So the grand jury is in on charges for the police in the Crawford case.
There is a tendency in these cases to give communities the benefit of doubt, and assume what happened is a horrible tragedy. In the case of Greene County (Ohio) there are good reasons to believe that is not the case. There is a recent history of institutional racism which should be highlighted as a confounding factor in this case. Let me explain.
Greene County (Ohio) is a suburb of Dayton. While predominantly white (86.4%), the county has long played host to communities of free people of color dating back to before the Civil War, running through the center of the county from Xenia, through Wilberforce, to Yellow Springs. In Wilberforce, they built the nation's first HBCU owned by the community. Greene County still had race issues, but if was far more accepting of racial diversity than other rural areas in the Midwest. Given this history, you may be wondering what's driving the present racial animus in the county.
From the late 1940s until the 1970s, the population of Greene County boomed, with this growth being heavily concentrated in Fairborn, and what would become the city of Beavercreek, where John Crawford III was killed. In part, this growth was driven by the growth of nearby Wright Patterson AFB. But, white flight played its part. In the 50 years between 1960 and 2010, the population of Dayton fell by by almost half, while whites went from 78.1% of the population to 51.7%. In the near future, Dayton will likely become a majority-minority city. Meanwhile in Beavercreek, less than 1 in 40 residents are African Americans.
And, the Beavercreek establishment seem damn intent on keeping it that way. Even if that meant losing federal highway funding:
The showdown began in 2010 when the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority proposed adding three new bus stops in Beavercreek, a largely white suburb 15 minutes east of Dayton. These new stops would give Dayton bus-riders access to Beavercreek’s major shopping mall and nearby businesses, as well as a medical clinic and Wright State University.
Facing the prospect of buses coming in from Dayton, the Beavercreek City Council began enacting as many hurdles as they could to stop the new bus stops. Among the dozen roadblocks included mandating that bus shelters included heated and air conditioning as well as high-tech surveillance cameras, features that would be hugely expensive and are not common at other stops. Unsurprisingly, these demands couldn’t be met and the council rejected the expansion. “We turned downed an application because they didn’t meet our (design) criteria,” Beavercreek City Councilman Scott Hadley explained to Eye On Ohio...
A civil rights group in the area, Leaders for Equality in Action in Dayton (LEAD), soon filed a discrimination lawsuit against Beavercreek under the Federal Highway Act. In June, the Federal Highway Administration ruled that Beavercreek’s actions were indeed discriminatory and ordered them to work with the Dayton Regional Transit Authority to get the bus stops approved without delay.
Beavercreek, though, isn’t particularly keen to do that. The city council voted most recently on Friday to put off consideration of the matter until later this month. They are weighing whether to appeal the federal ruling, or perhaps whether to just defy it altogether. Appealing the ruling could cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, according to a Washington D.C. lawyer the council hired. However, non-compliance with the ruling could cost Beavercreek tens of millions of dollars in federal highway funds.
If you look at the
DOT paperwork what you quickly learn is just exactly
where these proposed bus stops were to be located.
Oh, yeah. That's right. This proposed set of bus stops was to serve the shopping center where John Crawford III was killed. That Walmart in the map above is where he died. In the end, Beavercreek relented.
Forgive me, but I just can't help wonder if it's that same societal racism that allowed Beavercreek to hatch an openly segregationist public transportation plot than motivated Ronald Ritche in making a false report to the police. Segregation ... by any means necessary? And, a city government willing to believe the worst about young black men in order to deny them right to participate fully in the life of our nation. The fact that is context is missing from the discussion of what's happening suggests to me that those in the media have dropped the friggin ball on this one. If only there were a way to remedy this...