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Poe and Tate are Dead.... Long Live Poe and Tate - The 20th Anniversary of a Classic and the Rise of Human Rights/Repression Scholarship

5/30/2015

Roughly 20 years ago the rigorous study of human rights violation/state repression got a huge shot in the arm (no pun intended). At that time, a piece by Steve(n) Poe and C. Neal Tate (1994) entitled "Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s: A Global Analysis" was published in what most classify as the premier journal in political science - the American Political Science Review. Of course, there were pieces before this was published but, admittedly, in somewhat less prestigious venues. For example, Neil Mitchell and James McCormick (1988) had a piece in World Politics, which was probably the most prestigious publication up until that time, and there were pieces in the equally important but somewhat less visible specialty journals (e.g., Conway Henderson's piece in the Journal of Conflict Resolution).

Poe and Tate or P&T was significant in many ways:

1) it brought more visibility to a topic that was essentially in its infancy with a few individuals engaged in this work;

2) it employed a sophisticated methodology developed by Neil Beck and Jonathan Katz (presented in a conference paper) to a relatively newish database - the Political Terror Scale; and,

3) it was a much deserved victory lap for the calm, unassuming Steve Poe. (I did not know Neal until much later but never quite as well as I knew his co-author.)

Up to P&T Steve had been cranking it out in the trenches for a while, putting forward some of the most rigorous work on the impact of human rights on US aid. This was perfect for Steve - he was always interested in trying to see how things worked and how they could be improved. He had no problem identifying that this was his wish. This is why he published so much in the Human Rights Quarterly - a journal not as prestigious as the APSR but one he felt was closer to the community that actually tried to do something in the world.

Now, P&T wasn't fabulous (I've perhaps only read and critiqued one other piece as much - Fearon and Laitin [2003]). This should be no surprise. Academics could find wrinkles in heaven/nirvana, after all. There was kind of an a-theoretical vibe to the piece which hit many in the field at the time. Steve attempted to address this limitation later and, to be clear, this was not just a problem for the study of human rights and state repression - by a long shot. Most areas in conflict/violence/peace studies are working out of our structuralist/highly aggregated orientations to address the multi-level as well as dynamic processes presented within the subnational/disaggegated turn.

Truth be told, my interaction with Poe and Tate actually went back a little before P&T. As a newly minted grad student (just finishing up) I went to a panel at the American Political Science Association annual meeting where the paper was being presented. I was less a scholar at that point than the pit bull that grad students often become when they take aim at something. I wanted to make a mark to interact, overcome my public school identity and get in on the ground floor of what was going on. I downloaded everyone's paper (T. David Mason might have been on that panel too now that I think of it), I read them very carefully, worked out my remarks ahead of time and when the discussant was done (which took way too long), I went after them. What I said at the time was irrelevant. The most relevant point to the current entry was that Steve heard me and responded, but even more importantly (and this was very Steve), he "saw" me - the better me, the me that I could be, the me that all scholars on human rights/repression could be. He did not tell me this. No, he guided me there by example (with his Quaker-like calm and biting wit) - in every conversation, in every draft he read, in every kind as well as supportive engagement we ever had. He's still there, doing the same - now internalized.

I recall that after Steve passed there was a roundtable to talk about what would be a fitting remembrance for him as well as a discussion in the Human Rights business meeting (my more proximate thoughts are here). I was hoping that our remembrance would not take the form of a paper or book award because this is seemingly what everyone does and he demanded so much more. Of course, this is what the room came up with. I said that we should at least include a presentation on human rights to an undergrad class or a high school club along with the award. This was something that Steve would have liked. Indeed, I never saw anyone as engaged with their students (except perhaps Will Moore). The award was put forward and I dedicated my webpage (physical embodiment of my life's work) to Steve (and Chuck Tilly).

In this spirit and in remembrance of Steve, at the 20 year anniversary of his most important piece, I thought it would be appropriate to briefly talk about the study of human rights and state repression looking at the same journal that P&T was published in.

By any stretch of the imagination, Steve would be proud and his presence is very much felt, twenty years later. In many ways, the future is very bright and as Parliament Funkadelic reminds us: "Everyone's got a Little Light Under the Sun". Published in 2014 alone were 2 pieces in the APSR, which was important because essentially nothing relevant to the topic was published following P&T (Barbara Harff had an important piece in 2003 but she saw her work as more connected to genocide than repression).

One of the two pieces was published by one of Steve's undergrads - Christopher Fariss, entitled "Respect for Human Rights has Improved Over Time: Modeling the Changing Standard of Accountability". This piece stands out in numerous ways. In contrast to just using the Political Terror Scale as Poe and Tate had done, this work integrates various measures of human rights violation together in order to determine whether repression has gotten better or worse, controlling for the improvement in monitoring agencies. Spoiler alert: Things have gotten better. The application of the new methodology with the sensitivity to addressing an important real world problem would have been applauded by Steve. That this was done by one of his former students would have further pleased him.

Now, while pleased, Steve would be pushing on what explained the improvement. We are not quite sure why repression has gone down and we have not collectively reflected upon this in any detail as the civil warification of conflict and violence studies has essentially crowded out discussion of other phenomena. Is the decline noted by Fariss attributed to the same factors highlighted by Pinker and Goldstein or something else? We don't know. Clearly, distinct phenomena are involved. Steve helps point the way. One of Steve's last papers started to push on the theoretical explanation for state repression drawing on some work by Most and Starr. In this regard, Fariss' paper provides a nice puzzle but not yet the answer.

Danny Hill and Zachary Jones' paper "An Empirical Evaluation of Explanations for State Repression _" similarly fits in with something the Poe (and most likely Tate) would have liked. This piece represents a culmination of 20 years worth of research in an effort to sift through the now dozens of pieces being produced by an even greater number of scholars to see what we know. Employing an equally sophisticated but largely unfamiliar approach as Fariss, it is disclosed that we actually know a little about what influences state repression. For example, some of the most powerful predictors are among the most studied and widely known: civil conflict and particular aspects of democracy. Some of the most powerful predictors are seldom studied and are not as widely known: youth bulges, domestic legal institutions and state reliance on natural resource rents. Interestingly, most of the international variables discussed in the literature as well as within policy and NGO circles do not appear to matter or they matter in unanticipated ways.

The importance of domestic determinants and the instability/irrelevance of international factors might have surprised Steve a bit. He was more of an IR-human rights scholar and I think that he would have liked it if international factors mattered as these are one of the things that external actors can do to stop or lessen what horrible things governments do. This said, he would have appreciated the effort and accepted the challenge to push on this theoretically to figure out what is going on. Why is it that the more domestic variables employed within the Hill and Jones study are the best predictors of state repression? Why do international variables not do better? Beyond the article itself, this is where Steve would have and the broader community should go. We would not have gotten to this however had it not been from the stellar work of Hill and Jones, which (again) Steve would have applauded.

Are these two pieces anomalies? Are we to not see any more repression stuff for another 20 years? I would suggest that this is not the case at all. Indeed, the present glow on the field continues into the most recent year as a few more gems have been put forward. Already there have been two more pieces accepted into the APSR relevant to state repression and human rights violation. One is by Evgeny Finkel entitled "Phoenix Effect of State Repression: Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust". Another is by Emily Ritter and Courtenay Conrad entitled "Preventing and Responding to Dissent: The Observational Challenges of Explaining Strategic Repression". Both of these push the field and discussion in important ways. In a later post I will explore them in greater detail. In the meantime, I end as I began: Poe and Tate are Dead... Long Live Poe and Tate. You are deeply missed but not forgotten.

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The "Black Spring", The Likely following "Black Summer" and the Inevitable "Black Winter" - What is/is Not Going on and What is/is Not Likely to Happen Next

5/3/2015

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I was struck today by some recent stories that spoke of a "Black Spring", referencing the "Arab Spring" and the diffusion of diverse protest activities that took place there in 2010/11. This was troubling in many respects because the "Arab Spring" was not that effective at least in the short term and potentially the long term. There was some mass activity but the grievances that people had before these activities were not really addressed afterward. Indeed, one preliminary study by Will Moore was even more skeptical noting that most popular efforts did not result in democratization but increased repression.

What is also important about the Arab Spring reference is that it is now commonly associated with what was called the "Arab Winter" - the coercive backlash by governments that was prompted. Will Moore and I talked about this in some detail. This should give pause to those talking about the Black Spring because it reminds us that political authorities will more likely engage in some activities to re-assert themselves as well as re-establish some order - let's call it (yes you guessed it), the "Black Winter". The question remains how are authorities going to respond. One response could be the declaration that police will be investigated which happened recently in Baltimore (accommodation). Another response involves the establishment of curfews (repression). There will likely be discussions of investigatory committees, focus groups, town hall meetings and so forth (channeling and delaying). There might even be some talk of police reform (actual change). Perhaps all of the above.

All of this should sound familiar. We have been here before. This is one of the ways that we got back to this point (Back to the Future, yet again). Recently I talked about the Kerner Commission report (published in 1967) and perhaps the most depressing aspect of the discussion was the degree to which the problems currently being discussed were the same ones discussed in the report. What we will not likely see is a deeper, broader discussion of economic development or the lack thereof; the meaning of true political power in America; and, what tactics are most effective in bringing forward lasting social change (for the last one see the syllabus from my course "Saving the World or Wasting Time" for some good reading on this).

Interestingly, we are seemingly caught in a circle, like the seasons. Black Spring inevitably leads to Black Winter but before we get there we might just see a Black Summer. Not like a dark one with no sunlight. There will be plenty of light; perhaps a fire or two. You might not remember those references to the hot times of the late 1960s and early 1970s but when black folk got agitated back then, the summers were long, contentious and pretty destructive. We might be heading this way as the momentum for the diverse movements seems to be building. One explanation for Baltimore's seemingly quick appeasement might be avoiding this thing going into June and July.

But, what exactly is building? This I am not sure about. I am sure, however, what it is not. On Twitter I started seeing comparisons between Black Lives Matter to the black power movement but I think that attempting to find some relevance and similarities to these earlier struggles is somewhat misguided. Think about it. In Black Lives Matter, they are asking for the following:

We will seek justice for Brown’s family by petitioning for the immediate arrest of officer Darren Wilson and the dismissal of county prosecutor Robert McCullough. Groups that are part of the local Hands Up Don’t Shoot Coalition have already called for Wilson’s swift arrest, and some BLM riders also canvassed McCullough’s neighborhood as a way of raising the public’s awareness of the case.
We will help develop a network of organizations and advocates to form a national policy specifically aimed at redressing the systemic pattern of anti-black law enforcement violence in the US. The Justice Department’s new investigation into St Louis-area police departments is a good start, but it’s not enough. Our ride was endorsed by a few dozen local, regional and national organizations across the country – like the National Organization for Women (Now) and Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation – who, while maintaining different missions, have demonstrated unprecedented solidarity in response to anti-black police violence. We hope to encourage more organizations to endorse and participate in a network with a renewed purpose of conceptualizing policy recommendations.
We will also demand, through the network, that the federal government discontinue its supply of military weaponry and equipment to local law enforcement. And though Congress seems to finally be considering measures in this regard, it remains essential to monitor the demilitarization processes and the corporate sectors that financially benefit from the sale of military tools to police.
We will call on the office of US attorney general Eric Holder to release the names of all officers involved in killing black people within the last five years, both while on patrol and in custody, so they can be brought to justice – if they haven’t already.
And we will advocate for a decrease in law-enforcement spending at the local, state and federal levels and a reinvestment of that budgeted money into the black communities most devastated by poverty in order to create jobs, housing and schools. This money should be redirected to those federal departments charged with providing employment, housing and educational services.

Essentially, they are asking not to get shot and they are appealing to existing authorities to assist them while they create a network.

This clearly is not the Black Panther Program:

We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine
The Destiny Of Our Black Community.We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
We Want Full Employment For Our People.We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
We Want An End To The Robbery
By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings. We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History
And Our Role In The Present-Day Society. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People. We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense.
We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States. We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the Black community.
We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Essentially, the Panthers were arguing that there was no government (at least one that was protecting black folk) and that without this protection, they reserved the right to displace the current system and protect themselves. Black Lives Matter hints at this direction but in the final analysis they appeal to the same political authorities that are complicit with the current policies that have not yet protected black lives. Perhaps there is some nuance here with appealing to attorney general instead of more local officials but there is no clear reason to believe that this would work over the short or long term.

The Black Lives Matter movement also differs from the subject of my latest book - The Republic of New Africa (depicted below).

The Republic of New Africa not only believed that the US government was a failed state in that it could not protect African Americans but that the people of African descent had the right as well as responsibility to create their own government - institutionalizing their already segregated communities but with actual political, military, police and economic power. Here is their "Declaration of Independence":

As is clearly observable and differing from the Black Lives Matter movement, the RNA was not deferring to the US political system to do anything on their behalf accept get out of the way. The RNA was trying to build an independent political institution to create what they thought of as the "New African" (someone not just employed but doing something they loved, someone working for community not just money and someone living in a society that valued all genders, colors and classes equally). Tall order but clearly different from what the Black Lives Matter movement is asking for.

To be clear, I do not mention the differences above to downgrade the current efforts being undertaken to rid America of one of its darkest blemishes. Rather, I suggest that in order to move forward (truly forward), it is necessary for Americans to look and see where it has come from, which paths were as well as were not taken and which way it might need to go in the future. I too would like to connect the current activities to a broader historical trajectory of awareness and resistance but let's not get carried away with comparisons. Let us not also look at the current activities as if we have not seen this before. Indeed, I will dust off some old "riot"/"rebellion"/"urban disturbance" data that I have and provide some comparisons when I get a minute. In the meantime, Black Lives Matter might just be more like the I am a Man campaign than the black power movement.

Very different kind of movement. Relevant in that it also concerned discrimination and poor service delivery but more tied to labor rights than police brutality. It doesn't all fit together. A good tag line is hard to drop I suppose.

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When the Past is Present: Looking Back at Old Riots to Understand New Ones

5/1/2015

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The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner Report) put forth back in 1967 turns out to be a good place to try to understand what is taking place right now in Baltimore. Additionally, as we begin to roll into the summer months which tends to ramp up such activity (especially when police behavior does not appear to be getting better), some other American cities might be moving in this direction.

A major part of the report was a review of information emerging from 24 disorders in 23 cities. The conclusions from this work are striking terms of their similarities (Yellow indicates quotation from report, white lettering represents my commentary, blue lettering indicates quotation from some earlier work, green lettering represents hyperlink):

* The final incident before the outbreak of disorder, and the initial violence itself, generally took place in the evening or at night at a place in which it was normal for many people to be on the streets.

* Violence usually occurred almost immediately following the occurrence of the final precipitating incident, and then escalated rapidly. With but few exceptions, violence subsided during the day, and flared rapidly again at night. The night-day cycles continued through the early period of the major disorders.

* Disorder generally began with rock and bottle throwing and window breaking. Once store windows were broken, looting usually followed. (yes, I said that this study came from 1967)

* Disorder did not erupt as a result of a single "triggering" or "precipitating" incident. Instead, it was generated out of an increasingly disturbed social atmosphere, in which typically a series of tension-heightening incidents over a period of weeks or months became linked in the minds of many in the Negro community with a reservoir of underlying grievances. At some point in the mounting tension, a further incident-in itself often routine or trivial-became the breaking point and the tension spilled over into violence. (so, this should lead to discussions of what was taking place in Baltimore over time, consultations of survey data from the black community, evaluations of the black press to identify what folks were talking about and potentially a discussion with community leaders)

* "Prior" incidents, which increased tensions and ultimately led to violence, were police actions in almost half the cases; police actions were "final" incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders. (police violence is an old problem with the black community and one that should have been curbed earlier given its explicit connection to earlier riots)

* No particular control tactic was successful in every situation. The varied effectiveness of control techniques emphasizes the need for advance training, planning, adequate intelligence systems, and knowledge of the ghetto community. (interesting shift to socio-political control efforts/management as opposed to deeper discussion of root causes)

* Negotiations between Negroes--including your militants as well as older Negro leaders--and white officials concerning "terms of peace" occurred during virtually all the disorders surveyed. In many cases, these negotiations involved discussion of underlying grievances as well as the handling of the disorder by control authorities. (big difference. who were the authorities going to negotiate with. the NAACP seems largely disconnected from the black community and the militants were put in jail from the 1960s and 1970s seemingly not replaced with any organized black militant presence - linking back to an interesting article from Pam Oliver where she shows that state repression of social movements and crime control are connected to one another)

* The typical rioter was a teenager or young adult, a lifelong resident of the city in which he rioted, a high school dropout; he was, nevertheless, somewhat better educated than his nonrioting Negro neighbor, and was usually underemployed or employed in a menial job. He was proud of his race, extremely hostile to both whites and middle-class Negroes and, although informed about politics, highly distrustful of the political system.

* A Detroit survey revealed that approximately 11 percent of the total residents of two riot areas admitted participation in the rioting, 20 to 25 percent identified themselves as "bystanders," over 16 percent identified themselves as "counter-rioters" who urged rioters to "cool it," and the remaining 48 to 53 percent said they were at home or elsewhere and did not participate. In a survey of Negro males between the ages of 15 and 35 residing in the disturbance area in Newark, about 45 percent identified themselves as rioters, and about 55 percent as "noninvolved." (This broadly corroborated an evaluation of those arrested as well)

* Most rioters were young Negro males. Nearly 53 percent of arrestees were between 15 and 24 years of age; nearly 81 percent between 15 and 35.

* In Detroit and Newark about 74 percent of the rioters were brought up in the North. In contrast, of the noninvolved, 36 percent in Detroit and 52 percent in Newark were brought up in the North. (I'm not sure of where individuals in Baltimore came from historically but the larger question seems to be one of a cohort of individuals being brought up in a community and context which is broadly underdeveloped and over-policed. Yes, I will invoke the tv show the WIRE here for a second but obviously the coverage of the Baltimore PO-Lice [as they were pronounced] in the show was perhaps a bit less violent than might be appropriate)

* What the rioters appeared to be seeking was fuller participation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the majority of American citizens. Rather than rejecting the American system, they were anxious to obtain a place for themselves in it. (Now this remains to be an interesting question. No one seems to be trying to figure out what rioter or protestors for that matter are putting forward regarding their grievances. Everyone is focused on the action and the violent action at that. Do not actions following from grievances however? The grievances might become focused by movements and spokespeople later but the mass, unfiltered grievances exist nonetheless. What were they? What are they? What will they become?)

* Numerous Negro counter-rioters walked the streets urging rioters to "cool it." The typical counter-rioter was better educated and had higher income than either the rioter or the noninvolved. (Perhaps no counter-rioter has received more coverage than the black mother out in the street, popping her child upside his head (shown below). Even my mother sided with the woman, which led to an interesting agreement to disagree as I went on to argue that her action was counter-productive to the larger point. I suggested that the mother should have been outside with her son teaching him a more effective way to change the system that resulted in black males being killed. She maintained that it was the fear of the violence and desire to protect that prompted the mother's response. While I understood the impulse, it was the aftereffect and its resonance that I found problematic. We should not be having a conversation about black mothers and sons [a topic that is near and dear to me as I am very much my mother's son]; rather, we should be talking about police violence and democratic accountability)

* The proportion of Negroes in local government was substantially smaller than the Negro proportion of population. Only three of the 20 cities studied had more than one Negro legislator; none had ever had a Negro mayor or city manager. In only four cities did Negroes hold other important policy-making positions or serve as heads of municipal departments. (This came from the belief that having more blacks in office would lead to better outcomes for black folk. I am not sure if the data on this exists and actually I always found the symbolic representation discussion kind of distracting. Shouldn't the question be has the political, economic, social, psychological and health condition of African Americans changed and what [if anything] has facilitated that change. I am not privileging black politicians as an explanation. I think that all possibilities should be explored with equal vigor. Similarly, I never accepted the argument that black incorporation into the police departments of America would resolve the problem of anti-black police violence for these brave individuals are being trained in a specific facility as well as surrounded by a particular community and culture that they are trying to survive within. This would more likely lead to isomorphic adaptation [i.e., assimilation and trying to fit it] than to a fundamental change in police practices.

Indeed, when writing my book How Social Movements Die involving policing in Detroit, I remember a particularly important section:

After two years of studying police-African American interactions, Burton Levy, the head of the Community Relations Division of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, concluded that Detroit had a faulty police system, not just a few “rotten eggs”. Rather,

[This system] recruits a significant number of bigots, reinforces the bigotry through the department’s value system and socialization with older officers, and then takes the worst of the officers and puts them on duty in the ghetto, where the opportunity to act out the prejudice is always available (cited in Fine 2000, 95).

This resulted in a very bad situation throughout the ranks. Taken from a survey around 1967, it was found:

That white police officers] held “predominantly negative views of the black community.” Lower echelon white officers saw Detroit’s blacks as a “privileged minority… without real grievances, deficient in respect for law and order and ready to use violence to attain a still greater advantage vis-à-vis the white community…” Slightly more than 80 percent of the white patrolmen thought that the more blacks received, the more they wanted and the more likely they were to resort to violence to satisfy their desires. Detectives, sergeants, lieutenants, and inspectors largely shared these views (Detroit Free Press 1968).

Having a couple of black police or even several without changing the culture was not going to change anything.

* Although almost all cities had some sort of formal grievance mechanism for handling citizen complaints, this typically was regarded by Negroes as ineffective and was generally ignored. (Does your city have a police review system independent of the police department? Many of these were placed in police departments which kind of defeated the purpose.)

* Although specific grievances varied from city to city, at least 12 deeply held grievances can be identified and ranked into three levels of relative intensity: '

First Level of Intensity

1. Police practices
2. Unemployment and underemployment
3. Inadequate housing

Second Level of Intensity

4. Inadequate education
5. Poor recreation facilities and programs
6. Ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms

Third Level of Intensity

7. Disrespectful white attitudes
8. Discriminatory administration of justice
9. Inadequacy of federal programs
10. Inadequacy of municipal services
11. Discriminatory consumer and credit practices
12. Inadequate welfare programs

* The results of a three-city survey of various federal programs--manpower, education, housing, welfare and community action--indicate that, despite substantial expenditures, the number of persons assisted constituted only a fraction of those in need. (Changes from 1967? Good question)

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Poe and Tate are Dead.... Long Live Poe and Tate - The 20th Anniversary of a Classic and the Rise of Human Rights/Repression Scholarship

The "Black Spring", The Likely following "Black Summer" and the Inevitable "Black Winter" - What is/is Not Going on and What is/is Not Likely to Happen Next

When the Past is Present: Looking Back at Old Riots to Understand New Ones

Analog - The Anti-Blog

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