Sleeper on Diallo

[Rakesh Bhandari]

It seems quite plausible that by asking for Fyfe's testimony to be read
last the jury was suggesting that what while there was no criminal
intent--and the burden here seemed impossible to meet--police protocol
itself was really to blame. If this is the most important story--as Bruce
Shapiro argues on that Salon page--it is quite shocking that it does not
seem to have been really discussed in NYT coverage or in HRC's or Gore's
post verdict comments--though Bradley hit this one dead on.

 I found Sleeper's comments an unpersuasive justification of that profiling
that somehow sanctions the non sequitur (held together by racism) that if a
disproportionate number of crimes are committed by minorities, it's a good
bet that a minority is a criminal--let's remember that a good majority of
even young black men are not under the thumb of the law.

   Let's say we take the deepest, darkest hood of America--and Diallo's
Bronx neighborhood doesn't seem to fit that bill by a long shot--what
percentage of the residents have committed or will commit a violent,
*armed* crime? Well, let's take a totally ridiculous number and say 50%,
though it's clear that  a few create most of the mayhem (it doesn't mean
that if 50% of violent crimes are committed by blacks that 50% of blacks,
even in the most marginalized ghetto, commit an armed crime).  Well that
means if you shoot when unsure or you allow yourself to be in a position
where'll you'll have to shoot if unsure, you're going to kill a non violent
person 50% of those times. It's only because poor black life, subject to
every sort of violence this system has to offer, is so devalued that it
seems a tolerable burden to allow the police to secure their safety at any
cost. Even the star defense witness Fyfe seems to think this intolerable.
But not critical thinker Jim Sleeper--isn't he the boyfriend or husband of
Harvard political theorist Seyla Benhabib?

Sleeper thinks it's silly in a  post racist age that minorities should be
worried about a profiling police department when they are many times more
likely to die at the hands of a lumpen criminal. Stanley Crouch can always
be counted on to give his imprimatur to such dismissiveness of anti racism.
But police profiling and this Guilani protocol don't make people any
safer; it compounds the horrors of daily life. And the state announces to
the nation the worthlessness of black life--the police could not be
convicted on any crime *at all*!  Sleeper obviously doesn't think this is
at all  the message of the verdict.I wish he were only deluded.

Yours, Rakesh