As a youth and a bibliophile, I found newsreel clips of book burnings from 1930s Germany deeply disturbing. It is only now that I understand that, as dramatic as these images were, their purpose was not to destroy the books themselves but to send a chill through all those harboring any ideas that might be contrary to those staging the conflagrations. The pinnacle of methods for suppressing opposing views were recently on display in bills passed by the Trump Republican dominated Texas legislature and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott.
In an excellent, highly recommended (and free) article entitled “Reading While Texan” Doug Muder discusses the latest chilling reaction to the Republican extremism of state laws recently passed in Texas:
NBC News received an audio recording of an administrator in the Dallas suburb of Southlake [1], telling teachers that a new law (HB 3979) requires them to offer an “opposing” perspective if they have books about the Holocaust in their classroom libraries. When a teacher asked “How do you oppose the Holocaust?” the administrator didn’t offer a suggestion, but replied “It’s come up. Believe me.”
How long will it take before a science teacher in Texas is hauled before a board for broaching the subject of biological evolution without giving equal time to Biblical creationism?
Dr. Heather Cox Richardson, a much published professor of american history and author of Letters from an American, wrote a detailed dissection of what’s in and what’s out in teaching history in Texas established by the new law S.B. 3, the text of which you can read here. One among the many atrocious additions and deletions Professor Richardson details in the law that stuck out for me was the line through (deletion of) “the history of Native Americans” from “the essential knowledge and skills” for the K-12 social studies curriculum.
If your response to all this is “Oh, well, that’s just in Texas” I have news. Most of this push in Texas is riding on the wave of idiotic outrage Republicans have whipped up over “critical race theory”, a subject not touched on as such in K-12. The words “Critical Race Theory” is the new fairy dust of Republican outrage. Critical race theory outrage is nearly always interwoven with the anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-evolution hysteria among the folks making school board meetings intolerable in Spokane valley’s Central Valley School District (CVSD). Similar groups, similarly inspired have forced Spokane Public Schools School Board meetings to go virtual in order to comply with public safety rules. If one scratches the surface of the groups instigating these assaults on school board meetings, one often finds a reactionary, fundamentalist religious fervor, a desire to impose the group’s idea of doctrinal purity on the broader society.
It is this type of quasi-religious reactionary fervor in Germany in the early 20th century, the Völkisch movement, that, in the 1920s, took control of the German Student Union. In 1933, just months after Adoph Hitler became Chancellor, it was the German Student Union that announced a nationwide “Action against the Un-German Spirit” that would climax in a massive burning of books on May 10, 1933. On that occasion, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda meister, gave a speech heard by tens of thousands. Goebbels exhorted his listeners against “decadence and moral corruption” and in favor of “decency and morality in family and state.” Those words (not unlike rhetoric you hear today) were code for a hugely broad range of literature, including the works of H.G. Wells, Thomas Mann, and “all historical writings whose purpose is to denigrate the origin, the spirit and the culture of the German Volk, or to dissolve the racial and structural order of the Volk, or that denies the force and importance of leading historical figures.” This last should sound chillingly familiar in the context of current anti-CRT hysteria. (Read more of the wide range of literature condemned to the flames here.)
The German Student Union/ Nazi book burnings of the 1930s, while broader in scope, served the same two fold purpose as recent state laws passed here: rouse the faithful—and instill fear in anyone holding a view or wishing to pedagogically consider any view that might run counter to the orthodoxy.
When I started writing this post, book burnings, as far as I knew, had not been carried out recently in the United States. That changed on February 2 at the “Global Vision Bible Church” about fifteen miles east of Nashville, Tennessee. Pro-Trump, anti-mask Pastor Greg Locke said he was “called by God” to stage a book burning of offensive materials—like the Harry Potter books. It made national news. For a full account of the event visit this “Nashville Scene” article.
The primary intent of Pastor Greg Locke’s book burning was to rouse and unite his fundamentalist flock, though we should have no doubt that if Pastor Locke were able to sufficiently spread his views he would be happy to instill fear among those he considers the unbelieving heathen.
Surely we are not yet at a stage of actual national book burnings like those of 1930s Germany, but the same fundamentalist, reactionary sentiments of the German Völkisch movement are alive and well in the anti-CRT, anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-evolution, anti-sex education salvos we now see directed at local school boards.
Recognize where these movements are coming from. History rhymes, but it doesn’t have to repeat.
Pay attention to whose axe is being ground–and by whom
For decades I read the Spokesman Review’s Opinion page without paying much attention to the identity or the income source of article authors. That was my mistake.
The Legislature last year passed a 7% tax on the sale of stocks, bonds, businesses and other investments, if the profits exceed $250,000 annually. Exceptions include the sale of all real estate, livestock and small family-owned businesses.
It would bring in about $415 million for the state to pay for child care and early learning. The tax technically went into effect in January, but payments don’t begin being made to the state until 2023.
The tax would affect less than 1% of taxpayers, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.
Nowhere in Mr. Cargill’s article will you find any hint of the scope of the contested capital gains tax or any indication of what it is earmarked to fund. Nowhere, of course, does he acknowledge that Washington State has the most regressive tax structure of any state, i.e. the least wealthy citizens in the state pay the highest percentage of their income in aggregate taxes. Mr. Cargill’s wants the reader, instead, to focus on this idea [the bold is mine]:
They [supporters of the capital gains tax] want to sock it to people in the higher income brackets, then extend the tax later to everyone else.
Recognize that slippery slope argument? “Once those evil folk have their foot in the door, the next thing you know they’ll be after your money! You must resist now or they’ll be coming to get yours!” Cargill is coming from a place where any hint of a progressive tax must be resisted. It is a familiar argument coming from a familiar source, the Washington Policy Center (WPC). The WPC is the local manifestation of the libertarian/conservative “think tank” network of 5019(c)(3)s detailed by Jane Mayer in her comprehensive study, Dark Money. Funded by tax-deductible dollars from undisclosed wealthy donors, their purpose is to mold public opinion for their own benefit one speech and one article at a time.
The donors to the Washington Policy Center have an axe to grind—and they hire staff who have demonstrated skill in grinding that axe. WPC provides its hires with a prominent platform from which to speak. Substance and and expertise takes a back seat to demonstrated skill at consistently pushing the “right” argument, in this case, the slippery slope argument that any tax that might selectively affect the WPC donors is to be feared by the common citizen, too.
Mr. Cargill was not supported by WPC (or by the Spokesman, see below) because of his expertise in tax policy. Like others on the WPC payroll, Mr. Cargill was hired on account of his particular political bent layered on his education and experience in communication, specifically political science and television news. Mr. Cargill is, no doubt, sincere in his opinions, but his opinions are selected and elevated for what they are—not for any demonstrated subject expertise.
The Washington Policy Center through a Chris Cargill Guest Opinion has been offered a platform on the opinion page of the Spokesman at least every two weeks for nearly a year, over which time there has been a subtle shift in the manner in which the paper presents his opinions.
Until September, 2021, Mr. Cargill’s mini-bio following his opinion pieces was:
Chris Cargill is the Eastern Washington director for Washington Policy Center, an independent research organization with offices in Spokane, Tri-Cities, Seattle and Olympia. Online at washingtonpolicy.org.
As of October a more accurate and transparent mini-bio appeared and is appended to each of Mr. Cargill’s later articles:
Chris Cargill is the Eastern Washington director of Washington Policy Center, an independent research organization with offices in Spokane, Seattle, Tri-Cities and Olympia. Online at washingtonpolicy.org. Members of the Cowles family, owners of The Spokesman-Review, have previously hosted fundraisers for the Washington Policy Center, and sit on the organization’s board.
It may be a small change, but it is a positive change in the interest of transparency. One hopes that readers of the Spokesman will pay attention to the financial backing and background of the folks whose opinions are put forward to influence public opinion.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. If you wonder where you’ve heard of Chris Cargill before this, it might be from his election last November to the City Council of the City of Liberty Lake, Washington. The “Eastern Washington director of Washington Policy Center” now has a city council seat.
The column by Shawn Vestal copied below appeared in the Spokesman on Friday, February 11, 2022. Vestal’s column appeared in response to statements by County Commissioner Al French sent in an email to several recipients including Mr. Vestal. In that email Mr. French tried to justify Spokane County Commissioners French, Kerns, and Kuney’s revision of the Spokane Regional Health District Board of Health (SRHD BOH) last November. French sent the email the day before the Commissioners put the finishing touch on their power takeover of the SRHD BOH by finalizing three new, handpicked SRHD BOH appointees.
Al French would like you to know it’s not his fault, nor the fault of his fellow county commissioners, that they have done what they have done to the board of the Spokane Regional Health District.
The law allowed it, so they’re not responsible.
Al French would also like you to understand that, when it comes to serving on the health board, there’s no real benefit to having medical expertise.
If you thought there was, well, that’s on you.
And Al French would also like you to understand that the latest terrible decision he and fellow County Commissioners Josh Kerns and Mary Kuney have made – in an impressively long string of terrible decisions regarding public health – was technically within the letter of the law and therefore not their fault. Just as it was technically within the letter of the law when they shrank the board by booting everyone who’d disagreed with them about their past terrible decision to cover up the botched firing of the health officer.
The law allowed it. They bear no responsibility.
“The appointments we are making today are in complete compliance with the law,” French said Monday before voting to appoint a naturopath to the health board. “If there are those that are unhappy with the law, then talk to your legislators.”
French has a chapped hide about media coverage and public criticism over the commissioners’ decision to ignore entreaties to appoint a doctor or medical expert to the board, among other issues.
He made a series of comments before taking that vote Monday and was so proud of these comments that he emailed them to some people who weren’t there to hear them, myself included, in an effort to help them be “better informed and accurate.”
In the remarks, French whines about the criticism he and his fellow health-district underminers have received. It’s nothing but misinformation and political posturing, he said.
One of the things people just don’t understand, French says, is that there’s no reason to have medical expertise on a health board.
“The Health District Board is a ‘community’ board and not a ‘medical’ board,’” French insisted. “This differentiation is critical to this process. The Health District Board provides oversight and community input to the programs and functions of the Health District. The Board DOES NOT make medical decisions.”
This is his argument for appointing a naturopath to the position on the board that is required by law to represent “public health, health care facilities and providers.”
Regional hospitals, French notes, don’t have boards that are made up entirely of doctors (though he proceeds bizarrely to cite the fact that every one does have doctors, actually). And for many years, he says, there were no doctors on the SRHD board. And – even though it absolutely, definitely doesn’t matter to French whether there is medical expertise on a health board – it was Al French himself, he notes, who years ago appointed a doctor to the board, a doctor who he would later help fire in a storm of dishonesty.
Yes, amazingly, French patted himself on the back for putting Dr. Bob Lutz on the health board back in 2011, all while arguing how beside-the-point it would be to put a doctor on the health board now.
The confusion is deep, but the pique is understandable. After all, it’s been very difficult for the commissioners, as they’ve made one terrible decision after another, that so many people have noticed.
Starting with their efforts to undermine public health at the start of the pandemic and continuing through the disastrous firing of Lutz – about which they have repeatedly told blatant falsehoods – and evolving into the latest putsch to take greater control of the board by eliminating dissenters, the commissioners have been consistently criticized in public.
French, for one, is tired of it.
“There has been a lot of misinformation and political posturing over the last many months over the creation of a new Health District Board to comply with the legislation adopted last year,” French said. “Even the legislator that sponsored the bill has criticized us for following the law and not his intent or what was in his mind when he voted for the bill.”
French is referring to the law sponsored by Rep. Marcus Riccelli, which attempted to broaden community representation and medical expertise on health boards. The law had fatal flaws that the commissioners have cynically exploited. While the law aims to expand boards by requiring districts to balance community members and elected officials, commissioners met the legal standard by shrinking the board instead, consolidating their own power and thumbing their noses at medical expertise.
The law wasn’t clear enough in requiring commissioners to do the right things, and it allowed room for them to do the wrong ones.
For this, Al French demands you hold him blameless.
On November 15, 2021, the Spokane County Board of Commissioners, Al French, Josh Kerns, and Mary Kuney, voted to dissolve the Spokane Regional Health District’s Board of Health (SRHD BOH) as of December 31, 2021. In a brazen display of power politics, the Commissioners reconstituted the SRHD Board of Health effective January 1, 2022. By removing five BOH member positions currently held by city representatives and selecting appointed member of their own choosing, the Commissioners gave themselves a likely supermajority on the Board. At least viewed from the standpoint of many, Resolution-21-0791 seemed to come out of nowhere, without warning or time for public comment. The Spokesman article by Colin Tiernan that covered the Commissioners’ action, quoted two members of the dissolved Board of Health, President of the City of Spokane City Council Breean Beggs and Mayor of Millwood Kevin Freeman, saying that even they were not made aware that the Board on which they sat was about to be dissolved.
For a month the audacity (and opacity) of Resolution-21-0791 apparently so stunned all concerned that no one thought to ask if the Commissioners had broken the law with their action. Then, on December 8, a guest opinion piece appeared in the Spokesman written by Dr. Pam Kohlmeier, MD, JD, entitled, “Was shrinking SRHD Board of Health illegal?”. In the article, Dr. Kohlmeier details multiple apparent violations by the County Commissioners, including violations of the Bylaws of the SRHD BOH, the Washington State Open Meetings Act, and other state laws, including one that authorizes commissioners by way of a resolution to establish a single county health district like SRHD WITH a Board of Health to govern it, but not the authority to gut an existing Board of Health.
What exactly is the power relationship between the three member Spokane County Board of Commissioners (French, Kerns, and Kuney), the State of Washington, and the SRHD Board of Health?
We claim to be a nation governed by “the rule of law”. Law is composed of words contained in a hierarchy of documents: the federal and state constitutions and federal, state, and local laws and ordinances. Power flows from and is constrained by the words in those documents, documents to which most of us pay little attention. A major portion of the practice of law is devoted to arguing over what those words mean, i.e. what the words authorize and forbid.
The power of the Spokane County Commissioners flows, as it does in all other Washington counties, from the Washington State Constitution and state law (the Revised Code of Washington or “RCW”). Commissioners French, Kerns, and Kuney must act within the confines of those laws—and—if not—should be called to account.
In shrinking the membership of the SRHD Board of Health and thereby clawing back voting power from local cities and towns and shoring up their own voting power on the BOH, French, Kerns, and Kuney have overstepped their authority—a polite way of saying they have broken the law.
The single county Spokane Regional Health District was established January 1, 1997 by Spokane County Resolution 1996-0825. This was done in several steps in response to the then recent passage of a state law (SB5253), part of the 1995 “Public Health Improvement Plan Implementation.” Having established the SRHD and the SRHD’s Board of Health, the three commissioners at the time, by law, as a threesome, relinquished some of their voting power to the members of the Board of Health, based on membership specified through a series of resolutions, under the authority granted under state statute RCW 70.05.030which states:
The board of county commissioners may, at its discretion, adopt an ordinance expanding the size and composition of the board of health to include elected officials from cities and towns and persons other than elected officials as members so long as persons other than elected officials do not constitute a majority.
Take special notice of the words “an ordinance” and “expanding”. Note the wording is not “ordinances”, nor does the law allow for the county commissioners to “shrink” or even to “alter” the composition of the board.
The district board of health shall constitute the local board of health for all the territory included in the health district, and shall supersede and exercise all the powers and perform all the duties by law vested in the county board of health of any county included in the health district.
Over the years various Spokane County Commissions have passed resolutions that have expanded the number of BOH members—and they have tinkered with the details of who gets to be a member (e.g. adding representation for the City of Spokane Valley after it incorporated), but Resolution-21-0791, violates state law, breaking new ground by shrinkingrepresentation in a naked attempt to solidify their control over the duly constituted Spokane Regional Board. It is not only a shameful act, but it is illegal on its face.
The city governments of Spokane and Spokane Valley need to challenge this County power grab, in court if necessary, lest the three current county commissioners under the leadership of Al French continue to shamelessly claw back power that is not theirs to wield.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. As I read RCWs and historical Spokane County Resolutions in preparation for this post I was very much struck by this: The historical tone of past laws and resolutions was one of cooperation in pursuit of better and broader representation and inclusion in pursuit of the common good of Public Health. It is with regret and sadness that I note the tone of the current county commissioners as quoted in the Spokesman, which expressed, for example, sentiments made by Commissioner John Kerns:
Kerns also emphasized that the commissioners followed the letter of the law. He said if Riccelli wanted more public health professionals and more elected city officials on the board, he should have written that into the bill.
“It’s his law,” Kerns said. “I would say Rep. Riccelli’s rhetoric doesn’t match the bills that he drafts.”
That statement reeks of a politician’s version of the schoolyard taunt “Nah, na, ni, na, na.” AND, as I’ve just demonstrated, the Commissioners most certainly did not “follow the letter of the law”. Instead, they broke the law and assumed in their audacity that no one would call them on it.
P.S.S. The SRHD BOH, as a government entity related to, but separate from, the County Commission, established Bylaws which include the rules for membership on, and conduct of, business by the SRHD BOH, including a procedure to amend those bylaws. Once a single county health district is established by county commissioners and a Board of Health for that district is put in place then the BOH of that district is governed by its Bylaws, not solely by the county commissioners (although they retain votes on the board). If that were not so, then any decision made by a vote of a quorum of the twelve member BOH that was conducted under its Bylaws could be summarily overruled by just two of three commissioners voting in a commission meeting. That doesn’t make any sense.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
