Month: February 2022

Unconscious Prejudices from my white past

I grew up in a white suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the 1960s. In our four year public high school of more than two thousands kids I don’t remember a single black face. Still, it was the 60s. We read “To Kill a Mockingbird”. We deplored the violent, ugly racism of the South that was often on display on the evening news. We examined ourselves for something we called “prejudice”. In schools and in churches we declared that we would strive to be “colorblind” in our encounters with people of other skin colors—an aspiration we now hear voiced by people who insist that aspiring to “colorblindness” is sufficient on its own. We were good kids. We thought well of ourselves—and, by and large, for the times, probably we were. 

On Monday, February 7, Doug Muder in his “Weekly Sift” email published a post entitled “Racism in the NFL”. His article slapped me in the face with a realization about the social milieu in which I was so steeped as a teenager that I was blind to it. On the one hand, back then I was intellectually certain that skin color bore no genetic relationship to any sort of aptitude, i.e. beneath the skin surface there was what we called “equality”. On the other hand, in reading Muder’s article I recognized, painfully, that I had heard, and unconsciously absorbed—and never once thought to challenge—assertions about sports prowess, quarterbacking, and coaching, assertions that were based on race that were the diametric opposite of what the other part of my brain professed to firmly believe. Muder’s article awakened me to the systemically racist, but smugly “colorblind” social environment in which I was steeped and from which I passively absorbed.

Many on the right wing, especially those with white supremacist leanings, want us to look back at the racial progress of the 1960s as more than sufficient—we dealt with that, we’re all colorblind now, it’s all fixed, nothing to see here, let’s move on. Closer, honest examination of our country’s past and our own socially-molded attitudes is an unwelcome and threatening exercise when such consideration might shake the foundations of one’s own deeply held beliefs. Consciously or unconsciously, the backlash to the call to better understand ourselves gathers support from among these people for laws threatening, silencing, and muzzling the teaching of our history and literature in the public schools. 

Electrons are cheap, so, for your convenience, I have pasted Muder’s article “Racism in the NFL” below. It is also free to read at his blog site, the “Weekly Sift”. I encourage you to sign up for his Monday emails. His view of the world is refreshing.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry 

Racism in the NFL

by Doug Muder

The lack of coaching opportunities for Blacks in the NFL is more than just the usual it’s-hard-to-break-into-management problem, and a new lawsuit explores why.

As far back as 1908, when Jack Johnson won the heavyweight boxing championship, sports have been a prime setting for America to work out its racial issues. Blacks might have been barred from most opportunities to excel, and what they managed to accomplish in spite of racial barriers could usually be minimized. But sporting events have objective outcomes. In the 1930s, for example, Whites who wanted to downplay Black achievements could claim that jazz wasn’t really music. But they couldn’t claim that Jesse Owens wasn’t really fast.

In sports, the 20th century was a long story of racial barriers falling and Black athletes succeeding. In 1947, Jackie Robinson was the only Black player in the major leagues. But he became the rookie of the year that season, and by 1949 he was the National League’s most valuable player. Willie Mays entered the league in 1951, and Hank Aaron in 1954. By 1981, the major leagues were 18.7% Black, but then percentages began to fall, possibly because Black athletes drifted into other sports. In 2016, major league baseball players were 63.7% White, 27.4% Hispanic, 6.7% Black, and 2.1% Asian.

Basketball is the sport most dominated by Black players: In 2020, about 3/4 of NBA players were Black, a number that has been relatively stable for some while. The change from majority White to majority Black happened fairly quickly: The first three Black players entered the league in 1950. By 1957, Bill Russell was the most important player in a Celtic dynasty that would win 11 championships in the next 13 years. Whether White owners and executives continued to have racist beliefs or not, there was no arguing with that kind of success.

The story of race in the National Football League has always been more complicated. The NFL had a handful of Black players when it was getting started in the 1920s, but instituted an informal color barrier from 1933 to 1946. That barrier was broken not through the efforts a crusading White general manager like baseball’s Branch Rickey, but out of legal necessity: When the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles in 1946, they played in the publicly-owned Los Angeles Coliseum. Public accommodations couldn’t be segregated even in that era, so the Rams needed at least one Black player. The Washington Redskins became the last team to integrate in 1962, when the Kennedy administration similarly threatened not to let them play in a stadium on federally-controlled land.

The quarterback mystique. But even as Black athletes in many sports succeeded in blowing up the myth of White superiority, racism established a fallback position: Some Blacks might possess a raw animal physicality, but only Whites had the intellectual and moral virtues that made athletes truly admirable.

And so an article about base-stealing baseball players might emphasize a Black player’s blazing speed, but a White player’s painstaking analysis of pitchers and their moves. Black basketball players might be imposing Goliaths like Wilt Chamberlain, but (as the sports magazines of my youth told the story) White players compensated through smarts, hard work, and an indomitable will to succeed. That racial distinction was rarely spelled in so many words, but whenever I heard an athlete described as “crafty” or “scrappy”, I could be pretty sure he was White.

Baseball and basketball are inherently egalitarian sports — everybody bats, anybody can shoot — so this pro-White image-making had limited effects. But football is more corporate and specialized. In particular, a racial mystique developed around the quarterback position: Of course arm strength and other physical gifts mattered, but intangible (White) qualities like leadership and courage were more important, and quarterbacks needed the (White) mental capacity to analyze defenses and make sound decisions under pressure.

As a result, it took decades for football’s conventional wisdom to recognize that Black athletes could be good quarterbacks. The prophecy was self-fulfilling: High school and college coaches didn’t want to “waste their time” training unsuitable Black players to be quarterbacks, so by the time the quarterback pipeline reached the NFL, it contained mostly White players. As that pipeline combined with NFL coaches’ own racial preconceptions, Black NFL quarterbacks remained exceptional and usually had short careers until Warren Moon and Randall Cunningham became stars in the 1980s.

Naturally, if Black athletes lacked the cerebral and moral virtues needed to be good quarterbacks, it followed that they couldn’t be good coaches either. All sports have had racial barriers to management positions, as the larger society still does in many fields. (Bill Russell once explained the dominance of Black players in the NBA by semi-seriously observing that young Black men weren’t distracted by their opportunities in banking.) But no other sport has such a wide gap between its majority of Black players and its tiny number of Black coaches: 69% of players are Black, but only one of the 32 head coaches (Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers). With only a slightly higher percentage of Black players, the NBA has seven Black head coaches.

Until a few weeks ago, Brian Flores of the Miami Dolphins had been a second Black head coach. But he was fired at the end of the season, a move that seemed mysterious: In 2019, Flores had joined a team mired in mediocrity. The Dolphins had managed only one winning season out of the previous ten. His first season had been even worse: 5-11. But then he turned the team around, going 10-6 in 2020 and 9-8 in 2021. 2021 had seemed like two different seasons: The team had started 1-7 (and if Flores had been fired then, it would made some sense), but then finished 8-1. Teams that finish with that kind of spurt usually have high hopes for the next season. They don’t usually fire the head coach. So Miami’s Channel 4 seemed a bit puzzled:

During a Monday morning news conference, the primary issues [team owner Stephen] Ross cited for the decision to fire Flores seemed to have little to do with the on-field product and more with communication within the team’s braintrust — though there were no specific examples offered of how the team determined Flores wasn’t the right fit in those regards.

Anyway, life in the NFL. Flores moved on to apply for other coaching vacancies. And then, for a minute, it seemed like he had found something. The Patriots’ Bill Belichick — Flores had been his defensive coordinator during the Super Bowl winning 2018 season — sent Flores a text congratulating him on landing the New York Giants head coaching job.

The weird thing was, Flores hadn’t heard anything and hadn’t even interviewed for the job yet. That was supposed to happen in a few days. After a quick back-and-forth it turned out that Belichick had gotten the wrong Brian: The Giants had decided to hire Brian Daboll, a White coach who had also been a Belichick assistant at one point.

But even though they were telling people like Belichick that the decision was made, the Giants didn’t inform Flores. They went ahead with his interview, then announced that Daboll was their new coach.

Why they would do that has a simple answer: the Rooney Rule.

Rooney Rule. Named after former Pittsburgh Steeler owner Dan Rooney, the Rooney Rule says that NFL teams have to interview non-White candidates for coaching and management jobs. It puts no quota on hiring, but Black candidates at least have to get in the door.

It was established in 2003 after a similar controversy: Tampa Bay had just fired coach Tony Dungy (who would later win a Super Bowl in Indianapolis), and Minnesota had sacked Dennis Green (after his first losing season in ten years). A study showed that Black NFL coaches had, on average, better records than White coaches, but were less likely to be hired and more likely to be fired.

Clearly, the rule didn’t solve the problem. Nearly 20 years later, the NFL is down to one Black coach again. Instead, the rule has become a box-checking exercise, in which Black coaching candidates are put through charade interviews without being seriously considered.

They have long suspected this, but the Belichick text was the first time it could be established in a particular case.

The Flores lawsuit. Tuesday, Flores filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York (where the NFL is headquartered). It’s a class-action suit on behalf of

All Black Head Coach, Offensive and Defensive Coordinators and Quarterbacks Coaches, as well as General Managers, and Black candidates for those positions during the applicable statute of limitations period

The suit asks the court to declare the league in violation of several non-discrimination laws, to award monetary damages (both compensatory and punitive), and for

injunctive relief necessary to cure Defendants’ discriminatory policies and practices

And that’s where it gets interesting. What would a court have to do to “cure” the NFL of racism?

The problem is that each team hires only one head coach at a time, and those decision depend on subjective judgements: How well does this coach’s management style fit the team’s vision and the talent on the field?

So far this year, five of the nine coaching vacancies have been filled (all by White coaches), but it’s hard to pick out any one of them as a racist decision. The Jaguars, for example, just hired Doug Pederson, who in his last job won the Super Bowl with a back-up quarterback.

The fact that a coin comes up heads once doesn’t prove it’s rigged. But if it keeps coming up heads again and again, it probably is.

What Flores claims. Several of the specific charges in Flores’ lawsuit have gotten attention from the media, but not enough attention has been paid to the suit’s larger narrative.

For example, the accusation that Dolphins’ owner Ross offered Flores a bonus for losing games so that the team could get a better draft pick (an officially denied practice known as “tanking”), has been widely reported. But the larger implication is that hiring Flores in the first place was a sham: He wasn’t hired to succeed; he was hired to be the fall guy for losing seasons that would build a team that some other coach (presumably White) could lead to victory in the future.

Another former Black coach (Hue Jackson of the Cleveland Browns) has told a confusing story that supports Flores up to a point: At first he seemed to imply that he also was offered money to tank, but later backed off to claim only that the management above him was trying to lose.

I told [the Browns’ owner] that what he was doing was very destructive, to not do this because it’s going to hurt my career and every other coach that worked with me and every player on the team. And I told him that it would hurt every Black coach that would follow me. And I have the documents to prove this.

The Miami tanking scheme (which Flores obviously did not implement), also throws a different light on the official explanation of poor “communication within the team’s braintrust” as a reason to get rid of him.

In other words, the NFL’s problem is even bigger than the numbers suggest: Of the few Black coaches hired, how many were hired to take the blame for an intentional failure?

Prospects. The Federalist Society, which wouldn’t be able to find racism in a Confederate plantation, outlines the difficulties Flores’ suit will run into in the hardball world of anti-discrimination law.

What the lawsuit doesn’t contain, however, is actual proof that the NFL is a systemically racist organization and needs to be punished for discriminatory behavior.

Most of Flores’ allegations don’t come close to proving legally actionable systemic discrimination, which must involve finding racist intent or internal statistical “patterns” of inequity. He points out that the NFL currently employs only one black head coach (and three minority head coaches, counting Ron Rivera and Robert Saleh) in Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But judging an organization by one year of results is not actionable.

I agree with their analysis this far: Flores can’t win purely on the evidence that he cites in his complaint. But the class-action lawsuit is an open invitation for other Black coaches and coaching candidate to join his class. Hue Jackson is telling his story. How many others will chime in?

Informally, there’s a lot of sympathy with Flores. I’ve heard ESPN analysts quote unnamed Black coaches saying “I’ve been on that interview” where Rooney-rule boxes are checked without any real chance at a job. But does that mean they’ll come forward?

At some point, it’s not just about the law. The NFL needs public support. The racist blackballing of Colin Kaepernick is already a stain on the league, and so is the race-norming in the original concussion settlement. (Until a new settlement in June, Black players had a harder time claiming cognitive impairment, because the assumed baseline for cognitive function was lower for Blacks. In laymen’s terms: The league assumed Black players had less brainpower to lose.) Independent of what a judge might say, the NFL just can’t have a parade of Black players and coaches testifying about its racism.

And finally, there’s the discovery process. If Flores can get a look at NFL teams’ internal communications, who knows what he’ll find? The NFL is run by billionaires, and billionaires often assume the rules don’t apply to them.

Divisive Ideology over Community

School boards across the nation were targeted in the last election cycle by right wing extremist candidates backed by groups often self-identified as “Christian” (a claim often belied by their actions, as detailed below) and promoting anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-mandate, anti-“CRT”, and anti-sex education agendas. School Board meetings transformed from dry discussions of budgets and levies into fora for belligerent, fact-challenged, maskless protestors to browbeat and sometimes threaten seated board members. 

In District 81 (Spokane Public Schools) the two candidates promoting somewhat disguised versions of this agenda were defeated by substantial margins in the November general election. 

In the Central Valley School District (CVSD—see map) candidates and supporters pushing the anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-mandate agenda managed to seat one of their own, Pam Orebaugh, on the five member CVSD Board of Directors. I chronicled in earlier posts the civics of school boards and school board elections, the school board meeting disruption leading up to the CVSD Board elections, and the multi-pronged effort these people mounted to intimidate and unseat the entire CVSD Board (click the links). 

School Board Directorships are nominally non-partisan. In Washington State school board directorships are unpaid elected positions. As such these directorships are typically held by selfless community members with a particular interest in funding quality public education. 

One might reasonably expect, then, that a meeting widely advertised on Facebook for “district parents and voters”to which all five school board members were invited would actually be open to all district parents. Such a meeting, advertised by the “CVSD Parent Coalition”, was held last Monday, January 31, at an event center in the Spokane valley. Pam Orebaugh was the only CVSD Director to appear. For a group that claims that “transparency is key to moving forward to a better tomorrow” and “the goal for this meeting is a civil discourse that is intended to build trust between parents, students, and district leadership” the treatment of some of those district parents, voters, and taxpayers by the meeting organizers was appalling, uncharitable, and un-Christian. What follows is an account of the event as seen by Petra Hoy, a mild-mannered parent who has been involved in CVSD for years who tried to attend the meeting. The account speaks for itself.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

Hi friends,

Many of you have asked for an update regarding the meeting on Monday 1/31.  I was really rattled by the experience and it took me a while to process what happened. We were told to leave before the event started so we were not allowed to attend the meeting.

A few things for context and details:

1.  This is how the meeting was advertised:

“This invitation is open to all CVSD board members and we encourage you to extend the invitation to them.

The agenda for the meeting is as follows:
6:00 – Open the meeting, welcome guests, Pledge of Allegiance
6:05 – Opening remarks from the Host and Guest Introduction 
6:15 – Board remarks
6:30 – Questions from Audience
7:20 – Wrap-up and Closing Remarks from the Host
7:30 – Close the Meeting

To help you prepare, questions from the audience from the topics listed below can be expected. 
– District Policy and Budget 
– Test to Stay Policy to include Staff Utilization to perform testing, Staff Training to administer the test, Safety Protocols, Metrics (Test Frequency, Pass/Fail Ratios, Number of Missed School Days, etc.)
– Transgender Bathroom and Locker Room Policy
– District Safety and Security – As you know, there are currently and have been for several months, accusations directed at the parent group related to threats of violence including “stalking” and we would like to know if these threats have been reported to law enforcement, is there a formal investigation, are there any suspects?
 – The U-High Student MLK Holiday Video – The student describes racist and demeaning behavior at U-High. Is there a formal investigation? What is the Principal and District Leadership doing about it? 

We encourage you to invite subject matter experts from the District Staff that can address and discuss these topics. We will request a follow-up to either unanswered or partially answered questions. 

The goal for this meeting is a civil discourse that is intended to build trust between parents, students, and district leadership. Security for the event will be provided and I assure you, any attendant that steps out of line will be asked to leave immediately. 

We really do hope that as a group, we can all come together to support each other during this time.  The parent coalition is here to help if the district should reach out for assistance in any area, especially the above subject matters whether locally or state-wide.  Transparency is key to moving forward to a better tomorrow.”

2.  The meeting (sometimes referred to as a town hall) was widely advertised on Facebook including this post in Open Spokane Schools.  

3.  It was also advertised by WA Citizens for Liberty

4.  Pam Orebough is a new CVSD school board member and many of us were interested in her plans. 

5.  Many of us (including members of the Spokane County Human Rights Task Force) were espeically interested in these agenda items “Transgender Bathroom and Locker Room Policy” and “The U-High Student MLK Holiday Video – The student describes racist and demeaning behavior at U-High. Is there a formal investigation? What is the Principal and District Leadership doing about it?”

6.  We politely went to the meeting Monday.  Prior to the meeting starting, a couple of people, apparently from among the organizers, began telling selected people they were not welcome and needed to leave— including parents, retired teachers, Pam’s opponent in her school board race (Stan Chalich) who is also a retired teacher and coach, and Human Rights Task Force members Paul Schneider and JJ Johnson.  I will let them explain their experience. 

I was asked how I heard about the event and I told them about the invitations.  A loud unmasked woman hovering over me told me I needed to leave. I politely asked her why and she would not give me an explanation beyond “you’re the enemy”. 

I have been active in the CVSD district for years as a volunteer, tutor, voter, coach and parent.  I have voted for every levy and bond.  I’ve even canvassed for them. 

I don’t remember ever being screamed at and berated like this. There were also threats to call the police on us, including Rob Linebarger, who was also a CVSD School Board candidate.  For attending a meeting that was advertised as open to all taxpayers?  All of us in attendance are taxpayers. 

Sadly, CVSD Director Pam Orebough placidly stood by.  She could have defended the rights of her constituents at any time, but she did not.  I would hope that as director she would represent all 15,000 students and their families, but on Monday she stood on the sidelines as 8-10 citizens were removed from her meeting.

So that is my summary of the night. Thank you for your concern, it’s very appreciated.  The level of vitriol under the guise of “unity and transparency” is shocking. We will continue to work to support our teachers, students, staff and school district.  It’s especially critical that we encourage the district to hire a good superintendent. Ben Small set a high bar and we need someone at his level who can stand up against this intimidation and harassment.

Sincerely,

Petra Hoy

The Ghost of Nurse Ratched Still Haunts Us

The novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey was published in 1962. It was widely read and acclaimed. The book was adapted into a Broadway play in 1963 and re-appeared as a film starring Jack Nicholson in 1975. I was entertained first by the book and then by the film. Little did I realize at the time that “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was a primary driver of the public attitude around society’s treatment of the disabled and mentally ill. (Fiction and popular non-fiction shape public attitudes on many topics to a degree we often fail to recognize— except in hindsight. Think “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the “Left Behind” series, and “To Kill a Mockingbird” to name only a few—but that’s another topic.)

As it is put in wikipedia, “the narrative [“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”] serves as a study of institutional processes and the human mind; including a critique of psychiatry, and a tribute to individualistic principles.” Totally opaque to me at the time I read it (and probably to most readers and movie goers) was the fact that “Cuckoo’s Nest” fueled a profound distrust of the motives and methods by which society tries to take care of its disabled and mentally ill, including even the methods by which society decides who isdisabled and mentally ill.

Concurrent with the era in which “Cuckoo’s Nest” was shaping public attitudes, federal legislation was setting in motion a movement dubbed “deinstitutionalization”. Shortly before he was murdered in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Community Mental Health Act (CMHA) providing federal funding for building local mental health centers. The CMHA, along with the availability of new anti-psychotic drugs, fueled the emptying out of state hospitals, but the CMHA’s best intentions around community-based psychiatric care were not realized:

Only half of the proposed centers were ever built; none were fully funded, and the act didn’t provide money to operate them long-term. Some states saw an opportunity to close expensive state hospitals without spending some of the money on community-based care. Deinstitutionalization accelerated after the adoption of Medicaid in 1965. During the Reagan administration, the remaining funding for the act was converted into a mental-health block grant for states. Since the CMHA was enacted, 90 percent of beds have been cut at state hospitals.

Most Spokanites (including me, until recently) are only dimly aware of the existence of Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, just 15 miles west of Spokane. The history of Eastern State Hospital, as detailed in its wikipedia article, chronicles the local manifestation of the deinstitutionalization movement. In 1954 the patient population peaked at 2,274, housed in 23 buildings. In 2016, the hospital had a bed capacity of 274, with “91 in the Adult Psychiatric Unit, 101 in the Geropsychiatric Unit, and 95 in the Forensic Services Unit.” Meanwhile, the population of Spokane county has more than doubled, from 196,000 to 456,000, while the patient population at Eastern has dropped by a factor of 10. Many of the buildings at Eastern State Hospital stand empty. 

Neither God nor evolution makes all of us humans mentally stable, non-drug using, model citizens. Ever. Coping with those of our fellow humans who are either temporarily or permanently mentally ill, drug addicted, destructive, and/or psychopathic—or just plain lawless—is an issue human society will never escape. Sometimes we are more successful and sometimes less, but the problem never goes away, especially not with something as simplistic as just building—and filling—a larger jail. 

All of us, even the homeless folk pushing their worldly belongings in a shopping cart, all of us want—and deserve—to be safe from physical harm and our “stuff” safe from vandalism, thievery, and befoulment. It is worth a bet that in the 1950s many of those 2,274 folk held at Eastern State Hospital were examples of the same unfortunates who today wander our city’s streets talking to themselves, threatening others, defecating on sidewalks and in alleyways, and breaking windows. Some of them are known patients who are “off their meds”. The 1960s were full of hope that with burgeoning improvements in psychiatric medications that outpatient mental health services and the new medicines could allow people to live in the community. For some people among those formerly housed at Eastern State, rejoining local communities with outpatient support worked well, but others, over time, were condemned to a life on the streets. We ought to ask ourselves how that happened.

For some, deinstitutionalization was seen as an opportunity to reduce costs. After all, if, with a little counseling and some pills, people can manage in the community mostly on their own it will be cheaper than the state or county providing room and board along with some form of behavioral management in a centralized institution. Officials in state and local governments, faced with managing budgets strained by endless anti-tax rhetoric from the Republican Party, saw other needs on which to spend constrained funds. The federally enacted and well-meaning Community Mental Health Act did not guarantee funding for the community-based alternatives—and Reagan’s subsequent “states’ rights” move of block grants shifted decision-making to state and local officials buffeted by competing budgetary demands. 

Over the same seventy years since “Cuckoo’s Nest”, laws began to change that gave people the “freedom” to refuse to cooperate with treatment as long as they were not deemed a “clear threat” to themselves or to others. These laws and court cases were in line with public perception that was, in part, driven by “Cuckoo’s Nest”. Nurse Mildred Ratched became the emotional stand-in for the institutional system of psychiatric care, while the gentle giant, “Chief” Bromden, came to represent the put-upon institutionalized psychiatric patient with whom the public could identify. The movie, and the general attitude of the 1960s, fostered not only suspicion of psychiatric diagnosis (and government authority in general) but validated the “freedom” of individual expression. The consequences of all this still reverberate.

Mental illness is endemic to humanity. There is no magic pill and no universal identifier. Many of us have experienced the pain and heartache of dealing with and trying to help—and get help for— a mentally ill family member. The struggles are heart-rending, emotionally draining, and often tragic, like that of Ethan Murray, gunned down by a Sheriff’s Deputy in Spokane Valley. The current mental health system that might have saved Ethan is both underfunded and hamstrung by law and precedent.

Unrestrained, unmanaged mental illness is the most visible and, arguably, the most damaging contributor to the issue of homelessness. The damage includes damage to property, damage to other people, including other homeless people, and damage to the image of the overall homeless population. 

We cannot successfully address homelessness or mental illness in Spokane by building a bigger jail and filling it with the product of a wildly overzealous County Prosecuting Attorney. Nor can we (nor should we) return to the 1950s, re-fill the empty buildings at Eastern State Hospital, and re-visit the abuses of the time (even if making some use of those buildings might make sense as part of a broader plan). At the same time we cannot allow behavior that will destroy our downtown by people who at one time would have been inmates at Eastern State Hospital . 

We got to where we are now with both homelessness and mental illness very gradually, like the proverbial frog in the warming water. Getting out of this mess cannot happen overnight—and no simple solution like a bigger jail or moving the downtown police station to new digs is going to solve it either. First, it will take understanding and acknowledgement of how we got here and then a long term, concerted effort to get ourselves out. 

Law enforcement cannot help us sort out the downtown dilemma until we find a workable place for people living on the margins of society to be safe and stay out of the weather. Downtown has had enough—and NIMBY (not in my backyard) responses counter nearly every attempt secure a location anywhere in the city. We need to look at outlying, safe, manageable locations and then provide ample transportation and a social service hub. That will cost money—but it already costs both private and public money to manage the problem downtown. It will be far easier to address the vandalism, filth, and behavior that threatens the viability of our downtown when secure shelter is available to those willing to accept it.

In the longer term we need to work to improve society’s ability to care for the Ethan Murrays among us. That will take empathy, money, and some legal and judicial change that gives families, mental health professionals, and law enforcement the tools with which to help. Let us not be hamstrung by the public image of mental health care embodied by the memory of Nurse Ratched in “Cuckoo’s Nest””.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. In writing this I was struck by understanding that nearly all of us (including, I suspect, the majority of people now homeless) want the same things: food, shelter of some kind, warmth, and safety for ourselves and our stuff. We, as a society, have always had to reckon with social outliers who are mentally ill or psychopathic. We struggle to properly define those terms as applied to any one individual. Each person has their unique story. Laws and appropriations can steer the ship’s course, but ultimately homelessness and mental illness must be addressed one person at a time.

Crime and Punishment

On January 27, The Inlander posted an article by Daniel Walters entitled “Lesley Haskell, wife of Spokane County Prosecutor, calls herself ‘White nationalist,’ uses N-word as slur” (not yet in the paper version of The Inlander). Walters has gathered Lesley Haskell quotes from Gab, an alt-social media platform she frequents. (Click and read. The Inlander article is free, comprehensive, and should be shared.) Lesley Haskell is free to express herself however she likes. Decent people, once acquainted with her words, will find her statements and the mindset they reflect revolting. 

Daniel Walters’ article rang true to me. I had the displeasure of sitting a few rows in front of Mr. and Mrs. Haskell at Sherrif Ozzie Knezovich’s and former State Senator John Smith’s presentation of “The Threats We Face” (referring to Matt Shea and company) in Spokane Valley in October 2019. Lesley periodically shouted out verbal attacks toward the podium over our heads. I thought at the time that anyone who could sit next to someone spouting like that had to be signaling silent agreement. 

Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell, should not be surprised if his wife’s vile views cause voters to wonder how his actions as prosecutor can avoid being tainted by her incessant slime. She invokes him:

“My husband is the Spo Co Prosecutor and he’s the last line of conservative armor that the County has,” writes Lesley Haskell, wife of Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell. “Spokane has gone to shit.”

He deflects:

Back then [in response to coverage of a 2015 Lesley outburst], Prosecutor Larry Haskell sent the Inlander a statement that Lesley “is a strong, independent, and conservative woman” who “does not represent me in these forums, either personally or professionally” and that he supported “the right to freedom of speech of all people.”

Attorney Haskell still wishes us to believe that listening to his wife’s diatribes over the dinner table have no effect on his prosecutorial conduct. Obviously stung by the Inlander article that appeared online on on January 27, the next day Attorney Haskell posted a lengthy defense of the impartiality he claims on the Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney’s website. In part he writes:

I do not and will not tolerate racial bias or discrimination in any form. People that know me fully understand those are not my views.  I do not tolerate racial bias or disparate treatment of any kind as proven by my words, deeds, and treatment of others during my tenure as prosecutor.

Larry Haskell was first elected to the supposedly non-partisan office of Spokane County Prosecutor in 2014 to replace the outgoing prosecutor, Steve Tucker. Larry’s wife Lesley’s vile discourse didn’t surface until the next year, 2015, and (judging by searches for “Lesley Haskell” at the Spokesman and The Inlander) the flap over her statements soon died down. Haskell ran unopposed in 2018. In the Spokesman’s endorsement of Haskell in 2014much was made of Haskell’s nearly seventeen years experience working in the office of the county prosecutor. As an innocent voter at the time I probably assumed that continuity of the culture at the prosecutor’s office, a culture that Attorney Haskell helped shape, would be a good thing. I was sucked in by “tough on crime” rhetoric. I didn’t do my homework.

The Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney’s office has a race problem. It is a problem baked into its culture, a culture in which Larry Haskell was steeped and which he now leads. There is a measure that stands out at Spokane Trends, a non-partisan provider of Spokane County data based at Eastern Washington University. At Spokane Trends there is a metric labelled “Average Daily Jail Population: Share of the Adult Population Incarcerated Compared to Total Adult Population by Race”. For all adults in Spokane County the number is about 0.15% or 1 in 667. For African American adults in Spokane County that percentage hovers around 1.5%, that is, one of every 67 African American adults in the County is, on average, in jail on an average daily basis, ten times the average rate for all adults. If anyone reading this is tempted to suggest that this ratio of rates within Spokane County is an expression of the lawlessness of African Americans, then you need to look at the state statistics in the next paragraph.

Over the last ten years the rate of African American adults incarcerated in Spokane County on any given day (about 1.5%) is consistently more than twice the average rate of incarceration of African Americans statewide (about 0.75%). In 2019 the Spokane County rate was four times the state rate. This disparity between the Spokane County and the state rates of incarceration is very similar for Native American adults. 

Lesley Haskell’s vile rhetoric and a photo of her posing with the Proud Boysmade a blip on national news. It should shine a spotlight on the racial bias endemic to the Prosecutor’s Office and Larry Haskell’s leadership. As Luke Baumgarten of RANGE points out, Larry Haskell has made other moves to undercut racial equity:

In January 2020 and again that July, Haskell tried to remove racial equity language from criminal justice goals proposed by a reform task force composed of community members, elected officials and stakeholders. Haskell was joined in perseveration by County Commissioners Kerns and French, all white men.

If Larry Haskell is to retain control and continue to nurture the warped culture of the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office he will need to run for re-election this year. There are rumblings of an opposing candidate who could begin to change the culture of that office. Lesley and Larry’s current notoriety and the light it shines on that culture needs to be kept in the public mind.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. A somewhat dry, but very informative, Zoom video presentation on disinformation put on by the non-partisan People for Effective GovernmentSpokane (PEG) recently introduced me to Spokane Trends and Dr. D. Patrick Jones, Ph.D., the the director of the office at EWU that gathers the data. I highly recommend a visit. The graphical data presentations are interactive: hover your cursor over a data point and more detail emerges.