Experiences of racism linked to adult-onset asthma in African-American women

Science Daily, Aug. 15, 2013

According to a new study from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University, African-American women who reported more frequent experiences of racism had a greater likelihood of adult-onset asthma compared to women who reported less frequent experiences.

The study, which currently appears on-line in the journal Chest, was led by Patricia Coogan, DSc, senior epidemiologist at SEC and research professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health.

This study followed 38,142 African-American women, all of whom are participants in the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS), between 1997 and 2011. They completed health questionnaires every two years. In 1997 and 2009 they provided information on their experiences of "everyday" racism, like poor service in stores or restaurants, and "lifetime" racism, which was discrimination encountered on the job, in housing and by police.

The results indicate that as experiences of everyday and lifetime racism increased, the incidence of adult-onset asthma also rose, up to a 45 percent increase in women in the highest compared to the lowest category of the racism measures. Furthermore, the incidence of asthma was increased even more in women who were in the highest category of everyday racism in both 1997 and 2009, and who may have had more consistent experiences of racism over time.

"This is the first prospective study to show an association between experiences of racism and adult-onset asthma," said Coogan. "Racism is a significant stressor in the lives of African American women, and our results contribute to a growing body of evidence indicating that experiences of racism can have adverse effects on health."The hypothesized mechanism linking experiences of racism to asthma incidence is stress and its physiological consequences, particularly effects on the immune system and the airways. "Given the high prevalence of both asthma and of experiences of racism in African Americans, the association is of public health importance," she added.

How to Really End Mass Incarceration

N.Y. Times, Aug. 14, 2013

By Vanita Gupta

Washington — In 2003, I represented dozens of African-American residents in Tulia, Tex., who had been convicted after a botched drug sting. Jason Jerome Williams, a 22-year-old with no prior criminal record, had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for four sales of an eighth of an ounce of cocaine. Freddie Brookins Jr., 25, had received 20 years for a first-time offense of selling less than four grams of cocaine. Joe Moore, a 56-year-old hog farmer, had gotten 90 years for two cocaine sales totaling under five grams. Others accepted plea deals to try to avoid such lengthy prison terms.

The convictions, in 1999 and 2000, were based on the flawed testimony of an undercover officer. The prosecution offered no physical evidence of marked bills, weapons, narcotics or drug paraphernalia — things you would expect to find in a sophisticated drug ring.

It took years of advocacy by many lawyers to win their release, but this hard-fought vindication was just a flash in the pan. Starting in the 1970s, a domestic “war on crime” dominated by antidrug policies and racial profiling fueled a prison-building binge that is morally — and now financially — bankrupt. Both political parties embraced draconian policies like mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes laws and wide disparities in sentences for possession of crack versus powder cocaine. The result: by 2003, the United States had 4.6 percent of the world’s population but 22.4 percent of its prison population — even though violent crime started dropping in the 1990s. Prospects for reform looked bleak.

So I was elated when Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced on Monday that the government would commit to reducing the bloated prison population. This is without precedent: the nation’s top law enforcement official directed all federal prosecutors to exercise their discretion toward ending the relentless warehousing of inmates — the vast majority of whom are minorities — in federal prison for low-level drug crimes.

But the immediate impact will be very limited at best. First, federal inmates accounted for just 14 percent of the nation’s 1.6 million prisoners last year. Second, Mr. Holder has limited authority to enact permanent reforms without Congressional action. Third, it’s unclear how federal prosecutors will enforce his plan. To maximize its impact, the Justice Department needs to track implementation by the 93 United States attorneys around the country and hold them accountable for enforcing the policy.

For lasting national impact we need to look at the states, where most criminal defendants are sentenced. Over the past few years, a quiet revolution has been brewing in state capitals. Historically low crime rates and shrinking state coffers have led to a nascent consensus among lawmakers and advocates across the ideological spectrum that our addiction to incarceration is not sustainable, effective or humane. Republican governors in cash-strapped states have been among those leading the charge. States as varied as Texas, New York, Colorado and Michigan have passed reforms that have stabilized or significantly reduced prison populations without increasing crime.

What Mr. Holder has done is turn up the dial, lending his imprimatur to a growing sense of national urgency and moral necessity. The muted reaction to his announcement from ardent conservatives is a reflection of the shift in debate.

But this is no time to rest. Those who seek a fairer criminal justice system, unclouded by racial bias, must at a minimum demand that the government eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, which tie judges’ hands; rescind three-strikes laws, which often make no distinction between, say, armed assault and auto theft; amend “truth in sentencing” statutes, which prohibit early release for good behavior; and recalibrate drug policies, starting with decriminalization of marijuana possession and investment in substance-abuse prevention and treatment. Federal aid to state and local agencies, like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant and the Community Oriented Policing Services, must prioritize diversion and rehabilitation over arrest and incarceration.

I am not naïve about the challenge, or of the needs of crime victims. In 1992, as I was finishing high school, my 71-year-old paternal grandmother was murdered in a house robbery in Sahibabad, India. The killing remains unsolved, and the anguish it caused my family will never fade away. But in America, our criminal justice system has too often focused on vengeance and punishment (and racial suspicion) rather than on crime prevention, restitution for victims and the social and economic reintegration of released prisoners into our communities so that they do not turn to crime again.

The buildup of our prison-industrial complex was a bipartisan process that unfolded over decades, and digging ourselves out of this hole will require unlikely political alliances. (For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union is working on sentencing reform with Right on Crime, a conservative initiative, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization whose stances on immigration, voting and other civil rights policies we are fighting tooth and nail.) And where there is a lack of political will, we need to bring litigation of the kind that drove down prison populations in California and New Jersey and organize to make our voices heard.

The work ahead is daunting, but Mr. Holder’s announcement holds out hope that we have crossed a threshold, that there is no longer any serious argument about whether there is a problem with criminal justice in America. It’s sad it took so long for this moment to arrive — and that the impetus has come as much from budget pressures as from concerns about justice — but we need to seize it.

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Vanita Gupta is a deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Racial Profiling Lives On

N.Y. Times, Aug. 14, 2013

By Devon W. Carbado, Cheryl I. Harris, and Kimberlé W. Crenshaw

Los Angeles — The historic ruling by Judge Shira A. Scheindlin that the stop-and-frisk practices of the New York Police Department violate the Constitution is being applauded as a major victory against unreasonable policing.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, meanwhile, is bitterly disappointed. “This is a very dangerous decision made by a judge who I think does not understand how policing works,” he said after the decision was handed down Monday.

But if unrestrained policing is, for Mr. Bloomberg, policing that works, it turns out that he can still have it. The ruling by Judge Scheindlin, of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, does nothing to disrupt the authority the Supreme Court has given police officers to target African-Americans and Latinos with little or no basis. Despite the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of that provision gives the police frighteningly wide discretion to follow, stop, question, frisk and employ excessive force against African-Americans and Latinos who have shown virtually no indication of wrongdoing.

That might sound hyperbolic. But consider these 10 actions a hypothetical Officer Bloomberg could still take against a hypothetical black man, Tony.

First, Officer Bloomberg can follow Tony without any hint that Tony had done anything wrong. The officer could ask: “What’s your name? What are you doing here? What have you got in the bag? May I see some identification?” The Supreme Court would rule that because the suspect was free to walk away, the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply.

Officer Bloomberg could ask Tony for permission to search his person or his belongings. He would not be required to tell Tony that he has the right to refuse consent or walk away — the Supreme Court has held that people do not have a right to know that they can say no to an officer’s request to conduct a search.

Despite this week’s decision, Officer Bloomberg could stop and frisk Tony for weapons based on the officer’s “reasonable suspicion” — a standard the Supreme Court defines as more than a hunch but less than probable cause. Nothing in Judge Scheindlin’s opinion challenges this standard, one that is relatively easy for the police to meet.

For example, the Supreme Court has made clear that simply being in a “high crime” (which often means a predominantly black or Latino) area can be a factor in determining whether a person is armed and dangerous.

And suppose Tony ran away upon seeing Officer Bloomberg? The officer would be free to chase Tony, even if he had no reason to believe that Tony had violated any law. The Supreme Court has ruled that people who are chased and captured by the police are not “seized” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

Moreover, Tony’s running away would be counted in determining reasonable suspicion, and if he fled in a “high crime” area, the standard would likely be met.

This all assumes Tony was on foot. If he was driving, Officer Bloomberg could easily stop and arrest him if he had probable cause that Tony had committed a traffic infraction, no matter how minor. Even if Officer Bloomberg specifically targeted Tony for arrest because he was black, the Fourth Amendment is not a bar, as long as probable cause exists.

If Tony were a Latino, Officer Bloomberg could argue that Tony “looked Mexican,” and therefore believed that Tony was undocumented. Under a 1975 Supreme Court decision that remains good law, apparent Mexican ancestry can be a factor in determining whether a person is undocumented. Lots of local police departments, not just those in Arizona, regularly take race into account in enforcing immigration laws.

Upon arrest, no matter how minor the charge, Officer Bloomberg could handcuff Tony, conduct a full search of his person and haul him off to the police station.

In each of the preceding examples, Officer Bloomberg could successfully argue that he did not impermissibly rely on race. In immigration enforcement, using race is permitted, and the Supreme Court has largely ignored the role of race in ordinary policing.

Finally, even if Tony, like Rodney G. King or Oscar Grant III, didn’t resist, but was beaten or shot and killed by Officer Bloomberg, the likelihood of winning an excessive-force claim would be difficult. Courts and jurors defer to police judgments, even if those judgments are inflected by racial stereotypes that inevitably render an unarmed black man more dangerous than an armed policeman.

None of this is to say that Judge Scheindlin’s ruling is unimportant. But she was ruling on a particular policy. The victory leaves in place a higher body of law, Supreme Court doctrine, that continues to expose African-Americans and Latinos to surveillance, harassment, violence — and death.

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Devon W. Carbado and Cheryl I. Harris are law professors at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw is a law professor there and at Columbia University.

© 2013 New York Times

Why “Stop & Frisk” Matters, Even If You Don’t Live in New York

Atlantic Mag, Aug. 13, 2013

by Andrew Cohen

If you don’t live in or near New York City, it’s easy not to care about the controversial "stop and frisk" policy its police have implemented there. If you are a tourist visiting Manhattan, for example, the chances that you will be stopped and frisked on a public street are more than remote. If you are someone who frequently travels to the city for business, you aren’t likely to go near a "high crime area" that often triggers these police stops. You enjoy the security the police say these practices bring — why would you look behind the curtain to understand how?

Oh, and it helps, measurably, if you are white. If you are white in New York City, or if you are a white person visiting the city for a day or a week or a year, your chances of being stopped and frisked are far lower than if you are a person of color. So this is one of those stories that means far more to the people affected by a government policy than it does to anyone else — a story that cries out for the type of racial and ethnic and regional empathy that, let’s face it, most people cannot or will not muster on behalf of strangers.

It’s also easy not to want to spend the time in the middle of August reading a 198-page judicial opinion written by a federal trial judge. But in this case, you should make the time. Everyone in America, white or black, urban or rural, Democrat or Republican, should take the time. Because U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin has just written a ruling about New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy that goes beyond the city, its policies, and its constitutional law to the essence of the debate about law and order, crime and punishment. It’s not just about the tension between liberty and security — it’s about simple government competence.

Do, in other words, what so many public officials did not do Monday before pronouncing the opinion right or wrong — read it for yourself, all of it, twice if you must, to understand both what Judge Scheindlin did and did not do:

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/frisk-op.pdf

Only then will you be able to understand the magnitude of the NYPD’s failure as well as the opportunity this turning point provides. Despite the hysteria offered by city officials, there is room in New York City, and in this ruling, for a better, smarter, fairer stop-and-frisk policy; the only obstacle to it now is the unremitting pride and stubbornness of the men defending what is essentially indefensible as a matter of law or fact.

So what exactly is Mayor Michael Bloomberg defending? A racially discriminatory police policy he and his tribunes tolerated with "deliberate indifference" to its unconstitutional applications? Overwhelming evidence of shoddy training and management practices within the police department? With their Chicken Little reaction to the ruling — murder and mayhem are on the way now that we aren’t stopping and frisking minorities! — city officials are purposefully avoiding the part of Judge Scheindlin’s ruling they really can do something about.

It seems to me that pages 11 and 12 of the judge’s ruling form the heart of the non-racial case against New York City’s stop-and-frisk practices. It turns out that they aren’t just intentional acts of racial discrimination or humiliating to the millions of people caught up in them. They also represent terribly inefficient police practices. Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly shouldn’t be angry that a judge has exposed these sad truths about police tactics — they should be terribly embarrassed. It’s the taxpayers who pay for all this who should be angry:

As early as 1999, a report from New York’s Attorney General placed the City on notice that stops and frisks were being conducted in a racially skewed manner. Nothing was done in response. In the years following this report, pressure was placed on supervisors to increase the number of stops. Evidence at trial revealed that officers have been pressured to make a certain number of stops and risk negative consequences if they fail to achieve the goal.

Without a system to ensure that stops are justified, such pressure is a predictable formula for producing unconstitutional stops. As one high ranking police official noted in 2010, this pressure, without a comparable emphasis on ensuring that the activities are legally justified, "could result in an officer taking enforcement action for the purpose of meeting a quota rather than because a violation of the law has occurred."

In addition, the evidence at trial revealed that the NYPD has an unwritten policy of targeting "the right people" for stops. In practice, the policy encourages the targeting of young black and Hispanic men based on their prevalence in local crime complaints. This is a form of racial profiling. While a person’s race may be important if it fits the description of a particular crime suspect, it is impermissible to subject all members of a racially defined group to heightened police enforcement because some members of that group are criminals The Equal Protection Clause does not permit race-based suspicion.

Much evidence was introduced regarding inadequate monitoring and supervision of unconstitutional stops. Supervisors routinely review the productivity of officers, but do not review the facts of a stop to determine whether it was legally warranted. Nor do supervisors ensure that an officer has made a proper record of a stop so that it can be reviewed for constitutionality. Deficiencies were also shown in the training of officers with respect to stop and frisk and in the disciplining of officers when they were found to have made a bad stop or frisk. Despite the mounting evidence that many bad stops were made, that officers failed to make adequate records of stops, and that discipline was spotty or non-existent, little has been done to improve the situation.

One example of poor training is particularly telling. Two officers testified to their understanding of the term "furtive movements." One explained that "furtive movement is a very broad concept," and could include a person "changing direction," "walking in a certain way," "[a]cting a little suspicious," "making a movement that is not regular," being "very fidgety," "going in and out of his pocket," "going in and out of a location," "looking back and forth constantly," "looking over their shoulder," "adjusting their hip or their belt," "moving in and out of a car too quickly," "[t]urning a part of their body away from you," "[g]rabbing at a certain pocket or something at their waist," "getting a little nervous, maybe shaking," and "stutter[ing]."

Another officer explained that "usually" a furtive movement is someone hanging out in front of [a] building, sitting on the benches or something like that" and then making a "quick movement," such as "bending down and quickly standing back up," "going inside the lobby. . . and then quickly coming back out," or "all of a sudden becom[ing] very nervous, very aware." If officers believe that the behavior described above constitutes furtive movement that justifies a stop, then it is no surprise that stops so rarely produce evidence of criminal activity.

The police say that all of this nonsense works. Let’s assume, for this moment alone, that it does. What the judge is really saying here is this discriminatory stop-and-frisk policy the city is trying so hard to defend is actually one giant bluff — an enormously arbitrary and capricious attempt to scare a relatively small number of people away from criminal conduct by inconveniencing a great many people (but of course not a great many people who have a great deal of political and economic power within the city). Whether it worked or not, such a policy would be legally valid if it humiliated blacks and whites evenly. But clearly it doesn’t.

Instead of lamenting Judge Scheindlin’s ruling or promising quickly to appeal it, Bloomberg and Kelly and company ought to be pledging to fix the widespread "inadequate monitoring and supervision" of police officers who are implementing the policy. Instead of arguing that the city will become Gotham if these policies are made more efficient and less discriminatory, they should accept the reasonable remedies the judge has suggested, pledging even to go beyond what she proposes to make these stops more accurate, more fair, and more justifiable.

The most storied and prominent police force in the nation has just been caught implementing a racially discriminatory policy by means of arbitrary tactics undertaken without adequate monitoring or supervision. That’s not just a constitutional scandal in one city– it’s a scandal that could take place whenever and wherever the police are willing to take shortcuts in the name of security. That’s why New York City’s trouble today is a national story — and why you should care about it even if you are white and live a thousand miles from the Empire State Building.

Turning unemployed Americans into very profitable prisoners is a booming business.

Alternet, Aug. 13, 2013

By Thom Hartmann

What does America do when she no longer needs her slaves or surplus workers?

The 1880’s reconstruction era was the first time in our history that America had seen a large surplus of non-white labor.

In the 1870’s many former slaves were integrated into the labor force, but white backlash in the 1880’s and 1890’s led to a permanent underclass through nearly a century of “separate but equal.”

For very different reasons, there was a similar surplus of white labor in the early 1930’s.

Regardless of race, capitalism runs in cycles: It’s called “the business cycle.” There are uptimes when there are jobs for everybody, the labor market is tight, and pay rises.

Then there are downtimes when the economy has a surplus of workers, falling wages, and a high level of unemployment.

We saw this cycle during the boom-and-bust of the roaring 20’s and the stock market crash and Great Depression of the 1930’s. After the crash, nearly a third of American workers couldn’t find a job, and the numbers were even worse in minority communities.

Our economy couldn’t put them to work, because capitalism failed.

So what do you do with all of those extra workers who can’t find a job?

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, that very question was the subject of a clear and open disagreement between Democrats and Republicans.

Herbert Hoover and the Republicans believed that when capitalism fails and you have high unemployment, you do nothing. You wait for the “free market” to magically fix things, and for capitalism to right the ship.

FDR and the Democrats believed that the Republican’s benign indifference was the completely wrong approach. Instead, FDR said that it’s the responsibility of government to put people back to work during times of high unemployment.

He enacted his New Deal. He put Americans back to work planting trees and forests, building schools, and improving the nation’s infrastructure. Twelve million Americans who’d been unemployed for years went back to work, and capitalism was rebooted in America.

For much of the 20th century, Hoover’s and FDR’s approaches represented the two sides of the debate about what to do with surplus workers.

Up until 1980, Republicans said you waited for the market to absorb the surplus of workers, while Democrats said you proactively used the powers of government to put Americans back to work.

But then Ronald Reagan came to Washington, and everything changed.

When Reagan stepped foot in the White House, he said the job of the government was not just to ignore a surplus of workers, but to figure out ways to make a buck off of them. Reagan lived by the notion that profit was king. If America’s businesspeople always and only did whatever made them the most money, that would magically cure all ills with supply-side fairy dust.

He fundamentally changed the way that we deal with surplus workers. Instead of ignoring them, or having the government put them to work, there was now a third option.

Make a profit off of them.

There are a variety of ways capitalists make a profit off of poor and unemployed people, from payday lenders, to “rent to own” furniture stores, to the most radical of them all: Turn them into prisoners.

That latter is the most radical, and has turned out to be the most profitable for America’s capitalists.

It’s almost elegant in its simplicity.

Turn unemployed Americans into criminals. Track them, punish them for any crime possible, take away their rights and throw them into for-profit prisons.

Once thrown inside a for-profit prison, an inmate needs food, housing, healthcare and other services. This means huge profits for capitalists. They’re raking in tens of thousands of dollars per prisoner per year – hundreds of percent more than Roosevelt paid to simply put them back to work.

And turning unemployed Americans into very profitable prisoners is a booming business.

From the beginning of America until 1980, the incarceration rate in America remained fairly steady. While Nixon declaring his war on drugs in 1971 did slightly increase incarceration in the United States, the increase was nothing drastic.

But then Reagan came to Washington, and his buddies realized they could make a buck off of unemployed Americans.

The nation’s incarceration rate took off like a rocket.

Thanks to Reagan elevating profit to a religion, between 1980 and 2009, the state and federal prison population in the U.S. increased by over 700 percent.

Since the for-profit prison industry started aggressively buying Congressmen 15 years ago, the number of people thrown into for-profit prisons has exploded.

And Americans sitting in jail make a very exploitable, very profitable, slave-like labor force.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the minimum wage for a prisoner who works in the UNICOR program, the federal government’s prison industries program, is 23 cents an hour. The maximum UNICOR wage is $1.15 an hour.

Across all state prisons, the average minimum wage for prisoners for non-industrial work is 93 cents per hour.

And some states, like Georgia and Texas, are completely upfront about their slave-labor camps. They pay absolutely nothing to prisoners.

Because the Reagan Revolution changed America’s value system, we stopped asking, “What’s the best way to deal with surplus workers?”

Instead, we started asking, “How can we make the most money off surplus workers?”

The logical answer was a return to slavery, and it has been embraced by capitalists with a vengeance.

And that is insane brutality.

Hillary Clinton Returns to Political Life

N.Y. Times, Aug. 13, 2013

By David Firestone

Hillary Clinton seized upon exactly the right issues in her return to political life this week, issuing a firm defense of voting rights Monday in a speech to the American Bar Association. The danger is that she will see this as a box that’s been checked, an obligation addressed, and will then move on to other subjects in a policy parade.

That would be a mistake, because there is no graver issue at the moment than the ability of one political party to diminish the voting power of another, through outright abuse or through financial domination. Underlying all the gridlock holding back progress on the economy, on education, on the environment and so many other matters are abuses of the electoral system: The gerrymandering of districts to create safe seats for incumbents, which vastly magnifies the power of the right. The use of unlimited, undisclosed money to give an outsized voice to corporations and the rich of both parties. And the systematic reduction in ballot access for minorities, the poor, students, and the elderly, all designed to reduce Democratic turnout.

Ms. Clinton talked mostly about the latter issue, condemning the Supreme Court for overturning part of the Voting Rights Act and criticizing state governments (largely dominated by Republicans) that have imposed unnecessary voter ID laws and cut back on programs that made it easier for a wider variety of people to vote.

“Anyone who says racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention,” she said, adding: “Our government cannot fully represent the people unless it has been fairly elected by them.”

She attacked what she called the “phantom epidemic of voter ID fraud,” and did so on the same day that the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against what may be the harshest anti-voter law in the country, signed into law a few hours earlier by Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina.

But there is so much more to say, and so many other abuses. Kansas, for example, is refusing to register thousands of people who have not complied with a blatantly illegal proof-of-citizenship requirement that goes far beyond federal standards for registration. (The ACLU will probably have to file suit there, too, assuming the federal government does not.) Campaign finance issues deserve a speech just as impassioned as the one on voting rights, and it will be interesting to see if Ms. Clinton devotes more time to the subject than President Obama has.

Building a campaign around these kinds of issues particularly non-partisan redistricting and easy registration — has always been seen as too narrow and too wonky for a major candidate. But Ms. Clinton’s political future, not to mention the health of her party and her country, depend on someone taking them on and not letting go. And should Ms. Clinton succeed Mr. Obama, she will encounter precisely the same kind of blanket opposition in the House unless she starts trying to change it now.

She can start by using her popularity to urge greater turnout in next year’s midterm elections and in off-year state elections. The North Carolina law would never have passed if more people had paid attention and turned out in state elections. And once people begin fighting ballot restrictions and exercising their power at the state level, voting might just become a habit.

© 2013 The New York Times