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| Outraged parent Ana Marie Cox protesting the killing of school cafeteria manager Philando Castile in 2016 |
Terms that have become symbolic of the overreach of some law enforcement organizations who intentionally and disproportionately target, and stop, people of color - too often for no discernible reason other than the color of one's skin.
African-American Minnesota cafeteria manager Philando Castile is a sad, but prime example.
As I blogged about back on June 10th, the former St. Anthony, Minnesota PD officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled Castile over for a broken taillight back on July 6, 2016.
Before that fateful stop, remarkably, Castile had been pulled over by various local Minnesota police officers between 49 and 52 times over a 13-year period for mostly minor infractions like failure to use a turn signal.
Within 74 seconds of pulling Castile over, an unhinged Yanez fired seven shots into the car at point blank range, (with Castile's girlfriend sitting in the passenger seat and her four-year-old daughter in the backseat) killing an innocent man who'd committed no crime, and had done nothing to threaten Yanez aside from comply with a verbal order to produce his identification from his wallet.
While unjustified traffic stops based on racial bias continue to be an issue in many parts of America, the positive news is that stop-and-risks in the city most notorious for their use, New York, have plummeted since being phased out in 2104 under current 2nd-term Democratic NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio.
And as James Cullen reported in an article for the Brennan Center For Justice in 2016, the elimination of stop-and-frisk did NOT lead to an increase in crime as some conservative politicians (including former Mayor Mike Bloomberg), right-wing media pundits like Rudy Giuliani, and some members of the NYPD insisted that it would.
In fact, in total contrast to the dystopian crime-ravaged wasteland Trump described in his demented inauguration address back in January, as Ashely Southall reported for the New York Times last Wednesday, crime levels in New York City are as low as they've been since the 1950's.
But as recent international headlines indicate, stop-and-frisks and the use of the law to unfairly target, and disproportionately stop racial and ethnic minorities have been generating controversy, and police-related deaths, in France.
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| French journalist Rokhaya Diallo |
She wasn't removed from the FDC advisory board because of some embarrassing personal scandal, or because she wasn't qualified to serve.
Ms. Diallo was apparently removed by the government of French President Emmanuel Macron because of a conservative backlash that might be seen in America as a kind of knee-jerk, reverse political-correctness run amok.
Over the past couple years, she has emerged as a leading vocal critic of some of the stunning displays of authoritarian overreach by French police that have resulted in the injuries and deaths of a number of young men of color - most of them Muslims of African or Arab descent.
According to the Times, her public accusations that such conduct is reflective of institutional racism within France have rankled conservatives, including French education minster Jean Michel Blanquer, who threatened to sue a French teachers union last month "for using the words 'institutional racism' during educational workshops in ethnically diverse Seine-St. Denis northeast of Paris. Mr. Blanquer has also threatened to sue Ms. Diallo."
Back in May, President Macron famously beat his far-right extremist candidate opponent Marine Le Pen in a widely-watched national election (in part) with a promise to "fight the divisions which undermine France".
But the excitement of those elections seven months ago has faded.
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| French President Emmanuel Macron |
Now facing the political reality that he needs the support of conservatives to enact the kinds of policies that got him elected, he yielded to pressure from French conservatives and Ms. Diallo was removed from the FDC advisory board.
The president of the board, venture capitalist Marie Ekeland, resigned in protest over the widely-condemned decision along with most of the other board members she'd tapped.
It's a pretty sad reflection of a European nation with such a proud tradition of "liberty, equality, fraternity" and free speech to remove a young progressive voice from a (supposedly) independent advisory board because some people are uncomfortable with what she thinks and says.
Particularly a young journalist of color who speaks up for the rights of a group that is increasingly marginalized from mainstream French society in the economic, political and social sense - alienation which is a huge factor in some French Muslims self-radicalizing and identifying with (or being recruited by) ISIS in the first place.
As the Times op-ed notes, in 2016 Diallo produced and directed a documentary titled From Ferguson to Paris: Guilty of Being Black - an analysis of the growing problem of French police using excessive physical, and deadly force in the wake of confrontations arising from the huge spike in stop-and-frisk identity checks that overwhelmingly target Muslims and people of color.
These kinds of identity checks grew exponentially in France in the wake of the horrifying wave of terrorist attacks that took place in multiple venues across Paris on Friday November 13, 2015.
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| Far-right French supporters of the National Front rallying in honor of Joan of Arc in 2015 [Photo - Alamy] |
Those attacks unfolded at a time when many Europeans, including some French citizens, were already expressing a simmering resentment over the thousands of illegal immigrants fleeing war-ravaged nations in the Mid-East and Africa who were desperately seeking refuge in towns and cities across Western Europe.
That anti-immigrant resentment also found an outlet of expression in a resurgent nationalist / populist political movement that has seen once-marginalized right-wing extremist political parties capture seats in parliaments across Europe - including the National Front in France.
For many French citizens, that resentment was further fueled by a string of terrorist attacks starting in 2012 that rocked the country - including the mass shooting at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January, 2015 that left 17 people dead and 22 wounded.
And the beheading of Herve Cornara in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in southeastern France by a radicalized Islamic French Muslim of North African descent named Yassin Salhi who also attempted to blow up a factory by ramming a vehicle into a bunch of gas cylinders on June 26, 2015.
From a domestic security standpoint, given the sharp increase in the number of home-grown "self-radicalized" French Muslims who've been engaged or connected to the slew of terrorist attacks that have struck France since 2012, it's understandable that French authorities would try and target areas with high concentrations of Muslims in an effort to try and prevent such attacks from happening.
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| The uncomfortable truth about stop-and-frisk in NYC; stats from NY Civil Liberties Union |
Unfortunately, just like stop-and-frisk in New York City, the overwhelming majority of people being stopped repeatedly were innocent French people of color who had nothing to do with terrorism or any other kind of illegal activity.
As The Guardian reported back in 2015 these kinds of random stop-and-frisks have also been successfully challenged in a French appeals court, as in the case of 13 men, all of whom were either of African or Arab descent, none of whom had a criminal record, who'd all been stopped multiple times by French police for humiliating ID checks.
The French court awarded all of the men modest financial compensation.
Now I'm no security expert, but are spot ID checks and stop-and-frisks of mostly people of color really the best way to stop some person who's sitting in a room alone watching ISIS propaganda online getting motivated to commit some kind of heinous terrorist attack on an innocent person or people?
Or are such actions only further stirring up the kind of anti-government resentment that already exists in already-marginalized communities? Thus serving the recruitment efforts of terrorists trying to target those alienated populations as they do in other countries like the U.S.?
There's no easy answer to those questions, but if you want to get a better sense of the repercussions of French police using undocumented stop-and-frisk against young French men of color, take a few minutes to read an op-ed Rokhaya Diallo wrote for Essence Magazine last August titled, "Police and Racism Kill In France Too".
Just under a month after a slim majority of the 30 million-plus British citizens voted for the UK to "Brexit" the European Union on June 23, 2016, driven in part by the same kind of anti-immigrant hysteria being peddled by Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race, a 24-year-old black Muslim Frenchman named Adama Traorie´ got into a confrontation with French police who were trying to arrest his older brother Bagui.
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| Adama Traorie´'s sister Assa (2nd from right) joins thousands of protesters July, 2016 [Photo - AFP/ Getty] |
For perspective, this incident took place just about fifteen days after former Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez fired seven shots into Philando Castile's car, killing him.
The death of Traorie´, subsequent protests, and disturbing allegations of an attempted police coverup, forced the issue of French police brutality into the mainstream spotlight in France.
Frankly, Americans who wish to see the implementation of meaningful reforms in policing to prevent this kind of abuse of police authority can't just get angry when it happens here in the United States.
Those who care have a responsibility to use peaceful dissent and political activism to channel outrage and concern over the same kinds of incidents that happen in other countries into substantive change that can take root globally.
Because this ongoing issue is reflective of a deeper systematic racism that's not bound by borders.
Rokhaya Diallo's passion and commitment to end unjustified police brutality in France and beyond isn't just going to get swept under the rug as a result of conservative French authorities pressuring the Macron government to boot her off of an independent advisory board.
Aided by social media, the ability of more people to see her documentary and a growing global presence thanks to attention from mainstream French, British and American media, Ms. Diallo's voice and influence is growing.
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| French police conducting a stop-and-frisk on a young French citizen in 2011 |
But Rokhaya Diallo's (and other activist's) efforts are important.
They've helped people around the world learn the name, and story, of Adama Traorie´.
As well as young men of color like Hakim Ajimi, who died after French police used an illegal choke hold on him that crushed his thorax in 2004, or Lamine Dieng who was in police custody when he died of asphyxiation inside a French police van in 2007.
French authorities have every right to take proactive steps to protect their citizens from the kinds of violent terrorist attacks that have seized the world's attention.
But killing innocent people is an unacceptable way to achieve that goal - and as the editorial board of the New York Times observed, French President Emmanuel Macron is going to have to decide if the time-honored French concepts of "liberty, equality, fraternity" are just words, or an important part of his long-term vision for the country who elected him into office, in part, to reject the divisive politics of the far right and bring the country back together.
That's an important question as we head into 2018, not just in France or the United States but everywhere where injustice has become a part of government policy.
Well that's it for now, I'm off to join some friends in Princeton to ring in the new year.
2017 has certainly been one heckuva ride.
Here's to better things in 2018, thanks again for checking out the blog and I hope to see you back here next year. -CG
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