Carmen Best, Seattle Police Chief, is an African American woman. She wrote the following letter to the Seattle city council after crowds went to her house.

Dear President González, Chairwoman Herbold, and Seattle City Council Members:
I wanted to update you on recent events, particularly those that occurred late last night.
A residence of mine in Snohomish County was targeted by a large group of aggressive protestors late last night. My neighbors were concerned by such a large group, but they were successful in ensuring the crowd was not able to trespass or engage in other illegal behavior in the area, despite repeated
attempts to do so. Currently, the local sheriff (not SPD resources) is monitoring the situation.
I urge both of you, and the entire council, to stand up for what is right. These direct actions against elected officials, and especially civil servants like myself, are out of line with and go against every democratic principle that guides our nation. Before this devolves into the new way of doing business by mob rule here in Seattle, and across the nation, elected officials like you must forcefully call for the end of these tactics.
The events of this summer were initiated in a moment of grief and outrage over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and so many other Black and Brown people suffering at the hands of injustice. All of us must ensure that this righteous cause is not lost in the confusion of so many protestors now engaging in violence and intimidation, which many are not speaking against.
Sincerely,
Carmen Best
Chief of Police
Seattle Police Department

CC
Tammy Morales, Councilmember, District 2
Kshama Sawant, Councilmember, District 3
Alex Pedersen, Councilmember, District 4
Debora Juarez, Councilmember, District 5
Dan Strauss, Councilmember, District 6
Andrew Lewis, Councilmember, District 7
Teresa Mosqueda, Councilmember, District 8, At-Large
Community Police Commission, Co-Chairs

Written by Chief Carmen Best on August 2, 2020 8:33 pm
August 3rd, 2020
Lorena González, President and Lisa Herbold, Public Safety Chair
Seattle City Council, City Hall
600 Fourth Ave, 2nd Floor
Seattle, WA 98104
Re: Intimidation of Public Officials and Employees

‘

Letter Sent to Council

Letter Sent to Council

Letter Sent to Council

Letter Sent to Council

The tragedy of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota by police officers in May 2020 has somehow sparked some beautiful moments in its wake. Some of those beautiful moments have involved peaceful protesters and good police officers joining together to call for justice. Let us not forget these moments when additional tragedies grab headlines. As per the Beatles on the Abbey Road album, “Come together, right now, over me …”

Honestly, I am flabbergasted. Does anyone working on Joe Biden’s campaign really think that Joe Biden wants low voter turnout? Well, according to the Miami Herald,… (excerpt follows)

Over 90 field organizers for the Florida Democratic Party signed a scathing letter Friday to the party’s leadership, claiming among other things that the campaign is “suppressing the Hispanic vote” in Central Florida.

The seven-page internal letter, obtained by the Miami Herald, contains eight allegations from field organizers about what they say is a lack of a “fully actionable field plan” from the Biden campaign as it transitions into the Florida party to coordinate voter outreach efforts.

So, his lack of a “fully actionable field plan” now meets the definition of ‘suppressing’ the vote?

Please do read the whole article. I really hope that as more details come out that it turns out the Miami Herald sensationalized the letter. But it is 90 field organizers writing a 7-page letter, and that is not good.

Bianca Padró Ocasio, Miami HeraldJuly 25, 2020, 1:09 PM

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-campaign-suppressing-hispanic-vote-180950158.html

Recommend reading the whole review in the Atlantic, as linked below. McWhorter is quite negative. Seek out positive reviews as well. I will post some later. DiAngelo’s book is an illustration of, and application of, standard concepts taught in anti-bias training courses in the United States.

Excerpt from McWhorter’s review

White Fragility was published in 2018 but jumped to the top of the New York Times best-seller list amid the protests following the death of George Floyd and the ensuing national reckoning about racism. DiAngelo has convinced university administrators, corporate human-resources offices, and no small part of the reading public that white Americans must embark on a self-critical project of looking inward to examine and work against racist biases that many have barely known they had.

I am not convinced. Rather, I have learned that one of America’s favorite advice books of the moment is actually a racist tract. Despite the sincere intentions of its author, the book diminishes Black people in the name of dignifying us. This is unintentional, of course, like the racism DiAngelo sees in all whites.

…

What end does all this self-mortification [by whites] serve? Impatient with such questions, DiAngelo insists that “wanting to jump over the hard, personal work and get to ‘solutions’” is a “foundation of white fragility.” In other words, for DiAngelo, the whole point is the suffering. And note the scare quotes around solutions, as if wanting such a thing were somehow ridiculous.

A corollary question is why Black people need to be treated the way DiAngelo assumes we do. The very assumption is deeply condescending to all proud Black people. In my life, racism has affected me now and then at the margins, in very occasional social ways, but has had no effect on my access to societal resources; if anything, it has made them more available to me than they would have been otherwise. Nor should anyone dismiss me as a rara avis. Being middle class, upwardly mobile, and Black has been quite common during my existence since the mid-1960s, and to deny this is to assert that affirmative action for Black people did not work.

In 2020—as opposed to 1920—I neither need nor want anyone to muse on how whiteness privileges them over me. Nor do I need wider society to undergo teachings in how to be exquisitely sensitive about my feelings. I see no connection between DiAngelo’s brand of reeducation and vigorous, constructive activism in the real world on issues of import to the Black community. And I cannot imagine that any Black readers could willingly submit themselves to DiAngelo’s ideas while considering themselves adults of ordinary self-regard and strength. Few books about race have more openly infantilized Black people than this supposedly authoritative tome.

John McWhorter, Contributing writer at The Atlantic and professor at Columbia University, July 15, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/

See article at https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility “On “White Fragility”, A few thoughts on America’s smash-hit #1 guide to egghead racialism” Matt Taibbi, Jun 28, 2020

Excerpt

People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of “anti-black racism” to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other’s careers before they’ve even finished growing?

“People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I don’t want people like that to keep getting jobs,” one 16 year-old said. “Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives… I love twitter,” wrote a different person, adding cheery emojis.

A bizarre echo of North Korea’s “three generations of punishment” doctrine could be seen in the boycotts of Holy Land grocery, a well-known hummus maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks it’s been abandoned by clients and seen its lease pulled because of racist tweets made by the CEO’s 14 year-old daughter eight years ago.

Parents calling out their kids is also in vogue. In Slate, “Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill” wrote to advice columnist Michelle Herman in a letter headlined, “I think I’ve screwed up the way my kids think about race.” The problem, the aggrieved parent noted, was that his/her sons had gone to a diverse school, and their “closest friends are still a mix of black, Hispanic, and white kids,” which to them was natural. The parent worried when one son was asked to fill out an application for a potential college roommate and expressed annoyance at having to specify race, because “I don’t care about race.”

Clearly, a situation needing fixing! The parent asked if someone who didn’t care about race was “just as racist as someone who only has white friends” and asked if it was “too late” to do anything. No fear, Herman wrote: it’s never too late for kids like yours to educate themselves. To help, she linked to a program of materials designed for just that purpose, a “Lesson Plan for Being An Ally,” that included a month of readings of… White Fragility. Hopefully that kid with the Black and Hispanic friends can be cured!

This notion that color-blindness is itself racist, one of the main themes of White Fragility, could have amazing consequences. In researching I Can’t Breathe, I met civil rights activists who recounted decades of struggle to remove race from the law. I heard stories of lawyers who were physically threatened for years in places like rural Arkansas just for trying to end explicit hiring and housing discrimination and other remnants of Jim Crow. Last week, an Oregon County casually exempted “people of color who have heightened concerns about racial profiling” from a Covid-19 related mask order. Who thinks creating different laws for different racial categories is going to end well? When has it ever?

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Is capitalizing the w in white racist?

The effort to redefine common terms, use them inconsistently, and attribute animus to speakers increases the risk of purges and pogroms, in my opinion. Today’s warning is triggered by the Associated Press’s announcement that the news organization will not capitalize w in white but will capitalize B in Black. My warning is not whether white should or should not be capitalized by journalists; either is plausible. The warning is that under the redefined approach to social justice, both usages are racist. There is no safe harbor.

According to David Bauder in an Associated Press News article, “The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.” This is a plausible rationale for the AP’s decision to keep the w for white in the lower case, which is joined by left-leaning New York Times and right-leaning Wall Street Journal. If shared history is the standard, then historians, cultural anthropologists, and other researchers can continue to research and compare shared histories, or lack thereof, and w’s can rise and fall in due course.

On the other hand, for consistency, it is plausible to capitalize the W for White, as reportedly called for by The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). Some news organizations, including CNN, Fox News and The San Diego Union-Tribune, said they will give white the uppercase.

In the above paragraphs, I framed the decision to capitalize in terms of either consistent usage across groups, or whether people within a group had a shared history. But reportedly, the reason capitalization is an issue now is renewed efforts to address systemic racism. Under the sociological approach to justice, incorrect usage is not only shoddy journalism, it is racist.

Damned if you do capitalize w. According to John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president for standards, “But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

Damned if you don’t capitalize w. In the sociological approach, the default is dominant, so according to Eve Ewing of the University of Chicago, leaving w lower case helps maintain the pretense of white inevitability and power. Furthermore, capitalizing the W can undermine white supremacists. According to Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at New York University, capitalizing white would take power away from racists, since their similar use “would no longer be a provocative defiance of the norm.” (AP cites The Atlantic).

Your editorial practices are racist if you capitalize w. Your editorial practices are racist if you don’t capitalize W. Excuse me one moment, George Orwell is calling.

https://apnews.com/7e36c00c5af0436abc09e051261fff1f

‘They use our culture’: the Black creatives and fans holding K-pop accountable
Elizabeth de Luna, The Guardian, July 20, 2020, 12:00 AM

Excerpt – “Today, a striking number of K-pop hits are written and produced by Black Americans and a significant percentage of K-pop fans in the US are Black. As K-pop grows in popularity worldwide, many international fans are waiting for the industry to develop a more sensitive, globalized understanding of race.”

Warning – using sociological definitions outside of a sociology class should be done with care. Combining (a) thinking in groups with (b) the assumption that any deviation from equality in result is unjust leads to anti-Semitism, anti-Asian, and anti- recently immigrated Black attitudes.

Today’s edition asks the following questions.

If an American Black songwriter sells music and/or lyrics to a Korean entertainment producer, has someone been exploited? If so, whom? By how much?

If Korean entertainers make money from American Black fans, have the Korean entertainers exploited American Blacks? If so, how, and by how much? If so, did American Black entertainers exploit Korean fans when American Black entertainers made money through Korean sales? If so, how, and by how much?

Today’s edition offers the following thought to help avoid the politics of resentment. Gains from trade – perhaps there are mutual gains from trade – not exploitation.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/culture-black-creatives-fans-holding-050011477.html

Reportedly, federal agents in unmarked cars are active in Portland against social justice protesters. Neither the Portland mayor nor the Oregon governor is reported to have called for such federal help. This must be investigated. This must be investigated now. https://finance.yahoo.com/m/3785716d-82d2-31f4-bc89-1e21da78bc88/mayor-of-portland-to-trump-.html

Reportedly, US Attorney Billy Williams in Portland has called for an investigation of the agency by AG Barr and its Inspector General’s office. This is not enough. President Trump has been replacing the principal level IGs (that is his right as executive), raising concern about their perspective. https://edlabor.house.gov/imo/media/doc/House%20Chairs%20Letter%20Condeming%20the%20Trump%20Administration%20Assault%20on%20IGs.pdf

Thank you, James Madison and all, for separation of powers. Unlike Parliamentary systems, our House can be controlled by a different party than the president – and it is!!!! House Committees, I look forward to your investigations.

Having said all that, there are a number of possible lawful explanations. For example, it would be a pretty incompetent ‘foreign enemy of the United States’ who did not try to take advantage of domestic unrest. The agency principals and the administration could have reasonable grounds for action, and so they get their say. But I don’t mind saying that my default position is against them and I hope the House Committees, ACLU, and anyone else who cares about checks on authority gears up.

Here is related press release by Senator Merkley of Oregon.

MERKLEY, WYDEN, BLUMENAUER, BONAMICI CALL FOR INVESTIGATIONS INTO FEDERAL OPERATIVES IN PORTLAND
The request for Inspector General investigations follows the shooting of a protester, and arrests by unmarked federal forces
Friday, July 17, 2020
PORTLAND, OR – Oregon’s U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, with U.S. Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici, today announced that they will be asking the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offices of Inspector General to investigate the unrequested presence and violent actions of federal forces in Portland.

The request for investigations follows federal operatives shooting a peaceful protester in the head, causing serious injury and hospitalization, and reports and video recordings of unmarked federal agents grabbing protesters from the streets and taking them to unmarked minivans.

“DHS and DOJ are engaged in acts that are horrific and outrageous in our constitutional democratic republic,” Merkley said. “First, they are deploying paramilitary forces with no identification indicating who they are or who they work for. Second, these agents are snatching people off the street with no underlying justification. Both of these acts are profound offenses against Americans. We demand not only that these acts end, but also that they remove their forces immediately from our state. Given the egregious nature of the violations against Oregonians, we are demanding full investigations by the Inspectors General of these departments.”

“Oregonians’ demand for answers about this occupying army and its paramilitary assaults in Portland at the direction of Donald Trump and Chad Wolf cannot be stonewalled,” Wyden said. “That’s not how it works in a democracy. It’s painfully clear this administration is focused purely on escalating violence without answering my repeated requests for why this expeditionary force is in Portland and under what constitutional authority. Simply put, the Office of Inspector General must investigate Trump’s assault on Americans’ constitutional rights now.”

“The jarring reports of federal law enforcement officers grabbing peaceful protestors off the street should alarm every single American. This is not the way a government operates in a functioning democracy,” Blumenauer said. “We are demanding an immediate Inspector General investigation into these incidents to get answers from the Trump administration and ensure these disturbing abuses of power stop immediately.”

“The overly aggressive conduct of federal officers in Portland is alarming and unconstitutional. Oregonians must be able to exercise their First Amendment rights safely, without being picked up and detained by unidentified federal officers,” Bonamici said. “The President is intentionally provoking unrest and discord, and our community will not stand for it. He purports to be a law and order President, but his Administration’s actions are political bluster and are making our city and our country less safe. We will not rest until we get answers on behalf of Oregonians.”

Earlier this week, the delegation sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf condemning the escalation of violent tactics against protesters, and raising concerns about the presence of federal law enforcement in Portland. They also expressed concerns that the federal agents may be taking direction from leaders outside of Oregon, and asked how those engaging in illegal use of force will be held accountable.

https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/press-releases/merkley-wyden-blumenauer-bonamici-call-for-investigations-into-federal-operatives-in-portland-2020

This sports article by Scott Davis offers food for thought. A series of tweets and statements have raised questions about veins of anti-Semitism and silence in the NBA, sdavis@businessinsider.com (Scott Davis), INSIDER•July 19, 2020.

See https://www.yahoo.com/news/series-tweets-statements-raised-questions-131100537.html

Davis’s article touches on several of my themes. In my posts, I have pled for tolerance for differences of opinion, and called on critics to debate people on the merits of what they say, not to evade the issues or to silence them. Furthermore, I have expressed concerns about some of the assumptions and some of the tactics of people seeking social justice. My willingness to debate details of the social justice movement should not be confused with opposition or condemnation.

In my view, the application of the current methodology of sociology (defining white as whatever the analyst believes the social norm is, combined with assuming that group average inequality must be the result of unjust social systems) necessarily puts any seemingly successful group at risk. In the United States, this includes Asians, Jews, and recently immigrated Blacks.

The linked Davis article raises several of these same issues in the context of recent anti-Semitic statements by some Black former NBA players, and seeming silence by others.

• if for the purpose of social justice, white is defined as being able to take acceptance in society and personal rights for granted, are descendants of European Jews white?
• is it an anti-Semitic trope to assume that the relatively higher average income and educational status of the descendants of European Jews must be unjust?
• does speaking up for one person or group impose a duty to speak up for any person and groups, or may one pick and choose? What if you don’t consider yourself educated on the context that others encounter? Is silence still violence?
• does ‘anyone’ mean ‘all’? Does Kareen Abdul Jabaar saying “If we’re going to be outraged by injustice,” he said, “let’s be outraged by injustice against anyone” mean the same thing as ‘All Lives Matter’?

Please read the whole Davis article. Even if you skip the article, remember to tell me how wrong I am about everything I blog about.

Allen Iverson is under fire for saying positive things about Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, and repeating some anti-Semitic statements. https://www.yahoo.com/sports/allen-iverson-addresses-louis-farrakhan-post-says-he-doesnt-support-anti-semitism-051247998.html

Minister Farrakhan has earned the label anti-Semite, and has been officially labeled so by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Shame on you, Minister Farrakhan, and shame on you Allen Iverson. I condemn your anti-Semitism.

Allen Iverson should have to answer criticism of his statements on the merits, like anyone else. Or, he can silence himself and exit the public stage. But don’t dis-invite, don’t fire, don’t cancel. Instead, debate Iverson based on the substance of what he said, not who he associates with. Confront him with facts and make him clarify his own position; don’t silence him or misrepresent his position.

In general, if we discuss topics on the merits, error could be refuted, and learning could occur.

Rant over, now some ravings on the Nation of Islam

Why discuss the Nation of Islam now, when we have protests for police reform? Allen Iverson joins former professional athletes like Stephen Jackson, politicians like the late Marion Barry, and other prominent people who find their relationship with Minister Farrakhan scrutinized when crime or criminal justice reform takes center stage. Kareen Abdul Jabaar, former athlete, adherent of Islam, and social activist expresses dismay at the recurring connections between Black athletes/celebrities and anti-Semitism.

The Nation of Islam provides religious services and engages in a wide range of social services intended to help poor and marginalized people, in addition to helping spread Minister Farrakhan’s hateful rhetoric. It should come as no surprise that Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam gain renewed attention during large protests demanding reform to police practices and broader social reforms; these topics are of special interest to the Nation of Islam.

The Nation of Islam offers genuine prison services, not just recruiting. The Nation of Islam’s prison ministries reportedly qualified for federal government payments as a service provider. Much to the consternation of Peter King, chair of the Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee, the Bureau of Prisons reportedly paid the Nation of Islam $364,000 since 2008.

Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam are hateful. Rather than provide illustrative quotes, doubters are directed to the ADL website which has gathered specific examples. https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/nation-of-islam-farrakhan-in-his-own-words These examples are not just archaeological debates about who resided in the Jordan River valley 4,000 years ago; Farrakhan makes gross generalizations and openly bigoted assertions about international conspiracies, sexual depravities, and clandestine control.

So what would police reform activists and Farrakhan have in common? The Nation of Islam agrees with activists who frame police and community issues in terms of white supremacy. Related national security concerns were raised in Congress after the Ferguson police brutality protests. Consider this excerpt from Raheel Raza’s July 27, 2017 testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

[Islamicists hijacking U.S. discourse on crime, police and race] manifests itself in the attempt to “racialize” the struggle against radical Islam and draw a connection between issues of policing and community relations and the war on terror, painting both issues as part of the same broader problem of “white supremacy.” Groups like the Nation of Islam peddle this rhetoric, conflating the issue of race in America with Islamist ideology. In the Ferguson riots ISIS tweeted support for the rioters, urging people of color in America to fight the police and convert to Islam in exchange for soldiers from ISIS who would come to wage war on their behalf against police officers.

What is to be done? How do we maintain an open society in the presence of hate? What do we do when self-described foreign enemies can exploit our flaws in order to recruit terrorists? Shouldn’t we restrict the range of public discourse until our flaws cannot be exploited?

No. We will never have zero flaws to be exploited. We might overcome some of our current flaws, but we would just develop others. Humans have flaws – always and everywhere.

An open society more easily identifies, deliberates, and corrects its flaws. We must maintain an open society because of our flaws, not despite our flaws. Don’t cancel Allen Iverson, Stephen Jackson for who they associate with or what others say. Make them clarify their own position, and give them the opportunity to do so. Similarly, don’t smear Black Lives Matter just because Farrakhan also frames community issues in terms of white supremacy. Allow everyone to clarify their own position.

And tomorrow, another flawed person will say something offensive. Don’t evade the substance of the issue. Don’t assume guilt by association. Don’t put words in their mouth. Don’t close society. Don’t dis-invite, don’t fire, don’t cancel. Make the person clarify. Engage them on the merits. Maybe learning can occur. And maybe, just maybe, sometimes we ourselves are partially wrong about something.

ADL on Farrakhan – https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/nation-of-islam-farrakhan-in-his-own-words

SPLC on Farrakhan – https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/louis-farrakhan

Stephen Jackson controversy – https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/stephen-jackson-desean-jackson-anti-semitic-posts/1athph62aet5l1berk09u865dl

Farrakhan speaking at Marion Barry’s funeral – https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4517858/user-clip-farrakhan-marion-barry-funeral-service

Kareen Abdul Jabaar rejecting anti-Semitism among sports figures and celebrities – https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-is-outrage-anti-semitism-sports-hollywood-1303210

Nation of Islam Prison Reform Ministries – https://www.noinationalprisonreformministry.org/

Nation of Islam prison ministries reportedly paid by federal government – https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2019/jul/2/federal-government-pays-nation-islam-teach-bop-prisoners/

Raheel Raza Testimony – https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO06/20170727/106339/HHRG-115-GO06-Wstate-RazaR-20170727.pdf