Hidden Trauma

A lot of black academics criticized President Obama for engaging in "respectability politics" when he did things like launch the My Brother's Keeper initiative. But when the President met with the young people involved in the Becoming a Man program in Chicago and during his visit to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation, he likely heard stories like the ones in this article by Sam P.K. Collins titled: The Hidden Trauma Plaguing American Kids.

While conversations about PTSD often focus on soldiers returning from combat zones, research in recent years has shown the development of symptoms in children who live in violent environments...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies symptoms of PTSD as flashbacks, nightmares, severe anxiety and loss of trust in people. For children of color still reeling from the effects of crime, poverty, limited health care, and poor schools in their low-income neighborhoods, the mental disorder can take a toll on the mind...

One in three young urban dwellers who experience mild to severe forms of PTSD say that people may doubt the severity of what they see, especially if they live in high-crime, high-poverty areas. But D.C.-based psychotherapist Lanada Williams argues that constant exposure to even the smallest incidences of violence — whether it’s physical, sexual, or verbal — can spur the development of mental ailments in children, especially in cases where school officials misinterpret cries for help as acts of delinquency.

Via the research Collins referred to, we are beginning to develop an understanding of the effects chronic (or complex) trauma has on child development and the behaviors that result. As he notes, failure to acknowledge it is part of the vicious cycle that feeds suspensions/expulsions from school and ultimately the school-to-prison pipeline.

“When children of color act up, we don’t try to get to the meat of what’s affecting that child. Instead, we adjudicate them and move them through the system,” Williams, also CEO of Alliance Family Solutions, a private counseling practice, told ThinkProgress.

Children of color (especially black boys) who suffer from chronic trauma are the ones who are also being robbed of their childhood innocence when they "act up."

Black boys as young as 10 may not be viewed in the same light of childhood innocence as their white peers, but are instead more likely to be mistaken as older, be perceived as guilty and face police violence if accused of a crime, according to new research.

President Obama touched on this in his interview with Jeff Johnson on BET.


At about 17:00:

Part of what I think is so heartbreaking and frustrating for a lot of folks when they watch this is a recognition that - simply by virtue of color - you've got less margin for error - that's particularly true for black boys...And so its not simply that we want to make sure that the perfect young man is treated OK. We also want a boy - who's a boy, or a young man who's maybe a little confused, maybe makes a mistake - we want them to be given the same benefit of the doubt as any other boy would be given.

This has nothing to do with respectability politics. It has to do with getting real about the challenges that too many children face as a result of the cycles created by racism. It also has a lot to do with not allowing the suffering of "hidden" trauma by these children to go unnoticed any longer.

Picking Your Battles

Yesterday I wrote about the reality that former-Senator Blanche Lincoln's contribution to Dodd/Frank was not a critical component of Wall Street reform. As part of that, I focused on the importance of passing this cromnibus spending bill as opposed to the ongoing government shutdown battles that would be triggered by a 3 month continuing resolution.

But I think its also important to note the positive elements that are included in the spending bill. Kevin Drum (who has been doing some excellent writing about this) does a great job on that.

The first thing we should recognize is that the rider eliminating Lincoln's "push-out" on a few derivative swaps was traded for additional funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission - in other words, more ability to enforce the really significant portions of Wall Street reform.

But then here's a quote Drum uses from retiring Rep. Jim Moran.

In 20 years of being on the appropriations bill, I haven’t seen a better compromise in terms of Democratic priorities. Implementing the Affordable Care Act, there’s a lot more money for early-childhood development — the only priority that got cut was the EPA but we gave them more money than the administration asked for....There were 26 riders that were extreme and would have devastated the Environmental Protection Agency in terms of the Clean Water and Clean Air Act administration; all of those were dropped. There were only two that were kept and they wouldn’t have been implemented this fiscal year. So, we got virtually everything that the Democrats tried to get.

President Obama echoed the importance of those provisions.

Let me start by saying a few words about the bill that was passed last night to keep the government open and make sure that our agencies are funded until the fall of next year.

This, by definition, was a compromise bill. This is what’s produced when we have the divided government that the American people voted for. There are a bunch of provisions in this bill that I really do not like. On the other hand, there are provisions in this bill and the basic funding within this bill that allows us to make sure that we continue on the progress in providing health insurance to all Americans; make sure that we continue with our efforts to combat climate change; that we’re able to expand early childhood education that is making a meaningful difference in communities all across the country; that allows us to expand our manufacturing hubs that are contributing to the growth of jobs and the progress that we’ve seen in our economy over the last couple of years.

And so, over all, this legislation allows us to build on the economic progress and the national security progress that is important. Had I been able to draft my own legislation and get it passed without any Republican votes I suspect it would be slightly different. That is not the circumstance we find ourselves in. And I think what the American people very much are looking for is some practical governance and the willingness to compromise, and that’s what this really reflects. So I’m glad it passed the House and am hopeful that it will pass the Senate.

Now...if all you care about is sticking it to Wall Street, the current battle among Democrats over this bill might be worth having. But - if you also care about enforcing the critical aspects of Wall Street reform, Obamacare, the President's actions on immigration, early childhood education, climate change, job growth, and national security - all this hysteria is simply a distraction.

I'm honestly trying to figure out why people like Senator Elizabeth Warren decided to pick this battle. Until proven otherwise, I continue to believe that she is a person of integrity. So I'm prepared to give it some time to sort that out. I'll simply note that she has a few issues that she cares a lot about and often resorts to the use of hyperbole to make her case.

I am personally more interested in politicians who have the ability to see the big picture and know how to pick their battles.  

Did cromnibus kill Wall Street reform? (updated)

Back when Congress passed Wall Street reform (the Dodd/Frank bill), many liberals dismissed it as meaningless weak tea. But then, a few of them came around and recognized that - what do you know - Wall Street reform is working!

A couple of months ago, when Paul Krugman took to Rolling Stone in defense of President Obama, he outlined the three most important components of Dodd/Frank:

First, the law gives a special council the ability to designate ''systemically important financial institutions'' (SIFIs) – that is, institutions that could create a crisis if they were to fail – and place such institutions under extra scrutiny and regulation of things like the amount of capital they are required to maintain to cover possible losses...

Another key provision in Dodd-Frank is ''orderly liquidation authority,'' which gives the government the legal right to seize complex financial institutions in a crisis...

A third piece of Dodd-Frank is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That's Elizabeth Warren's brainchild, an agency dedicated to protecting Americans against the predatory lending that has pushed so many into financial distress, and played an important role in the crisis.

So, what was the provision that cromnibus gutted? Here's how Michael Greenberger explained it at Mother Jones:

This provision guts the so-called push-out rule created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act. This rule forbids banks from trading certain derivatives—complicated financial instruments with values derived from underlying variables, such as crop prices or interest rates. Instead, banks would have to shift these high-risk trades into separate nonbank affiliates that aren't insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and are less likely to receive taxpayer bailouts. If the Citi-written measure becomes law, the largest FDIC-insured banks in the country will be able to make a wider range of these risky trades.

Now, don't get me wrong. Republicans threw this into the spending bill as a very ugly poison pill that was sure to rankle a lot of Democrats. Rightly so. But my point is that it DOES NOT gut the most important provisions of Dodd/Frank.

My suspicion is that Republican leadership threw it in knowing that progressive Democrats would react by joining with tea partiers to try to kill the bill. What John Boehner wanted all along was to watch this bill go down in flames and pass his alternative - a three month continuing resolution that would provide us with a series of government shutdown standoffs next year when all of Congress is controlled by Republicans. They had much more than the gutting of this one part of Wall Street reform in mind. That's why the White House lobbied for passage of a 12-month spending bill - even though they publicly denounced this part of it.

UPDATE: I just learned that the "push-out" rule that is eliminated in the cromnibus was the brainchild of former Senator Blanche Lincoln. So excuse me if I'm a little skeptical about how important it is. Apparently it doesn't affect  all derivative swaps - not even most of them.

In brief, the Pushout required federally insured banks to move-“push out”-some swaps dealing activities to separate subsidiaries that do not have access to federal deposit insurance. This does not apply to all swaps, mind you. Not even to the bulk of them (interest rate swaps, many CDS). But just to commodity derivatives (other than gold), equity derivatives, and un-cleared CDS.

A couple of questions that Hillary Clinton (or any other Democratic '16 candidate) must answer

Do you think that the Republican commitment to total obstruction will continue if you are elected president? Or was that simply a strategy they employed against our first African American president?

If you think it will continue, what strategies will you use to implement the agenda you are proposing?

These questions are critical because - if we are going to have an honest discussion going forward - we have to be clear that the gridlock we've seen in Washington over the last 6 years is the responsibility of the Republicans.

To assume that the obstruction this President faced will end with his tenure is to affirm its racist roots. If a candidate wants to be direct about that, so be it. Lets have that conversation.

But any suggestion that Clinton (or any other candidate) can simply overcome it because they have a history of "reaching across the isle" is irrelevant. President Obama reached...and reached...and reached. It didn't matter.

Why Now?

On Wednesday, after the announcement that NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo would not be indicted for killing Eric Garner, the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund Twitter posted a series of tweets naming 76 men and women who were killed in police custody since the 1999 death of Amadou Diallo in New York.

This is the point many activists are trying to make. It is NOT just the deaths of Michael Brown, or Eric Garner, or Tamir Rice that have fueled the reaction we're seeing. It is a very long history of this kind of abuse that has led to this moment.

So the question that spurs for me is "Why now?" As a white woman, I'm not the one to answer that. But I will share a couple of my observations.

First of all, I think back to something I wrote last spring: Who are the optimists these days? Here's a quote about that from Ellis Cose:

African-Americans, long accustomed to frustration in their pursuit of opportunity and respect, are amazingly upbeat, consistently astounding pollsters with their hopefulness.

And here's a quote I posted recently from the book The Healing by Jonathan Odell:

'Mark my words," I said, 'when a man's not afraid, then he's hoping. And that's when all hell breaks loose.'"

Offered for your consideration. What say you?

What is the trajectory of the moral arc of the universe?

One of the things President Obama said is necessary for us to solve our current challenges is that we have to recognize that we've made progress - because it gives us hope that we can make more. But there is a strain of liberalism that - either due to psychological or strategic preference - seems to be wedded to the idea that things are getting worse. Exhibit A: Chris Hayes.


At about 1:45:

"Equal Justice Under Law," as it reads above the Supreme Court. And I've gotta say that for a long time I believed the U.S. is such a place. Sure, its flawed and sure, there are places where justice is miscarried. But fundamentally I have long thought that the U.S. really is a nation of laws. I have to say...it is getting harder and harder to hold on to that faith.

When I saw Hayes tweet a link with that video, I had a question for him.

@chrislhayes Are you saying that US is less a nation of laws than it was 50 or 100 yrs ago? Or are you simply waking up to the inequalities?
— Nancy LeTourneau (@Smartypants60) December 10, 2014

I haven't heard back from him. But the only way a statement like that makes any sense is if he was commenting on his own growing awareness of white male privilege, which has shielded him from seeing our history as a country.

As Bryan Stevenson often says, we have a justice system that "treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Wealth - not culpability - shapes outcomes."

But does anyone else remember that there were days when black people were lynched instead of tried in a court of law - while public officials either participated or simply looked the other way? Or how about the days when neither women nor people of color were allowed to sit on juries? Better yet...where is the accountability for slavery...or Native American genocide? And when have any public officials been held accountable for torture?

The most generous take on what Hayes had to say is that he is awakening to his own sense of privilege. Because the only other alternative is to see it as a narcissistic statement devoid of any historical awareness.

I am reminded of why President Obama focused his 2008 speech about race in America on the opening statement in our constitution: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union..."

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution — a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part — through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk — to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

It is the sacrifice of those "Americans in successive generations" to perfect our union that is negated by those who cannot/will not see the progress that has been made. Honoring them in no way diminishes the difficult challenges we still face. But it does allow us to see that the trajectory of the moral arc of the universe is long, but its bending towards justice. And that's where hope comes from.

President Obama's theory of change

Did anyone else notice that over the last 3 days President Obama has done interviews with Jeff Johnson at BET, Stephen Colbert and Fusion's Jorge Ramos? Perhaps that should tell us something about how he sees the relevance of the Obama coalition - just as pundits from across the political spectrum are writing it off.

Via these three interviews, we've seen several sides of the President. With Colbert he was funny. With Ramos he was feisty. But it was with Johnson that he was most profound.


At about 14:35 in the interview, President Obama lays out his vision of how change happens.

This isn't going to be solved overnight. This is something that is deeply rooted in our society. Its deeply rooted in our history. But the two things that are going to allow us to solve it: number one is the understanding that we have made progress, and so its important to recognize that as painful as these incidents are, we can't equate what's happening now to what was happening fifty years ago. If you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they'll tell you that things are better...not good in some cases...but better. The reason its important for us to understand progress has been made is, that then gives us hope that we can make more progress.

The second thing...is that we have to be persistent. Typically progress is in steps - its in increments. When you're dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society, you have to have vigilance. But you have to recognize that its going to take some time and you just have to be steady. You don't give up when we don't get all the way there...We're not going to make it perfect, but we can make it better. And better is good.

That statement summarizes pretty well where Barack Obama is at odds with a lot of activists (and also where he is at odds with what Naomi Klein called "disaster capitalism").  I am reminded of something Dr. Keith Humphreys wrote about the reaction he got from reform activists when he highlighted the good news about a decline in prison admission rates.

But a small group of people are upset that I have engaged in what might be called “airing clean laundry”. Their argument is that by letting the public know that incarceration rates are going down, I am effectively declaring that mass incarceration is over (even though I have repeatedly said just the opposite) and implicitly encouraging everyone to move on to some other social problem.

The consequentialist argument against sharing good news regarding a longstanding social problem is that it invariably undermines further reform by reducing the public’s sense of urgency. I am not convinced that this hypothesis is correct.

What a lot of this comes down to is a question about whether hope or anger are better motivators for change. But of course, that frames the whole thing as an either/or. Marshall Ganz, the country's foremost expert on community organizing, explains the both/and of how the two work together.

The initial challenge for an organizer—or anybody who’s going to provide leadership for change—is to figure out how to break through the inertia of habit to get people to pay attention. Often that breakthrough happens by urgency of need. Sometimes it happens because of anger—and by anger I don’t mean rage, I mean outrage. It’s the contradiction between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. Our experience of that tension can break through the inertia and apathy of things as they always are.

How do organizers master urgency to break through inertia? The difference in how individuals respond to urgency or anxiety (detected by the brain’s surveillance system) depends on the brain’s dispositional system, the second system in the brain, which runs from enthusiasm to depression, from hope to despair. When anxiety hits and you’re down in despair, then fear hits. You withdraw or strike out, neither of which helps to deal with the problem. But if you’re up in hope or enthusiasm, you’re more likely to ask questions and learn what you need to learn to deal with the unexpected.

Hope is not only audacious, it is substantial. Hope is what allows us to deal with problems creatively. In order to deal with fear, we have to mobilize hope. Hope is one of the most precious gifts we can give each other and the people we work with to make change.

In other words, hope is the ingredient that turns our anger away from fear and towards the possibility of change. That's exactly why Bryan Stevenson said that hope is the antidote to "a political vision that is fueled by fear and sustained by anger."