By Chris Powell
Wokeness, the new model of political correctness reigning supreme in Connecticut, holds that all racial disproportions are caused by “structural racism” and must be eliminated by policy that awards favoritism by race.
State traffic stop data has shown that Black and Hispanic motorists are stopped somewhat more often than would be suggested by their proportion of Connecticut’s population. So legislation is advancing in the General Assembly to prevent police from stopping motorists for “low-level” violations, like broken or unused headlamps, taillights, and turn signals, obstructed windshields, excessively tinted windows, and expired registrations. Motorists still could be ticketed for those violations but only if an officer stopped them for something more serious.
The legislation’s approach may be politically satisfying but its assumption that racial prejudice is the main cause of the disproportion in stops is beyond simpleminded. It’s as if the legislation’s advocates have never examined criminal-justice data, which shows that [ITALICS] all [END ITALICS] crime is racially disproportionate, with members of minority groups committing more of it.
Fortunately few people still believe that this disproportion arises from an innately baser character of racial minorities. The evidence is that the disproportion is largely a matter of poverty, which has been racially disproportionate since the country’s founding.
Of course Connecticut could not begin to count all its traffic stops where the only offense was “driving while Black.” A young Black man driving or walking through a wealthy white suburb or rural town is likely to evoke suspicion no matter how innocent he is. The situation is improving but eliminating it will require much more housing and school integration.
But many motorists may put off fixing their headlamps, taillights, and turn signals, and making other car repairs because they don’t have the money. If it is enacted the legislation forbidding police from stopping motorists for “low-level” violations will in effect nullify the regulations and proclaim that safety on the road isn’t important anymore — especially with members of minority groups.
These days society’s disintegration may be most evident on the road, where there is ever more speeding, reckless and distracted driving, road rage, and bad manners. Police misconduct rightly gets plenty of attention but police remain more sinned against than sinning by a factor of a thousand to one, and they are more inclined to let violations pass rather than risk being so easily accused and disbelieved, even with dashboard and body cameras.
So while it is getting easier to imagine a state without accusations of police racism, it well may be a state with much less law enforcement.
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PROJECT VERITAS VINDICATED: After almost a year of paid leave, Assistant Principal Jeremy Boland will resign from the Greenwich school system on June 30, even as five agencies — the school system, town government, the state attorney general’s office, the state Education Department, and the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities — purport to be continuing to investigate him.
But Boland’s departure confirms that despite all the contempt heaped on it by the political left, the guerilla journalism of Project Veritas portrayed Boland with perfect accuracy in his own words, captured on surreptitiously recorded video. Boland admitted that he disqualified political conservatives, Catholics, and people over 30 from teaching positions so it would be easier to indoctrinate students with liberalism and thereby get them to vote Democratic when they grow up.
Establishment journalism in Connecticut, which, like Boland, leans heavily left, missed the indoctrination story and then resented its being told.
Something important is also shown by the long delay in Boland’s departure. Greenwich’s school superintendent says firing Boland outright would have been too expensive and time-consuming — a common complaint about pursuing accountability in public education in Connecticut, even accountability with nominal managers.
As a practical matter there is little management in public education, since nearly everyone but school superintendents is unionized and protected by so much due process that wrongdoing must be long indulged even when, as with Boland, it is caught on video and broadcast to a scandalized world.
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Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut. (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com)
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Chris Powell column 