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NEWS & LETTERS, NOVEMBER 2003Black/Red ViewRacism in Californiaby John Alan Two events happened in California at approximately the same time. One was the recall of Governor Gray Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor. This was nationally covered by the news media. The other was the failure of a jury, composed mostly of white suburbanites and no African Americans, to convict the “Riders," a trio of Oakland policemen charged with conspiracy to falsely arrest, file false police reports, plant evidence, assault and kidnap African Americans. The jury did not outright exonerate them, but after deliberating 56 days, it deadlocked and failed to bring any convictions. This never came near to getting national media attention. After all, it was only another one of those conflicts between poor African Americans and an urban police force. The Riders' trial was the longest and most costly in Oakland's history. It is estimated that it cost two to three million dollars. Jurors' lunches alone cost $11,000 and they were paid $30,000. Significantly, during the criminal trial, Oakland settled federal civil rights claims of 119 plaintiffs against the Riders for $10.5 million. Many African Americans in Oakland are bothered by the fact that there were no African Americans on the jury. At first, this appears to be incomprehensible. After all, the crimes that the Riders were charged with happened in areas where the African-American population is the majority. According to prosecutor David Hollister, the length of the trial kept many working class minorities off the jury. He gave an example: “If you get a juror who is 27 years old from West Oakland who is working an hourly wage, his employer might give him a day off with pay, but he is not going to give him four months off with pay, that would eliminate him. And that eliminated hundreds in the Rider trial.” After this elimination of hundreds of African Americans from jury service, Hollister said: “What we were left with was a predominantly white middle class, well-established jury.” (THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Oct. 3, 2003.) Hollister has given us a picture of how class justice is practiced in Oakland. But there is more. Oakland’s alleged justice contains a degenerate racist ideology that sees African Americans as potential or lying criminals. This racist concept was in the minds of the jurors, who advanced the idea that the tactics of the Riders were necessary in their fight against drug dealers. The idea that the end justified the means, and that Riders who were clearly guilty of abuse were justified in their tactics, was projected until the jury became hopelessly deadlocked. According to jurors interviewed by the OAKLAND TRIBUNE after the deadlocked jury was dismissed, “their 56 days of deliberation [was] polarized from the outset, with the foreman proclaiming on day one there was too much reasonable doubt to convict on any of the 35 charges. The divided camps were described as ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal,' with one inclined to trust police and the other being skeptical of the integrity of cops.” Police have a history of maltreating African Americans and not being condemned for it by most white Americans. African Americans in Los Angeles, Newark, Detroit and Cincinnati have revolted against the consensus that gave police blanket impunity to beat up or kill them. The Riders in Oakland didn't do anything quite as bad as the police in those cities, but they did send innocent African Americans to prison. The Riders' trial revealed that a jury without African Americans makes it possible for racist policemen to terrorize African Americans without fear of punishment. Racism still exists in California decades after the Civil Rights Movement and the enactment of federal legislation making African Americans "free and equal." Oakland's African Americans will organize to oppose every form of regenerated racism as they have in the past. |
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