Good Letter

A friend of mine named Mike has a blog called Thought Sifter for which he writes excellent, if infrequent, posts. His latest is a letter he wrote to an activist progressive group in response to a solicitation he received from them which, he says, was so bad that he couldn't help responding.

Because he makes a number of important points in the letter, I requested and received permission to reproduce his missive in full. Here it is:

Dear Sir,

I don't normally respond to group, solicitation emails, but the one I received from you for the Rural Utah Project on April 22 compelled me to write to you personally.

I work both in education and in the criminal justice system. I also have an interracial family and can say--sadly but confidently--that I have personally experienced the impact of genuine racism. I cite these points about myself because each of them has shaped my perspective on the issues you allude to in the email.

Along with many other people, I have been increasingly disturbed by the state of public discourse in our culture on the most significant moral and political concerns of our day. The age-old practice of argumentation--that is of thoughtfully explaining why one believes his or her view to be right and then carefully listening to a well reasoned critique--is essentially extinct in American culture.

The standard mode of communication when it comes to things like criminal justice, race relations, politics, and religion, is to bypass the thought process altogether with empty but emotionally charged catch phrases and buzzwords which are not used to clarify what is true but to galvanize the faithful and reinforce their allegiance to the cause.

This is a pervasive and deeply exasperating problem, and your email is one of the clearest examples of this that I've seen.

For example, you say, "This is how we can celebrate the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin and simultaneously call for the end of mass incarceration. It’s how we call this accountability but not justice."

"Celebrate" is an inappropriate word to apply to the George Floyd/Derek Chauvin case. We should appreciate that Chauvin was held accountable for his crime, but the fact that Chauvin was a murderous cop and the fact that George Floyd was a drug-addicted criminal are both tragedies, neither of which should be celebrated.

Also, your point that Chauvin's conviction is "accountability but not justice" shows that, as so often seems to be the case, there is no real end point to your cause; rather, the cause is an end in itself. The idea that a conviction on all charges is not considered an example of justice to many who identify as "progressive" shows that their main interest is in being progressive rather than progressing toward a particular goal.

You also "call for the end of mass incarceration." This is a nonsense statement. "Mass incarceration" means almost nothing. It is a good example of a content-free buzzword used in place of a thought.

I am generally familiar with the demographics of the incarcerated population. In the prison where I work, there is a large percentage of Latino inmates, many of whom are gang members and are in prison because they bludgeoned, stabbed, or shot someone, or were involved in trafficking large amounts of weapons or narcotics. And, as is the case with the "mass" number of people in prison, many were sentenced only after committing multiple offenses.

The prison also has a significant number of old white men, many of whom were incarcerated because they raped or sexually molested young girls.

With this in mind, I'm curious how a decrease in "mass incarceration" would work? In the pursuit of anti-racism, should there be a moratorium on sentencing Latino gang members for stabbing or shooting someone until their numbers in prison are below a "mass" level?

I'm assuming the large number of old white men in prison for child molestation isn't relevant to the problem of mass incarceration since they are already guilty of being white. But wouldn't it be considered "agism" if too many are kept in prison after a certain age?

Incarceration, mass or otherwise, is what happens to individuals of all races for committing serious (and usually multiple) crimes. The best way to combat mass incarceration is to get that mass of potential criminals to refrain from committing crimes.

If your response to this is, "You don't understand. It's different for minorities," then I would encourage you not to have such a low view of minorities. People who grow up in disadvantaged situations still have the dignity of making choices.

There are few ideas more degrading to another person than to imply that he or she is only a passive product of a cultural environment with no capacity to make independent decisions.

In light of these concerns, I implore you to please, please stop contributing to the epidemic of facile, partisan chest-beating. Please stop the emotional fly-over of the complex array of facts on the ground.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid his plea is likely to fall on deaf ears. People committed to promoting an agenda often lack a commitment to truth and accuracy. Their idea of a true statement is one which is helpful in promoting their agenda, and for such people objective facts are at best a nuisance.