you, drive you, and demand everything from you to help you get out. This is the key ingredient that is missing from most ghetto-dweller’s lives. Most of the time, the only systems that hold them accountable are the very same systems put in place to keep them in their situation – jail, welfare, etc.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:24 am ¶

11. Medusa wrote:

    @ Patrick- you wrote almost exactly what I thought. Yes, police brutality, especially against young black men (and women, and girls, and boys) in America is something that needs to be examined. It may very well even have contributed to Mixon’s crimes and ultimately his death and the death of four other police officers, but this is a terrible example of how damaging police brutality is. Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, the 15 year old girl who was recently beaten by a police officer, the 12 year old girl who was beaten by multiple police officers last year, and countless other victims of abuse at the hands of the very people are supposed to be protecting them simply based on the color of their skin should not be compared to Lovelle Mixom.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:26 am ¶

12. Thea Lim wrote:

    @Celeste

    Definitely Mixon had a disregard for life, but my question was more how much was that learned behaviour, based on how much the system disregarded his life?

    @ron

    There’s very little on Mixon – the most I could find out was that he had a Grade 10 education. I wish we knew more about him so that we could have a deeper discussion on how much he had experienced race and class prejudice in his life.

    Celeste also refers to cops as “society’s representatives of civil order”. I have a hard time with that characterisation. From my very brief and limited experience with the police, the system is cruel and barbaric. Definitely we need some sort of consequence and rehabilitation for people who commit crimes, but the system we now have seems just as bad if not worse than those who commit crimes.

    I think the reason why Weston classes Mixon with Turner is that
    1) they both lived under systems that dehumanised them (in Weston’s eyes, at least, you can read his justification of his Mixon/Obama poster here: http://bit.ly/EcSA
    2) On the ground, Mixon is being received as something of a hero.

    I think the reason why ppl see Mixon (who like Lisa says, is a thug) as a hero is because while ppl are aware of his crimes, they are also aware of his context. He faced the same excoriating prejudice that many young black men face. The fact that he died killing what to many are the embodiment of that prejudice, turns him into a hero for those who feel enslaved by that prejudice.

    Even though we can guess freedom fighting wasn’t his intention, even though it’s not unreasonable to assume social justice was furthest from his mind when he shot the cops.

    I think people who just see him as a thug and criminal and don’t understand his signifance, and people who see him as a hero are doing similar things: the first side ignores his context, the second side overemphasises his context.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:34 am ¶

13. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    I did not find the original Feministing article as insightful as it could have been and my comments over there noted as much. What needs to be understood is the feelings and statements of those in communities of color who see Mixon’s actions as understandable or even justifiable. *This* is what needs to be contextualized within this nation’s long history of institutionalized brutality against POC. But Mixon’s actions themselves should not be elevated to some form of protest against the system. In fact, I wonder if we’d be having these conversations at all if the people who were gunned down in the crossfire were Black children playing in the streets.

    There were at least two forms of “feminist racism” going on in the comment section at Feministing. One was the tendency to characterize this man as a monster who was owed no compassion.

    But the other is far more serious, IMO. It was the “racism of low expectation” tendency to remove from this man all humanity by painting him totally as the pawn of structural forces beyond his control. This kind of thinking does Black men no favors, and fails to acknowledge all the Black men–including ex-felons–who are working hard to not end up back in jail.

    We in Black communities are not helped by making such men poster folks for the inadequacies of a police state. They are not heroes or warriors, and all too often they return to our communities to further harm other Black men, women, and children.

    A more comprehensive “dialog” about this and other cases would acknowledge both the structural constraints and the personal choices involved. It would hold up as “warriors” those living in communities under siege who are working hard every day to make a difference.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:44 am ¶

14. Celeste wrote:

    @ atlasien: I agree with the concept that you coudl take Mixon and put him in a wealthy family and he might have been a white-collar sociopath. I think that white collar criminals get off way too easy. Their priviledge makes it so they aren’t ever tempted to use violence for their selfish nefarious plots because you can get way more money without a gun.

    @Just a thought: I didn’t grow up poor (I have family members who are/did), but for what it’s worth I don’t think poor urban=slavery. Slavery was a different degree of heinous and I think the distinction is important. With slavery there was very little the personal agency could do to improve one’s situation in life. Whereas in poor urban communities, agency can improve your situation. It’s bad that it often takes an exceptional and extraordinary amount of personal agency to improve one’s lot. However, if you do make it out, there isn’t a band of ghetto-catchers out to drag you and your children back to your former life a la Beloved.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:46 am ¶

15. atlasien wrote:

    “2) On the ground, Mixon is being received as something of a hero.”

    I have to say I doubt that. I’m not doubting that some people see him as a hero… just that the majority of the people in his community really see him that way. From news reports, the demonstration was not very large.

    It doesn’t sound anywhere near the level of outrage as, for example, the shooting of Kathryn Johnston in 2006 in Atlanta, which rightly threw the whole city into an uproar.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:49 am ¶

16. We Fight Blight wrote:

    At some point, don’t we all have to realize that each person born into this world has free will and has the ability to choose their path in life. Some choose productive and socially acceptable paths others choose lives of crime and violence. Yes, some people live in more nurturing environments and others live in environments with crime and violence. But ultimately, the choice between right and wrong, legal and illegal, is made largely by individuals who are cognizant of their choices, yet undertake them anyway. There are plent of people who live under incredibly difficult circumstances, yet continue to behave in socially acceptable ways. As others have claimed, Lovelle Mixon was a “good person” who was wronged by the circumstances of his environment. and “forced” into his rage. We all have choice. We all have free will. At what point do we ask every individual–regardless of race, income status or any other social division– to take individual responsibility for their lives , their actions and their community? The problem starts with the individual and how they choose to respond to their circumstances and their environment.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:53 am ¶

17. Celeste wrote:

    @Thea Lim: Yes the criminal justice system is a hot mess but some of the stuff people to do find themselves in the system ain’t pretty either. I don’t think drug users should be criminalized. However, police do represent/enforce societys laws. Police aren’t perfect but not respecting authority isn’t going to help the Mixon’s of this country. You don’t have to shuck and jive when interacting with police but shooting them because they’re trying to enfore the no-raping law is anti-social behavior.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:57 am ¶

18. Kavita wrote:

    I think you pose a very troubling question. To reiterate, the question is not whether Nat Turner and Mixon are similar people, or whether they committed similar crimes. The answer there is clearly no.

    But as to whether the conditions and contexts of their lives were similar–that is a more complex question. To start out, I have to say I’m not sure whether the inquiry is useful. On one level, it seems that any attempt to compare current conditions to slavery must result in a trivialization of the absolute horror of slavery. Slavery meant that Black people were legally stripped of their humanity, they had virtually no control over any aspect of their lives. So on that level there is really no way to compare those conditions to modern times.

    But something makes this question linger in my mind. It has something to do with the question of helplessness, a feeling of being trapped, and RAGE. I can imagine that Mixon felt totally ensared by a criminal “justice” system that denied him a voice, that had criminalized him even before he made the choice to be a criminal, that was omnipresent in his life.

    As a young lawyer working for a very well-intentioned judge, I witness everyday that the system is totally stacked against Black men like Mixon. Whether they are innocent, or guilty like Mixon clearly was, so many forces work against them receiving true justice. From the time of their arrests all the way through to sentencing, institutional racism and disadvantages pile on top of each other until they are insurmountable.

    I also want to add that prisoners have a high rate of mental illness, which is exacerbated by prison life, and which goes totally untreated in prisons. When they are released, most ex-felons are forced to live on the edges of society–homeless, jobless, without any support system, and we, as a society, are content to ignore them until they commit another criminal act. It is too easy to say that Mixon alone bears the responsibility for the murder of those four police officers. Certainly, he is to blame, but I also think our brains are big enough to comprehend that while he is responsible, so are all of us. As a parent, a guiding maxium is that your child will live up to your expectations. Mixon, sadly, lived up to society’s expectation. We absolutely have to conceive of a better way to deal with poverty than using prison as a warehouse.

    Lastly, there are some very interesting historical parallels between slavery and the prison industrial complex. The prison population began to significantly esclate in the US during Reconstruction–when Southern states passed “idling” laws and such, that were specifically enacted as a way of controlling the newly freed Black population. I’m not going to go so far as to say that prison is the modern-day plantation, but then again, maybe it is.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 11:03 am ¶

19. Thea Lim wrote:

    @atlasien

    I got that impression from the Muhammad article and the Weston articles, as well as from the Wikipedia page on Mixon. It is a good point you make that reactions to him in Oakland must be very mixed. I was focusing on the positive response his terrible actions are garnering.

    @ We Fight Blight

    I really don’t think problems start with individuals. People are born into certain systems – depending on who they are that works out for them or it doesn’t. I do definitely agree that people are responsible for their choices at the end of the day.

    @Celeste

    I wasn’t disagreeing with the fact that cops represent society’s laws – it was more that you phrased it as “they represent civil order”, when I do not think there is anything, civil, civilised or ordered (in the sense of the way we require order to live with each other) in the way both the US and Canada are policed. I’d also like to clarify that I think the policing system is rotten. I am sure there are cops here and there who try and do a good job and succeed as much as they can within the system.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 11:10 am ¶

20. Monie wrote:

    I think that if there is a connection between Tuner and Mixon it would be that they lived in a racist country and both dealt with the effects of it.

    BTW, there was a march in Oakland last night in honor of Mixon.

    I listened to a couple of local talk radio hosts (both White) go on about how terrible it was that anyone would honor Mixon. They of course went on to mention that we now have a Black President and that in the age of Obama there is no excuse for this (Mixon’s actions).

    I just had to turn the radio off.

    I really don’t think the people in Oakland were honoring Mixon, they were showing their lack of respect for and distrust of the police.

    Also I’ve heard quite a few African Americans say that they think the police took Mixon’s DNA from the crime scene on Saturday and are framing him in the rape case.

    The divide in some parts of America between Black and White is gigantic.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 11:23 am ¶

21. Celeste wrote:

    @ Thea: I for one, like a little order. A dystopian police state doesn’t sound so fun but there are too many knuckleheads out there to not have law enforcement. Now, if we ever got around to providing safe, healthful, nuturing environments for all our citizens then we probably wouldn’t need all the cops and guns, etc so I can see what you’re getting at. Treat people fairly so there’s not as much of a need for police.

    I do have to disagree with the problems not originating with individuals. I’m sure we all know people from affluent, educated families who for all their parents efforts turned out to be completely selfish, entitled slugs yet their siblings manage to be productive members of society. These people had all the advantages and still managed to be complete jerks. I think it’s the system plus the individual.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 11:30 am ¶

22. B wrote:

    I felt like the comments on Samhita’s article were a “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation, where there were legitimate ideas to be discussed and yet people couldn’t get over the graphic she used or the individual that she used as a jumping-off point. Is there any way she could have stated her thesis without people tripping over the details, or would privilege have stood in the way regardless?

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 11:48 am ¶

23. ART wrote:

    Hey, I’m not a feminist either – b/c the movement has devolved into something that will turn a rapist mass murderer into a hero they’ll defend to the ends of the earth just because he’s black. Give me a break.

    Why is there no author identified for this post?

    Mod Note – Look to the right:

    #
    About This Post

    * Written by Thea Lim
    * March 26th, 2009 at 6:00 am

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 12:06 pm ¶

24. inkst wrote:

    @ Kavita: cosign!! especially to reiterating the fact that we are thinking about comparing the environments and not the two men.

    Also, anyone who says that it is simply personal choice and responsibility that plays into social success has either never lived in poverty or has never been close to it in any way. Of course many, many people who live in poverty do not make choices that lead to breaking the law, but guilt by association haunts anyone in a poor community, and in particular a poor community of color. In that sense, I feel that there is a comparison to be made between the environment of slavery and the environment we create for people with limited resources. Our institutions are too racially and economically biased to allow room for equality, which creates a permanently marginalized community.

    On a related note to this post, I personally find it completely useless to dismiss criminals as necessarily “bad guys.” You break any law, you are technically a criminal, which includes pretty much most of us. As far as who is a “bad guy” (or girl), let’s leave that to the land of childish morality (actually, even children are capable of a more nuanced morality, but we don’t really give them much credit for it). I do not understand how we will ever be able to address violence in our community, be it gang violence, domestic violence, or institutional violence, if we constantly dismiss someone like Mixon as “inhuman” or someone with a “complete disregard for life” or some kind of serial rapist monster. He was a person, and by minimizing his life to his crimes, we shy away from any real discussion about a racist criminal justice system or a system that practically forces police to be as thuggish as the people they are supposed to protect society from.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 12:58 pm ¶

25. Nate wrote:

    Its an interesting conversation… But there a dichomoty about his actions… there seems to be a strong view (and a more ambilevant one by the author) that as he shot coppers he fought back against racists structure that put him in that situation.

    But, what in this instance put him in this specific confrontation, was that he had made a conscious decision to rape.

    Rape’s a choice. Its not a property crime or a crime of necessity (like stealing to eat or kiting checks, or dealing to keep a roof your head) and its not something that any system or structure forced him to do. Its a denial of his victims basic humanity only possible by his excercising his ‘male privilege’ (if nothing else than a tendancy towards physical bulk/strength and the social acceptability of use of violence by males).

    Prison and the criminal justice system are racist. Period. But there has to be structures in place to protect people from the violation of their physical safety (and more, in the case of rape and sexual assualt).

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 1:00 pm ¶

26. ceecee wrote:

    cosign with kavita & inkst
    When the story first broke the thought that occurred to me was I feel this guy’s pain and the visual that popped into my head was the (part of the) final scene from the movie Set It Off where Queen Latifah came out of the car shooting the place up.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 1:55 pm ¶

27. Nicole M wrote:

    atlasien and Lisa J, I agree with most of what you say but have to call you out on the idea of “genetics” as the causation for sociopathic behavior.

    There are three things that make us, as individuals, who we are:

    - our genetics
    - our family environment
    - our cultural context

    Genetic conditions such as ADHD, OCD, CD, even depression, etc. certainly lay the foundation for predisposition to criminal, antisocial, and/or sociopathic behavior, but there are, what, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people with these genetics who grow into neither sociopaths nor criminals. No one is “born without a conscience”. Psychologist Martha Stout defined conscience as “an intervening sense of obligation based in our emotional attachments”. Beliefs on the capacity for conscience vary, and mine is that while some may have more of the raw genetic material that responds to the lesson than others, the behaviors expressing concern, empathy, and love are taught, not inherited.

    What we learn from our families and cultural environments is what makes a child grow into an adult that exhibits social or anti-social behaviors. Abuse and neglect can turn genetically predisposed children into sociopaths and criminals. Nurturing, support, and sometimes medical assistance can help them become functional, socially aware people. Abuse and neglect happen in families of ALL races and economic backgrounds. So does love.

    White privilege is a systemic cultural condition that dominates multiple facets of the American experience. Many white people born into it are rarely taught to examine it and understand the extent of their benefit. Of those who are, many are not taught a moral obligation to work towards changing that inequality.

    That privilege, however, translates only into opportunity and often an assumption of success, it does not guarantee emotional support, happiness, self-respect or self-esteem. So terms like “all the advantages” oughtn’t be thrown about. Some folks have many advantages, but no one has all of them.

    Whites also suffer from abuse and neglect, despite their privilege. It often happens predominantly within the family environment, as opposed to the experience of people of color, in which abuse and neglect happen also in the larger societal and legal systems.

    White privilege is intricately tied to the myth of the self-made person, whereby a someone who achieves success is believed to have done so out of her individual talent, will, intelligence, and moral superiority, without the recognition of the many assistive factors in her life: privilege (white, economic, what have you), positive mentorship, nurturing love, access to education, good health, or etc. etc. Even traumatic events can be drivers in some individuals’ success…but the point is that no one gets to be where they are all my themselves.

    This mythology is exactly the same flawed logic that many people, white and of color, also ascribe to failure and criminal behavior: that lack of success is a product of an individual’s lack of talent, will, intelligence and moral fiber, without recognition of the assistive factors in her life: abuse, neglect, trauma, economic disadvantage, lack of access to healthcare and education, lack of positive mentorship, etc. It confounds me that anyone still subscribes to either of these systemic fallacies.

    But to answer the question posed by the author, I do not think that the societal context of Nat Turner can accurately be compared with the current societal and cultural landscape without extreme poetic license. Nat Turner lived in a system where blacks lived under *ownership*, under complete control of white masters where attempted escape guaranteed death. He lived within a legal system and society that brutalized him and taught him that he was less than a human being. His response was to rise up and lead a revolt with the tools he had access to: gunpowder, men, leadership ability and an irrefutable sense that the world he was living in was wrong and had to change.

    Lovelle Mixon lived within the confines of a culture that devalued him and put *enormous* obstacles in his way, but which still had positive options: support from churches, education through free libraries, honest if low-paying employment. His assistive factors may have socially enculturated him to ignore them, but he had choices. He had legal and societal advantages that Nat Turner dreamed of and died for, even if they still don’t have parity with white privilege.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 2:10 pm ¶

28. Jones wrote:

    I think Mixon and Turner are more the same than many want to admit. The slavery and beatings that moved Turner to deliberate murder have been changed into the prison system now in place (and all that follows conviction and incarceration) and the racism of that time has been made subtle, sneaky, but is still systemic, inextricable, and oppressive. The shotgun of the white men running the chain gang is merely more distant, is only not so unsightly and ostentatious. Think of X’s criticism of liberal vs. republican racisms in his autobiography.

    Turner’s actions are so often thought poetic, necessary, just even by those who have never known oppression. Still, they were violent and ended in death. Are they lauded because they were calculated or because they occurred within the context of slavery? How did Turner see himself and his circumstances? How did Mixon see himself and his? They lashed out against the overseers and the system which oppressed them, made them worth nothing.

    One may attribute righteousness to one of these men and make the other a mere criminal, but I think this is a mistake arising from our moralizing and some mythos we have in our minds, some grandiosity we attribute to one and some horror to the other. They both chose to deny their chains in the way that made most sense, that seemed most likely to secure their freedom for the time.

    No, they are not so different.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 2:11 pm ¶

29. Steve wrote:

    I think that using the incident with Mixon to try and make a point about structural problems with our society is, from a sensitivity perspective, a really poor choice. To the people who knew those policemen and to the people who know law enforcement personnel, to take the tragedy and say “well this is an opportunity to reflect on how the police or society are bad” is to disrespect their grief. I personally find the article and this post distasteful.

    As for the claims by writers that they are not acting as apologists, I really disagree. The only reason that posts like this one exist linking societal problems with the Mixon incident are to try and push the point of “Yes what he did was bad, BUT …” that “BUT” is the act of serving as an apologist.

    Finally, regardless of the merits of the substance of the points about societal impediments against young black men I think that trying to bring up discussions around that in the context of Mixon show a lack of empathy towards others. Its the online equivalent of showing up at a funeral of a fallen soldier to protest the war in Iraq — whatever the merits of the cause, its insensitive and I doubt that any of us would like to be treated that way when we or our loved ones are suffering.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 2:23 pm ¶

30. Morgan wrote:

    @PPR—”There were at least two forms of “feminist racism” going on in the comment section at Feministing. One was the tendency to characterize this man as a monster who was owed no compassion.”

    Ok, I’m speaking as a white feminist. I, like many others who identify as feminists and hang out on the feminist blogs, came to point because of my own experiences with rape and abuse. Therefore, rape/violence against women is my number one trigger issue. That does not mean I see it as objectively more important than police brutality, racism, etc. It just means that that is MY issue, I will have a strong emotional response to it, and I can’t really bring myself to accept a justification for it. Because of this, I see men who rape as monsters. It’s not that I think black people are monsters, poor people are monsters, victims of police brutality are monsters, etc. I see men who rape as monsters. I think of my own circumstance, what I went through, I think of men who rape as monsters.

    Now I would love to have a conversation about the role of poverty/institutionalized racism/police brutality in crime IN GENERAL, but this particular example, I just can’t see many feminists getting behind it. And I don’t think it’s fair to say we are blind to racism or police violence just because we’d rather not extend sympathy to a perp. It doesn’t have anything to do with that. If he was white, I’d have no more sympathy. If he did not kill cops, I’d have no more sympathy, he’d still be a rapist.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 3:21 pm ¶

31. Embarcadero13 wrote:

    Have we confirmed that Mixon actually committed the rape? I know that the police claim his DNA was linked to it, but considering the sentiment in Oakland right now, it would not surprise me that this information was “leaked” regardless of its veracity. The police needed the public on their side, and this was potentially, a convenient way to do it.

    It wouldn’t be the first time.

    But then again, I’m a cynic who keeps her camera phone out at all times.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 3:30 pm ¶

32. Nicole M wrote:

    Oh also for those who don’t live here, Oakland is a big city with dozens of different neighborhoods of various socioeconomic and racial concentrations. There is no more a united citizenry in Oakland than there is in the whole US. So remember that any references to the people of Oakland or the citizens of Oakland usually mean some subgroup or other.

    To me, equally disturbing is the fact that Mixon’s last rape victim was a 12 yr old girl, and her community was not informed that there had been a series of rapes in their neighborhood over a period on several months. They did not find out until 6 wks later, after he killed the police officers.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 3:39 pm ¶

33. Latoya Peterson wrote:

    I’m still traveling so I can’t really contribute, but I just wanted to point out how much I appreciate the conversation on this thread.

    This is a very difficult conversation to have (and the long time readers know how I feel about sexual assault/rape and children) and I appreciate all the thought, nuance, and examination in each comment – especially the dissenting comments.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 3:45 pm ¶

34. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    Morgan, understood. I did not get the sense that some of the comments to the original post had much to do with a reaction against rape, however.

    I have to wonder whether the “monster” language helps in our understanding of rape and rapists. That seems to remove both context and personal responsibility and blinds us to the factors (structural and individual) that contribute to the problem.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 4:05 pm ¶

35. Sean wrote:

    Steve wrote:

    I think that using the incident with Mixon to try and make a point about structural problems with our society is, from a sensitivity perspective, a really poor choice. To the people who knew those policemen and to the people who know law enforcement personnel, to take the tragedy and say “well this is an opportunity to reflect on how the police or society are bad” is to disrespect their grief. I personally find the article and this post distasteful.

    Point taken Steve, but lets flip the script: An unarmed black man -who is posing no imminent danger -is shot by police. After the shooting, his criminal past is touted to the press by the mayor and/or police commisioner (I see you, Gulliani) as implicit “justification” for the murder.

    Is that any less disrespectful to the grief of his loved ones?

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 4:22 pm ¶

36. broom wrote:

    just read about this:

    http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/football/nfl/03/26/moats.ap/index.html

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 4:33 pm ¶

37. atlasien wrote:

    A lot of these discussions (not the one on this thread, which is great) aren’t just backlash… they’re more like ping-ponging from reaction to reaction. The other side picks up on the most extreme statements and tries to one-up that.

    I noticed that in the news stories, every piece quoted a single woman at the demonstration who called Mixon a “hero” (which I think is a knuckleheaded thing to say). I’m sure other people were making more nuanced statements, but the “hero” comment is what gets picked up on. Then troglodyte commenters zero on that quote, and say things like “OMG THIS PROVES ALL BLACK PEOPLE ARE JUST AS RACIST AS THE KKK!!!”. Then people with strong anti-racist beliefs feel like they have to fight back against the troglodytes, and are pushed more to the other extreme than they probably want to be (in this case, pushed right up against the line of defending the honor of someone who is almost certainly a child rapist). And then other people react to their position by pushing from the middle to the other extreme in order to condemn him, and so on and so on…

    I think the middle is a better place to be in this case.

    Also, on a tangent here, I don’t think people who rape and murder are inhuman. But they are often sociopaths. Sociopaths aren’t robots, they can have something approaching a conscience if they get lots of therapy and really try hard, but they’re all potentially really dangerous… whether they become gangbangers, police or CEOs.

    @Nicole M: I take your point about the effects of the environment. I’m just more cynical about the prevalence of sociopaths — whether you define them as having no conscience, or just an abnormally low level of empathy. I think every culture throughout history, at every technological level, has evolved some kind of cultural role for sociopaths. In really peaceful societies, their negative behavior is ameliorated through mechanisms like peer pressure and threats of ostracism. But in more violent times and cultures, they often rise to the top of society. I just don’t think anyone can explain all the horrible things that people do in the world, at all levels of society, without accepting the fact that there is a diverse continuum of empathy and some people are outliers on the low end of the scale… and we have to find a way of dealing with that.

    I think family environment is really important but not the ultimate determinant. One case that really struck me in that regard was reading a biography of Fred Phelps called “Addicted to Hate” He subjected his family to decades of intense physical and emotional abuse. Many of his children were successfully warped by this program and now support the “God Hates F*gs” mission. Several of them escaped, and spoke out against him. But Phelps himself did not have an abusive childhood. He just became spontaneously evil… unlike his children, he truly has no excuse.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 5:11 pm ¶

38. puckalish wrote:

    unfortunately, i don’t have time to read all the comments right now, but i want to make one, pretty significant point:

    Samhita never said this guy was a freedom fighter. she used terms such as “armed, dangerous, a career criminal and potentially linked to the rape of a young woman” to describe Mixon. Even the article to which she linked stated, “We don’t know yet what Mixon’s politics were, whether there was some calculated consciousness that could be articulated behind his heinous actions. It doesn’t matter. One thing is clear, all of these men’s actions led to decisive reactions by government to squash the community responsible for producing them.”

    That author was making the comparison mostly to draw a line between outcomes, not to make Mixon out to be some revolutionary hero.

    I find it kind of intellectually lazy or dishonest to try to argue against the (nonexistent) idea that Mixon was some kind of protagonist. Further, if completely detracts from the point that authors such as Weston, Mukhopadhyay and Lim were actually getting at.

    I’d love to see more of that discussion and less buying into the idea that people who want to address systemic causes of violence are somehow canonizing Mixon, because that’s just dumb and no one’s arguing that. You know… the kind of discourse that folks like Lim and Kavita are getting at… because that’s the only useful way to move forward.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 5:42 pm ¶

39. Joseph wrote:

    Thea, thank you for posting this. After reading through the links/threads you reference it seems clear that Feministing was not the place to have a nuanced discussion about the context of Mixon’s actions. I really appreciate the care you have taken to tease out the most important questions from the links you cite.

    There are far too many issues swirling around this thread to take up individually (for e.g. I am not even getting anywhere near “genetics” excepet to say that bringing up genetics in the context of race never leads anywhere good…). But I wanted to add three points to this thread:

    1) @Jess
    “There is a difference between politically directed revolutionary violence and straight-up criminal behavior. It’s really that simple.”

    I disagree. It isn’t simple at all. The main difference between a revolutionary and a criminal is who is telling the story. Mixon’s shooting and the righteous responses it inspired reminded me of the discourse around terrorism, in which the only acceptable position for people in the “third world” is victim and any sign of resistance is configured as proof–not of the the fact of oppression, but of the fundamental lack of humanity of the insurgents. This supports the illusion that violent action occurs in a vacuum and is unconnected to systems of oppression. And that plays into racist/ethnocentric narratives that all boil down to “See how they are?” The conservative response is about managing third world people through violence and the liberal one is about managing them with care (i.e. “saving” them). But the underlying sentiment is the same.

    While I do not think a direct parallel with Mixon’s actions, which appear to be entirely self-serving, and those of various revolutionaries in struggles throughout the world is apt, this frame IS valuable in analyzing the response to his death. It is not at all uncommon for a person who battles authoritarian power to achieve the status of folk hero in spite of whatever else s/he may have done. Saddam Hussein is a perfect example of this. Hussein was a hated tyrant who ruled Iraq through violence, torture and fear. Nevertheless, his opposition to the United States, whose arrogant interventions in the Middle East always manage to make everything worse for everyone, have recuperated his image somewhat. And yes, some have celebrated him as a folk hero in that sense. This dynamic has less to do with the particulars of the person at hand than with the quality of resistance they display. In other words: Mixon killed cops in a community that feels terrorized by the police. Does that mean I applaud his actions? No. But I understand the context for their reception.

    2) I disagree with the sentiment, expressed by many on the previous threads and here as well, that Mixon is a poor example of the dynamic between Oakland residents and the police: Mixon is an excellent example. If even some of the people of Oakland are so bitter about their relationship with the police that they would champion a person like Mixon then I think that proves how life-or-death the situation is. Alternate explanations for community support that do not consider this context are racist because they always boil down to… “See how those people are?”

    3) @Jones
    “Turner’s actions are so often thought poetic, necessary, just even by those who have never known oppression. Still, they were violent and ended in death. Are they lauded because they were calculated or because they occurred within the context of slavery?”

    They are lauded because they happened a long time ago. You can bet that even sympathetic white people at the time were made nervous by thought of angry Black men going house to house killing white people. Of course I agree that Turner’s cause was just and Mixon’s was not–but that is not really the point, at least not to me. For me the point is, how are these narratives sold to the larger culture? The majority can safely celebrate Turner because his actions do not directly implicate them (and even so, I think if you looked at the curriculum of various schools around the country Turner would be much further down the list of Black Heroes than say, Sojouner Truth or George Washington Carver, whose contributions were not violent and therefore seen positively).

    It is worth noting however that if they were carried out today Turner’s actions would fall perfectly under the legal definition of “domestic terrorism.”

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 5:47 pm ¶

40. Jess wrote:

    @Jones —

    While both men were in dehumanizing systems, I think a better comparison would be Nat Turner and Spartacus, rather than Nat Turner and Mixon.

    Even though Turner wouldn’t have expressed it this way (many of the ideas I am putting here weren’t really codified yet) Turner was engaged in what we’d call the armed struggle.

    Now, being in that struggle doesn’t mean you have to say ‘I am in the armed struggle against an oppressive system, here’s my footnotes from Marx, Lenin and Hegel.’ But Turner was engaged in what was, even then, a political struggle and political act. And he knew it.

    Mixon was just a guy who made bad choices, and he was engaged in more one-on-one violence with the cops. Lenin talks a little about this (yeah, I know, I know, I hate to bring him up, but in this case he’s right) and talks about how criminality is a kind of response to oppressive systems. But he notes that it isn’t one that will change anything and in most cases reinforces patterns of oppression.

    Let’s look at figures who are more sympathetic — like the mafia. There’s a lot of romanticization going on there, even in movies that claim not to do so (it’s the old problem of how do you make a war movie without making it look like fun). Now, were I and my parents grew up organized crime was a heavy-handed presence. And when my dad was working with the unions to better the lot of the workers there, they were no help — and in fact used by the companies to control the unions.

    Why? Because in a society where people have trouble making a living, organized crime thrives. The reason? The mafia used to provide services that you couldn’t get otherwise, like loans. All those stories of wiseguys who were generous center on stuff like that. But that’s the problem — once you could get those services legitimately the mafia is out of the game, and they don’t like that.

    Therefore, they aren’t going to help when you say “Hey, I want to organize the local Italian workers to form a union.” or something.

    No, they’ll get hired as company goons. And they won’t come armed with pom-poms. This is one reason why local law-enforcement allowed and even encouraged organized criminal activity in local unions, and why after the purges of the 40s and 50s it was easier for the criminals to take control. (When the more ‘radical’ unionists were removed, you got rid of all the people who saw organized labor as more than a wages-and-benefits issue).

    Sorry to go all Lefty on everybody.

    Mixon — by possibly engaging in sexual assault and whatever other crimes he committed, he was perpetuating an oppressive pattern and system, not protesting it. So no, he doesn’t get the Turner comparison from me. Turner’s acts, even though he killed people, were directly against slavery.

    It’s the difference between a slave who leads a revolt — which will get him and everyone he cares about killed, but is a revolt — and the slave who makes some money in spite of his master’s wishes and buys his freedom, and does it by charging a commission for getting other slaves to work (a similar set-up was not uncommon in the antebellum south). Or who steals food from other slaves and sells it.

    That, I think, might be a useful way to look at it if we want to do Turner comparisons.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 6:05 pm ¶

41. Embarcadero13 wrote:

    @ Broom: Yes, I’ve read the article- http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/032609dnmetcopstop.3e9c080.html?nTar=OPUR

    I think this should be cited when Black men are referred to as “monsters” in the context of police actions. When a police officer says, “I can screw you over” to a young Black man and his wife, then his only reaction upon getting caught is simply to apologize, I have a hard time feeling like justice is found in this system.

    I don’t think Mixon is a hero, or even a victim necessarily. I feel like he is a Pavlovian response to an oppressive environment. Most Black people choose to ignore these automatic responses. Others lack the power to do so. But its a symptom, rather than the disease.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 6:16 pm ¶

42. Celeste wrote:

    @atlasien: “hero” oh no…… you’ve got to be kidding me. Why do they have to show the most warped comments over and over again?

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 6:44 pm ¶

43. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    there were legitimate ideas to be discussed and yet people couldn’t get over the graphic

    The graphic was, IMO, purposefully designed to evoke a visceral, emotional response so it should come as no surprise that this is exactly what it did. In the words of the artists:

    As artists we were trying to provoke thought and raise questions. Lovelle Mixon is a product of this society, just like our current president.

    People have lionized and deified Obama to the point where taking his name or image (or interpolating an image associated with him) in vain—in a way that is counterintuitive—is tantamount to dipping a picture of Jesus Christ in a bucket of piss. Obama=Jesus.

    The problem with this simple binary is that President Obama is not universally “deified”–in fact, there are many, many circles where he is demonized as much as if he had killed 4 police officers himself. Thus an alternative reading of the use of the image for Mixon is not painting him as the opposite of Obama, but painting both Mixon and Obama with the same brush.

    This, still, would be an interesting use of this artistic image. But as such it should come as no surprise that so many took issue with it. If such an image had appeared in a conservative news outlet, in an article decrying violence against police, most of us here (and, probably, at Feministing) would have rightly taken issue with it.

    There must be some responsibility in our re-using images in our on-line commentaries about hot button topics such as this. Just because we are able to download and re-post a cleverly executed image doesn’t mean that we should. At the very least we should not then be shocked when many people focus their attention on the image and not the content of our post.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 7:19 pm ¶

44. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    My apologies–the source for the artists’ statement about the image can be found here:
    http://blogs.newamericamedia.org/nam-round-table/1633/lovell-obama-the-theory-behind-the-image

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 7:20 pm ¶

45. jaye wrote:

    As a woman of color who is feminist, I have tended to shy away from white-feminism in the last few years.

    I understand that Lovelle is not the best poster-child for civil rights, but dealing with the lack of human rights in impoverished, brutalized communities isn’t as easy or as organized as designing a marketing brand for a corporation. Sometimes it is messy and far from ideal.

    With Lovelle, I get the impulse to characterize him as a monster because of the accusation of rape. As a woman of color, I tend to look at issues of rape through a lens of color. Men of color get accused of rapes they didn’t commit far more than white men. It has been used as a tool throughout U.S. history to control and suppress minority communities. I absolutely condemn his behaviour if he committed the rapes and I’m glad he’s dead if what he’s accused of is true, but you’ll excuse me if I don’t automatically believe the accusations of the Oakland Police Dept., they don’t exactly have the best track record of getting it right. And certainly, I don’t see them as being above lying to manipulate the public to sympathize with their cause. In this case, whether Lovelle is guilty or not is not the point, it’s that the police even have that kind of power in the first place that I think is triggering people to defend Lovelle. Lovelle is symbolic. If he’s guilty, fine…but what about all the men who WEREN’T guilty who were accused or brutalized by the police for something that they didn’t do? Those men never made the headlines, but they are there, their communities know them and have suffered with them…and Lovelle is symbolic of that pain and that reality. So I’m not with white feminists on this one…allegations of rape CAN be seen through a lens of color, because in communities of color, allegations can be thrown around by police to control the population, something not seen in upper/middle-class white communities.

    And I think why people are connecting with Lovelle is that he killed the police officers, not that he is accused of rape. I liked these lines in the Feministing article: “When police officers are found to have murdered young black men, they are almost always let off the hook, they do not face life in prison and they are not then hunted and killed…It is considered OK to kill young black men, often violently. We may be outraged, but not nearly as outraged as when cops are killed.” Often we do not fight back against our abusers, it is considered taboo. And like it or not, for millions of people, police officers are brutalizers of their communities. So for Lovelle to fight back…whatever his intentions, he becomes the symbol of an oppressed community who have often been fearful of fighting back against genuine injustices, whether he deserves it or not, whether he did it out of selfishness or not, whether it was actually unjust or not.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 7:22 pm ¶

46. Joseph wrote:

    @Embarcadero13
    I feel like (Mixon) is a Pavlovian response to an oppressive environment.

    Cosign. Beautifully put.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 7:31 pm ¶

47. Abu Sinan wrote:

    I am a white guy. Nothing excuses what this guy did, however, the brutalisation of young African American males, particularly the poor, provide a bit of context for this tragedy.

    I never would have said this 18 years ago, but having traveled extensively in the Middle East, especially Palestine, I have seen similarities that have helped change my point of view.

    Having spent a lot of time in Palestine I can tell you that the continuing degrading aspect of the brutality of the occupation certainly does have a great affect on the way people act and the way people think. There certainly does come about a certain “us or them” attitude that is understandable.

    I think the same can actually be said of the police in this case, and the occupation forces in Palestine. The situations actually create a society and a situation where brutality is more accepted, where the assumption is that one must deal brutally with the other side or be treated in the same fashion.

    I see the same types of things in some communities in the USA.

    Again, this doesnt justify what this guy did, but it can help to provide context.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:04 pm ¶

48. klunk wrote:

    Wow, I just have to say, as a (up to now) lurker who’s been following posts and threads for the past few months, I learn soooo much reading both posts and comments at this site. I really appreciate the level of discourse, the thoughtfulness, the honesty, and the compassion, in hashing out some really difficult questions. This is real communal dialogue like nothing else I’ve seen online.

    Sorry, I don’t meant to disrupt too much the flow of conversation on this particular topic, I just really felt compelled to give props & gratitude after reading through this entire thread–even if people aren’t commenting, that doesn’t mean they aren’t out here fully engaged with yall’s ideas and really thinking through what everybody has to say. thx.

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 10:31 pm ¶

49. octogalore wrote:

    I’m with Jess and Celeste on this one.

    I also think the Feministing commenters who wondered why this example was chosen to discuss police brutality were making some sense.

    It should go without saying to anyone who’s post-101 that there are systematic oppressions of race and class, as well as statistically racist/classist police brutality in particular, that are factors in Mixon’s action.

    But there are so many other factors that the discussion becomes unnecessarily messy.

    Samhita notes that one cannot always pick the circumstances that provoke discussion. But in this case, there have been recent instances of police brutality affecting black men AND women (hmm, Feministing’s a feminist site and all… OK won’t go there) where there has been understandable resistance by the victims of the brutality. Aren’t these better illustrations of violence not happening in a vaccuum, without having to invoke the story of a killer — and a killer who apparently killed other people of color, if one of the cop’s names is any indication?

    Posted 26 Mar 2009 at 11:43 pm ¶

50. Thea Lim wrote:

    Thanks to everybody who took the time to write a calm and thoughtful response! Was originally apprehensive about putting up this post and I’m really glad it sparked such a great discussion.

    @ the idea that Mixon is a bad jumping off point for a convo about police brutality

    I disagree with this, for reasons similar to Joseph’s:

    “…some of the people of Oakland are so bitter about their relationship with the police that they would champion a person like Mixon then I think that proves how life-or-death the situation is.”

    And as I said in my post, no matter how horrible a person Mixon was, that does not reverse or diminish the awfulness of the system he lived in.

    I think Mixon is a good jumping off point for a discussion about police brutality because it really challenges our beliefs about how people should be treated. Mixon is a good jumping off point *because* he did such terrible things. If we were only concerned about the brutality that innocent men like Grant experienced, than we would be missing the point. Regardless of who it tortures, the system is still sadistic and sick. Racial profiling is never ok, even if by accident it happens upon actual criminals.

    We regularly hear truisms like “all life has value” but the fact of the matter is that our society quite definitely values some lives more than others. Once we can say that even a person like Mixon deserves to be treated like a human being, we are in good shape for reforming the state of our justice system and ameliorating systemic racism.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 12:34 am ¶

51. octogalore wrote:

    “Once we can say that even a person like Mixon deserves to be treated like a human being, we are in good shape for reforming the state of our justice system and ameliorating systemic racism.”

    I agree with that. And also that Mixon could be a jumping off point if it could be demonstrated that he wasn’t treated like a human being.

    But the article linked in Feministing doesn’t demonstrate that. It might have been a legitimate stop, or it might not have. We don’t know, at this point. And there are certainly many other instances in which it *can* be demonstrated that a black person was not treated as a human being by police. So why this one, in which the policeman was simply returning to the car when shot?

    All life does have value, and the system is indeed sick. But again, I believe there’s a reason for some (not all) of the backlash — and I don’t think all of it is because those points weren’t taken.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 12:47 am ¶

52. Solitude wrote:

    I agree with Thea Lim: because it was clear he had no regard for human life doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have any for his. No one deserves to be killed, even a killer.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 6:08 am ¶

53. atlasien wrote:

    @Joseph (and straying way off-topic): “bringing up genetics in the context of race never leads anywhere good” is something I have to disagree with. What about African-American Lives? I think it’s not just possible, but necessary, to discuss the intersection of cultural definitions of race and genetics in a responsible way.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 9:03 am ¶

54. B wrote:

    @PPR_Scribe: Interesting thoughts about the graphic. I’ll clarify that when I said people couldn’t “get over” it in order to discuss the issues I wasn’t so much taking a position on it as observing what I saw. I was using “get over it” thinking of a wall you’d have to get over to get to the rest of the discussion, not so much as a, “Just get over it already” statement. I do think that Samhita would have done better by herself if she’d credited the picture and provided some context for who created it and why.

    @Thea Lim: “If we were only concerned about the brutality that innocent men like Grant experienced, than we would be missing the point.”

    I like that sentence a lot. It expresses feelings I’ve had going through school (I have a criminal justice degree and a law degree) but I’ve never been able to express them in such a short, to-the-point statement.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 9:07 am ¶

55. Ron wrote:

    I think this is a perfect post to limit comments to people who have experienced police brutality and come from urban areas. For example, I lived on a street in L.A. where you needed an I.D. in order to have access to that street. The police would stop all black males from ages 8 – 30. After we showed our I.D.s then we would be searched and patted down for contraband. Then we would have to make a statement that we truly lived over there.

    They would then question us about what are our gang names and what gang we belonged (the neighborhood had several gangs from all over including out-of-state gangs because it was a haven for a certain group).

    Most of the time even non-gang members would have to go thr0ugh this demeaning process. Sometimes, police would just harass you and beat you up a little bit. I remember boys the age of 10 being beaten up and given black eyes if they resisted or talked back at all.

    The police force of course had its own gang membership within it. Some members were Nazis, Vikings, Neandrathals and they hated black people and called us all kind of names. Sometimes they would take people from our neighborhood and not arrest them but those people would be taken to areas designated to brutalize certain members of the neighborhood. Other times they would take people and leave them in enemy territory to put them in harms way.

    I remember shootings that would happen on our street and the shooter’s precision would be so good that you knew that they had some specialized training. Whether it was a drive-by or walk-up.

    I could go on and on. I just think that there is a disconnect as to what actually happens in certain neighborhoods.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 9:33 am ¶

56. Kavita wrote:

    is this discussion making anyone else think of eldridge cleaver–soul on ice??

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 10:27 am ¶

57. inkst wrote:

    “Mixon is a good jumping off point *because* he did such terrible things. If we were only concerned about the brutality that innocent men like Grant experienced, than we would be missing the point. Regardless of who it tortures, the system is still sadistic and sick. Racial profiling is never ok, even if by accident it happens upon actual criminals.”

    Took the words right out of my mouth. I would also like to reiterate one of your ideas from the original post that we all should have room in our brains to empathize with the victims’ families while still problematizing the entire situation. It never ceases to amaze me how much people have a need to establish *right* and *wrong* when those two things are, in reality, always jumbled together.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 10:48 am ¶

58. Jess wrote:

    @Thea–

    maybe part of the problem people are having is that we’re conflating using Mixon’s case as a political tool (to illustrate issues of police brutality) and the issue of his actions, and further what his motivations might be — i.e. is he “excusable.”

    On the first, my issue is that (as a matter of strategy) it’s a bad idea. But that has more to do with what works and less to do with whatever was in Mixon’s head or whether the police were “really” justified in their actions.

    It’s like my dad used to tell me: the reason I look like a conservative (short hair, conventional dress) is so people won’t turn off on the message. It was never fair but there’s no fairness clause in my life contract either. People aren’t logical that way.

    The more complicated issue is the relationship between Mixon’s life decisions and the system he lives in.

    I think there are several things happening here, but one of them is to conflate many criminal acts that are a response to horrific conditions with protest against the system. They aren’t the same.

    I already outlined that with the mafia, but to expand a bit, those in marginalized communities tend to think that the guy who might be a criminal, but has success despite the odds, or fights the police, is a “good” guy no matter what. He’s on the “right” side by definition.

    Logically, we all know that Mixon was probably not a nice person. He was taking stuff from his own community. Illogically, we take a mental shortcut when he’s in a shootout with the police, because of all the bad things the system has done to PoC before.

    But just because the system has problems doesn’t mean that some folks shouldn’t be in jail, just as Mixon’s own criminality doesn’t detract from the problems in the system.

    Mixon didn’t deserve to die, but he shot a couple of cops — nobody else pulled that trigger. They didn’t deserve to die either.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 11:14 am ¶

59. Sean wrote:

    Broom Post # 36

    Wow. I just heard about the incident involving Ryan Moats and a police officer and figured that’s what your link was about. Those who haven’t heard – as well as to get a better understanding of what it means to be black and dealing with the PD:

    DALLAS (AP) — A police officer was placed on administrative leave Thursday over a traffic stop involving an NFL player whom he kept in a hospital parking lot and threatened to arrest while his mother-in-law died inside the building.

    Officer Robert Powell also drew his gun during the March 18 incident involving Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats in the Dallas suburb of Plano, police said.

    “I can screw you over,” he said at one point in the videotaped incident. When another officer came with word that Moats’ mother-in-law was indeed dying, Powell’s response was: “All right. I’m almost done.”

    Context, meet perspective.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 12:15 pm ¶

60. CVT wrote:

    I’m getting in here late, but I just wanted to throw in my perspective.

    I teach middle school, working with a lot of the kids that are getting pushed towards the prison system. These are kids who are very aware of the unfair system they’re trying to defeat; aware of the social pressures, inequalities, injustices surrounding them – all at the age of 12 or 13. Some of the smartest kids I’ve ever worked with, to be honest – but a lot of them won’t even MAKE IT to high school because these pressures are too much for them.

    Having all that weighing on you, with no feeling of hope, at such a young age, with little family or outside support – I’d like to see all the “bootstraps” folks lift themselves up. And when these kids drop out and end up with extremely limited options . . . (and please don’t tell me that dropping out for 13 year-olds is simply “a choice” and that “they have full control” and could just “stay in school”).

    There are still kids that make it, but that is a glorious miracle – as opposed to the simple “choice” that so many privileged folks like to maintain.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 1:02 pm ¶

61. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    Mixon certainly did not deserve to die, assuming there were other ways to bring an armed man in without further incident. I was not there so I cannot comment.

    But I will comment on one simple observation and frustration–one that I think many feminists of color share:

    When will we decide to march in the streets for Black girls and women who are brutalized and killed? When will we organize to demonstrate and hold pictures up of our daughters, sisters, mothers, wives, and aunts? Why are Black communities’ avenues for protesting racist systems of “justice” so often roads paved with fallen men and boys, but not fallen women and girls? Why, when there is talk of the prison industrial complex, is the thought so often immediately of black and brown men in the prison system instead of black and brown women?

    If it is possible to use the Mixon case to highlight long histories of oppression and brutality against Black men, it is certainly possible to use the reaction to the Mixon case to highlight the relative indifference to the plight of Black women.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 1:04 pm ¶

62. octogalore wrote:

    “I think this is a perfect post to limit comments to people who have experienced police brutality and come from urban areas.”

    That’s an interesting suggestion. One of the (many) things I like about Racialicious is that, with the obvious exception of bigoted or otherwise idiotic comments, there is an openness to a variety of views. While some threads dealing specifically with issues facing a certain group are understandably restricted, I am not sure why this one would fall into that category.

    Some commenters have noted that while they have not experienced police brutality, they have relatives who are police officers who face threats to their safety. There are also women who have been sexually assaulted, although may not come from urban areas or have faced police brutality. I would argue that these commenters as well deserve a voice.

    Fixing the analysis towards folks who may be more likely to agree with you may make for a more agreeable discussion (to you), but would it be an optimally open one? It’s not my blog and not my business; I can only note that the thread is not restricted in this way and that this may be for a reason.

    Ron’s point about racist behavior of urban police and CVT’s point about the ignorance of maintaining that black kids from such neighborhoods have every opportunity to make it are both well taken. But both of these seem to be strawarguments that nobody here is debating. There are numerous cases that highlight oppression and brutality against black men (and as PPR_Scribe notes, black women too!). Why not pick one of those? The only apparent reason to choose Mixon’s case is to highlight his unequal starting point and environmental factors which anyone past 101 already understands.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 1:49 pm ¶

63. Anonymous wrote:

    Resistance to a conversation about oppressive systems in this context isn’t surprising. In a lot of cases, and I think Mixon certainly qualifies, challenging revelations come out of an examination of an alleged “sinner”s trajectory that don’t arise when we only look at “saints.” Should we wait for the cops to shoot a black Harvard MBA in the back on his front lawn in the Oakland Hills? It wouldn’t make much of a catalyst for a conversation about the toxic criminal justice system.

    @ Sean
    That’s . . . awful. I wonder if this would have been news at all if the subject was an out-of-work copy machine technician rather than an NFL player.

    @ octogalore
    “So why this one, in which the policeman was simply returning to the car when shot?”

    But why not this one? And why not every case like it? Clearly, there’s a chance to learn a lot about the oppressive systems and the toxic criminal justice system from Mixon’s trajectory. What is the harm in trying to take apart what happened here?

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 2:00 pm ¶

64. Lisa J wrote:

    @Steve, I do not think it is anyone’s intent here to dismiss or disrespect the grief of the families of the dead officers. I am not sure why you are comparing the comments and original post comprable to picketing someone’s funeral. If we all went onto a website commemorating these officers I might see what you are saying or if we were sending direct e-mails to the family members. But what we are attempting to do is have a discussion about how this incident fits in with the larger problems of the cause and effect of how repressive policing, police brutality, and unfair system stacked against minorities may have contributed to this and other similiar situations and what all of this means. Most people aren’t making black and white (no pun intended) arguments that Lovelle = Good and Police= bad.

    @Joseph, what exactly in the mentioning of genetics here is leading down a dark path?Especially, in this day and age when genetics have been used to PROVE that there is no such thing as race, that we all are 99.999% similar across races, when genetics is often used to search for cures that genetically occur more often in certain “racial” groups, and when DNA can be used to overturn unfair convictions based on race. Yes, genetics has had instance in the past as being used to prop up racism, but it has also been very useful in many ways for mankind and today it can and is sometimes used for the positive in racial terms. Also, I didn’t see anyone say anything about genetics in terms of a negative but in terms of how genes can pass down certain predilictions toward anti-social behavior may have a genetic bases with the specific point that it cuts ACROSS the “races” but the results for the individual is different based on race.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 2:51 pm ¶

65. Lisa J wrote:

    let me rephrase my last statement, not that genes CAN pass down anti-social behaviors but that they MAY POSSSIBLY pass down a predilicion towards anti-social, socio-pathic behaviors.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 2:53 pm ¶

66. octogalore wrote:

    “But why not this one? And why not every case like it? Clearly, there’s a chance to learn a lot about the oppressive systems and the toxic criminal justice system from Mixon’s trajectory. What is the harm in trying to take apart what happened here?”

    Because four people, who were not individually implicated in police brutality as far as we know from the supporting materials here, died. And because the willingness to let that happen is not a reasonable consequence of the acknowledged oppressive systems at play here. It’s an added variable that makes this particular case an inopportune one, and one that’s arguably unfair to those who are hurt by the oppression in ways that don’t lead to murder of (as far as we know) innocents.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 3:03 pm ¶

67. Joseph wrote:

    @atlasien & Lisa J
    I am leery of opening up a can of derail in this important thread. So let me just say that I disagree, I think the overwhelming weight of history relating genetics to race is utterly sinister and not at all positive. But I am not the boss of you: if you think it is important, write away. Me? I get really nervous when these two ideas come together.

    @octogalore
    I agree that limiting the discussion on this thread is a poor idea, for the reasons you describe. However I do think that you are insistently re-framing this discussion in your own terms and away from those being explored by many of us on this thread. In other words, back on to Mixon himself and his crimes when this post concerns the “backlash to the dialog AROUND Lovelle Mixon.” My understanding of the original Feministing article was that was intended as an analysis of the larger context for his crimes and Thea’s post here (Thea, please correct me if I am wrong) is further opening up the discussion of that context. I (and others) are talking about the systems at play in this interaction and you (and others, here and elsewhere) are talking about the person and his actions. So we are at cross-purposes. I do not intend that as a criticism– I am just trying to figure out the different paths through this argument.

    I completely agree that Mixon had agency–but I do not think unpacking the larger context of his actions is anything like apologizing for them–or absolving him of responsibility. The fact that Mixon was not noble or dignified (or any of the cliches we have about black suffering), was a criminal who terrorized his own community and ultimately chose murder and suicide-by-cop over imprisonment is exactly what makes him, for me, such a compelling example. I understand the reasons why this is distasteful to you. But I still think it is an important thing to do.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 4:49 pm ¶

68. Sean wrote:

    Anonymous wrote:

    @ Sean
    That’s . . . awful. I wonder if this would have been news at all if the subject was an out-of-work copy machine technician rather than an NFL player.

    Certainly makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Consider also the fact that the officer conducted himself in this manner WHILE the dash-cam was running.

    Now imagine the countless unreported incidents where there were no cell phone cameras or dashboard cameras to document what took place.

    Had this occured to a regular family or had there been no footage, likely it would have been ignored or forgotten about.

    It is this climate that fosters the type of resentment that so many poor people feel for law enforcement.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 5:43 pm ¶

69. puckalish wrote:

    octogalore,
    wouldn’t you like to prevent four human beings like those officers from being killed in the future? wouldn’t you like to better understand what were the institutional pressures that helped guide Mixon’s hand in killing them so that you might better be positioned to prevent a similar event from occurring?

    it’s really important to recognize that this case is not “inopportune” because some police officers were killed, but it brings home how the current social dynamic is not only harmful to people like Oscar Grant (ordinary citizens), but even to those who are sworn to “protect and serve.”

    if you are actually invested in working toward a world where people charged with maintaining safety in our communities are safer and met with less resistance, this is a critical opportunity to look at why that’s not the case right now.

    we have an imperative to look specifically at cases like that of Lovelle Mixon to figure out where things went wrong, without just dissipating into “he’s a bad guy.” we need to look at what shaped his actions (and no one’s – not yours and not mine – actions are simply a matter of choice or personal responsibility) if we’re sincerely interested in moving toward a more just and peaceful society. if the farthest this conversation can go is “Mixon was a villain. that’s the end of the story. he never should have killed those cops and it’s destructive to even talk about it,” then we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot (feet?).

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 5:46 pm ¶

70. jaye wrote:

    @PPR_Scribe:

    I hear what you’re saying, what tends to happen with me is that in dealing with white feminists, I usually find myself defending men of color.

    When I’m around men of color, I usually find myself defending women of color.

    Sometimes I’m so busy being reactive to other people’s criticisms, I miss the complexity, such as “to use the Mixon case to highlight long histories of oppression and brutality against Black men, [and] to use the reaction to the Mixon case to highlight the relative indifference to the plight of Black women.”

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 5:47 pm ¶

71. Jess wrote:

    @Lisa J and Joseph —

    Before anyone gets to het up here — the mention of “genetics” often gets people crazy.

    Genetics is a tool, and a complex one. When we talk about genes, we talk often about potentialities and possibilities. If I say “You have a certain mutation of BRCA1″ it doesn’t mean you will get breast cancer, just that other things being equal (and provided you live long enough) you have better odds of getting it than other people do.

    Behavioral genetics is a dicier category. It is far from clear the combinations that lead to certain outcomes. Genes may create predispositions to certain things, but there are plenty of examples of areas that don’t seem to have a genetic basis at all, or if they do it’s awfully tough to tease out.

    Take serial killers. They do not appear to run in families, but if there were a hard biological basis for that you’d expect them to. So there’s probably something else going on.

    Alcoholism, though, is a bit of a different animal — it does run in families and is based on (in part) how the body metabolizes alcohol. That’s determined by genes, and is further affected by the level of exposure at various ages and how healthy you are to begin with (like, were you getting food as a young ‘un or getting starved, did you come down with hepatitis or not).

    But this doesn’t mean anyone will for sure be an alcoholic, just that the risk factors are higher. Obviously, someone raised by devout Mormons in Utah or Muslims in Saudi Arabia will probably have less opportunity to get drunk at all — even if s/he shares all the relevant genes with Dylan Thomas or Judy Garland.

    These things are synergies — they act together in sometimes unpredictable ways to shape our decisions and life-paths.

    None of this has anything to do with race per se. Even genetic diseases that are supposedly “black” (like sickle-cell) show up in “white” populations as well, though less often (especially in the Mediterranean — the gene pops up in Italy and Spain once in a while).

    Minus a complete genome-read on Mixon, as well as a family history, (and two or three generations would be best) we can only speculate.

    Yes, genetics (such as it was– really it was the pseudoscience of eugenics) has been used by racists in the past to justify all kinds of evil. But that doesn’t make it wrong or wrong to touch on. There’s a larger philosophical point about how we try to separate the mind and the body, as though one weren’t part of the other, but that’s a whole ‘nother thread.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 6:20 pm ¶

72. atlasien wrote:

    @Joseph: oddly enough and totally unrelated, I just posted earlier today on how one particular gene, strongly linked to race, has had a strangely powerful effect throughout my adult life.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 7:02 pm ¶

73. Joseph wrote:

    @Jess
    I am not het up.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 8:03 pm ¶

74. octogalore wrote:

    Puckalish said: “wouldn’t you like to prevent four human beings like those officers from being killed in the future? wouldn’t you like to better understand what were the institutional pressures that helped guide Mixon’s hand in killing them so that you might better be positioned to prevent a similar event from occurring?
    it’s really important to recognize that this case is not “inopportune” because some police officers were killed, but it brings home how the current social dynamic is not only harmful to people like Oscar Grant (ordinary citizens), but even to those who are sworn to ‘protect and serve.’”

    I understand where you’re going, but I don’t know that the added element of a murder that wasn’t in the heat of battle makes any kind of compelling foundation for analysis. It instead makes this more specific to Mixon himself than to his circumstances, although as you say, those certainly are a factor. But there are other cases in which that factor is a more dominant one.

    If the goal is indeed to understand institutional pressures so as to support activism that would “prevent a similar event from occurring,” then a muddy analysis, IMO, isn’t the best way to go about that. How were the institutional pressures that caused Mixon’s action different from those in other interactions between gangs (or non gang members) in urban areas and police, in which one or more parties are hurt or killed? The pressures are the same. Poverty, racial and class oppression, lack of equal access to opportunity. His actions were more disconnected from the circumstances, and while you can argue with merit that there is a connection based on the oppression inherent in his environment, it’s a much more difficult argument to make than it needs to be.

    Additionally, using this as an example case for how to “prevent a similar event from occurring” could lead to unfortunate results. If you look at an unprovoked murder as being a reasonable test case, then the preventative measures that might stem from that (emanating from a less progressive group than the commentariat here) would not be in the best interests of non-murderers in Mixon’s shoes who are stopped by police. I would like to think that activism on the part of folks like the commenters here would be all that’s needed to create a solution, but with almost all real-world problems, convincing unreasonable people is usually necessary. Mixon was dealing with institutional pressures that also “guide” others who don’t wind up murdering anyone, and I would propose that looking at these pressures in the context of the latter is more likely to lead to measure that could alleviate them.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 8:31 pm ¶

75. Jess wrote:

    @Joseph — point taken. Just worried that it might go that way.

    Posted 27 Mar 2009 at 8:33 pm ¶

76. Mark wrote:

    Mukhopadhyay needs to understand that to some people, it does sound like he was defending, or at least, trying to rehabilitate Mixon’s image in the press – by saying that society shares some of the blame for what happened, some people are going to conclude that Mukhopadhyay was saying that Mixon was blameless, which is what Mukhopadhyay did not say.

    Humans want to live in a world of moral absolutes – we want “good” guys and “bad” guys. We want story book protagonists and villians, and if we could, we’d also have identifiable musical cues that would appear whenever we saw them.

    What Mixon did was wrong. He killed 4 people he had most likely never met before, all because he was afraid of going back to jail. People see that action, and conclude: “Mixon was a villain”. And, he was a bad person – what he did was evil by any sort of moral code I can think of.

    Do the police brutalize and mistreat black people? Heck yes – that happens not just in the US, but in the UK, my country Australia, probably Canada, etc. Police in every nation tend to brutalize minorities (because they can, and so, they will). Does it excuse Mixon’s actions? No it does not. Mukhopadhyay was only trying to say how it might EXPLAIN Mixon’s actions, and how the Police can create some of these problems themselves, and that the Police need to look into their own operating culture to determine how reduce the violence between the Police and Black people.

    I’m not going to shed any tears for Mixon. I’m not going to defend his actions, and I’m not going to say it wasn’t his fault. It was his fault. But the Police are also human beings, and they need to be criticized as well. Not the officers who died, but the police culture as a whole.

    Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 12:38 am ¶

77. Mark wrote:

    And in the end, where does it end? There was this guy I knew when I was still in school, year 7. In Australia, most pupils who attend year 7 are 12 years old. He was 16. He was incredibly violent, mean-spirited, drank alcohol while on school grounds, and was dumb as a brick. He could barely read and appeared to be proud of it. He was eventually expelled because he shoved a large nail righ through the palm of another student, for no reason. No reason at all. Halfway through the day, he just got out of his desk, grabbed my classmate’s hand, and just jammed it into his palm. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever personally seen, and was the reason why my parents took me out of the public school system.

    I saw his family a few times – and they would shame even the most redneck of rednecks. His background was not nice – he almost certainly started drinking at an early age, grew up in a poor household with no positive role models.

    Does his background excuse his actions? Now, granted, this case isn’t the same – because this student was white, while Mixon was black, and he didn’t grow up in a nation that discriminated against him. But there is also no doubt that his up-bringing affected him – his parents allowed him to drink, his mother was probably drinking while she was pregnant with him, which might have given him some brain damage, and he associated with violent thugs in his neighbourhood.

    Yet I have a hard time believing that it wasn’t his fault for doing what he did – I know of quite a few people who have grown up in bad households. One of my best friends in Year 12 Chemistry grew up with multiple, abusive step-fathers. He was a bit, er, rough around the edges, had a tendency to swear a lot, but his heart was pure gold. He was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met (even if he did have a disturbing propensity to collect large, sharp, ornamental knives).

    Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 1:01 am ¶

78. Celeste wrote:

    This has been a great thread to read. I’m still stuck in my binary thinking with crimes like this. I applaud those who can see Mixon’s death as a loss, I just can’t go there. If he just hadn’t killed sooooo many cops and raped a child I might be able to muster some feeling of value for his life and the loss of it. If he were just a carjacker who shot 1 cop but didn’t kill him I might be able to have some empathy for him. It’s weird, up until a person commits a serious act of violence I care about all the mitigating factors. However, once they show the same disregard for human life that our unequal system shows them, I stop caring about the factors. Their loss of empathy results in me feeling less/no empathy for them. I know he has children but it’s just too much for me. I can muster sympathy for his kids but not his parents because I think there must have been some egregious parenting mistakes along the way.

    Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 12:59 pm ¶

79. ART wrote:

    There’s so much judgment and so much desire to understand. Unfortunately all the judgment is for the “police culture” and all the desire to understand is for Lovelle Mixon.

    This is a tragic downward cycle and as long as judgment and compassion are not doled out somewhat equally, things won’t get better.

    Are any of trying to put yourselves in the shoes of a police officer who’s never done messed up stuff, just doing their job, and trying to police a community where if they get shot dead — if their wives are widowed and their kids left fatherless or motherless — that community’s reaction will be a little bit of lip service about how they can’t condone murder but basically the police officer had it coming and what a great jumping off point to discuss why?

    If you haven’t then how can you expect anyone on the other side to care about the flawed policing system? _Nothing_ will change as long as people are rooted in their alliances.

    Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 2:29 pm ¶

80. Thea Lim wrote:

    @ART

    Can a police officer “never do messed up stuff” if the system they work within is beyond messed up?

    Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 7:50 pm ¶

81. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    There’s so much judgment and so much desire to understand. Unfortunately all the judgment is for the “police culture” and all the desire to understand is for Lovelle Mixon.

    Agree, ART. There also seems to be an underlying thought that police=White. I encourage everyone to check out the National Black Police Officers, and perhaps see if there is a local chapter in your area. (There is also a similar association for Hispanic officers, but I cannot think of the name right now.)

    http://www.blackpolice.org/

    Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 8:34 pm ¶

82. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    Can a police officer “never do messed up stuff” if the system they work within is beyond messed up?

    Thea, if not then gods help us because then there is no hope nor any alternative for a publicly-funded police force. Some areas are going towards private forces. I think we see how this worked in Iraq.

    Posted 28 Mar 2009 at 8:37 pm ¶

83. octogalore wrote:

    “Can a police officer “never do messed up stuff” if the system they work within is beyond messed up?”

    Cosign with PPR_Scribe. The radical vs reform battle emerges again. Sure, we can hope for a complete overthrow of the system today as we know it. But until that happens, do we deny that there can be basically good people within it, doing their best?

    Many systems are problematic. Capitalism, for example. I work with kids to help them succeed within this system, knowing that within it they like everyone else will make compromises.

    Writing off the potential humanity of everyone in the police force because there is corruption within it (and note, this Oakland outfit was not the one involved with Grant) is a futile as well as illogical exercise.

    Posted 29 Mar 2009 at 9:52 am ¶

84. ART wrote:

    The police system is not beyond messed up. Taking bad police officers actions, beliefs and intentions and projecting them onto every single police officer is the exact same thing as treating every single black man like he is a thief, murderer and rapist b/c there are some black men that are thieves, murderers and rapists. In both cases, it’s ugly ugly ugly.

    How can you expect police officers to hold their own accountable when you are unwilling to hold a murderer accountable for being a murderer? In other words, were things to change for the better, how would you _realistically_ see that transpiring?

    Posted 29 Mar 2009 at 11:02 am ¶

85. nt wrote:

    Nat Turner was considered a violent criminal in his time. Still is today by some people. It’s easy to give Nat credit for fighting against the system when we all now see how the system was screwed up then. I’m sure the same people now who won’t even allow a discussion on the reasons we have Mixons,without the benefit of what we “know” now, would have been just as dismissive of arguments for Nat in his time.
    What Nat did was not good, but it’s understandable given his time. What Mixon did is not good, but is understandable. Just naming him a criminal does nothing to increase any understanding of his actions.

    Posted 29 Mar 2009 at 11:38 am ¶

86. nt wrote:

    ^^^ and a systems that helps people to take on violent behaviors.

    Posted 29 Mar 2009 at 11:40 am ¶

87. Celeste wrote:

    @Thea: I think that a police officer can indeed be innocent, even in this system. I think most of them are decent people who do incredibly important work. That whole blue wall thing needs to stop, they need to seriously start policing themselves way better, pun intended.

    Posted 29 Mar 2009 at 12:26 pm ¶

88. Daniel P wrote:

    I disagree with octogalore and PPR_Scribe. The police defend a status quo and order which is inherently violent, and even if they follow the law, the implication of their collective actions is oppressive and arguably genocidal.

    Let us not forget that while “bad cops” may be responsible for things like the arrest and imprisonment of comrades like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, “good cops” and “good COs” keep them in jail.

    As George Jackson put it, the status quo is poor black men doing all of the dying, and even in a revolution it’s still probably going to poor black men dying. But at least, through armed struggle, perhaps we will be able to get other people to “join in the dying” and consequently those with power might act to create change, if only out of their own self-interest.

    I don’t like rapists. If Mixon was a rapist, then the world is better with him dead. I won’t excuse his actions.

    I also don’t like cops and corrections officers (and I’ve met cops and corrections officers who are rapists as well, and this really isn’t all that uncommon based on stories you hear from sexworkers on the streets), and all else being equal (which of course it never is), I think the world is a better place with fewer living cops.

    As for POC members of the police (or armed forces), I feel sorry for them. It must suck to so directly and violently have to defend racist institutions all day.

    Posted 29 Mar 2009 at 5:54 pm ¶

89. Joseph wrote:

    @nt
    “What Nat did was not good, but it’s understandable given his time. What Mixon did is not good, but is understandable. Just naming him a criminal does nothing to increase any understanding of his actions.”

    Cosign.

    @octogalore
    There is a difference between constructive disagreement and obstruction. It is not up to you to decide whether or not it is a “futile” and/or “illogical exercise” to look at this terrible situation from many angles. No one is advocating a “radical overthrow of the system” and your comparison to capitalism is patronizing and silencing.

    You have made your position very clear. Several of us see something else in this. Something you can’t/don’t/won’t see. This site is not devoted to deconstructing capitalism, it is about exploring race. If you can’t/won’t/don’t want to explore that dimension of this tragic situation then no one is forcing you. But it is not okay for you to prevent that discussion by making derailing and dismissive comments to those of us that do. Please respect the conversation.

    Posted 29 Mar 2009 at 7:10 pm ¶

90. atlasien wrote:

    @Daniel P: I live in a county where the police force is predominantly black, the police leadership is predominantly black, and the predominantly black voters have recently elected another black leader (Democrat of course) who had a campaign promise to increase the number of police on the street as a top priority.

    Would you tell all these police (and the voters too) that you’re sorry for them? I mean, that’s a lot of patronizing. I don’t see what it accomplishes, or how it helps the situation.

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 7:37 am ¶

91. Celeste wrote:

    @ Daniel P: ” I think the world is a better place with fewer living cops.”

    Thanks for wanting my cousin dead, the world would definitely be better without him since he’s a cop. *eyeroll* That’s really classy.

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 8:19 am ¶

92. inkst wrote:

    I am morbidly fascinated by where this conversation thread has gone over the past few days. The incredible thing is that this thread (the whole blog for that matter) is about as civil as blog posting and commenting gets, yet it still seems to be difficult to maintain a conversation about Thea’s main question without people starting to throw rocks at each other and going from one extreme to the other. I agree wholeheartedly with Joseph that comments that silence the argument, which includes both octogalore and Daniel P, are exactly what we are trying to avoid. I am flabbergasted that there have been comments about anyone being better off dead, be it Mixon or police. This type of simple moralizing is useless at best and insidious at worst. IMO it is the same as the “with us or against us” attitude of the Bush administration and the war on terror. When you force things onto one side or the other, there is absolutely no room for dialogue. Admittedly, dialogue is not action, and it does not often lead to direct action, but that does not diminish the importance of being able to speak openly about a topic and analyze it’s complexity.

    The amount of what I perceive to be vehemence that is bubbling under some of these posts is even more evidence for me that there are indeed similarities between the environment of the USA 200 years ago and now.

    I don’t know if anyone else has read the comments from David Muhammad’s article. They are really disgusting and totally neglect what he was even writing about IMO.

    200 years ago, we cultivated a culture of silence that maintained a dehumanizing institution. In our current corner of the 21st century, we cultivate a culture of silence that maintains dehumanizing institutions.

    Thea’s question was not “Whose fault was it?”, but in a sense asked us to think about what we can learn from this and how we can think about moving forward in a more positive direction.

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 12:53 pm ¶

93. PPR_Scribe wrote:

    inkst, I laud your concern about re-centering this discussion. I think what you say is key in that we need to use this case to “think about what we can learn from this and how we can think about moving forward in a more positive direction.” However, different people are taking away different messages. That is to be expected.

    My beef with the Feministing article is that it seemed to set up an analysis on this very “dialog” (not the actions itself) but then did not deliver. And it did not deliver in a way that, IMO, framed the ensuing thread comments.

    One thing that I have personally gotten from this and other conversations about the case, the rally afterwards, and reaction to that is that we are very selective about just which dehumanizing situations we speak out about. Black men being killed by police forces deserve our speech. Apparently, the dehumanizing systems in which Black men kill other Black men are largely not so deserving. (And, speaking just from a numbers standpoint a Black male is much more likely to be killed at the hands of another Black male than by police of any race.) The dehumanizing systems in which men (including Black) kill women (including Black, including their family members and significant others) is not so deserving.

    A valid question to raise for discussion, then, in this kind of environment is *Why?* Why the calls for lack of silence in one arena but not as much in others? Why will civil rights leaders and organizations get involved in some cases, but shy away from others? Why are the victims held up as touchstones allowed to be imperfect if they are men (e.g., criminal records) but not if they are women?

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 1:29 pm ¶

94. octogalore wrote:

    Joseph — I am a bit surprised that my view that “Writing off the potential humanity of everyone in the police force because there is corruption within it” is futile, is perceived as silencing. So saying we shouldn’t write off humanity because of someone’s job is silencing, but saying we should, isn’t?

    Joseph, inkst — feel free to disagree with me, but please don’t suggest that because I disagree with you, I am trying to silence or I don’t respect the conversation. That kind of accusation actually typifies what it ostensibly argues against.

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 3:07 pm ¶

95. ART wrote:

    @94 Brilliant.

    To effectively heal corruption Police need programs like clear accessible avenues through which to file complaints, independent oversight boards and whistle blower protection — not people randomly killing them.

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 3:55 pm ¶

96. Joseph wrote:

    @octogalore
    And I am surprised that you have interpreted my pretty reasonable request that you remain within the scope of the thread–as opposed to deciding what “we” should or shouldn’t be doing– as an “accusation.”

    This thread has been an amazing exploration of some pretty raw feelings and I wish you would let those difficult conversations happen rather than trying to shut them down or re-frame them in terms that are preferable to you. Of course, this exchange is a prime example: a thread about the racist discourse around Lovelle Mixon’s life and death has morphed into a “let’s talk about how octogalore feels” thread. Frankly, that is not why I am here.

    You are being a bit of a bully and I wish you’d stop it.

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 4:46 pm ¶

97. jaye wrote:

    For God’s sakes, no one hear said they CONDONED the killing of the police officers or said that they were HAPPY that the police officers were dead or that every single police officer in the country was evil and racist. People were trying to express understanding of why some people in the community would look at Mixon as a hero or a symbol of anti-oppression, by trying to give context to the OVERARCHING ROLE that the police play in many of these communities.
    Whether you like it or not, the police are looked at as an occupying force in many communities, but no, not in my community. When the police show up in my neighborhood, I am usually quite happy to see them, and I have no problems with them. That doesn’t mean that everyone else in the world has the same experience as me, and has the same relationship with the police as me. Or that because there are some good police officers as I’m sure there are, that means that the CULTURE of the police force is inherently positive and moral, and doesn’t need to be completely overhauled from the inside out.

    And talking about the fact that black men kill other black men…so what? What the hell does that have to do with the reality of police brutality?
    People that live in close proximity to each other tend to have closer relationships, which gives them greater motivations to kill or harm each other. You know in WWII, the greatest cause of white people being killed was…wait for it…other white people. You know in China or Japan, the #1 killer of Asian men would be…other Asian men. It’s not some strange black-person phenomenon. In Iraq, different communities within that country are murdering each other…they’re all Iraqis. You find this all over the world, it’s not particular to black people.
    This is not a thread about inter-community violence, it is about the systemic prejudice and role of police culture in American society that shaped or didn’t shape Mixon’s actions.

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 6:08 pm ¶

98. Latoya Peterson wrote:

    *sigh*

    And I had such high hopes for this thread around comment 50.

    I’m closing comments on this thread. I understand that this is a controversial topic, but staking out lines in the sand and grinding previously held axes isn’t conducive for conversation.

    *****Comments are now closed. **********

    Posted 30 Mar 2009 at 6:17 pm ¶