Fire and Ice

I usually write my blog posts on cool things Find over the internet the past week but this because I had presentation in class I actually had a good amount of nice information from Williams' book that I had written down therefore I wanted to share with you what I wrote and read for chapter 7 which is the Fire and Ice chapter. Chapter 7 opens with the story of Williams entering an apartment building as a white woman when two children storm out because there are "bums" in the lobby. The bum turns out to be simply an elderly black woman smoking a cigarette. When Williams informs the women of that, the woman complains about being mugged and shot at. She rushes away. Williams laments the "bum situation," where nothing is free in the city and everything must be bought. With so many people lacking anything, she argues that they are forced into bad situations. A year later, Williams notices that the complex has a security officer that Williams knows does not do any good.

Next Williams shares the story of Eleanor Bumpurs, a mentally ill black woman who is shot by armed policemen in her home in 1984. The police who shot and killed her said that she is brandishing a knife. After shooting the woman's hand half-off with a shotgun, making her anatomically incapable of hurting them, they find reason to shot and kill them anyway. They claim it is "obvious" that she is a danger at the time and that they have engaged in a simple oversight although they are not at fault. Williams thinks that what is "obvious" is shaped by social forces and that judges must take this into account.

Williams argues that originally the term "law" referred to the code on the books whereas "justice" is abstract law. This distinction is important because it means that law should be shaped by our deep conceptions of justice that evolve and develop over time. Conformity with the abstract therefore ruins law because it ruins justice. Legalism hides motivations that shape the justice system as well. Williams thinks that. laws should be redefined with cultural flux to keep society alive. Otherwise we risk public irresponsibility such as killing an "excessively emotional" woman.

According to Williams, the major problem with the police who kill Eleanor Bumpurs is their justification of public irresponsibility in privatized terms. They refuse to separate their private and public duties and they dare to impose victim responsibility. This reaction often leads blacks to be intimidated by police. Williams shares her own case of being briefly detained in a South Carolina jail by white police officers in South Carolina. One has a shotgun and if they appear "excessively emotional," they may be killed while their killers suffer no consequence.

Williams wonders what causes the fear and impatience in the men who kill Bumpurs. She does not know but she knows that the legacy of killing left by the police and events like that work their way into public expectations. They shape our sense of the "obvious" and condemn as crazy or dangerous those outside of these expectations.