Ta-Nehisi Coates is combing through the Department of Justice report on racism in Ferguson and finding evidence that the local government saw its inhabitants, who were mostly African Americans as a cash cow to be milked through fines and tickets. Or, perhaps more precisely, bled through fines and tickets. When the police chief reported that revenue from fines “beat our next biggest month in the last four years,” the city manager replied, “Wonderful!” As Coates suggests, this is a kind of legalized plunder. His scathing analysis recalls Charles Tilly’s classic article on “War-Making and State-Making As Organized Crime.” Tilly:
If protection rackets represent organized crime at its smoothest, then war making and state making – quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy – qualify as our largest examples of organized crime. … Apologists for particular governments and for government in general
commonly argue, precisely, that they offer protection from local and external violence. They claim that the prices they charge barely cover the costs of protection. They call people who complain about the price of protection “anarchists,” “subversives,” or both at once. But consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Governments’ provision of protection, by this standard, often qualifies as racketeering.
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.
- Publication Type:Other Writing
- Publication Date:03/04/2015