Another incident involving a white cop and a black woman in Alabama

I can hear Sharpton now; “Were those eggs WHITE? Damned racist cop!!”

That is a heartening story; Officer Stacy’s actions are commendable.

However, the article leaves many questions unanswered: What factors led to Ms Johnson needing to steal food to feed her family in the first place? On behalf of herself, her neice, and her grandkids: what’s being done to address those factors? A few weeks worth of groceries will undoubtedly be a welcome reprieve, but, unless the factors that left her impoverished in 2014 are addressed, what’s going to be on her grandkids’ breakfast plates come Jan 1, 2015? What of other families in the area facing similar circumstances – how many other fellow Americans must choose between feeding their kids this winter or breaking the law? And why the hell are Americans having to make that choice in 2014? Are we a third-world country here, that we can’t at least get full, healthy meals in front of our kids each day?

I liked the bulk delivery of food idea from this story: such a simple and direct solution to Ms. Johnson’s immediate problem. Why, as a society, couldn’t we choose to scale that up a little, and have a weekly bin of groceries delivered to all residences in need (with simplistic criteria, such as sufficiently low ratio of household income to headcount – or even just by request, for households with children under 18)? Nothing gourmet, just an assortment of healthy/core foods sufficient to get three squares on the plate of everyone in the home. It seems like with proper tax incentives/reimbursements for local grocers (and sufficient funding to put the infrastructure in place), we’d be able to build a program that would take the joy and relief Ms. Johnson’s family is getting for three weeks and multiply it up by a factor of a million (or more).

I wonder if, with a House and Senate majority of Compassionate Conservatives coming into power, it might be the prime time for our society to build out programs like this.

@Kevin Kirkpatrick: No doubt this story will come to the attention of Reverend Al Sharpton and he will see to it that the lady no longer wants for food. He may even offer her some helpful tax advice.

SIDENOTE TO ADMINS: Is there a reason the page is set to refresh every (30? 60?) minutes? It’s refreshing in a way that wipes out everything I’ve typed thus far, which is quite annoying for those who compose responses 5-minutes here/5-minutes there. For now, I just type replies in Notepad and copy/paste here, but I wanted to point out the behavior in case it is not intentional. This is using Chrome browser, by the way.

@Scott+in+Oklahoma:

Mrs. Johnson obviously has her hands full, raising other people’ children. Do you not recognize that as a huge part of the problem? No fathers in the house? Moms either? I agree her problem in the short term has been addressed, but instead of the government giving away more wouldn’t it be better if the black culture changed itself to take care of their own?

I tend to view problems faced by any Americans as problems with our American culture. Call me overly patriotic, but when I think of America as the greatest nation on the planet, I’m not doing so distinguishing white America and black America. Really? Splintering our country into sub-categories in order to rationalize away any responsibility for helping other Americans in need? Doing so along grounds of the color of peoples’ skin, as you do here? No thanks.

Maybe if the government was less involved in rewarding people for not working and instead returned this country to the business and industry super-power we once were, more people would be working, more (and better) jobs would be available. More give-a-ways, more food stamps, more welfare is not the answer; more government is no answer either.

I’ve always thought of the government as the collective power of all Americans, run by all Americans, to protect the interests of all Americans. I wonder – how are American children such as those Ms Johnson is raising going to get a solid education if their care providers have to steal eggs from the dollar store in order to get a nutritious meal in front of them? Without that education, how will they find careers that allow them to provide for families of their own? I think the phrase is “self-perpetuation cycle”.

The problem with charity is really a problem with human psychology: charity is empathy-based, and our empathy is wired to leave us inclined to help others in an anecdotal fashion based on proximity. Our hearts swell at individual acts of kindness (and don’t get me wrong, helping the person struggling right in front of us is HUGELY commendable), but the plural of “individual acts of kindness” simply does not scale. It has never, and will never, put 3 square meals, 365 days a year, on the plates of the millions of American children whose caretakers cannot afford it. And wow, does it make things worse when some people don’t see many of those malnourished kids as American children so much as “black culture problems”… this “Somebody-Elses-Problem” mentality is the refuge of scoundrels, and tends to be uncannily common in comment sections of conservative blogs.

Tackling large-scale problems requires large-scale solutions, built by the collection of, consolidation of, and focusing of massive and consistently available resources. Our national defense, for example, would be a joke if it consisted of hundreds of local militias “doing their part” to stand up to the military forces of other nations (even if those local militias had access to all the money saved by not paying taxes to a centralized US military). Interstate transporation *was* a joke when it relied on each community focusing on keeping it’s own roadways up to snuff. So too goes the problem of addressing the systemic poverty that has Americans in 2014 stealing eggs from the grocery store to feed their children. You’re fooling yourself if you think it’s going to be fixed by sufficiently large numbers of policement choosing not to arrest, and instead provide a few weeks of groceries to, a single grandmother for a single family.

Answer me this question… have you ever bought a complete stranger groceries? Made arrangements to get a car fixed or a tire or two replaced? Arranged for a hotel to house a Mom and her kids when the shelter was full? If not, why not?

Frankly, I don’t live a life where my inclination to help those around me in monetary need is frequently brought to bear. My career often demands 60+ hour work weeks in front of a computer screen; and as a father actively involved in raising two younger kids, I simply do not spend much time in the proximity of those who need that help (the person in front of me at Sam’s Club might need a hand getting the 45″ flatscreen tv. into the minivan, but doesn’t usually need a lift to a nearby shelter). Yeah, in those rare cases where the person right next to me is in a hard spot, I’m overjoyed by the opportunity to help out (i.e. last year at WalMart the mom who was arguing with the lady at the counter because she couldn’t get her thread-bare front tire changed because WalMart, for liability purposes, could only put 2 new tires of matching brands on – which the woman couldn’t afford – was presumably pleasently surprised to find the entire bill for both tires taken care of; and a $20 bill to get her daughter something from the toy aisle). But I don’t kid myself into thinking “problem solved!” for that family. That mother was about to drive her child home on hazardous, unsafe wheels for lack of $40 needed for the second tire – and I have no illusions about that being the first time she’d had to cut short on her child’s welfare for economic reasons.

That said, I do commit the same *level* of “act of kindness” twice a month (actually, far in excess of that, monetarily speaking) – and have done so going on 15 years – with paycheck deductions toward United Way that scale with my salary. But, and this is what I mean about human psychology, I cannot deny that my consciensous senses are 10-fold more boosted when I do things like handing a $3 six-pack of Mountain-Dews to the weary staff at the DMV, who’d just put up with the obnoxious tirade of screaming from another “customer”, while working the counters 20 minutes past close.

I have done all of those things and more, while wearing a uniform and sometimes being very close to broke myself; it isn’t the government’s job to provide charity (there’s a quote somewhere about that), it is our jobs, as people being a little more fortunate than others, to help others and provide a little charity.

We agree – it is our jobs, as people a little more fortunate than others, to help others and provide charity. Funny, you say “jobs” though – did you mean “option”? Because I think that’s where we differ: I really mean “job”, as in a mandatory component of our social contract; with no “scrooge” option available. I want an America of equal opportunity: where our kids can count on a three healthy meals each day (irrespective of their parents economic situation). And it’s self evident: voluntary charity IS NOT getting us there. It is not coming close, and never has.

Only the US government has the power to collect and direct sufficient resources to address problems of this scale. Individual acts of charitable giving are great for local short-term aid, but hoping that it’ll deal with national poverty, is like saying handgun are great for home defense, so let’s all get together with our handguns to deter Russia from invading Alaska.

@Kevin Kirkpatrick: Good points, however why do women continually have babies they can ill afford and there are usually no fathers? Usually, and not always, because they get money. For each child they get day care, medical, food stamps et al. Why did she run out of food and/or money is not because of something you did, or I did (and I wonder the reason). I give to charities too, but giving people continual assistance, free this and that does not instill a sense of responsibility, it instills a sense of entitlement. This is the problem. Too many people believe they are entitled, and they are not. I work hard for my money and freely give it to charities and organizations that I deem will actually help others (versus pad the CEO’s pocket) however that is my choice. I do not want my money taken from me to give to those who believe themselves entitled – that is socialist, redistribution of income. Is this being hard? probably but I worked my way from a poor family and anyone can IF they want to regardless the obstacles.

@Petercat #10:
That’s a good and useful list, the spiral notebooks should be the shirt pocket size ones. Bottles of water are always good too. I am sure my brothers and sisters appreciate the efforts.
And speaking of allies, I was an owner-operator for about 10 years before I was a cop, that overlapped a couple of years until I sold my last truck a couple years into my police career. My trucking buddies thought I had lost my mind when I became a cop 🙂

I believe this happens all the time!! Shame on our press!!