SSCI

YOUR POINTS WILL BE TAKEN AWAY IF IT IS LATER FOUND THAT SOMEONE COPIED YOUR PAPER

Extra credit paper directions:

- Each paper is potentially worth 2 points extra credit which is added on to your midterm or final exam score.

- Papers are due the Saturday after finals – December 9.

- Papers are submitted through Blackboard. No e-mail or hard copy papers accepted. Instructions for this are on a separate instruction sheet.

- You write the paper only on the articles that are on Blackboard for this class.

- If you write more than one paper, you cannot reuse any concepts from prior paper/s.

Technical expectations:

- 300 – 350 words

- double spaced

- in a 12 point non serif font (Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Candara, Verdana are some examples)

Paper expectations:

This paper is not a formal essay or term paper. This paper is not a summary, an opinion or a simple response. The objective of this paper is to allow students to show they have an understanding of course concepts and can apply them to current social conditions. It will include the following conditions:

- After reading one of the articles on Blackboard, students will consider 2 concepts from this course that can be applied to the article. These concepts will be defined according to the definitions in this class. No dictionary, encyclopedia or other source definitions are acceptable.

- Papers will NOT have:

— introduction

— opinion

— citations

— references

- Each paper must include 3 quotes from the article.

· - Your paper will be written on a computer, saved to a computer or portable device such as a flash drive, then up-loaded to Blackboard. The title of each paper MUST include some aspect of the title given on Blackboard (example: for a paper on an article about Rosa Parks, the title of the paper might be ‘RosaParksExtraCredit.’

·

·

· Title include：

· wrongful convictions

· drug tunnels

· traditional foods

· Native Americans Coal

· Sikh man

· school hate

· firefighters noose

· college hate crime

children ghetto )

-The format described below must be followed. Do NOT show references as I’m already very familiar with the course concepts and articles. Do not follow APA, MLA or another academic format.

- Students may write up to 7 extra credit papers for a total of 14 extra credit points

- PAPERS MUST BE SAVED AS doc, docx, or pdf. NO EXCEPTIONS

Format of the paper:

- Paragraph 1: Identify and define the first of the two concepts you will be applying.

— note: The definitions MUST come from either our textbook or class notes. Papers using dictionary, Wikipedia, etc definitions will not be read.

- Paragraph 2: Identify and define the second of the two concepts you will be applying.

— note: The definitions MUST come from either our textbook or class notes. Papers using dictionary, Wikipedia, etc definitions will not be read.

- Paragraphs 3 and 4: Show how each of these concepts can be applied to the article you’ve read.

possible concepts for extra credit — the following concepts are from chapters 1 and 2 of the text book. They are in no particular order. There could still be some concepts in chapters 1 and 2. There are most definitely more concepts in the rest of the book. This list is meant only as a suggestion.

- socioeconomic status (SES) - inequality - definition of minority group - definition of majority group

- characteristics of a minority group - racial minority group - ethnic minority group - race

- ethnicity - race as a social construction - markers of group membership - stratification - theories of Karl Marx (proletariat, bourgeoisie, means of production, importance of the economy, conflict as good

- living wage - theoretical perspective proposed by Weber

- theoretical perspective proposed by Lenski

- subsistence technology (foraging, agriculture, industrial, post-industrial)

- intersectionality (Patricia Hill Collins); matrix of domination

- relationship between power, competition, conflict

- evolution - prejudice - stereotypes - gender - discrimination - ideological racism

- institutional discrimination - miscegenation - assimilation - pluralism

- Anglo conformity - social structure - human capital theory - multi-culturalism - ethnic enclaves - separatism, forced migration, genocide, revolution

- industrial revolution - any of the different immigrant groups discussed in class

- chains of immigration - anti-Catholicism - anti-Semitism - pogrom

- push factors; pull factors - three generation model - quota system - ethnic succession

- labor unions - structural mobility - degree of similarity - ethclass - sojourners - ethnic revival

The interlink below is the reference and information which you can use:

http://ww2today.com/4th-september-42-nazis-order-that-children-be-deported

Student charged after bragging about putting roommate’s toothbrush ‘where the sun doesn’t shine’

By Lindsey Bever November 1 Former University of Hartford student Brianna Brochu, 18. (West Hartford Police Department/AP)

A former student at the University of Hartford has been charged with criminal mischief and breach of peace after bragging online about contaminating her roommate’s belongings with bodily fluids, including rubbing dirty tampons on her backpack and putting her toothbrush “places where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Eighteen-year-old Brianna Brochu appeared in court Wednesday. A judge banned her from the campus in central Connecticut and ordered her not to have any contact with her former dormitory roommate, Chennel Rowe, pending the conclusion of the case, according to the Hartford Courant.

Authorities told the Courant that Brochu, who is white, also faces a hate-crime charge stemming from the alleged actions against her roommate, who is black.

Last month, Brochu allegedly wrote on Instagram that she finally “got rid of her roommate,” whom she referred to as “Jamaican Barbie.”

“After 11⁄2 month of spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons [on] her backpack, putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesn’t shine, and so much more, I can finally say goodbye Jamaican Barbie,” the post read, according to court records obtained by Heavy.

According to the arrest warrant affidavit, Brochu posted pictures, including one of a bag stained with a “reddish brown substance” that she later acknowledged was “period blood,” one of a food container filled with a milky substance and one of hair extensions with the caption, “This b—- legit bought a box of f—ing hair.”

University of Hartford President Greg Woodward said in a letter Wednesday to the campus community that following the “deeply disturbing situation,” Brochu is no longer a student at the school. He said the university took immediate action once it learned about the allegations, notifying campus authorities and the West Hartford Police Department, which opened an investigation on Oct. 18.

Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brochu was arrested Saturday after telling police that she started to lash out at Rowe after she posted videos of Brochu sleeping and teasing her for snoring, according to court documents.

She told police that she did lick Rowe’s “plate, fork and spoon,” rub a used tampon on her backpack and mix Rowe’s lotions together, but she said that everything else she bragged about online was not true, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

Brochu had not yet been assigned an attorney in the case.

Rowe recounted the ordeal Monday in a Facebook Live video, saying that she had been experiencing throat pain for weeks and did not know why. She told police earlier this month that a nurse had advised her she had a “bacteria present in her throat” and Rowe suspected it was caused by “Brochu tampering with her personal items,” according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

Rowe said in the Facebook video that she learned about Brochu’s social media post when she was approached by a former neighbor and two resident assistants as she was switching dorm rooms.

The university president called the incident “deeply upsetting.”

“One of our students was the alleged victim of bullying and her story was shared across social media,” Woodward said Tuesday in a letter to the campus.

“The incident has brought about accusations of racism, and I want you to know that I hear and share your anger and frustration,” he said. “Acts of racism, bias, bullying, or other abusive behaviors will not be tolerated on this campus. I pledge to do everything in my power to work with our community to address related concerns together.”

Woodward said the University of Hartford “is not exempt from issues facing our society and world” and encouraged others to come forward with concerns.

“We must strive every day to practice understanding, tolerance, inclusion, and grace,” he said. “I know that you will join me in this critical mission.”

Lindsey Bever is a general assignment reporter for The Washington Post. Follow @lindseybever

NOVEMBER 2, 2017 / 3:22 PM / A DAY AGO Miami fires firefighters after noose found, black family photos defaced FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) - Six Miami firefighters have lost their jobs after a twine noose was discovered hanging over a family photo belonging to a black colleague, the city’s fire chief said on Thursday. A hangman’s noose is seen by many African Americans as a racist symbol of mob lynchings

of blacks by whites in U.S. history, usually by hanging and without a trial. The firefighters were dismissed on Wednesday. The photo, as well as two other family pictures belonging to a 17-year department veteran, were defaced with lewd drawings, Miami Fire Chief Joseph Zahralban said in a statement emailed to Reuters. Zahralban called the actions a “distasteful act of hate in one of our fire stations.” More than 70 percent of the nearly 5,000 people lynched in the United States from 1882 to 1968 were blacks, according to the website of civil rights group The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A fire department captain, a lieutenant and four firefighters were fired for defacing the photos or failing to report the incident, according to their termination letters. “We cannot and will not tolerate behavior that is disrespectful, hurtful and compromises the integrity of the department and the City of Miami,” City Manager Daniel Alfonso said in another statement emailed to Reuters on Thursday. No criminal charges have been filed in the case.

The president of the local International Association of Firefighters, Freddy Delgado, said in an emailed statement, “We are very disturbed by the allegations and look forward to the opportunity to review all the facts.” Reporting by Bernie Woodall; editing by Colleen Jenkins and Andrew Hay

November 3, 2017 by Maureen Costello

People refer to them as incidents or pranks or misbehavior. Let’s be clear: They are poisonous expressions of hate. At school, these acts should move school leaders to act decisively to restore the school community. Sadly, that isn’t the usual response.

Teaching Tolerance has counted news reports of over 90 episodes of hate, mainly involving high schools, from 30 states in October 2017 alone.

The hate was targeted mainly at black people (64 incidents) through racial slurs and references to slavery; in two incidents nooses were hung as visual warnings. About 20 of the vitriolic assaults were anti-Semitic, usually delivered via a swastika scratched in a bathroom or painted on a school wall, but sometimes with Nazi salutes. In one case, a Post- it note on a locker threatened, “Jews will burn.” White supremacy, in the guise of KKK references or hostile displays of the Confederate flag (accompanied by racist messages), popped up in 15 of the stories. You can add in a sprinkling of anti-Muslim acts (2), the beating of a Sikh boy and several threats against LGBT students (4).

Don’t expect it to add up neatly: Many of the demonstrations mixed the hate messages in a toxic cocktail. For example, a rap video produced and posted on social media by a student at an Alabama high school contains a raft of obscenities and targets gay people and African Americans. After rapping about LGBT kids and musing that “perhaps mass genocide is the only answer,” the video’s maker also suggests that Dr. King’s “only dream” should have been “picking cotton.”

Before you do the math and think that this is, in the grand scheme of things, a small number, keep in mind that it’s not the entire picture. TT uses Google alerts designed to search for news stories with specific words, like school, swastika, KKK or the n-word. If the story doesn’t contain the right combination of words, it doesn’t get captured. More important, if the story never makes it to the media, we never see it. Prior experience tells us that most of these incidents are cleaned up and taken care of at school and never find their way into the light.

Because they take place on social media or in public places, like football stadiums, many of the stories do emerge. In nearly 30 instances we tracked, the racist messages appeared on Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms. Like the video from Alabama, these posts raced around their communities. They included the photo of Pennsylvania high school students beaming behind their pumpkins carved with “KKK.” Or the Utah high school girls, all white, some cheerleaders, chanting “f*k n-word” in a video. In Virginia, a group of boys posted images of themselves in homemade Klan costumes and

making Nazi salutes. The white members of a football team, also in Virginia, thought it would be fun to video themselves holding down black members of the team, while simulating sexual acts and shouting racial slurs.

Football—and homecoming season—provides fertile ground for hate. Sometimes, the perpetrators aren’t students. In Louisiana, a black student-athlete took a knee on the field during the anthem; the referee called him the n-word. When a coach realized that a player on the opposing team lived with his two lesbian mothers, he instructed his team to taunt the player on the field with “Where’s your daddy?” The coach has been fired. In Maryland, a student wearing a T-shirt featuring both Trump and the Confederate flag harassed black students while other fans chanted obscenities at the opposing teams’ fans. In New Hampshire, students held up the “flag” of Kekistan, an “alt-right” symbol, during a pep rally. In Pennsylvania, middle school students hurled racial slurs at the opposing team’s cheerleaders and, later, joined adults in throwing stones at their bus.

kek: A stand-in for “lol” or “laugh out loud” borne from the video game World of Warcraft, in which typing “lol” to the Horde faction will result in this translation. Members of the alt- right will sometimes joke that they belong to a religion called Kek or the Cult of Kek.

Learn more about “alt-right” symbols and terms here.

Word gets out, often because students who don’t share the hate take a screen shot and report it. Word gets out despite efforts of some school officials to hide behind FERPA, the federal law designed to protect the privacy of children. If you’ve read about similar incidents, you’ll recognize the words when the privacy curtain is drawn: “We do not comment on individual discipline because of privacy laws.”

Of course, students who perpetrate these acts shouldn’t have their names released to the media. And, unless someone has been harmed or school safety is in danger, the incidents should be handled within the larger school community—including families—rather than being referred to the justice system, as administrators did in about a dozen cases.

No one envies the school leaders faced with responding to these events. On one hand, families of those targeted demand strong measures, running from expulsion to arrest. Others will minimize or even defend the behavior, like the California mom who excused her son’s Confederate flag T-shirt, one that other students objected to, by saying, “Everyone learns history differently.” In another Confederate flag case, the superintendent characterized it as an “ill-considered decision” that was an “unfortunate disruption.”

Some leaders try to strike a balance. In Iowa, another black football player who took a knee was targeted on Snapchat. Alongside his photo was a comment from a classmate, “Kick this f*king n-word off the football team like honestly who the f*k kneels for the national

anthem.” The superintendent denounced the post but diluted his outrage by upholding the First Amendment rights of students in the same statement.

Worse is when school leaders wash their hands of a situation because it is out of their legal jurisdiction. It’s true that students have First Amendment rights and that schools are not able to punish them for what they do and say on social media. Technically, the Alabama official faced with the “horrible” video was telling the truth when he said that it took place off campus and that school leaders “can’t do anything.” But he’s looking at the situation through one lens only, a punitive one.

Leaders can do something. An entire group has been targeted and is harmed. Every student who attends the school feels tarred. Administrators have a moral authority to denounce the hate in clear terms and do something to make sure the school is, truly, welcoming. They can take a page from Wilton, Connecticut, superintendent Kevin Smith, who responded to swastikas and the “Jews will burn” Post-it by calling the incident reprehensible and adding, “We need to acknowledge the pain and suffering it has caused.”

October’s news brought stories of many principals and superintendents—about 30 altogether—who were transparent with students, families and other members of the school community. Often, they followed the advice we laid out in Responding to Hate and Bias at School:

1. Tell people what happened and how you’ve handled it. 2. Denounce the act. 3. Lift up the values of the school. 4. Attend to the victims.

Many of them devoted classroom time to discussions, connected with local groups like the NAACP or the Anti-Defamation League, and rolled up their sleeves for the work ahead.

That still leaves two-thirds whose response simply doesn’t measure up. We need to change that story.

Costello is the director of Teaching Tolerance.

‘Go back to your own country’: Sikh man shot in his driveway in suspected hate crime By Cleve R. Wootson Jr. March 4 at 6:12 PM

A gunman shot a Sikh man standing in his driveway in Kent, Wash., on Friday, March 3. The gunman reportedly told the Sikh man to "go back to your own country." Kent Police chief Ken Thomas held a news conference shortly after the incident, calling the shooting "surprising" and "extremely disappointing." (Reuters)

The 39-year-old Sikh man was working on his car in his driveway in Kent, Wash., just south of Seattle, when a man walked up wearing a mask and holding a gun.

According to a report in the Seattle Times, there was an altercation, and the gunman — a stocky, 6-foot-tall white man wearing a mask over the bottom part of his face — said “Go back to your own country” and pulled the trigger. Authorities are investigating the shooting as a suspected hate crime, the newspaper reported.

The victim, whose name hasn’t been released, was shot in the arm at about 8 p.m. Friday and suffered injuries that are not life-threatening, the newspaper reported. The man who shot him is still on the loose. Kent Police have reached out to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies for help.

Follow

Ryan Takeo Kent police chief says dept. is investigating last night's shooting as a possible hate crime against member of Sikh community. 11:06 AM - 4 Mar 2017

The Washington state shooting comes just weeks after an Indian man in Kansas was killed and another was injured by a gunman who told them to “get out of my country” before opening fire in a bar.

In the Kansas case, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, died from his wounds. Alok Madasani, 32, was released from the hospital Thursday. A third person, Ian Grillot, a patron at the bar, was shot while trying to intervene, The Washington Post reported. Authorities there were also investigating whether the shooting was motivated by bias, a widely held suspicion among the victims’ family members.

The father of the injured Indian man said the rhetoric of President Trump contributed to negative feelings in the nation and implored parents in India “not to send their children to the United States.” The White House disputed the family’s claim.

Family members of the two men said in interviews that they feared the current atmosphere in the United States. “There is a kind of hysteria spreading that is not good because so many of our beloved children live there,” said Venu Madhav, a relative of Kuchibhotla. “Such hatred is not good for people.” Madhav said that “something has changed in the United States.”

Relatives of the Indian men told the Hindustan Times that they were friends who had not antagonized the alleged shooter, Adam Purinton, and that Purinton had instead “picked an argument” with them and suggested they were in the country illegally. Purinton is charged with first-degree murder.

“They tried to tell him that they had done their [master’s degrees] in Kansas in 2006 and had been staying there with valid work permits,” a relative said.

Sikhs have faced similar fears since Sept. 11, 2001, worried that they are singled out for persecution because of their religious head coverings, according to Sikhnet, a global virtual community for the religion’s adherents. Sikhs, who wear turbans as part of their religion, are from northern India and are neither Hindu nor Muslim, according to Sikhnet. “Many Sikhs have become victims of hate crimes because of their appearance,” according to the site.

Lynne Peeples [email protected] Coal-Hungry World Brings Tough Choices For Native Americans Posted: 01/30/2014 11:44 am EST Updated: 02/06/2014 9:59 am EST

Jewell Praying Wolf James addresses a crowd gathered in September in Olympia, Wash., to

protest coal exports. (Lynne Peeples)

Inside a ceremonial longhouse in northern Oregon last September, the sun's rays spilling between the high-peaked beams, Davis Yellowash Washines was

seated in full ceremonial dress -- yellow headband, red sash, beaded shoes. A rawhide drum rested in his hand, and to his left sat four teenage boys, each with his own drum and mallet. One wore a black Chevrolet T-shirt. They thumped their instruments and called out native songs as an organized smattering of young children bounced rhythmically counter-clockwise around the dirt floor. Two dozen fellow members of the tribal community, seated in folded metal chairs, looked on.

"This longhouse is used for lots of occasions," Washines said between songs. "But this one is significant."

This ceremony aimed to ward off coal.

Celilo Indian Village, Ore., separated from the Columbia River by only a highway and some railroad tracks, is one of many tribal communities that sit in the path of what could soon become America's coal-export superhighway. If government agencies grant approval to three export terminals proposed for Oregon and Washington, up to 100 million metric tons of coal

per year could soon be shuttled in open rail cars from mines in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, along the shores of the Columbia River and the Puget Sound, and through ranches and reservations like this one. The coal would then be loaded onto ships destined for Asia's proliferating fleet of coal-fired power plants.

Many activists currently fighting the plan see the impacts of burning coal on the global climate as their primary motivation. But for the Yakama, Lummi and other tribes, as well as communities in the path of these shipments, it's the local effects that worry them most. There are the potential traffic delays and disturbances to cultural sites.

Then there's the very real prospect of toxic coal dust wafting off the passing trains, fouling the air, poisoning local waterways and even contaminating key food resources -- such as the salmon on which many local tribes, including those living in the tiny Celilo Indian Village, depend. While the U.S. has seen a steady decline in coal use in recent years thanks to tighter federal regulations and the expanded viability of natural gas and renewable energy, the rise of burgeoning, coal-hungry economies in China, India and other fast-developing nations means the Celilo tribes -- like many communities across the Pacific Northwest -- now find themselves wedged squarely between a domestic abundance of the combustible rock and its most promising international market. The potential expansion of coal exports elicits differing opinions among tribes and communities

here. What may be an environmental or public health imposition for one is seen as a desperately needed opportunity for another. The coal industry, for example, argues that exports could inject welcome economic activity into struggling Northwest towns and reservations. By itself, the Gateway Pacific Terminal proposed at Cherry Point on the Puget Sound would add approximately 1,250 permanent jobs, including induced jobs such as restaurant and healthcare workers, as well as 4,400 temporary construction jobs, according to an analysis by an industry consultant. Annual local and state tax revenues would amount to about $11 million. The dispute over the coal trains is playing out in television advertisements, on the streets and inside boardrooms, town halls and courthouses from Washington, D.C., to Seattle. A series of hearings and protests over the last few months have attracted thousands of people -- some donning makeshift respirators, others wearing "Beyond Coal" T-shirts, and some even rappelling from a bridge over the Columbia River as a symbolic blockade to the shipments. Still, nowhere are the tensions so acute as on the hardscrabble reservations that either sit atop valuable coal -- an estimated 30 percent of U.S. coal reserves west of the Mississippi are located on native lands -- or lie in the path of the trains that would haul it to port. Just outside the walls of the longhouse where Washines and his fellow drummers were singing out in opposition to the coal shipments, a 22-foot totem pole lay on the bed of a white truck. The carving, which depicted five salmon, two kneeling men and a hungry child, was touring

towns, churches and reservations across the Pacific Northwest as part of an effort to consolidate tribal opposition to the proposed coal shipments. (The totem's last stop, in late September, would be across the border in the Tsleil-Waututh Nation of British Columbia, where it now stands erected as a display of solidarity with that tribe's parallel struggle over a tar sands oil pipeline.) "Mother Earth doesn't have a voice," said Karen Jim Whitford, a tribal elder, as she stepped shoeless into the center of the longhouse floor. A couple of her tears disappeared into the dirt. "So we must speak for her."

"I vote we stand up," exclaimed another elder, Lorintha Umtuch, referring to the totem's symbolic call for Native Americans to get off their knees and "Warrior Up!" for future generations. "Indian people need to stop this, or else corporations will trample us."

Not all tribes stand on the same side of the coal-export battle line. CJ Stewart, a senator of the Crow Nation, said in a phone interview in October that his tribe desperately needs to develop its coal reserves to improve its economic fortunes and lift its people out of poverty. In November, the Crow Nation signed a joint resolution with the Navajo Nation in support of each other's coal development. "We rely on coal just as they rely on salmon," Stewart said, referring to the Yakama and other tribes represented in Celilo. "All tribes share one common enemy, and that enemy is poverty."

Many tribes along the rail corridor, however, feel it's not just livelihoods at stake -- it's lives.

Jewell Praying Wolf James, the carver of the well-traveled totem and member of the Lummi Nation, expressed sympathy with the coal-dependent tribes during a later stop on the totem's journey in Olympia, Wash. "We feel bad for the Crow Nation, the Navajo, the Hopi. That's all they got," he said. "But we want clean air, clean water. We want salmon restored and our children healthy."

Davis Yellowash Washines presses his hand against one of the brightly painted salmon encircling the bottom of the totem. "The salmon gave its life for you, just like the tree gave its life for this purpose," he said. (Paul Anderson)

Dig into Native American history and you will strike coal. As far back as the 1300s, Hopi Indians in what is now the U.S. Southwest used the fossil fuel for cooking, heating and baking clay pottery.

In the 1800s, Native Americans made up much of the early mining workforce that would help ignite coal's long reign as the go-to fuel source for the country's necessities and luxuries -- from transporting goods and running factories to heating homes and powering Playstations.

But King Coal's grip is slipping. The rise of hydro-fracturing technology in recent years has

unleashed torrents of natural gas, a cheaper and cleaner alternative, and left coal-rich states and undiversified coal companies with a serious revenue problem. Many have responded by looking to Asia, where mining local coal, in addition to building wind farms and solar panels, has not created nearly enough energy for the rapidly growing economies there.

Asia's ready market and America's still plentiful coal could make a convenient marriage. Proving particularly attractive to Asian buyers is Powder River Basin coal, which is cheap to extract and relatively low in polluting sulfur. Yet plenty of obstacles remain in the U.S. and abroad before coal interests can successfully drive their product to northwestern ports for export. There are the vocal environmental advocates, the newly elected local leaders who've

made clear their opposition to the plans, the big-money investors who've withdrawn support for port builders and, of course, the tribes. In a July letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency tasked with evaluating the two Washington State coal port projects, the Lummi Nation wrote of its "unconditional and unequivocal opposition" to the terminal planned for Cherry Point, near its reservation. The tribe cited among other concerns "significant and unavoidable impacts and damage" to treaty rights reserved in the 19th century to fish at its "usual and accustomed" areas. Patricia Graesser, a spokeswoman with the Corps, acknowledged the Lummi letter and said her agency was in government-to-government discussions with the tribe. "We have a responsibility to uphold the nation's treaty with Native American tribes," she said.

The Chinese government, meanwhile, is responding to a major air pollution crisis sparked largely by rapid development centered on coal-fired power. In December, Shanghai's air quality fell to a record low and the country's smog could be seen from space. But even with leaders in China vowing to slow down the growth of coal use, experts predict global coal consumption will jump up another 25 percent by the end of the decade. Decisions on the Northwest export terminals could significantly influence the future of coal in Asia. "Opening up this main line of cheap American coal is a pretty important signal if you are a Chinese official thinking about how much to invest in what kind of energy infrastructure," said KC Golden, senior policy adviser for the non-profit Climate Solutions, which has advocated against the proposed ports. The effects would span the globe. According to estimates by the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit

think tank based in Seattle, Pacific Northwest coal exports could create greater national and worldwide environmental impacts, including on climate change, than a Canadian company's controversial proposal to ferry Albertan tar sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast via the Keystone XL pipeline. As Jewell Praying Wolf James put it: "Once the coal gets to China, it's pollution for all of us." For more than 11,000 years, Celilo Falls served as the center of trade and commerce for Native Americans of the West. The upwards of 15 million salmon that passed through the mile-long span of rocky chutes in the Columbia River every year functioned as a sort of

currency. "Some tribal people call it pre-contact Wall Street," said Charles Hudson, intergovernmental affairs director with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in Portland, Ore.

Lewis and Clark called it "the great mart."

But within a few short hours on March 10, 1957, Celilo's era of plenty came to an abrupt end. Rising floodwaters from a newly completed hydroelectric dam engulfed the rapids. Salmon runs soon shrank to a small fraction of their former numbers.

Davis Yellowash Washines, chief of enforcement for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, was only 5 years old when the Dalles Dam opened and drowned Celilo Falls. "I can still feel its mist. I can still hear its thunder," he said over dinner the night before the

September longhouse ceremony.

Warren Spencer, a Yakama elder, was serving in the military in Germany that year, but he recalled the time-lapse photos of the inundation he received by mail from his mother back home in Celilo Falls. "I sat there on my bunk and cried," he said.

Now, Spencer is deeply concerned about how this new energy project might affect the futures of his four children, 17 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. The coal push, he said, represents the continued encroachment of the federal government and "white man's money" on Native American tribes. "It's turning brother against brother," he said.

Members of the Lummi Nation bask in the natural light of the Celilo longhouse before the totem pole ceremony in September. (Paul Anderson)

Many of the current and former residents of Celilo belong to the Yakama Nation. Like the Lummi, the tribe put its opposition to the exports on paper. In a November letter to the Army Corps of

Engineers and a state official, Yakama chairman Harry Smiskin referenced a "long history of

Treaty violations from energy development in the region that permanently and irreparably have harmed my People." The new energy projects, he said, would add "direct adverse impacts" to the tribe's treaty rights to fish, hunt and gather food, and do more damage to the already fragile environment, culture and health of his nation.

Dr. Frank James, of the University of Washington School of Public Health, underscored the "disproportionate impacts" of the coal projects facing native people of the Northwest. Much of this vulnerability results, he said, from their traditional dependence on the salmon of the region's rivers and coastal waters -- fish that are now widely listed as threatened or endangered under federal law and could be further spoiled by air and water pollution from mining and transporting the coal, and its burning overseas.

The tribes' reliance on salmon goes beyond a staple food and a means to make a living. "It is their total way of life," said James. "Salmon is part of their religion, their culture, their language. To further impact that is an assault on their very existence." In a back corner of the Celilo longhouse kitchen, Gloria Jim sat in a folding chair, on a brief break from cooking the ceremony's Columbia River salmon lunch with other Celilo women. She lamented that they hadn’t had enough salmon to serve for breakfast, too. "That's how it used to be here," said Jim, who wore a white shirt printed with a picture of her deceased son, pink stretch pants and running shoes. She recalled the Forest Gump-like menu of her childhood: Salmon, fried or dried, stuffed or baked, or simply salted. "My mom didn't believe in food stamps. We lived on what we caught," she said. "Now we have

no choice. We have to go to the grocery store." Her people have been warned, she added, that the salmon they do catch and eat may be dangerously polluted. An estimated 17 percent of pregnant Native American women already have mercury levels high enough to disrupt the healthy development of their babies -- much higher than other racial groups. Deposits of the neurotoxic heavy metal, along with arsenic and other contaminants from coal- fired power plants, can accumulate up the food chain and into salmon. Research further suggests that around 25 percent of the mercury in Northwest American waterways and up to 10 percent of the ozone in the region's skies is carried by wind currents across the Pacific -- from power plants in Asia.

Coal exports could pollute the region in other ways. Perhaps most talked about are the risks of heavy metal-laden coal dust and diesel exhaust blown and belched from trains, terminals and ocean-going tankers. Derailments, such as the one that sent seven cars spilling coal into a British Columbia creek last week, raise further fears, as does the possibility of bunker fuel spillsonce tankers set out to sea through narrow, rough passages.

In November, Dan Jaffe, an environmental scientist at the University of Washington-Bothell, released preliminary results of a study on the environmental insults of existing coal train traffic. His team monitored 450 passing trains -- some carrying coal, some not -- from two representative sites. They sampled for about 10 days at a spot on the Columbia River Gorge and for about a month near a Seattle home that butts up against railroad tracks currently used by trains en route to Canadian coal ports. Jaffe said he confirmed elevated levels of diesel exhaust there "on par with the dirtiest air in the Seattle area," as well as a slight increase in large airborne particles -- likely coal dust, he said -- when coal trains passed by. The three proposed terminals would dramatically increase rail traffic, bringing some 35 additional mile-plus-long trains in and out of the region every day. Currently, fewer than 10 coal trains come and go.

Jaffe's crowdfunded research has yet to be peer-reviewed, a point emphasized by Courtney Wallace, a spokeswoman with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, whose lines would host much of the westbound coal. Wallace added that BNSF has spent more than $1 billion on rail cars and locomotives that "achieve the highest EPA standards available," and result in 69 percent fewer diesel emissions compared to older locomotives. BNSF has testified that up to 645 pounds of coal dust can escape from each rail car during a 400-mile journey, but Wallace also pointed to findings by the railway that this fugitive dust diminishes as railcars travel farther from the Powder River Basin and toward export terminals. Several environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit in July against BNSF over coal contamination of U.S. waterways. Wallace called the action a "publicity stunt," but a U.S. District judge denied a motion to dismiss the case this month. Blown coal dust and other hazards could be particularly dire around Celilo and the rest of the

Columbia River Gorge, where train tracks are sometimes just feet from tribal residences, said Hudson, of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. "The winds are reliable and strong -- 40, 50, 70 miles per hour," he said. "There's a reason it's the wind-surfing capital of the world." Located in rural Montana, the Crow Nation can't boast a lucrative seafood or wind-surfing tourism market. What they do have is a whole lot of coal. Approximately 9 billion tons of the fossil fuel lie beneath their land, comprising one of the largest coal reserves in the United States.

"Coal is the way we've been taking care of our people," said CJ Stewart, the Crow senator. Yet his people continue to struggle with poverty and an unemployment rate he suggested is upwards of 50 percent. "And the U.S. cries over its 8 percent," he said. In June, the U.S. government approved a deal between the Crow and Cloud Peak Energy, a Wyoming company that's moving to increase its coal exports to Asian markets. The tribe now has the green light to lease its rights to an estimated 1.4 billion tons of coal, more than the U.S. consumes annually. The deal could be worth at least $10 million for the Crow over the first five years. Cloud Peak has also pledged to give preference in hiring, training and promotion to qualified Native Americans, as well as annual scholarships to local native students. A spokesman for Cloud Peak, Rick Curtsinger, said the company is continuing to work through an agreement with the tribe.

Crow Nation chairman Darrin Old Coyote testified in July before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources that the deal is largely dependent on the fate of coal exports through the Northwest. Such significant coal development, he said, has "unlimited potential to improve the ongoing substandard socioeconomic conditions of the Crow people and the surrounding communities in southeastern Montana." "Given our vast mineral resources, the Crow Nation can, and should, be self-sufficient," he said. Also in the heart of the Powder River Basin, and also saddled with high unemployment, are the Northern Cheyenne. The tribe has a long history of resisting coal development due to perceived environmental health risks. But like the Crow, the Northern Cheyenne are also recognizing an increasingly tough economic reality. "We've got a lot of coal underneath our land," said Tom Mexican Cheyenne, director of the Northern Cheyenne's community health department, who made clear that he did not speak for the tribe. "There's a split -- some on the tribal council are for coal mining and some are against it." The Northern Cheyenne's decision on whether or not to harvest their coal may, too, come down to pending verdicts on the Pacific Northwest ports. No train tracks currently run to their

reservation's coal reserves, though rail lines could be expanded with enough demand. Mexican Cheyenne believes the council is leaning towards development of the coal. "I see a real desperation to help the economy any way they can," he said. Wind energy has also been on the table here for years. But impoverished tribes such as the Northern Cheyenne and the Crow often lack the funds necessary for capital investments and opportunities for outside help, such as tax credits. Debra Lekanoff, a leader with the Swinomish Tribe of Washington, said the tribes need federal support to find alternative ways to benefit from their resources. "We urge the federal

government to help our brothers and sisters with funding, capacity-building and sound science to open up the doors to new opportunities," she said. She suggested that the "elephant in the room" in the coal development debate is the challenge of "walking in two worlds" and soundly balancing "economic sustainability and environmental protection." The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, which includes the Yakama and Lummi, adopted a resolution in September supporting a pilot project proposed by the Crow Nation to convert some of its coal to liquid fuels such as diesel and gasoline for domestic use. The tribe's plan, which Stewart said illustrates that the Crow are not entirely reliant on coal exports, also gained support from the National Congress of American Indians this fall. It still awaits federal approval.

The official document from the Northwest Indians, however, notes that their blessing does not "supersede, replace, or rescind" a resolution made by the group in May that opposed all proposals to increase transportation through the region of "fossil energy," including both coal and unrefined crude oil. About a week after the resolution's adoption, Jewell Praying Wolf James's totem pole pulled up in front of the Washington state capitol building in Olympia for another event opposing coal exports. Much like the other stops on the totem's journey, this ceremony's songs and speeches pointed to both the despair and hopes of Native Americans and the deeply complex tensions at hand. A crowd of some 50 people, many representatives of local tribes, stood in the alternating rain and sun in front of the flatbed truck. Flanking the truck was a yard sign that read, "No coal exports. We can do better." Creating alternatives, experts agree, is prerequisite to combating climate change and sustaining resources for future generations -- and even to passing judgment on any group that chooses to develop its coal, or buy and burn it. "At the end of the day, we're not going to stop fossil-fuel dependency if we don't have an answer for how to create energy and create better lives," said KC Golden, the Climate

Solutions policy adviser. "The Crow and other folks across the world want a fair shot at the relative prosperity we enjoy. We have to have a better answer than digging up half of Montana and burning it in Asia."

What Happens When Native People Lose Their Traditional Foods?

November 17, 2016

by Deborah Small

Purepecha public health worker Abe Sanchez gathers chia seeds. | Photo: Deborah Small

“The revitalization of tradition is much more complex than people can imagine. It really is a process that reaches far into the silenced knowing. Recovering from intergenerational historical trauma is something that continues to seep into the lives of California Indians

today. Growing, nurturing, harvesting, and

preparing native foods not only feed and renew the body—they feed the mind, the soul, the dreamtime of the people. Most importantly, our practices contribute to the healing of our common relative, our Mother Earth, and right now, she is sick and unable to attract all the beauty of the universe to come to her. And if our Mother Earth is sick, so are we, simply because we are part of her.” —Cindi Alvitre, Tongva educator, Chia Café Collective

The native people I have worked with in southern California for the past 16 years have a profound spiritual connection to the land through their ancestors and their long history of living on the land. They pay homage to plants and consider them as their teachers. They’re dedicated to passing on what they know to others. All stress our interdependence with other species. All have a fierce devotion to revitalizing their culture as part of the larger cultural revitalization sweeping California.

Cahuilla/Apache elder Lorene Sisquoc describes a reciprocal relationship with the plants and the land. “The plants are waiting for us to come take care of them so they can take care of us. In Temalpakh, Katherine Saubel writes that the Cahuilla word for an oak grove, meki'i'wah, means ‘the place that waits for me.’ It’s our responsibility to take care of the land, to get out there and gather, to sing songs, tell stories, do ceremony, share our laughter and our language. To preserve our oral traditions by passing our knowledge to our kids and grandkids. It’s important that they start learning very young. Taking care of the plants helps make our families healthy. We’re working hard to heal our communities by deepening our connection to the land.”

Sisquoc is a founding member of the Chia Café Collective, or CCC, a grassroots group of southern California tribal members and their allies committed to the revitalization of native foods, medicines, culture and community. Their work to revitalize native foods honors the vast traditional knowledge and spiritual relationship to the land, and explores the nutritive and medicinal bounty the land offers us.

Through workshops, classes, demonstrations, and native foods celebrations, the CCC focus on ways to re-incorporate native food plants into their daily diets to take back responsibility for their health and well-being. Their work helps others to reconnect with the land through gathering, gardening, and cooking native foods, and by preparing medicinal plants as teas, tinctures, salves, and soaps.

The goal of the CCC’s classes and workshops is to inspire healthy eating practices for individuals and social justice for communities whose land management practices and native food traditions were disrupted when tribal land bases were taken away, native children sent to boarding schools, and traditional foods replaced by white flour, white sugar, and other unhealthy commodities and fast foods.

Sisquoc teaches at the Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, a former boarding school created to assimilate Indian children into the dominant culture. Sisquoc relates that students were instructed: “‘Forget about your traditional plants. Forget about the acorns and pine nuts and mesquite waiting to be gathered. You’ve got to get over here and make a garden and milk that cow. That’s what the boarding schools were about. It was lactose-intolerant kids being fed dairy products and introduced foods, and taught cooking and home economics that were different from theirs. They were taught that their ways were wrong. Many of our gathering practices and our culinary secrets and specialties were not passed down because the boarding

school students weren’t home to learn them.”

Shimwich Chumash educator and CCC member Tima Lotah Link echoes Sisquoc: “If you want to wreck a culture, hit it in the kitchen. Boarding schools did that in one generation. Take away the kids, take away their plants, take away their knowledge of the kitchen. Parents and children no longer gathered their plants together. They no longer spoke their language or shared information.”

Tongva educator and CCC founding member Barbara Drake also describes a shattered way of life: “Our lives and our cultures were disrupted by colonization, and we became disconnected. The colonizers tried to eradicate us by severing our relationship with the natural world, with our plants and animals and the land. They took away the benefits of our traditional foods. We were no longer celebrating the seasons, caretaking our land, using digging sticks to aerate the soil, pruning plants, or thinning stands of trees. We were no longer spreading seeds or saving them, or helping plants to grow. We were letting them down. It was disastrous, but all was not lost. Today, we’re asking elders what they remember. We’re piecing together our traditional knowledge and sharing the benefits of eating our traditional foods.”

The agave harvest | Photo: Deborah Small

Re-introducing native foods into people’s diets has a remarkable effect, helping individuals and communities take back a large measure of responsibility for their

health and well being, and for reclaiming their cultural identity. For the past 20 years, the Malki Museum on the Morongo Reservation has sponsored a yearly Agave Harvest and Feast to celebrate what Lorene

Sisquoc calls “our most important staple every spring.” The Cahuilla have been working for over 20 years with CCC member Daniel McCarthy, former Tribal Liaison for the U.S. Forest Service, to restore the nutrient-dense agave to its honored place at the table of traditional foods. McCarthy speaks of the historic importance of agave as a staple food by noting that over 10,000 ancient roasting pits have been found in agave gathering areas. “So many foods like agave were almost forgotten,” Sisquoc says, “but now we’re continuing to gather, eat, and celebrate these native

foods.”

Agave hearts in a roasting pit | Photo: Deborah Small

Those foods include cholla, whose buds pack a nutrient punch with their highly absorbable calcium, a boon for lactose-intolerant people. The slow- release mesquite and acorn are two of the most effective foods for controlling blood sugar levels and diabetes. Chia seeds are high in protein, fiber,

and omega-3 fatty acids, and their mucilage is of great assistance to the digestive system. Prickly pear juice can alleviate musculo-skeletal inflammation, sage provides a dose of

antioxidants, and rose hips and lemonade berries are a rich source of vitamin C.

The Chia Café Collective promote an ethic of gathering and cultivating native plants in a manner that is sustainable, and they stress the importance of preserving native plants, plant communities, habitats, and the land for the future generations of all species. When they teach the protocol and etiquette of traditional gathering practices, Barbara Drake reminds us to take no more than we can use, and to share what we gather with everyone. “Our ancestors were doing that sharing all the time. We knew that if we didn’t do that, it was endangering the life of everyone.”

For Lorene Sisquoc, gathering native foods is a way to heal both individuals and communities. “A long time ago it was our families and our clans, but now we go out as intertribal groups. We pray before we gather. We’re teaching the young people and teaching each other about discipline, about respect for the land, about taking care of the land and creating a healthy environment. Gathering is about community.”

For Rose Ramirez, of Chumash descent, the healing dimension of gathering native foods comes from a very palpable connection to the ancestors. “When we gather, we feel spiritually as if our ancestors are right there alongside of us. Either they’re my ancestors or my husband Joe’s ancestors, because we’re in his territory [Luiseño]. They’re side by side with us. By revitalizing native foods, by bringing them back, we’re honoring our ancestors. We’re cherishing not only what they used to do and create, but also what they lost. I don’t think our ancestors lost their foods, their language, and their culture willingly. It’s a real honor to try to recover as much as we can. This is one of the best things we can do.”

For Tongva educator and CCC member Craig Torres, his profound sense of responsibility and compassion for other species extends to the oaks, pinyon pines, yucca, mesquite, chia, sage, and stinging nettle. For Torres, “Plants are not just ‘cultural resources.’ Plants are our relatives. They’re to be treated with reciprocal respect as relatives in the web of nature, in the circle of life. Plants enable us to survive and to maintain a sacred balance on this particular place on Mother Earth. In Tongva sacred oral narratives, it is we humans who were the last created. We were given the responsibility and obligation to maintain a sacred balance for all life on Mother Earth.”

Similar to the protectors of the waters fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, Torres tells us: “If we don’t fight to protect the plants and to protect the land, they’re no longer

there for us. We’re trying to re-establish those relationships with the native plants, because they’re so important to us. The connection to who we are as a people has everything to do with the plants.”

One significant way to re-establish those relationships with native plants and foods is to put in some labor-intensive hours to insure the sustainability and survival of the plants. As part of the Parry Pinyon Pines Project, the CCC worked alongside Daniel McCarthy and southern California tribes and to resurrect traditional environmental practices. They removed the lower limbs of pinyon pines, cleared vegetation beneath the trees, and pruned the surrounding shrubs to eliminate potential fuel ladders to make the groves less vulnerable to the ferocious wildfires that can sweep through unmanaged forests.

Roasting pinyon pine cones | Photo: Deborah Small

Another way to revitalize a relationship with native foods is to reject to the industrialized food chain and all that it represents—the multinational corporate control of seeds, production of genetically modified foods, and the promotion of unsustainable agricultural practices damaging to all species and to the earth that sustains us. For public health worker and CCC member

Abe Sanchez, it’s a daily practice to cultivate consciousness about the foods he eats to maintain optimum health. “Native foods sustained indigenous cultures for thousands of years. Native foods are our future. But we have to make choices. We have to be disciplined. We have to be aware of what we’re putting in our bodies to prevent chronic illness, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure. And native foods will help us prevent that.”

When diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, anthropologist and CCC member Leslie Mouriquand had an epiphany: “I needed to actually eat the traditional foods that I had been researching, not just for the sake of cultural preservation, but to save my life! I am now passionately immersed in gathering, growing, and eating chia, mesquite, prickly pear, cholla, and other native foods. By changing my diet and sedentary lifestyle, I succeeded in reversing my diabetes. This is a lifetime commitment for me.” Mouriquand is lucky that she caught her diabetes early and knew exactly what she needed to do.

In Recovering the Sacred, Anishinaabeg environmental activist Winona LaDuke writes that “the recovery of the people is tied to the recovery of food, since food itself is medicine: not only for the body, but for the soul, for the spiritual connection to history, ancestors, and the land.”

People speak of the necessity for a major shift to a sustainable society from our unsustainable and ultimately destructive way of life. Like Leslie Mouriquand, we have the opportunity to learn from people whose ancestors were here for thousands of years, who knew how to protect and honor the earth. Their work offers hope, inspiration, and healing for all of us.

Banner photo: Deborah Small

Co-produced by KCETLink and the Autry Museum of the American West, the Tending the Wild series is presented in association with the Autry's groundbreaking California Continued exhibition.

US agents find major Mexico drug tunnel covered by bin in California Tonne of cocaine and seven tonnes of marijuana seized after discovery of metre-wide tunnel running between Tijuana and San Diego A US Border Patrol agent climbs through the narrow drug tunnel running from Tijuana to San Diego Associated Press Wednesday 20 April 2016 22.45 EDTLast modified on Thursday 5 October 2017 11.54 EDT

US agents have uncovered a narrow cross-border tunnel complete with rail system that was used to transport tonnes of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico to an exit covered by a trash bin in California. US authorities said on Wednesday the tunnel that ran 800 metres (874 yards) from a house in Tijuana was equipped with a large elevator to a lot in San Diego that was advertised as a wooden-pallet business. The discovery resulted in the seizure of more than a tonne (2,240lbs) of cocaine and seven tonnes of marijuana. It was the 13th sophisticated secret passage found along California’s border with Mexico since 2006, including three on the same short street in San Diego that runs parallel to a border fence with a densely populated residential area on the Mexican side. The unusually narrow tunnel was only about one metre (3ft) wide, equipped with a rail system, lighting and ventilation. The tunnel was unusual because it was used for cocaine, not just marijuana, said Laura Duffy, US attorney for the southern district of California. Tunnels are often built for marijuana because its bulk and odour make it more difficult to escape border inspectors’ scrutiny than cocaine and other drugs. The elevator, which was big enough for eight to 10 people, was located in the closet of a Tijuana house whose floors were strewn with mattresses, Duffy said. The tunnel zig-

zagged for 800 metres to the fenced commercial lot in San Diego, where the exit was covered by a large trash bin. It’s something completely different than what we’ve seen Laura Duffy, US attorney Other tunnels that have ended in California were inside houses and warehouses.

“It’s a rabbit hole,” Duffy told reporters. “Just the whole way that it comes up and that it comes up out right into the open, it is a bit ingenious, I think, and it’s something completely different than what we’ve seen.” Investigators didn’t know when the tunnel was completed. Margarita Ontiveros, who works at a law office next to the San Diego lot, said the tenants arrived about a year ago and often bought and sold wooden pallets. “They loaded and unloaded a lot of pallets,” Ontiveros said. “They sold very cheap.” Investigators began to monitor the lot daily in autumn last year after Border Patrol agents assigned to the area saw heavy traffic and grew suspicious, said Duffy. The

prosecutor said she was “fairly confident” the first drug load was sent earlier this month but did not rule out the possibility that some got through undetected. Six people were arrested in San Diego on Friday on drug- and tunnel-related crimes, including one US citizen, two Cubans and three Mexicans, Duffy said. Authorities saw a trash bin forklifted on to a truck at the San Diego lot on 13 April and followed it to a parking lot, a US immigration and customs investigator said in a criminal complaint. Two days later, San Diego County sheriff’s deputies stopped a truck after it left the parking lot, seizing 1,000kg of cocaine and 5,000kg of marijuana. Marijuana found in the tunnel and trash bin brought the total haul to more than seven tonnes, authorities said. The discovery demonstrates the enduring appeal of tunnels to smugglers, despite the significant time and money required to build one. Dozens have been found along the US-Mexico border in recent years, mostly in California and Arizona. Many are found incomplete. The San Diego-Tijuana region is popular because its clay-like soil is relatively easy to dig with shovels and pneumatic tools, and both sides of the border have warehouses that provide cover for trucks and heavy equipment.

Opinion When wrongful convictions affect blacks more than whites, can we call it a justice system?

Scott Martelle Racial disparities have long been evident in the U.S. criminal justice system, but a new report drilling into statistics on wrongful convictions points up exactly how nefarious the problem is. African Americans are much more likely to be wrongfully convicted of a murder, sexual assault

or drug offense than whites. The report, by the National Registry of Exonerations, found that “innocent black people are about seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people,” and thus also account for a disproportionate share of the growing number of exonerations. African Americans who were convicted and then exonerated of murder charges also spent four years longer on death row than wrongfully convicted whites (and three years longer for those sentenced to prison). According to the report, African Americans convicted of murder “are about 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers,” and that such wrongful convictions, even when later corrected, expands the impact of violence on African American communities. “A major cause of the high number of black murder exonerations is the high homicide rate in the black community — a tragedy that kills many African Americans and sends many others to prison,” says the report, written by Samuel R. Gross, a University of Michigan law professor, and registry researchers Maurice Possley and Klara Stephens. “Innocent defendants who are falsely convicted and exonerated do not contribute to this high homicide rate. They — like the

families of victims who are killed — are deeply harmed by murders committed by others.” Bias in the system becomes clear when looking at the races of the arrested suspects as well as the victims. Blacks are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder when the victim is white: “Only about 15% of murders by African Americans have white victims, but 31% of innocent African American murder exonerees were convicted of killing white people.”

Chillingly, black prisoners later exonerated of the crimes for which they were convicted were 22% more likely to have been targeted by police misconduct, a function of everything from malevolent individual racism by law enforcement and prosecutors to institutional discrimination. Although African Americans convicted of sexual assault are more than three times likely to be innocent than white convicts, the major cause isn’t official misconduct but “the high danger of mistaken eyewitness identification by white victims in violent crimes with black assailants.” In a sense, the study affirms what most people already know: Failings of the criminal justice

system disproportionately affect African Americans. The solutions, though, aren’t so clear. Programs aimed at helping law enforcement and court officials recognize their own implicit bias are a step, and giving less credence to eyewitness testimony (whose veracity is shakier than most people think) at trial would help. More judicious use of police patrols would also help. Although blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate, black users are five times more likely to go to prison for it than whites “and judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about 12 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent white people.” Why? Police enforce drug laws far more vigorously in predominately black neighborhoods than in white, which means black people are more likely to be stopped and searched, increasing both the overall arrest rate and the wrongful conviction rate. When people are wrongfully convicted of murder, a real murderer goes free, and the pain of the crime invests in yet another family. If there’s any good news in the registry’s findings, it comes in a second report also released today noting that exonerations reached a record 166 cases last year. So the truth is being

rooted out more often, but only for a fraction of the wrongful convictions that have occurred. Which makes you wonder where exactly the justice is to be found in the criminal justice system. There’s more at stake here than the already bad-enough theft of years of freedom from the wrongfully convicted. A study published three years ago in Proceedings of the National

Academy of Science found that, conservatively, about 4% of people on death rows were likely wrongfully convicted. There currently are about 2,900 people on death rows around the country, of whom; under that formula, about 120 are likely to have been wrongfully convicted. In California, about 30 of the 749 current death row inmates, using that formula, were likely wrongfully convicted. This isn’t to deflect or ignore the pain and suffering of the victims of crimes, and their families. But when people are wrongfully convicted of murder, a real murderer goes free, and the pain of

the crime invests in yet another family — that of the person falsely convicted. So how does this happen? The Death Penalty Information Center analyzed both its own exoneration count and the one maintained by the registry and agreed with the registry conclusion that that official misconduct was the primary cause for people being sentenced to death for murders they did not commit. “Our data shows that police or prosecutorial misconduct has been the primary cause of 16 of the last 18 death-row exonerations (88.9%),” said Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham. “We also found that in 18 of the last 25 misconduct-related death-row exonerations (72.0%), the wrongly capitally prosecuted defendant was black.” What we can’t know is how many innocent people have been put to death in the name of justice.