Syracuse College of Law Professor Kevin Noble Maillard: Racially Profiled in Palm Beach – Excerpts

/ Daniel Ramsey / Leave a comment

Syracuse Law Professor Kevin Noble Maillard authored the following article, featured as original content for The Atlantic Magazine on July 23, 2013.  The full article can be accessed here.

 

Race is America’s Voldemort: That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named. Even when discrimination’s role in an event is obvious, there has to be another reason. It’s not about race, it’s about class. It’s about safety. It’s about line dancing. But we are arguably experiencing the greatest racial tensions since the 1960’s, Barack or not.

The most prominent racial issue dividing America today is racial profiling. Trayvon, Stop-and-Frisk, Obama’s Beer Summit, and Arizona’s Show-Me-Your-Papers law are all about acting on racial presumptions.

Three years ago, on a balmy summer night in Palm Beach, I went for a midnight bike ride. Earlier that day, I presented a paper at a law professor conference at the Breakers Hotel. The whole day and early evening was crammed with intense intellectual schmoozing, so I was glad to have some solitary time to explore the long, narrow island. I hopped on my rented beach bike and headed south and over a bridge.

***

Suddenly I am blinded by a profusion of oncoming lights, accompanied by a siren, crossing against traffic into my lane on the two-lane road. Reacting quickly, I squeeze left and right brakes in addition to steering the bike sharply to the right. All together, it is perfect choreography for an overbar face-plant. I spill onto the blacktop.

I skid a little in front of my bike, scraping my elbows, wrists, and forearms on the road. Blood, but not too much. My childhood comes back to me in that odd mix of pain and nausea I felt from bike accidents in fifth grade.

***

The first policeman steps out of the car. “Where are you headed?” I tell him I’m on a bike ride. “Why so late?” I say I like it late. “What are you doing here?” I tell him I’m a law professor attending a conference at The Breakers.

At this point, I’m still thinking about my lonely, abandoned doll of a bike on the ground. Then the second policeman approaches. “We’ve had some robberies here.”

***

The first policeman asks for my ID. He asks for my name and address–clearly printed on the card, next to my picture that looked exactly like me–and my university affiliation.

Both men retreat into the car with my ID to run it though an interminable, rotary-dial background check system. It takes no fewer than 15 minutes. I’m alone with my thoughts, which are mostly questions. I try not to move, and attempt rationalization. Perhaps the burglary announcement was coincidental. I had multiple bike violations, and night cyclists are rare. There must be a logical reason for getting stopped. Other people must have gotten stopped like this.

The first policeman comes back with my ID and tells me I’m free to go. I’m mulling over this incident, and so I cross back over the bridge and decide to do a full loop of the island and think.

I’m on my bike for only a few minutes before another high pitched siren ringtone tells me to stop cycling. Again. This time there are two police cars.

***

Americans love to say “it’s not about race.” Unless there is a cross burning and people wearing “I’m racist” t-shirts, it has to be about something else. Complaining minorities, so the refrain goes, have chips on their shoulders.

Nothing violent happened. But this incident showed me something about bias and perception. Though it’s common to hear race described as just one “factor” in profiling, it’s a factor that seems to outweigh all others: age, education, class, occupation, and just plain common sense–remember, rental bike. It’s utterly exasperating to realize that how hard you work, how much money you have, where you went to school, who your friends are mean nothing at crucial times. The values of colorblindness and merit–which conservatives, including black conservatives, rely on in other race-based debates, for example those about affirmative action–wouldn’t even save Clarence Thomas on the street in these moments: Cabs will pass, police will stop, and as we painfully know, neighbors will shoot.

 

Kevin Noble Maillard is a law professor at Syracuse University.  Teaching courses in Family Law, Wills and Trusts, and Social Deviance and the Law, he is a frequent writer for the NY Times and appears on MSNBC.  You can follow him on Twitter:  @noblemaillard

 

 

Okay, that wasn’t quite the proposition being debated on the Intelligence Squared podcast, but that was essentially what it boiled down to. Instead, the proposition debatined was “For A Better Future, Live In A Red State.”

Moderated by ABC News’ John Donvan, the debate featured Hugh Hewitt–radio host of The Hugh Hewitt Show–and Stephen Moore–editorial board member of The Wall Street, who argued for the motion; and Michael Lind–co-founder of New America Foundation–and Gray Davis–37th Governor of California, who argued against the motion.

Here is description of the debate:

While gridlock and division in Washington make it difficult for either party or ideology to set the policy agenda, single-party government prevails in three-quarters of the states. In 24 states Republicans control the governorship and both houses of the legislature, and in 13 states Democrats enjoy one-party control. Comparing economic growth, education, health care, quality of life and environment, and the strength of civil society, do red or blue states win out?

California v. Texas

/ Matthew Clemente / 1 Comment

Fed Continues QE3

/ Edward Thater / Leave a comment

When the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve met earlier this week, it decided to continue its third round of quantitative easing, known as QE3, until at least its next meeting in six weeks.

Quantitative easing is a technique of monetary policy where a central bank, in our case the Federal Reserve, will purchase financial assets for freshly “printed” money, thereby increasing the money supply and stimulating the economy. The basic idea is this: all macroeconomic slow downs, recessions and depressions included, are ultimately caused by a reduction in the overall spending by economic actors. This reduction is aggregate spending has a multiplier effect, because my spending is someone else’s income, which ripples across the economy and causes a bigger drop in gross domestic product than the actual reduction in spending. (For a more detailed discussion of the multiplier effect, you can read my earlier SLACE post about the shutdown and its economic effects.) With more money in circulation, economic actors can build up savings in weaker economic times and yet still have enough money left over to go and spend at their old levels. Of course, this can lead to inflationary pressures, with too many dollars chasing too few goods, so the Open Market Committee has to walk a fine line.

QE3 is already the the largest round of quantitative easing since the 2007-2008 recession, and it is on pace to be the largest round of quantitative easing ever. Critics of quantitative easing policies are asking the legitimate question of whether we will see a crash of asset prices, in particular in the stock and real estate markets, after the Fed decides to scale back QE3 since it has been pumping $85 billion into the economy every month since last fall. However, with GDP growth still relatively anemic and no signs of inflation on the horizon, most Fed watchers predict the Open Market Committee won’t begin scaling back until sometime well into 2014, at the earliest.

As an aside, dear readers, we here at SLACE would love for you to leave us some comments and let us know what you think about our posts. In particular, if you have economic topics you’d like to see blogged on in the future, let us know and we will try to accommodate.

New Movement In Higher Education

/ Gregory Clark / Leave a comment

The ideas in this New York Time article can be applied to many different areas of education in addition to higher ed. For those who do not wish to read the entire article, I’ll provide a brief summary. There is a recent movement in higher education to grant degrees for the amount of knowledge and skills you can demonstrate; this is in place of how long you have studied. In order to keep down the costs (money AND time) of obtaining a college degree, higher education institutions have begun to offer credit for finishing the work. These “competency-based” programs are all about outcomes, providing certification once learning requirements can be demonstrated. Many institutions, including the University of Wisconsin, have started testing these programs, and from what I can tell they are exclusively online.

Are you skeptical of these new programs? You’re not alone. A lot of questions (some are my own, and some are in the article) are being raised about whether or not degrees obtained this way can be compared to those conferred by a traditional college or university. Is the quality of education provided high enough? What about the classroom experience? If credits can be earned quickly, can we be sure the students have learned anything? How can we be sure they have learned the right things?

My largest concern is about assessment. In most areas of learning, it is a constant challenge for instructors to know how to create assessments that reflect what a student has (and should have) learned throughout the course. My initial reaction to this article was fear that it may be impossible to grade a student who a professor has never met, and who sprinted through the material in three weeks. But this is not entirely unique to online courses. College and university courses usually have only a few graded assignments; they just take four months to complete and occasionally an instructor will actually interact with the student. So in this light, any concern about assessment may actually be misguided.

This can also be applied to K-12 education. The role of assessment is growing in importance every day it seems. After No Child Left Behind, the results of standardized tests carry weighty consequences. If we’re comfortable with assessment when applied frequently (as in K-12), and infrequently (in higher education, online and/or on campus), what is it about a large standardized test that is so different and controversial? Is it the weighty consequences? College exams have weighty consequences. Is it their frequency? Some courses only have a midterm and a final exam.

I find myself unable to provide a full answer to the questions raised by this article and my own analysis of its significance. Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

Bringing Lincoln Back From The Dead: Luxury Cars and American Automaking

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Bringing Lincoln Back From The Dead: Luxury Cars and American Automaking

Today, NPR’s Planet Money podcast reran a story about how Lincoln is attempting to recapture its image as a cool luxury car and the economic implications of a successful re-branding. 

Here is a description of the podcast: 

Lincolns used to be the coolest cars in the world. They used to be driven by kings, moguls and celebrities. Today, Lincolns are driven by the old, the out-of-touch, and the guys hustling you at the airport.

On today’s show: How Lincoln is trying to regain its former glory — and how the story of Lincoln may be the story of the U.S. auto industry, for better or for worse.