McClellan compared the problem of St. Louis smog in the 1930s to the problem of crime in the 2010s.
He outlines how the solution to the smog problem was to ban dirty Illinois coal.
His solution to the present crime problem is to suspend the constitution and then mandate intensive racial profiling. He wants to target young black men. He wants them all frisked. He wants their mothers to go to jail if they are found with weapons.
Basically Bill McClellan has compared young black men to dirty Illinois coal.
Does he think that he has come up with a new idea when he suggests the labeling of all young black males as a suspect criminal class and then targeting them for police harassment, detention, arrest and imprisonment? It might be useful for Bill to read The New Jim Crow to get a better idea of what has been going on during the last 30 years with the so called War on Drugs.
Punishing an entire class of people based on the crimes of some of these these people is called collective punishment. It is an assault on the constitution that McClellan wants to suspend. Of course, why should Bill care? He is an old white man, not a young black man. He's not part of the suspect group. He's not advocating that police harass him - he's asking police to harass other people. I guess he would still want the constitution to apply to him, just not to young black people. Now there is a new, modern idea - a constitution for one race but not another race.
I do read Bill McClellan's columns. I realize that his ideas here are not motivated out of hatred, but rather a desire to stop killings. I do realize, as he states in his column, that the majority of murder victims in the St. Louis area are also young black people and McClellan's heart aches for victims like Anya Cook who he wrote about recently.
I do read Bill McClellan's columns. I realize that his ideas here are not motivated out of hatred, but rather a desire to stop killings. I do realize, as he states in his column, that the majority of murder victims in the St. Louis area are also young black people and McClellan's heart aches for victims like Anya Cook who he wrote about recently.
Regardless of the reason why, the ideas he presents are appalling - he suggested suspending the constitution for a category of people based on their age and race.
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Y'all know anything about the Kacie Starr Triplett resignation? My instincts tell me that there is more to it than has been reported by the local press.
ReplyDeleteI sincerely hope that McClellan wrote this as a subtle satire and plans to attack the vast numbers of racists who respond positively to this. Maybe I'm too optimistic but I never saw McClellan as this kind of person before.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else catch McClellan talking about this on Donnybrook? He was asked why just the mothers would be arrested and not the fathers. His response was "Because all the fathers are already in jail".
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