Thank you for holding this town hall, Rep. Marshall!
At your town hall two weeks
ago, Christopher Renner asked you how you are responding to the racism coming
from the Trump administration. The
Manhattan Mercury wrote that you avoided
answering that question, despite repeated reminders from the audience.
Racism was also a non-issue
to your Republican colleagues in the Senate when they voted unanimously to
confirm Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.
As you know, Jeff Sessions
has a past so troubling that when he was nominated by President Trump the Alabama
NAACP staged a sit-in in his office.
They remembered well his politically motivated prosecutions intended to
suppress the Black vote. Coretta Scott King testified about those
actions in 1986, saying Jeff Sessions had used the legal system to do what
Alabama sheriffs had done 20 years earlier with clubs and cattle prods.
Fast forward to 2017: At this very moment there are 3 initiatives coming from Jeff
Sessions’ Justice Department that have the appearance of racism—that is, they
disproportionately direct negative impacts against communities of color.
Maybe having specific policies
to respond to will make it easier for you to answer the question of how you are
responding to the racist policies of the Trump administration.
1.)
Attorney General Sessions has placed under
review and therefore halted all the consent decrees with troubled police
departments, where investigations had revealed patterns of corruption and/or excessive
brutality, disproportionately directed against citizens of color. He said he didn’t want police to have to
operate in fear of “viral videos.” Here
in Geary County our law enforcement agencies videorecord all interactions. They say it brings out the best behavior from
everyone involved. But Sessions seems
to be calling for a return to policing without accountability.
2.)
He is bringing back the war on drugs. The
last war on drugs A) was not effective; B) led to mass incarceration &
mandatory minimum sentences; and C) savagely
targeted communities of color, even though white people use and sell drugs at a
higher rate than people of color.
3.)
And finally,
Sessions is establishing a mass deportation force, with 32,000 beds already
leased. Is this force going after the
Scandinavian students at American universities who overstay their visas? On
the contrary: Sessions went to the
border with Mexico to say that he vows to stop “the filth” coming across that
border.
All
three of these initiatives cut one way, and they all cut against people of
color.
As
the representative of all the people of the Big First, how are you responding
specifically to these three initiatives?
Thank
you.
Margy
Stewart
11003
Lower McDowell Rd., Junction City, KS
66441
Margystewart785@gmail.com
Rep. Marshall replied that President Trump is not a racist and that he (Rep. Marshall) is not a racist. He said he hoped that Jeff Sessions had changed over the years, and that Sessions told him that he had. Rep. Marshall seemed to think racism was just a matter of what lies in someone's heart--a subjective issue. Since only God knows the mysteries of the soul, how can anyone make declarative statements about who is and is not a racist? I hope Rep. Marshall will learn to consider the objective dimensions of racism--results, not intentions. Institutionalized racism is a matter of policies which disproportionately impact communities of color with negative effects that can actually be measured.
In response to the 3 policies I mentioned, Rep. Marshall had no response.
We may have loving hearts, but if we choose not to notice institutionalized racism when it is right in front of us, how can we claim to be innocent of it? Isn't willful ignorance a matter of intention?
I was so glad to build on Christopher's initial question; I hope other Big Bluestem Rapid Responders will build on mine!
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