![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yesterday, the League of Women Voters held its Candidates Forum for the upcoming primary elections.
I helped write and print out the invitation letters (weeks ago now) and was also the time keeper last night. Because of the number of people and the need to (ahem) encourage some people to collect their thoughts and get straight to the point, we have a time limit (usually 1-2 minutes) for opening and closing statements. I was the person tracking and signaling that.
We collect written questions from the audience so that we can review them and eliminate any that are personal attacks, and written questions from our members are evaluated by other members before inclusion. The moderator then reads the rest of them and the candidates respond.
I included 2 questions, both for the candidates for sheriff. The first was just saying that I’d heard he didn’t allow Muslim literature in the jail and 1) was that true and 2) if so, did he intend to continue this policy of promoting one religion over another if re-elected.
The incumbent sheriff just said that it wasn’t true, and that he believed in freedom of religion, which he then muddied up a bit by claiming that all religions worship the same god (I think that’s what he meant) but it was better than I’d feared anyway.
Toward the end of the session we ran short of questions and the moderator asked if we had any more. That’s when I thought of the one I should have thought of first. It was this:
Logically, being a policeman would be a dream job for someone who wanted to harm minorities.
What steps do you take, or would you take if elected, to screen out people like this?”
I actually had to push myself a little to write the question out, because it made me nervous to bring this up in an (as far as I could tell) all white gathering. I don’t want to make a big deal of that, because I didn’t have to push myself all that hard; this wasn’t bravery it was just me noticing a tinge of social discomfort.
But what does it say that asking such a logical and obvious question causes social discomfort. If we allow politeness to be an enemy of fairness, what is politeness really?
Anyway, the result disturbed me: to start with, there was an indignant and dismissive sounding rustle from the audience that made me really uncomfortable. I am guessing it’s a good thing that question came from someone with white privilege.
Then, both the incumbent and the other candidate basically denied indignantly that anybody like this worked in the department and didn’t address the actual question at all.
I made the opportunity after the end of the session to speak personally with both candidates and explain that what I had been asking was “what steps do you take to screen out white supremacists in applicants?” (I mean watching for white supremacy in members is important too, but I wanted to start with the low hanging fruit.)
It turns out that the non-incumbent candidate could explain some common sense steps that were taken, including investigating applicants’ social media and disqualifying any that were posting racist (I assume it would have to be fairly obviously racist, but it’s something) jokes or memes, and conducting background checks and interviews with people who have known the applicant for a long time. I found this...somewhat reassuring.
The incumbent candidate basically talked about how he interviews everyone personally, holds them to a high standard, and has sometimes suspended someone for mistreating prisonners on the grounds that in addition to their guard duties, they are there to be role models for how to behave. I found this... less reassuring.
I’m glad I talked to them, and disappointed in myself that it only occurred to me to bring this up as an afterthought and that I didn’t phrase the question better, because those answers should have been stated where everyone could hear them. I should have written these questions up ahead of time.
Next time I’ll do that.
Call it practice.
I helped write and print out the invitation letters (weeks ago now) and was also the time keeper last night. Because of the number of people and the need to (ahem) encourage some people to collect their thoughts and get straight to the point, we have a time limit (usually 1-2 minutes) for opening and closing statements. I was the person tracking and signaling that.
We collect written questions from the audience so that we can review them and eliminate any that are personal attacks, and written questions from our members are evaluated by other members before inclusion. The moderator then reads the rest of them and the candidates respond.
I included 2 questions, both for the candidates for sheriff. The first was just saying that I’d heard he didn’t allow Muslim literature in the jail and 1) was that true and 2) if so, did he intend to continue this policy of promoting one religion over another if re-elected.
The incumbent sheriff just said that it wasn’t true, and that he believed in freedom of religion, which he then muddied up a bit by claiming that all religions worship the same god (I think that’s what he meant) but it was better than I’d feared anyway.
Toward the end of the session we ran short of questions and the moderator asked if we had any more. That’s when I thought of the one I should have thought of first. It was this:
Logically, being a policeman would be a dream job for someone who wanted to harm minorities.
What steps do you take, or would you take if elected, to screen out people like this?”
I actually had to push myself a little to write the question out, because it made me nervous to bring this up in an (as far as I could tell) all white gathering. I don’t want to make a big deal of that, because I didn’t have to push myself all that hard; this wasn’t bravery it was just me noticing a tinge of social discomfort.
But what does it say that asking such a logical and obvious question causes social discomfort. If we allow politeness to be an enemy of fairness, what is politeness really?
Anyway, the result disturbed me: to start with, there was an indignant and dismissive sounding rustle from the audience that made me really uncomfortable. I am guessing it’s a good thing that question came from someone with white privilege.
Then, both the incumbent and the other candidate basically denied indignantly that anybody like this worked in the department and didn’t address the actual question at all.
I made the opportunity after the end of the session to speak personally with both candidates and explain that what I had been asking was “what steps do you take to screen out white supremacists in applicants?” (I mean watching for white supremacy in members is important too, but I wanted to start with the low hanging fruit.)
It turns out that the non-incumbent candidate could explain some common sense steps that were taken, including investigating applicants’ social media and disqualifying any that were posting racist (I assume it would have to be fairly obviously racist, but it’s something) jokes or memes, and conducting background checks and interviews with people who have known the applicant for a long time. I found this...somewhat reassuring.
The incumbent candidate basically talked about how he interviews everyone personally, holds them to a high standard, and has sometimes suspended someone for mistreating prisonners on the grounds that in addition to their guard duties, they are there to be role models for how to behave. I found this... less reassuring.
I’m glad I talked to them, and disappointed in myself that it only occurred to me to bring this up as an afterthought and that I didn’t phrase the question better, because those answers should have been stated where everyone could hear them. I should have written these questions up ahead of time.
Next time I’ll do that.
Call it practice.
