Er.

What the hell is with the Obama-ized poster? Have you not thought about the implications there?

We refuse to take care of our nation's children when they are children and so we end up in situations like this. Lack of funding and commitment to education and child health care (mental and physical) caused this mess.

Our nation makes the weather and then we stand in the rain and say, Shit, it's raining.

"I do not deny that Mixon was armed, dangerous, a career criminal and potentially linked to the rape of a young woman. Lovelle Mixon's actions are deplorable. But if we look at them within the context of police brutality, they sadly start make sense."

Actually, no, they don't make sense. Killing cops NEVER makes sense, just like killing an unarmed person doesn't make sense either. Turning a multiple cop killer and rapist into the poster child for a conversation about police brutality is apologism at its worst.

I hate to sound so cynical first thing in the morning, but I would bet the results of our search for what went wrong have nothing to do with police culture, or the prison industrial complex, or any other thoughtful and reasonable answers. In a culture where white males and police officers are constructed as being the authority, as being in the right, as being good, well-intentioned people, while black males are constructed as the opposite and their voices and concerns are therefore delegitimized, this is exactly the kind of struggle that will continue. Cops who beat or kill blacks and other minorities who they perceive as being disenfranchised will continue to be rewarded for their actions with paid vacation. The media will continue to portray black men as dangerous and savage. There's no potential for change as long as the dialogue that controls our shared mythology remains the same.

As always, if you control the dialogue, you control the framework of power.

But I liked this post and think it's really a topic that we should keep bringing people's attention to for as long as it takes.

So he's the Bernard Goetz of Oakland?

@sshayne7,

I so agree with you! You said it better than I could.

I understand your point of view, and I agree that it's very sad that Lovelle felt he had no other option, but you make a huge critical leap without backing it up when you state:

"But if we look at them within the context of police brutality, they sadly start make sense."

His actions were never fueled by police brutality, they appear to be fueled by possibility that he did not want to pay for additional crimes he knew he committed.

You're conflating the brutal murder of Oscar Grant with a career criminal who knew he was caught and reacted like a wild animal cornered, doing anything and everything to escape being brought to justice.

I also take issue with the point that you make about cops killing young black men, statistically a much larger percentage of young black men are killed by other young black men.

I do not think the cops are above reproach, but there's certainly no way to justify an 'eye for eye' using a scoreboard mechanism. If you're keeping score then where's the scoring for another black youth wasted another black youth.

Any life claimed at the hands of violence is a waste and requires some amount of contemplation regarding how the person arrived at that point.

I feel the only way to start to have peace, is too project it everywhere, and until me make some very significant changes in our society we'll see more men like Lovelle Mixon who feel they have nothing to lose because they have no hope.

And that lack of hope has nothing to do with the police, it's endemic of our consumer focused society. Those who have, and those who have not.

Samhita,

Actually, I WOULD agree with the young African Americans in Oakland who see this as fair payback for the police murder of Oscar Grant III.

I remember when the cops here in NYC murdered Sean Bell and got off scott free at one of the rallies in Harlem somebody said "the next time the cops kill one of us - THEY'RE GONNA HEAR BAGPIPES!!!"

And, honestly, if it takes a few Inspectors Funerals to get the cops to stay in their radio cars and keep their pistols holstered instead of murdering our young men, then it's a damned small price to pay!

Also, I'd like to add, the cops themselves, and the criminal INjustice system they serve, created that situation.

First of all, why did they stop this guy anyway - DWB*, more likely than not.

Second, had Mixon been White, would he have had the kind of long criminal record that he had, even with the same crimes? Probably not.

So a White Lovelle Mixon wouldn't have had the kind of parole history that would make him fear incarceration from a minor traffic stop, and therefore he wouldn't have had to react the way he did.

Third, once he shot the two traffic cops, the Oakland Police decided to "GO TACTICAL" - that is, to bring out the paramilitary Special Weapons and Tactics squad [SWAT].

Police Departments only "go tactical" like that once they have decided that they will not take the suspect alive and plan to kill that person instead of arresting them.

Unfortunately for Oakland PD SWAT, Mixon was a better marksman than they were (or, more correctly, a better marksman than the first three OPD SWAT officers through the door - the fourth cop was a better shot than Mixon, as it turned out).

* ["DRIVING WHILE BLACK"]

Hmm, well I dont see any justification for killing police officers to get back at them for past incidents. As the girlfriend of a New Yorck City police officer, I would be very angry and hurt if someone shot and killed my loved one to get back at the police department, even though my loved one had nothing to do with previous incidents. I feel for the families of the slain officers. It's very scary when someone you love works midnights and you hope they come home to you in the morning and you dont hear from them. Just as angry as we feel when when unarmed men are killed, no excuse for any murder of anyone anywhere. And yes alot of people are cop haters, but Its strange, I do not look at my boyfriend as a cop. We met while working together in a deli-bagel store back in the day lol, its a job, and he always told me the most useless thing on his gun belt is his weapon and i never understoof what he meant. radio radio radio. Anyway, this whole thing is really sad, noone should lose a loved one even if they are cops or individuals with criminal records or everyday joes. No single life is better then an other. I have never been to oakland and do not know anything then what I read in the papers, sO ii am not sure how life is over in oakland..

Maybe the fact that this is a kind of hot-button issue is causing the thread to kind of jump the tracks right out of the station.

I interpreted this post as a call to examine and work to change the dialogue that surrounds racialized police brutality and the subsequent backlash. So I thought Samhita had hoped to start a discussion centered on how our culture "does" dialogue in this context. Instead, the discussion seems to be centering on whether or not Mixon was justified in his actions, and most commenters are assuming that Samhita thinks the answer is "yes."

There are two distinct issues here, and a conversation about both of them may prove productive, but it will be a huge missed opportunity if we forego a discussion of the dialogue in order to focus exlusively on parsing out responsibility and blame in this case.

Samhita - which is it please? Was Mixon a social rights crusader as Mr. Weston infers? I seriously doubt that Mixon was thinking of the greater good of POC when he took these actions. Or is he merely a poor unthinking victim as Mr. Hutchinson the post-mortem mind reader claims? Someone who shoots two people point blank and then stands over them and shoots them again sounds more deliberate than panicked to me.

I think you should encourage this discussion I just question your choice of "poster man" from which to launch it.

The problem is cultural. White men are taught to obey authority, black men are encouraged to ignore authority.

I don't care about the color of the skin or sex of the cop, they tell me to do something, I do it with a "Yes Officer." When I get pulled over by a cop I always talk to them in respect, even when I think I did nothing wrong (like driving 30 mph down a city street at 8 am) and then when ticketed I say "thank you Officer."

I expect that if I told the cop off I would likely end up in jail (verbal abuse is disorderly conduct) and that if I attempted to run from the cop that I would be forcibly held, and that if I struggled with a cop trying to arrest me that I would be hit. And that if I struck the cop I'd be hit back until the cop was certain I wasn't going hit them agin.

And if I end up beaten up by cops the first thing my friends say is 'Joe, how could you have been so stupid?' That's right I would be blamed by my friends because they know you don't go around provoking people unless you want a fight, and they acknowledge that a fight with a cop is a great way to get killed.

I thought this was a very thoughtful post and great analysis.

I like to think that as human beings our brains are big enough to be able to simultaneously understand that what Mixon (allegedly) did is horrific, and that there is also a long context and history of disproportionate state violence against black men (and other men of colour).

Many of the comments so far are just plain foolish and appear to be written by folks who didn't even read the first paragraph of this post.

Just from glancing at the coverage of Lovelle Mixon's crime I'm starting to get angry. From the first para of the first article Samhita linked to: "As the two Oakland police officers lay in the street, already shot at least once, parolee Lovelle Mixon stood over them and fired again."

Ok yes. Disturbing and upsetting.

But am I wrong to find, for e.g. (because you can find so many other examples), the death of unarmed black man Amadou Diallo who was shot by four police officers FORTY ONE times more disturbing and upsetting?

If you just take a step back and look at the numbers alone (see Lakers playing a junior high school team) how can you NOT think that that something is obscenely wrong with the way this country is policed?

"Our young men"???? Yeah, Gregory. How about tonight you go take a walk down the road with Lovelle Mixon and his ilk. The white liberals on this board love talking about "privilege". There is nothing more privileged than being able to refer to a criminal thug in a respectful manner while blogging from the safety of your apartment.

When was the last time that you took a walk in the urban housing projects, Samhita? Have you ever? They'd love to hear your philosophies out there, I'm sure. Go give it a try this weekend.

Race and cop-killing aside, can I just voice a quibble with the fact that analyses of police brutality and brutality against police in non-white communities so often try to reduce things to issues of unemployment?

The last major unemployment hand-wringing I can recall by commentators in the American press came during the 2005 Paris banlieu riots (and, to a lesser extent, the more recent French student demonstrations). Immigrants can't get jobs, an unemployed man is a dangerous man, etc.

I've always found the argument dangerously capitalistic and reductive. Blaming a series of murders or other violence even in part on a guy's alleged inability to find a job sort of papers over more complex issues with this old presumption of the innate value of labor as the source of income and thus self-worth.

Spirited arguments have taken place in these threads before about whether violence against women is triggered in part by rising unemployment among men. In those discussions, I recall some commenters spoke up to call the theory a convenient red herring -- or an effort to humanize a completely indefensible act.

I'm not saying unemployment wasn't a big issue here. But I do think we should be more aware of how quick we are to jump to these explanations so rooted in capitalist, work-ethic-derived values.

Even in cases where the perpetrators themselves jumped to those explanations, I think we need to take note of just how ingrained those values are or, alternativeely, take the explanations with a grain of salt.

Oh, by the way. I absolutely love that this post is immediately preceded by one that is criticizing the concept of "Victim Blaming". I suppose that only applies with rape, though, right? There's always a good reason for murder.

Thank you, though, Samhita, for helping us understand "the dialogue around Lovelle Nixon". Your assistance is invaluable.

Samhita, my thinking is not so simplistic as just to think of the case, "He deserves to die. Armed dangerous gunmen deserve to die. Why are black youth so violent?" I believe you're using that as a straw man to advance an untenable argument.

We SHOULD have a dialogue about the high rates of incarceration for young black men, the difficulties of transitioning post-incarceration and the relationship between police officers and the black community.

But Lovelle Mixon is the wrong choice to start this dialogue. Using him as an example is an untenable argument.

Mixon's case is too atypical. His crime was unconscionable. Any number of people in Mixon's situation have NOT resorted to multiple murder.

By framing this discussion around Lovelle Mixon, you alienate people who would be otherwise open to the discussion. It also sounds dangerously close to excusing Mixon's actions, even though I doubt that is Samhita's intent.

Also, Samhita notes of the killing of black men that "we may be outraged, but not nearly as outraged as when cops are killed." Yes, murder is always outrageous, but I feel completely justified in being even more outraged when the victim is a public servant, who risks his or her life everyday to keep me safe. The victim was targeted because of his or her dedication to protecting me. I'm not going to apologize for being even more outraged about that.

Sometimes, when you write an opinion piece tying in a current issue, you miss. You draw the wrong parallels. I think that's what happened here in Samhita's posting. And I consider that constructive criticism.

I am somewhat confused about this post. To whom is it directed? What "dialog" is this meant to help us understand?

All of these issues are discussed day in and day out in Black communities and other communities of color. In the comment section of Black-focused blogs you will see a range of opinions and emotions about this specific case and about the larger issues of police brutality as well.

So my hunch is that this is some sort of primer or introduction to the issues for mainstream feminism? I honestly do not know.

Let me assume, though, that the above is the case. If so, then the topic is not understanding Mixon in the context of police brutality in Black communities, but understanding the supportive reactions of some in Black communities (including, according to some reports, some bystanders at the scene). Why would some people cheer about payback for Grant? Why would some bloggers and commenters say that they "understand" but do not "condone" what happened? Why are some pundits framing this case in a context of Black community-police hostilities? Why might some Black women feel torn (yet again) by the desire on one hand to decry the violence perpetrated by authority figures on our sons, partners, fathers, brother while on the other hand decrying the violence against us that some of these sons, partners, fathers, brothers perpetrate?

Those, to me, are the conversations that need to be understood. I deeply appreciate this issue being brought up on a blog with this focus but I think that a longer, clarified discussion is needed.

Those of you that are accusing Samhita of apologism really need to give your head a fucking shake. This thread displays much of the criticism I have continually laid on this site; unless a post is a reflection of your lived experience and supports your undeserved privilege you naysayers become like over stuffed thanksgiving turkeys.

The man was in a sever case of depression when he committed this crime. As Samhita cited in her post integration for former inmates in mainstream society is next to impossible despite our social myth of punishment ending upon release from prison. If you treat someone like an animal they will behave like one.

Anyone even stop for even one minute to consider the ways which our social construction of black men and race played into this event? Anyone stop to think about the countless black men that have wrongly died due to police criminality? Of course not because to do so you would have to run face first into your unacknowledged white privilege. We create forcefully the society we inhabit and therefore though his actions were the crime of one man we all are to a degree culpable.

Didn't really have time to read thoroughly through all the comments (skimmed, mostly), but this statistic Samhita cited caught my attention, and I don't think anyone else commented on:

"...60 percent of ex-felon offenders remain unemployed a year after their release." and this: "A significant number of them suffer from drug, alcohol and mental health challenges, and lack education or any marketable skills. More than 70 percent of all U.S. prisoners are literate at only the two lowest grade levels. Nearly 60 percent of violent felons are repeat offenders. They are a menace to themselves and, as the nation saw with Mixon, to others. In some cases, they can be set off by any real or perceived slight, insult, or simply lash out from bitter rage."

These, combined with the documented fact (although I don't have citations at my fingertips) that a majority of those in the prison system are people of color, seems to me to also be telling us we should be doing something much more serious about prison reform. We have to get off the mind-set that prison should be revenge: no TV, no exercise, no education, no programs to prepare them for the outside - *nothing* for prisoners - they "have to pay" and "we shouldn't coddle them"... Seriously? Having *any* slight relief or diversion in prison is "coddling"???

It's scarcely a wonder this man was willing to kill rather than return to prison.

OK, it's off topic, and sorry for the rant, but thank you Samhita for being unafraid to take on a really difficult and controversial topic.

I hate how the article about the rape doesn't even mention much about it- in an article with the word "rape" in the title! I know he is just allegedly the attacker, but the way the article was written is once again skimming over the affects and damage of rape.

"At first, police suggested that Mixon might have shot the motorcycle officers because he knew he was being sought for skipping a meeting with his parole officer in February, something that would have resulted in a prison sentence of no more than six months.

Had he been convicted of rape, however, Mixon could have been looking at a state prison sentence of several years. "

"However"!? Oooo scary! "Several years"...? I doubt he would even get "several" years. They make it sound like several years would some how justify the rape.

Sorry, this has very little to do with the original blog itself... I'm just pissed. I'm just sick of rapists getting off the hook. Much like these cops who get away with so much. I'm sick of the injustice. Grrr Angry Feminist!!

This is the third time I've read something of Samhita's that is making an issue out of race when an issue did not exist previously.

He's a black kid who killed cops. No one looks at it going "why are black kids so violent?!" except for you. Because you seem to have some sort of Race issue going on, so you force it on to people around you.

I've read the article about Obama being black, and whether or not people are voting for him because of his color, a rapist who was Indian that we shouldn't judge for being Indian and this. While the rest of us fixate on the crime, or the issues, you are fixating on race. When we comment about it, you condescendingly comment back about how we claim to not see race. Yet, you are making an issue out of race that very few other people - at least on this forum- are looking at.

No one cares what race a cop killer or a rapist is. Apparently very few people cared what color our President was. We care about what they did, or what they are going to do. Get over your issues.

"Angry cops are capable of anything."

Which angry cops are you referencing? ANY angry cops, or just some? Are all cops the same to you? All of theme are "capable of anything" in your world? Or can you appreciate that like every other profession, there are good and bad?

Unfortunately, the dialogue we need to have is not the one some people want. Police brutality is a fact, but the dialogue we need is much bigger than about police brutality. The dialogue we need to have is about a culture of violence in urban America, where violence begets violence in an endless cycle, and it's been uanbated for more than 40 years. We need a dialogue about a culture of poverty and dependence that engender rampant criminality. This culture has flourished ever since the War on Poverty encouraged fathers to be tossed out of the house (in disregard of the advice of the brilliant Daniel Patrick Moynihan) -- and we went from 70% of homes with fathers to 70% homes without. That's a fact. The social maladies that followed were Shakespearean in their scope. Crime skyrocketed; as did teen pregnancies; kids dropped out of schools in record numbers; and guess what? Poverty continues to flourish -- more than 40 years after the "war" started. What other war in our history has raged for so long to so little effect? It's by far the biggest problem in America -- our nation's dirty little secret -- but we get sidetracked on the symptoms and no one has the balls to treat the problem.

So, yes, we need that dialogue about race that the Attorney General suggested. Except it has to be about real solutions -- not about the symptoms and not about finger pointing at some bad cops or talking about someone else's "undeserved privilege." The issues are too severe, too deeply rooted, too complex, and too interrelated to be separated.

Has anyone asked the question of why we're having this conversation HERE?

I have to say one thing. I really really really wish you didn't use that poster. As someone who has had days where she came home wondering where her officer father was (and remembering those days where he was injured on duty), its very offensive.
Yes we need to have an open dialogue about police brutality, but this is not the way to do it. That style of poster was a symbol of hope for a new tomorrow with President Obama's campaign. Cop Killing is hardly a symbol of hope.

So it is less reprehensible for a black man to shoot fallen police officers, than it is for a police officer to shoot a fallen black man? That smacks of the victim blaming this site is always railing against.

Wow, what a debate here today! I was going to critique the "deplorable but makes sense" line myself but we already have a full throated discussion!

Instead let's take Samhita at her word that she wasn't equivocating on the murder of 4 men. The argument she implicitly makes is that there is a cycle at play, ie, police brutality leads to cop killers.

This is a flawed argument. First, this suggests some ghetto version of the "Bush doctrine". A history of harassment means black pre-emptively kill cops now. It would take an awfully severe history of harassment--we're talking at least Rodney King like proportions--to justify the PRE-EMPTIVE killing of 4 men. Second, the statistics don't bear it out. Of all the young black men harassed by cops daily, a tiny, tiny fraction of them go on to shoot/kill cops. They wear bright blue uniforms & come when called, so if most black men really wanted to retaliate against cops for harassment, it'd be pretty easy to do. The #s speak for themselves, harassment aside, you have to be a pretty crazy motherfucker to kill 4 cops.

No, this is not a societal problem, its a Lovelle Mixon problem.

I wonder how much Samhita should really edit what she wants to put out on this blog.
I mean, let's take this poster as an example. This is a bit of what Samhita's had to say about it:
Yeah, I wanted people to parse out what the poster meant themselves. I think the poster is scary and exactly what will happen to Mixon's story... it is powerful irrelevant of the intention of the artist. If it is meant to be racist and fucked up, then that is what it is and it is clear. If it is meant to be a nuanced conversation starter about making examples out of black men, then that is what it is as well.

I believe she's using it, along with the two referenced stories, to draw lines around where the discourse is going... particularly, in camps that are not of the same mind as the majority of feministing readers...

That said, I'm pretty certain that Samhita really loves the readers of Feministing; perhaps that leads her to overestimate us... to think that she can put up a brief post with starting points for learning more and then trust us to fill in the gaps. Judging by it taking 43 minutes for someone to interpret her post as being a defense of Mixon's actions, I'd say that trust is misplaced.

In one of Davey D's tweets, he mentioned the (more than 1/2 white) crowd going wild at a show when the shooting was mentioned. There is clearly a lot of confusion and anger surrounding these events (Mixon killing police, police killing Grant, etc.) and Samhita was just pulling out a few (thoughtful, if controversial) examples of the ways different perspectives are being shaped.

Regardless of whether or not she believes cop killing is a message of hope (and it's pretty clear that she doesn't), it's important to recognize that an image like the "poster" was created in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. It's important to recognize that there are a lot of people who see this as a tit-for-tat situation... and there are a lot of people who are conflicted - at once feeling sorry for the people who were killed (and their families) and simultaneously feeling like the system had it coming. Recognizing that these are perspectives that are very real and shared by a lot of people is not the same thing as holding such a perspective. Ignoring that such perspectives are worth considering or even exist stifles our capacity to understand all the angles on a tragedy such as this.

She stated, clearly, I thought, that she doesn't endorse one point of view or another (of the poster and two articles)... I mean, in the OP, Samhita said, in no uncertain terms:
I do not deny that Mixon was armed, dangerous, a career criminal and potentially linked to the rape of a young woman... Lovelle Mixon's actions are deplorable.

This, to me, seems worlds away from the first article's comparisons of Mixon to Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Jonathan Jackson and Huey Newton. The "Obama-ized" image is a step farther than even that analogy. However, it's important to recognize that these comparisons are being made and that there are reasons these comparisons are being made.

Further, it's important to recognize that, as Samhita pointed out upthread, that Actions don't happen in a vacuum. This =/= exonerating those who commit the actions. She even pointed out that sexual violence can not be effectively dealt with if we abandon analysis of the systemic causes of such violence in favor of simply demonizing the actors.

Similarly, Mixon's actions come out of a violent environment and a violent context. While he was definitely not directly reacting to the murder of Oscar Grant, his actions sprang from the same well of resentment, mistrust and violence as Johannes Mehserle's. Violence by police and violence against police are necessarily linked.

Also, regarding whether or not race is even germane to this discussion: Of course it is. And, AprilRocksIt, if you think that people didn't look at Obama's race during and after the election, you're living in a different US than I am. Further, if you don't think that race plays a significant role in the outcome of police interactions, particularly in places like Oakland, you're not paying attention.

Regarding the term "makes sense." Samhita's making a point that the way this has all played out makes sense within a historical and social context. This is very different from saying that the individual's actions make sense or are in any way defensible.

Similarly, I think it's important to see the direction that Samhita's post could point if we could all get past the "this is too controversial" or "is this really feminist" chatter... Namely, if we understand that police brutality and systemic privilege nurture a violent environment, it takes us one step closer to understanding how we can work toward building a more tranquil society. If we simply see each violent act (by people representing the system or by people who've fallen through it) as an isolated incident, we may feel better about ourselves (and blame will be much easier to place), but we will get no closer to undoing the trends that lead to such tragedies.

It's critical that, particularly in the wake of tragedies such as the shooting of Oscar Grant or the shootings of John Hege, Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai (the victims of Lovelle Mixon), we take the time to look at what the root causes are of this senseless violence. Otherwise, we will simply take sides and wait until the next spark comes near the powder keg and more people can fall victim to this cycle of oppression and violence.