A Proposal for Reducing Rioting After a Police Officer or Vigilante Has Been Acquitted of a Criminal Charge that the Officer or Vigilante Caused the Death of a Black Person

A PROPOSAL FOR REDUCING RIOTING AFTER A POLICE OFFICER OR VIGILANTE HAS BEEN ACQUITTED OF A CRIMINAL CHARGE THAT THE OFFICER OR VIGILANTE CAUSED THE DEATH OF A BLACK PERSON
Tuesday Feb. 22nd, 2022

 

After a police officer or vigilante has been acquitted of a criminal charge that the officer or vigilante or vigilante caused the death of a black person (a suspect or otherwise), there are usually riots in large American cities protesting the finding of innocence.

There have been many such acquittals, and many such riots.

As I have previously argued (in my blog posting of "Failure to Heed the Discourse of the Poor," at http://boilingspringsnewton.blogspot.com/ under June 12th, 2021), such rioting can reasonably be interpreted as the natural outgrowth of originally peaceable assemblies to petition the Government for redress of grievances, which are made legal by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The most-favored solution for forestalling such riots is one in which the right to assemble peaceably is not diminished or craftily rendered inaccessible to citizens in any way.

The solution I propose is that when a police officer or vigilante is charged with unlawful behavior in an incident in which the officer or vigilante caused the death of a person belonging to a minority listed as a minority on any United States government website or in any United States law, at least half of the jury members must be of the same minority as the person who was killed.

Any admissible evidence that the minority in question used to be listed as a minority on any United States government website, but has since been removed from that list on that website, will be considered to be evidence that that minority is, for the purpose of this law, currently listed as a minority on a United States government website.

It is perfectly obvious that a law fulfilling this purpose would have to be far, far longer than this proposal.  To anyone who considers this proposal an idea worth working for, clauses and language forestalling loopholes will immediately come to mind.

The rioting described here may take place after an acquittal, but such rioting may also take place immediately after the officer or vigilante or vigilante has caused the death of a black person, before an acquittal indeed before any trial has taken place.

The purpose of a law fulfilling the description proposed here would be to forestall rioting after an acquittal, by decreasing the probability of an acquittal in the case of an officer or vigilante acting in bad faith or without appropriate restraint -- and to forestall rioting before charges have been brought against the officer or vigilante in question, by increasing the faith of the minority to which the slain person belongs, that the system of justice will operate fairly and without prejudice -- in other words, by increasing the faith of the minority that a majority of citizens will not use the doctrine of qualified immunity to acquit an officer or vigilante who has acted in bad faith or without appropriate restraint.

Frank Newton

Talking to People of the Other Political Party: "The Gentleman Works on the Trunk"

 

TALKING TO PEOPLE OF THE OTHER POLITICAL PARTY: "THE GENTLEMAN WORKS ON THE TRUNK"
By Frank Newton
Written Tues. Sept. 21st, 2021; posted to my blog Sat. Feb. 5th, 2022

  

"The gentleman works on the trunk." -- Confucius, Analects, book 1, verse 2.

 

Let's begin by talking about the English translation of this remark by Confucius.

It's based on Sir Arther Waley's translation of this sentence, which will be on the first page of Confucius's Analects in most English editions of Waley's Confucius.  Let's set the superscribed translation underneath Waley's translation:

Waley's translation of Confucius's Analects, 1:2:

            "It is upon the trunk that a gentleman works."

Newton's simplified translation of Confucius's sentence:

            "The gentleman works on the trunk."

I hope you will agree with me that I haven't changed the meaning of Waley's translation.  I have just boiled the English sentence down, so it can easily pass from mouth to mouth without the meaning being trampled. It has become more like a saying, and less like a sentence from a speech.  Most likely, Waley's goal was to move the trunk to the beginning of the sentence -- rhetorically effective in theory, but less memorable in English.

Waley draws out the meaning of Confucius's remark in a footnote which your publisher should have put at the bottom of the same page: "I.e. [the gentleman works] upon what is funda­mental, as opposed to 'the twigs,' i.e. small arts and accomplishments, which the gentleman leaves to his inferiors" (that is, to other people).  Confucius's metaphor refers to a bunch of men with axes who are turning a tree into firewood to keep people warm, or into lumber to build a building.

Those things being said, we suggest that Confucius's statement applies to politicians, and in politics it should be interpreted as follows: Politicians who are trying to make their country a better place address the big problems and issues of their generation, and do not waste their energies trying to prove that some other political party has more scandals than their own political party has.

But not just politicians.  Ordinary citizens also, who are sincere about trying to make their country a better place, center their political conversation on the important issues of their time; not upon the scandals.

The work of journalists has to be nuanced.  Journalists have to spend enough time investigating scandals and choosing their words with care when reporting scandals, so that their readers and listeners will have a clear understanding of what the scandal is about.  But journal­ism (especially commentary upon the news) should be like farming.  Dealing with the time-sensitive things -- crises and scandals in journalism, and planting, watering, and harvesting in farming -- should not use up all the worker's time.  Journalists should manage their time so that time remains to report and comment on the important issues of their generation.  Just as farmers manage their affairs in such a way as to leave time to get into diplomatic conversations with their neighbors in the hope of securing the best possible spouse for their sons and daughters.

(An example is given in Leonard Bloomfield's Menomini Texts, page 2, where he translates the words of Maskwawānahkwatōk (Red Cloud Woman), one of the Menominee people of Wisconsin who taught him the Menominee language.  She said & he wrote it down & he translated it:

[The mother of a young woman visits the parents of a young man]:
"I very much admire your boy; might he not well marry that girl of ours?  It is for this I have come.")

What it means is that the hunting, planting, watering, and harvesting did not take up all of the old people's time.  They did the time-sensitive things in such a way that there was still time for working on the trunk.  It should be the same with our journalists.  And it should be the same with our politicians -- our leaders -- and the same with our citizens of good will.

Every conscientious adult among us, man and woman, has opportunities to be a gentleman in Confucius's meaning.

Scandals and crises have to be dealt with.  But the person of good will does not spend all their thought and their conversation on scandal. 

When talking to a person of a different political party, the person of good will focuses their attention on the important issues of their generation, and not on the scandals.

Frank Newton