Ferguson’s government was run like a racket
March 6, 2015 4:38 PM Subscribe
Ta-Nehisi Coates is combing through the Department of Justice report on racism in Ferguson and finding evidence that the local government saw its inhabitants, who were mostly African Americans as a cash cow to be milked through fines and tickets.
Or, perhaps more precisely, bled through fines and tickets. When the police chief reported that revenue from fines “beat our next biggest month in the last four years,” the city manager replied, “Wonderful!” As Coates suggests, this is a kind of legalized plunder. His scathing analysis recalls Charles Tilly’s classic article on “War-Making and State-Making As Organized Crime[pdf].”
VOX: Read the full, shocking Department of Justice report on racism in the Ferguson PD
Ta-Nehisi Coates Twitter, where he has posted some of his findings.
Coates: "Ferguson Police Report is a record of plunder made legal. In other words, it fits right in with the history of this country."
Coates: "Important to understand Ferguson Report not as an aberration, but how white supremacy actually works."
Coates in the Atlantic: The Gangsters of Ferguson
Or, perhaps more precisely, bled through fines and tickets. When the police chief reported that revenue from fines “beat our next biggest month in the last four years,” the city manager replied, “Wonderful!” As Coates suggests, this is a kind of legalized plunder. His scathing analysis recalls Charles Tilly’s classic article on “War-Making and State-Making As Organized Crime[pdf].”
VOX: Read the full, shocking Department of Justice report on racism in the Ferguson PD
Ta-Nehisi Coates Twitter, where he has posted some of his findings.
Coates: "Ferguson Police Report is a record of plunder made legal. In other words, it fits right in with the history of this country."
Coates: "Important to understand Ferguson Report not as an aberration, but how white supremacy actually works."
Coates in the Atlantic: The Gangsters of Ferguson
One should understand that the Justice Department did not simply find indirect evidence of unintentionally racist practices which harm black people, but "discriminatory intent”—that is to say willful racism aimed to generate cash. Justice in Ferguson is not a matter of "racism without racists," but racism with racists so secure, so proud, so brazen that they used their government emails to flaunt it.
The emails including "jokes" depicting President Obama as a chimp, mocking how black people talk ("I be so glad that dis be my last child support payment!"), depicting blacks as criminals, welfare recipients, unemployed, lazy, and having "no frigging clue who their Daddies are.” This humor—given the imprimatur of government email—resulted in neither reprimand, nor protest, nor even a polite request to refrain from reoffending. "Instead," according to the report, "the emails were usually forwarded along to others."
This post was deleted for the following reason: Double. I love T-NC's work, but I think this would work better as comments in the existing thread from two days ago. -- mathowie
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posted by standardasparagus at 4:41 PM on March 6, 2015