Word: fuhrman
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...citizens of Los Angeles too did not need Fuhrman to illustrate how vows of absolution are followed by disillusionment. In the wake of the 1991 Rodney King beating, then Mayor Tom Bradley established the Christopher Commission, a blue-ribbon panel entrusted with the job of recommending police reforms. Chief Daryl Gates, who was frequently criticized for closing ranks with his officers rather than being accountable to the public, retired under pressure, and Williams was brought in. Still, 3 1/2 years later, many of the Christopher Commission's recommendations exist only on paper. For instance, the commission identified 44 "problem" officers...
Indeed, the say-it-ain't-so-Joe reception of the Fuhrman tapes follows a well-established pattern of denial about the virulence of racism that extends far beyond the field of law enforcement. In part be cause of the conservative backlash against affirmative action, it has become fashionable to dismiss black and Latino complaints of discrimination as either mere pleading for preferential treatment or hallucinations, until an incontrovertible piece of evidence such as the Fuhrman tapes comes along. Then, inevitably, a surge of moral condemnation washes across the country like a cathartic wave--and subsides without any lasting effect...
What planet are these white people living on, the ones who profess such shocked surprise at the Mark Fuhrman tapes? Haven't they heard what black people have been telling them all these years: that the ranks of major police departments all across the country are full of Fuhrman-style lying bigots? Not all cops, by any means, not even most of them, but enough to generate a steady stream of racially motivated police misconduct. Most of it never makes the national news--the hundreds of cases in which minority suspects are manhandled, beaten or even killed. But certainly...
...accept the notion that police racism and other acts of discrimination are aberrations rather than commonplace occurrences. And how, in the face of such reports, citizens can nevertheless believe that it is time to disregard race as a factor and take a ''color-blind'' approach to social issues. The Fuhrman tapes effectively refute the claim put forward by conservatives, both black and white, that prejudice no longer has much impact on the lives and fortunes of African Americans. Like most black men, I can testify from personal experience that it does. During the 1970s, when I lived in Montclair...
Ruling on new evidence in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Judge Lance Ito said jurors could hear only two relatively tame snippets--out of at least 41 instances--in which ex-L.A.P.D. detective Mark Fuhrman used the word nigger on a screenwriter's interview tapes. The decision enraged Simpson's defense lawyers, who had been counting on the tapes to bolster their contention that Fuhrman--who denied on the stand that he had used the epithet--is a racist who planted the famous bloody glove at Simpson's home in order to frame him. Earlier in the week, with...