Hoodies

I must be slipping if Dale Carpenter caught a racial reference that completely slipped by me in the Larry Craig case. I mean, for heaven's sake, Carpenter's a Republican! And he's out CRTing me? I got to get my act together.

Anyway, this is from the tape recording of the police officer who arrested Senator Larry Craig:

Karsnia: I just, I just, I guess, I guess I’m gonna say I’m just disappointed in you sir. I’m just really am. I expect this from the guy that we get out of the hood. I mean, people vote for you.

Carpenter queries what work "the guy we get out of the hood" does in this context:

It seems to me that the phrase, “the guy that we get out of the hood,” is an implied racial reference. It refers specifically to blacks, though one could say the officer meant to refer only to young black men from the ghetto who, in the officer's view, are prone to commit crimes.

Either way, it’s still race-specific in a case that otherwise has no obvious racial dimension. To shame Craig into telling the truth, the officer could have used a different example, like, “I expect this from some punk we get off the street.” Or, “I expect this from some low-life, but not a Senator.” It’s also fairly clear from the context that the officer is not associating blacks with bathroom cruising, but with dishonesty and "disrespect" toward the police.

Why would Karsnia use a race-specific reference in this context? First, the officer may associate blacks in general, or at least those from “the hood,” with bad conduct. In the heat of the exchange, this particular example is the one that first comes to his mind because black men from poor neighborhoods are the kind of people he would most associate with dishonesty and disrespectful behavior.

Second, the officer may have expected that Craig would immediately understand the reference and be especially shamed by it as a law-abiding white person. “Not only were you engaged in this tawdry behavior but now you’re acting like a black thug who lies to a police officer about it," he seems to be saying. I doubt the officer would have used the “hood” reference if he’d been talking to a suspect who was black. It simply wouldn’t have worked against a black suspect, whether that suspect was from "the hood" or not. It would have backfired even if used against, say, a wealthy black lawyer in a business suit. Further, in the presence of a black person the officer would have been sensitized to using a racial reference. It only works as a shaming technique if it’s one white person speaking to another, with no blacks around to object.

The whole thing passed by unnoticed in their conversation; one of the interesting things about it was how matter-of-fact it was. Craig had no audible reaction to the comment except to insist that he is "respectable" — unlike those people from "the hood." The officer made no other racial reference, and of course used no blatantly racist slur, which would be unacceptable in senatorial company.

Many commentators have tried to argue that "hood" is a race-neutral term. It is true that "hood" sometimes refers to whatever neighborhood you hail from, and moreover some White people live even on blocks that we'd commonly refer to as "hood." Nonetheless, the predominant association of "hood" is referring to heavily minority, poor areas of the inner city. And unless it is used in a specific ironic or quasi-ironic context (as in a White rapper looking to gain credibility by talking about his 'hood), it is fair to assume that the image it is meant to evoke is of such a neighborhood (and someone "we get out of the hood" is a Black man). The folks spinning circles about how "hood" could mean anything seem to be missing the point. Carpenter concurs:

Some commenters suggest that because "the hood" can have non-racial meanings, the cop must not have intended to refer to inner-city blacks here. But coded race references work, when they're used, precisely because they can have non-racial meanings; in a society that condemns overt racism, they provide deniability.

I agree that the reference to "the hood" can mean lots of things. I've heard gay people refer to predominantly gay neighborhoods as the hood. The language of hip-hop has seeped into popular culture and has been appropriated to refer to lots of things, depending on context. But the question is, what's the most likely meaning of "the hood" when a white cop is interrogating a 65-year-old white suspect and trying to shame him into a confession? That he's lying like the people in a poor white neighborhood? Like the people who live in crime-prone neighborhoods in general? I doubt it....

Another issue being raised as a diversion to the main point is whether the cop himself is racist. Folks are saying that--even granting a racial connotation--this statement doesn't "prove" that he is. I agree, and I'm rather uninterested in whether the cop is "racist" in the classical sense of coming home from work to attend his weekly cross burning. This statement is meaningful not because it gives folks an opportunity to tag a person a "racist", it matters because it illustrates a broader societal racist perception or mien that associates Black ("ghetto", "hood") with criminality, worthlessness, and lack of respectability. Precisely because it is a social perception, individual persons can float in those waters and simply absorb the standpoint without actively identifying as a racist (and probably consciously disavowing possessing any racist beliefs).

I think it's really important to separate these out. There can be racism without racists, in the sense that there can be widespread, socially salient perceptions, behaviors, or policies that act to disadvantage certain people on basis of race, without a significant proportion of people who actively believe that people should, in fact, be disadvantaged on basis of race. If it is to have any meaningful bite, "racism" is the existence of forces which subordinate certain people on basis of race--not the belief that people should be so subordinated. Certainly, regardless of what we call it, the former is the real problem while the latter is just contributory, and since "racism" is our general-purpose word for identifying harms of a racial variety, I call these forces "racism." Others prefer "White supremacy", "structural racism," "institutional racism", or any number of other terms. Tomato, to-mah-to.

Fighting against racism (or whatever we end up calling it--"the problem"), in such an environment, means attacking these negative perceptions, behaviors, and policies wherever they crop up--but that doesn't mean that the people who espouse them are "racists" in the sense defined above. The split is important because, in theory, people are more receptive to remedying a racist perception than they are to admitting that they, themselves are racist.

I have noticed, however, that folks anxious to defend policy that perpetuate racism in America are very keen on redefining the attack on the policy to an attack on the person, complaining that "you're calling me a racist" and thus draping themselves in the cloak of victimology (the very banner they claim to despise). In response (because I'm a nice guy), I phrase the linkage in ever more attenuated fashion (e.g., from "people who support racist policies" to "people who support policies that perpetuate racism"), but it really doesn't seem to do much good, which leads me to believe that the folks making the "are you calling me a racist" defense secretly like it because it serves as a shield from having to grapple with the actual substance of the critique. The irony is that, in doing so, it actually strengthens (doesn't prove, but strengthens) the case that these folks are actually racist(-as-persons)--albeit ambivalently so--because they are laboring so hard to evade the question that what might otherwise be chalked up to a general social milieu has to be seen as at least somewhat self-conscious.

See also ebogjonson and Alternet