NBA Stars Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James Support Black Lives at ESPY's

Courtesy of Celebuzz.com

Often, we castigate most athletes for lack of awareness and blindness to challenging social issues of the day. When it comes to the most prominent athletes, their voices are muted or absent in troubling times. I take my hat off to NBA stars Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwayne Wade, and LeBron James for their courageous and socially aware stance in their opening remarks to last night's ESPY Awards on ESPN. Here goes a link to their remarks:

http://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2016/07/14/espy-awards-lebron-james-nba-social-justice-jnd-orig-vstan.cnn

Kudos to these guys. What do you think? Do these remarks move the needle in casting light on challenging social issues?

D.L. Hughley's Explosive Fox News Interview on Race and Policing

Here goes the full video of D.L. Hughley's explosive Fox News interview with Megan Kelly:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eZJ7QSI7uV0

What are your reactions to the interview?

Thoughts on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Moral Hazard Inspired by D.L. Hughley

Courtesy of Wiki Commons

A thought just crossed my mind listening to D. L. Hughley talk about police shootings of people of color on CNN with Chris Cuomo this morning. A weird parallel about my academic works/writings and D. L.'s comments crystallized in my mind.

In my academic life I've written about financial services/banking regulation under the Glass-Steagall, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and Dodd-Frank Acts. These have proven to be among my most cited and influential scholarly writings-measured in my mind by subsequent law review, book, and blog discussions by other scholars and thought leaders. In my article published in the Albany Law Review in 2010, where I discuss one of the root causes of the 2007-2008 Financial Crisis (The Great Recession), I spilled a lot of ink talking about the issues of Too-Big-To-Fail and moral hazard in the banking world. I think these concepts have applicability as we try to intellectualize and come to grips with the back-to-back police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile last week.
When I talk about moral hazard to my students, I situate the concept in the following terms. Imagine you purchase a house for cash, but the kicker is that for whatever reason (cost or benign oversight) you decide or fall not to buy a homeowner's insurance policy to insure your home against risks like theft, fire, or other casualties that are reasonably foreseeable that might beset your home. When you don't have insurance you are ultra safe! When you leave for work in the morning you triple check to make sure the doors are locked and all accessible windows are locked and shuttered. You unplug your iron and let it cool down before leaving for work. You get the picture!

The moment you purchase an insurance policy things change dramatically. In the morning when you leave you might not triple check to see if the doors and windows are locked. Hell, if you're running late on the way to work one morning for a big meeting with your Boss, and you think in the back of your mind you left the iron plugged in on the cotton/linen setting on the ironing board you probably won't turn your car around.

Why do rational people behave in such a manner? It all comes down to the moral hazard dilemma! When I don't have insurance and I have to foot the bill if a thief breaks into my house, or I create conditions that could burn my house down (like leaving my iron on the cotton/linen setting all day), I would tend to act with a high level of caution. My wallet serves as the backstop if something goes wrong-I'm personally financially on the hook. I have to write the checks to pay for my own damage and carelessness! The moment a person gets insurance they become less worried and careless, and begin to take more unnecessary risks. Risky/Reckless behavior is cleaned up and financed by others (your insurance company)-levels of responsibility and accountability are vastly diminished when someone else theoretically is footing the bill. In a nutshell, this illustrates the problem of moral hazard.

How does the issue of moral hazard relate to the killings of primarily African-American males in this country? In my mind, the issue is one of police responsibility/accountability. When one has to account and be responsible for their own actions, and there are consequences and repercussions the individual tends to act with restraint, caution, and measure. Just like in the homeowner examples I've outlined above. All too often, I think the problem has been our criminal justice system (specifically, a failure to prosecute police-involved shooters)-the "system" has acted as a backstop, insurer, and guarantor of unrestrained police behavior and blatant killing.

The botched grand jury proceedings in the Mike Brown case, the failure to prosecute Tamir Rice's killer, the lack of accountability for the killer of Eric Garner, and countless others, bear witness to the point that I'm making. From a prosecutorial standpoint, for years in this country, police who kill Black males have had nothing to fear. Where actors have no accountability they will continue to act in an unrestrained and lawless fashion. Here lies the moral hazard dilemma in American policing-reckless police behavior has gone unpunished for decades.

In the recent cases of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, we will have to see whether the criminal justice system holds the officers involved accountable. If not, the morale hazard dilemma in policing in America will continue to persist and manifest itself. Our society will bear the cost of the unjustifiable and highly suspect killings of these young men.

If our criminal justice continues to fail to value lives, even those of the perceived lest among us, life is valueless for all humanity. Are we saying that police officers and police departments are Too-Big-To-Fail? Will we continue to throw bad actors (police who kill for unjustifiable reasons) a lifeline and bail them out for unabated risk taking behavior? Our criminal justice system is not a shareholder in an insurance company or an insurance company itself, the criminal justice system has to make police officers who kill unjustifiably write their own checks and be held to account for their own actions. When a day comes where police officers have to answer with their own lives (let's be clear-I'm in no way advocating for violence towards law enforcement) and liberty for their bad decisions/actions the lives of Black males might matter. Just some thoughts on issues that have troubled me for some time.

D.L. Hughley's CNN Interview on Black Lives Matter

Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Here's a link to D.L. Hughley's CNN interview where he comments on Rudy Giuliani's comments calling the Black Lives Matter Movement a terrorist organization: http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/07/13/dl-hughley-rudy-giuliani-kim-kardashian-new-day.cnn

What Defines The Black Intelligentsia Blog?

Courtesy of Wiki Commons

Admittedly, the blogosphere is an extremely crowded space.  Why, would someone in their right mind endeavor to create a new blog?  Especially, one with a long name such as the "Black Intelligentsia Blog" that constitutes a mouthful for the average person to say?  In this post my intent and goal is to provide a meager explanation for why I created the Black Intelligentsia Blog, and moreover why I think it is necessary in a time of social, political, and economic turbulence and upheaval.

Over the years, I've grown rather disillusioned about the type and content of news and opinions delivered by the media to the African-American community (my community).  In earlier years, when I wanted to hear timely and relevant news about social, political, economic, artistic, and literary happenings in the Black community, and the opinions of thought leaders and intellectuals, I often turned to BET.  After BET was sold to Viacom (a huge multinational corporation) the programming and content of BET changed remarkably in my humble opinion.  Instead of interviews, commentaries, and insights by journalists like Ed Gordon and others, the content of BET was watered down and diluted.  I remember distinctly after the Viacom merger, BET started to air a series entitled "American Gangster" which provided depictions and biographical coverage and glorification of African-American criminals.  In a world where we are killing each other on an astronomical order, the white/black wealth gap is steadily increasing, educational opportunities have shrunk as the Supreme Court and state and federal public policy makers have waged a war to dismantle affirmative action programs to increase diversity, unemployment and meaningful job opportunities have decreased for the masses, rural and urban poverty persists, police brutality and lethality have quickened, and healthcare disparities exist, our community (the African-American community) has so many fish to fry to sort out our issues holistically and internally within our family.  We (Black folks) need to be revealing, unraveling, discussing, and solving problems that threaten the mere existence, fabric, and vitality of our community.  Media portrayals of gangsterism and criminality will not lead us to a cultural, moral, metaphysical, intellectual, economic, political, or social promised land.  We can frame, guide, lead the discussions and find the solutions to issues at the crux of our collective suffering in America.  No one defines us-not the media, politicians, institutions, systems, groups, conditions, or other people-we define ourselves and orientate the world in which we exist. 

As a law professor and lawyer, on a macro-level, I've sat on the sideline as Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and now recently Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and countless others who go unnamed, have lost their lives.  The time to act is now to uplift and elevate our community to the place in society that has been paid for and secured by the wages and labors of our ancestors who have bought our birthright in blood, sweat, and tears.  The time to demand our social, political, and economic inheritance has arrived! We shall not be turned back from the gates of full citizenship in the United States-the land of our birth!  I have a voice to frame and conceptualize the issues we discuss and the solutions we can bring forward.  From here forward, I'm going to use my voice loudly-the inside voice is gone.  That is why I've endeavored to create the Black Intelligentsia Blog.  This will be my vehicle to share with you news, content, essays, and opinions that critically impact the African-American community in terms of our social, political, economic, artistic, literary, and cultural movement to the highest ground possible.     

Words matter in our lives.  In order to accomplish anything that is worth obtaining you must first think it, speak it into conception, and take action steps to achieve it.  What is in a name?  I've conceived, birth, and delivered this blog, the Black Intelligentsia Blog, into life with words and a name that have meaning and significance.  Webster's Dictionary defines the word intelligentsia as follows: "a group of intelligent and well-educated people who guide or try to guide the political, artistic, or social development of their society."  The intelligentsia are the intellectuals who are at the vanguard of a social, political, or artistic movement or revolution. 

I humbly invite you to follow the Black Intelligentsia Blog in order to be a foot soldier in the movement to make our lives better and more prosperous.  As time passes, I, and contributors I invite to this space will be posting news, content, and opinion to expose and tackle issues that impact our community on a multitude of levels.  Join the movement-follow this blog!!!  Read, comment, and share your thoughts and reactions with me and others who use this portal as time passes.  However, remember one thing and keep it supreme in your mind and heart, we are all brothers and sisters let's respect each others opinions, reactions, experiences, and perspectives on what sometimes will be difficult and uneasy discussions to engage each other.  Thank you in advance for supporting this endeavor and being a participant!  God bless you!   

Welcome!

Welcome to the Black Intelligentsia Blog! Thank you for your visit, please visit often for future posts!