A New Orleans shopkeeper
reports a robbery to police.
Die Zeit, Germany
Warts and All, 'No Tolerance' Policing Has Made America Much Less Segregated
"Police
conduct is especially ruthless. Police intervene first and ask questions later.
For Europeans, this often leaves the impression that the United States has
failed as a multicultural society. But the opposite is the case. This police
force is the glue that holds multicultural America together."
Slain filmmaker Helen Hill: The murder of the director and social activist in 2007 is the exception that proves the rule: America today is much safer - particularly but not only - for Whites.
Helen Hill was a leftist
filmmaker. She lived in New Orleans with her husband Paul, a doctor who felt
that it was his duty to serve the poor. Helen was murdered by a burglar she
surprised one morning. Paul, who carried the couple’s baby in his arms, barely
survived [after being shot three times by the intruder].
In New Orleans, dozens of
people are murdered every year. Most of the victims are young Black men who die
in gang wars. But it was the violence inflicted on Helen Hill that plunged the
city into a rage. Thousands demonstrated for more police. Her murder was an
affront against the unwritten rules of American society: Helen and Paul lived
in a Black neighborhood - and Helen’s killer was Black. They were the area's only
White couple.
This murder also made
headlines because it is the exception to the rule. America today is in fact
relatively safe. In many cities the murder rate has declined by as much as a
third over recent decades. In New York alone, the number of murders fell from
over 2,000 in 1990 to roughly 500 today. And 90 percent of today's murders
involve family members and acquaintances. Murders of strangers in the street or
in subways are extremely rare in New York. Across the nation as well, the
majority of crime victims are either Black or Hispanic gang members who shoot one
another, or Black and Hispanic children murdered by their fathers.
With the drop in crime rates,
America has been functioning much better as a multicultural society than it did
in the sixties and seventies. While there is (marginal) hostility toward
Muslims - which is due to wars in the Middle East, Muslims in the U.S. are
generally well-integrated and successful. while there are complaints about Hispanic communities being not integrated enough, those are most likely temporary.
America is similar to Europe
in its demographic composition: A Caucasian majority with a darker-skinned
minority (a somewhat larger group than in Europe). But while the minority in
Europe consists of immigrants, in the U.S. the situation is reversed. Here, the
immigrant hierarchy is turned on its head. The immigrants who today govern the
country, the majority of whom immigrated between 1880 and 1924, are White
Europeans. On the other hand, those with darker-skin usually belong to the indigenous
population or are descended from Black slaves who arrived before 1807, when the slave trade [in
Europe] was abolished.
And that’s how White
Americans see themselves: even if they were born in Europe - as the “real”
Americans. By contrast, many young African-American men, although their
ancestors came to America centuries ago, feel almost like “emotional
immigrants.” Like many Muslim immigrants in the French suburbs or the troubled
neighborhoods of German cities, they contribute more than average to the unemployment
figures, lead in terms of crime statistics and do not identify with a country
from which they feel excluded.
An
LA gang member sports a new tattoo: America's 'No Tolerance'
criminal justice policies have reduced crime
dramatically across the
nation. But are these methods in keeping with the protections
of
individual rights provided for under the U.S. Constitution?
Not only has America become “Whiter”
during the course of its history, but the immigrants who weren't initially considered
"White" fought to be considered such: First it was the Irish, then
the Poles, then the Southern Italians and finally the Jews. The state had to
help them assimilate to such an extent that immigrants were forced to adopt
anglicized names, and languages other than English, like German, were
periodically banned. But Blacks were not only excluded from this forced
assimilation, they were subjected to a legalized racial segregation that
existed since slavery ended - in the Army, in schools, in factories and in churches.
It was not until the civil rights
movement, from 1948 and 1967, that legal segregation was repealed.
Desegregation was paid for
with hundreds of deaths; the federal government even sent troops to escort
Black children into White schools. But it wasn’t until the “rollback” of the
Reagan years that integration became acceptable to Whites as well. The reasons
for this were threefold: The virtual abolition of social welfare; the extensive
privatization of schools; and as mentioned earlier; the extremely successful battle
against crime in the inner cities.
When Reagan publicly
denounced “welfare queens,” he was referring to Black women who illegally collect
welfare. This was acceptable to the White majority. Whites were also supportive
under Clinton, when his administration combined social welfare with a requirement
to work. A similar trend existed in the schools. Busing (White children were
bused to Black schools and vice versa) led to the near total-flight of Whites
from the public school system and subsequently to a drain in funding. In
response, most states took a step back: today, communities support “charter
schools,” which are semi-public schools children can choose like private
schools.
Ultimately, the core of U.S.
integration is its zero-tolerance policy toward criminals, which was advocated
by New York Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani (or actually, more by his police commissioner, William Bratton). In
essence, it was about making inner cities in the most ethnically-diverse cities
- their public parks, squares and transportation - more habitable for the White
middle class by the massive augmenting of police and judicial power. Whites who
had lived there in the sixties and seventies fled in droves for the suburbs.
"Zero-tolerance"
involves not only harsh penalties for minor infractions and first-time
offenders, but also quick judicial rulings. But even critics - and there are
many - cannot deny that in the end it was a success. And that success is evident
not only in the crime figures, but in the prevailing coexistence of Blacks and Whites
(and Hispanics).
Large cities where police
intervention is particularly effective are far less segregated today then they
once were. And that's not just on paper. You can see it in the streets,
restaurants, theaters and even (at least partially) in the churches. That is
particularly true in New York; but to a lesser extent Los Angeles, Chicago, or
Boston. By contrast, in cities like Washington D.C., Detroit or New Orleans,
where police are ineffective and corrupt, there isn't only more crime but more
segregation. And the proportion of Whites that have fled to gated communities
or suburbs is much higher.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Of course, the American
system also has its disadvantages: A large proportion of the population - one percent
of adults, an increase of two million people - sit in prison thanks to "No
Tolerance," many for drug violations. There are a disproportionate number
of Black men amongst them. Punished particularly severely, the legal system is
still prejudiced against them.
Although it isn't all
one-sided: even crimes against Blacks or other ethnic minorities are classified
as "hate crimes" and perpetrators are severely punished.
Particularly in New York,
police conduct is especially ruthless. Police intervene first and ask questions
later. For Europeans, this often leaves the impression that the United States
has failed as a multicultural society. But the opposite is the case. This
police force is the glue that holds multicultural America together.
*Dr. Eva Schweitzer, a
long-time U.S. and New York correspondent for Die Zeit, is the founder of Berlinica, a publishing company based in New
York focused on the city of Berlin.
