Stop Making Excuses for Hateful White Men

By Zenobia Jeffries, Yes! Magazine

07 June 17

Racism—not mental illness—was behind the killings on the Portland train. Let’s call it what it is so we can deal with it.

Somali-American Muslim woman was attacked and severely beaten in Columbus, Ohio, over the weekend, after coming to the defense of another Muslim woman who was being verbally assaulted.

Portland, Oregon, is still reeling after the previous weekend when two black teenage girls, one who is Muslim and was wearing a hijab, were verbally abused on a commuter train. Their attacker cut the throats of the three men who came to their aid, killing two.

Two Native American men were run down that same weekend by a driver in a large pickup truck at a campground in Grays Harbor County, Washington. One died. A Quinault Nation statement said the driver yelled racial slurs.

And the week before that, on May 20, a black college student, only days away from his graduation ceremony, was fatally stabbed at the University of Maryland. It’s being investigated as a hate crime.

All of the people arrested are white men. The attackers spewed racial slurs. They were known to affiliate with white nationalist groups on social media.

Sean Christopher Urbanski, charged with murdering student Richard Collins III at a bus stop on University of Maryland’s campus, was a member of the Facebook group "Alt Reich: Nation,” where bigoted comments were made against people of color, Muslims, and women. The page, which had over a thousand members, has since been removed.

Jeremy Joseph Christian, arrested in the Portland train stabbing deaths, was a “known right wing extremist and white supremacist,” according to a local newspaper. Motivation seemed clear enough, but then this happened: A Portland police spokesperson was quoted as saying, “We don’t know if he’s got mental health issues.”

Why would he say that?

Why is mental illness the go-to line for white men who commit acts of terrorism against people of color? Why is it an easier excuse than plain hatred and vicious racism?

Most people with mental illness are not violent, and only 3–5 percent of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with serious mental illness, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are more than 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population.

The label “mental illness” when referred to white men who’ve committed bigoted violence is a dangerous cover-up. It downplays the contribution of racism.

Mental illness elicits sympathy. It becomes merely sad that a white man like Dylann Roof massacred nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

The easy excuse is not OK.

How does the saying go? “The definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing expecting a different result.” So how do we change, stop making excuses for evil white men? How is it that folks expect racism to go away when nothing has been done at a structural or institutional level to dismantle it? And many who remain in their own silos perpetuate it, directly or indirectly.

In fact, this country has doubled down. How else do you explain the election of Donald Trump?

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of hate groups in the country rose “for two years in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump.” SPLC’s annual census of “extremist” groups, reports that 37 percent of over a thousand bias incidents directly referenced Trump.

From the moment Donald Trump became the GOP nominee for president, his misogyny and bigotry became the kindling and fuel for white people who live in fear to act out their hatred on others.

So leave mental illness out of it. I say the blood of Rahma Warsame, 40, Jimmy Smith Kramer, 20, and Harvey Anderson, 19, Rick Best, 53, Taliesin Namkai Meche, 23, Micah Fletcher, 21, and Richard Collins, 23, is on Trumpism.

Actor Jim Carey said the other day, “Covering up for this president is like putting make-up on a melanoma. It’s not only unsightly, but it’s dangerous.”

I would like to add “and hateful white men” to that statement following “this president.” If we keep making excuses and not holding these people accountable for their terrorism, all the social justice marches, rallies, truth circles, diversity meetings, and “undoing racism” workshops amount to absolutely nothing.

James Comey, a Whistleblower, Really?

By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News

06 June 17

he first time I ever heard former FBI director James Comey described as a “whistleblower,” I chuckled to myself. After thinking about it, though, I concluded that, in a way, Comey actually is a whistleblower. The legal definition of a whistleblower is “any person who brings to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety.” So I guess, technically, Comey fits the bill.

But be that as it may, the truth is that Comey is the enemy of whistleblowers, or at least of national security whistleblowers. He proved that throughout his short tenure at the FBI, where he made life for whistleblowers miserable, despite being warned repeatedly by the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI was not in compliance with current whistleblower protection laws.

Indeed, a Senate Judiciary Committee report published last year found that the FBI routinely takes action against employees who expose wrongdoing in the Bureau. The report found that “whistleblowers play a critical role in keeping our government efficient and honest, yet they also risk retaliation from their employer, sometimes being demoted, reassigned, or fired as a result of their actions.”

Congress last year passed a new whistleblower protection law, which, while exempting other national security whistleblowers from its protections, covered FBI employees. The legislation sought to “expand reporting opportunities for whistleblowers, improve the lengthy and opaque adjudication process, and strengthen protection for employees who expose bureau waste, fraud, and abuse.” But it didn’t turn out that way.

A normal whistleblower “chain of command” is to report wrongdoing to one’s supervisor. If the whistleblower gets no satisfaction there, he or she is then supposed to go to the Inspector General, the General Counsel, and, ultimately, the Congressional oversight committees. It’s something that government employees are taught during their first day on the job.

A Government Accountability Office report found, however, that the FBI did not include supervisors in the “list of approved officers” to whom a whistleblower could report. The result, according to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), was that “FBI employees have long faced vague and confusing rules for how to properly disclose problems because of the FBI’s unusual exemption from the normal whistleblower protections for other federal employees. The confusion and lack of an independent process has landed too many people in hot water for simply telling the truth.”

That’s exactly what happened to FBI supervisory agent Darin Jones. Jones reported evidence of procurement improprieties to his supervisor and was promptly fired. He appealed, of course, but he was not reinstated because he had made his complaint to his supervisor and not to one of the nine people on the FBI leadership-approved list of who could hear a whistleblower complaint. Jones’s appeal has entered its fourth year. There’s no end in sight. This is a violation of the law and is exactly what the GAO and the Judiciary Committee complained about.

The FBI’s illegal behavior hasn’t been lost on Grassley. He wrote to Comey on April 14, saying that “the FBI’s official whistleblower policy directive still does not reflect changes to the law. It was apparently last reviewed on February 19, 2017 and still posted on the FBI’s internal system as of yesterday—nearly four months after the FBI WPEA (Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act) became effective. Yet, it erroneously tells FBI employees that they are only protected for disclosures to the certain, specific officials that could receive protected disclosures before the new law.” Grassley demanded that the Comey correct the record and issue a new policy statement immediately. There is no indication that he did so before being fired by President Trump.

I have mixed feelings about Comey (and about special counsel and former FBI director Mueller, for that matter. It was Mueller who was FBI director when I was investigated and charged with five felonies after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program). Comey is getting ready to provide a public service in the coming days. He’s going to talk about Trump, Trump’s people, and the Russians. With any luck, he’ll bring this president down.

But when Comey finally testifies on Capitol Hill about his investigation into Trump’s involvement with the Russians, let’s remember that he is not the American hero the press is making him out to be. He’s the enemy of transparency. We can still hope, though, that whistleblower or not, he does the right thing.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.