The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

The Student News Site of University of Wisconsin-Madison

The Badger Herald

Advertisements
Advertisements

Letter to the editor: Column assumes Koval, YGB are on equal playing fields

Letter+to+the+editor%3A+Column+assumes+Koval%2C+YGB+are+on+equal+playing+fields
Ricardo Zhang

As communication students, we spend a lot of time thinking about how language affects our perceptions of the world and treatment of other people. We thus wish to express some concern about Alex Derr’s March 24 opinion piece, “YGB, Koval must reconcile different views to mend racial divide .”

https://badgerherald.com/opinion/2015/03/24/ygb-koval-must-work-together-to-mend-racial-divide/

Derr argues the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition and Madison Police Chief Mike Koval need to compromise in order to address racial disparities in the city’s criminal justice system. He writes, “Both groups are sick of mistreatment and respective stereotyping, and fail to see the potential ally sitting across from them.”

Advertisements

The trouble with this argument is that Derr assumes YGB and Koval are working on an equal playing field. But they’re not. Koval has the backing of the local government, of tradition and of the power that comes with being a white man in a police uniform in a city that is 78 percent white.

In contrast, YGB is a grassroots movement comprised of some of our community’s most marginalized members. They are working class black people, many identify as LGBTQ and some have been locked up in the Dane County jail.

YGB lives in a community where 75 percent of black children live in poverty, and black people are arrested at a rate of 11 to 1. As they often remind us, even though Dane County is only six percent black, 49 percent of the people currently being held in Dane County Jail are black. This is not because black people are more prone to commit crimes. Rather, this reflects police departments’ tendency to arrest and incarcerate large numbers of people for committing crimes associated with poverty, such as petty theft, failure to pay municipal tickets or public urination (when there are no public toilets for homeless people downtown). This is the mistreatment YGB and Madison’s poor black community face.

When we examine what it might mean to consider Koval and the police as “mistreated,” the circumstances are dramatically different. Peaceful protesters’ chanting, “Who do we trust? Not the police,” or even “F%&k the police,” unhappy letters from community members, or what Koval refers to as “drive-by-disrespect” (a clearly racialized phrase) may cause Koval and the police department some emotional discomfort. When compared to the circumstances facing Madison’s black community everyday – not just in the wake of Tony Robinson’s killing – we can see that one of these things is just not like the other.

Calling for compromise assumes that people come to a negotiating table from equal positions of power.

What Derr is calling for, and what Koval is calling for, isn’t actually compromise. They’re calling for a continuation of the status quo. Apologizing to Tony Robinson’s family does not bring him back, nor does it change the circumstances that create Madison’s racial disparities in the first place. Likewise, Koval’s commitment to protesters’ right to peaceably assemble does nothing to end those racial disparities. This kind of talk is cheap, but for black communities in Madison, the price is high.

Whitney Gent, ([email protected]) Marissa Fernholz and Hana Masri are graduate students in the Department of Communication Arts.

 

Advertisements
Leave a Comment
Donate to The Badger Herald

Your donation will support the student journalists of University of Wisconsin-Madison. Your contribution will allow us to purchase equipment and cover our annual website hosting costs.

More to Discover
Donate to The Badger Herald

Comments (0)

All The Badger Herald Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *