I mean, we can pretend we’re divided into races and countries, and we can carry on with that until we stop doing it. But the reality is, it’s one world and one people. Really. — John Lennon
If you were seriously ill and needed an operation—say, to remove a tumor in your brain—would you care about your surgeon’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or age?
Of course not. You’d care only about her qualifications, right? Now consider this op-ed piece from a while back in the Chronicle by the young Black writer, Justin Phillips. “How a Black D.A. could bring change,” is the headline in the print edition (in the online version, it’s been changed to “Could a Black D.A. finally help reimagine Alameda County’s regressive criminal justice system?”)
The article goes on to push Pamela Price, a Black woman who is running for Alameda County District Attorney in November, whom Phillips clearly supports. Price’s “supporters,” he writes, “were certain that their voices were largely absent from prosecutorial decision-making in Alameda County [because] every D.A. in the county’s 168-year history has been a white man except for [current D.A. Nancy] O’Malley, a white woman.”
There are two objections to Phillips’ argument. One—the surgery analogy—is that it simply doesn’t matter, or shouldn’t matter, what color the candidate is. What matters is the candidate’s character and policies. When it comes to a D.A., we want someone who understands the law, including its Constitutional implications. We want someone who combines compassion with a firm intent to protect public safety. The second objection to Phillips’ argument is that one of Price’s opponents for the election is a Black man, Jimmie Wilson. Thus his headline--“How a Black D.A. could bring change”—applies equally well to Wilson as it does to Price.
Why would Phillips then prefer Price over Wilson? He himself gives the answer: None of the D.A.s in the history of Alameda County “were champions of transformative justice.”
So there we have it: It’s not simply the fact that Price is Black that makes Phillips support her, it’s that she’s a progressive. And what does “transformative justice” mean, from Phillips’ point of view? He wants a D.A. who will be far tougher on officer use-of-force issues than has been the case until now. “[Alameda] county also has multiple problematic police departments, including Oakland’s…some of the Bay Area’s largest law enforcement-related wrongful death involving Black and brown [sic] victims have occurred in Alameda County…”.
It would be healthy if Phillips could recognize how out of step he is with the vast majority of folks from Oakland and Alameda County and indeed from across the U.S.A. It may have been true, a few years ago, that Americans wanted the kinds of “police reforms” Phillips and Price desire. But it’s not true today; the year 2021 was so violent, so retrograde and horrible because of the national crime wave, that Americans decided to put aside their doubts about cops, if they had any to begin with, and instead support public safety, which means hiring more police. It also would be nice if Phillips told the truth about these “wrongful deaths.” From my reading of the news—and I follow it closely, all around the country—the majority of police officers charged by progressive D.A.s are eventually acquitted by juries of their peers; such millions of dollars that are paid out to victims’ families (as I wrote earlier this week), are done so simply because city managers, city attorneys and City Councils don’t want to get dragged into lengthy civil lawsuits, in which possibly biased juries will find for a plaintiff even when the same plaintiff has lost his criminal case. It’s cheaper in the end for cities (which have insurance for such things) to settle for a lot of money than to fight it out in court.
Look once more at John Lennon’s quote. Think about his great song, Imagine, the greatest ode to worldwide peace since the Psalms. Race, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. etc. are irrelevant when it comes to electing the most talented candidates. We can do better than to obsess on race (and all the other examples of identity politics) because, corny as it sounds, we’re all Americans.
Steve Heimoff