FBI Director James Comey addresses racial bias -- with amazing forthrightness

This post is based on reporting by Ryan Reilly, who reports on the Justice Department for Huffington Post. 

FBI Director James Comey gave a major speech on race and law enforcement at Georgetown University, probably the first time that an FBI director has spoken so candidly about the way that race influences law enforcement. 

While he had high praise for law enforcement officers in general, he also said he was "not looking to let law enforcement off the hook" as he called for an “open and honest discussion” about the role that race can play in the justice system.   Here are some excerpts:

"First, all of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty. At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups."


"Much research points to the widespread existence of unconscious bias. Many people in our white-majority culture have unconscious racial biases and react differently to a white face than a black face. We all — white and black — carry various biases around with us."

"So many young men of color become part of that officer’s experience because so many minority families and communities are struggling, so many boys and young men grow up in environments lacking role models, adequate education, and decent employment. They lack all sorts of opportunities that most of us take for granted." 

"We must better understand the people we serve and protect -- by trying to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement," Comey said. "We must understand how that young man may see us. We must resist the lazy shortcuts of cynicism and approach him with respect and decency."

He also said that one of his proudest moments as FBI director was that, when FBI agents went to Ferguson, Missouri to investigate Michael Brown's death, they were trusted by members of the black community.    The unstated, but obvious, comparison was to the mistrust that the community felt toward the local police officers and elected officials

Comey, a white Republican who served in the George W. Bush Justice Department, addressed race in a way that is not likely to evoke the same conservative criticism that the same speech given by Barack Obama or Eric Holder would have done.    Or -- even by Progressive Democratic New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, when he talked about needing to have the discussion with his mixed-race son about how to conduct himself if stopped by the police.    Look at the outcry from conservatives falsely claiming he was against the police.

Which all makes me realize my own political bias -- not racial bias; political bias.   Because I find myself really wanting to deny that someone who says things like Comey did could be a Republican.    That's my prejudice against their whole tribe. 

It was this same James Comey, then Deputy Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration, who saved the nation from the Cheney/Bush/Gonzales putsch on March 10, 2004.   This was the evening, when AG John Ashcroft was lying in a hospital bed gravely ill with pancreatitis, that Cheney/Bush sent his chief of staff Andrew Card and his legal counsel Alberto Gonzalez to Ashcroft's hospital room to coerce him to sign the reauthorization for the illegal NSA wiretapping program.

Comey got the call, rushed to Ashcroft's hospital room and was there for the showdown.   Ashcroft, under the influence of pain killers had already told Comey he would not sign it.  He told Card and Gonzalez that he was not the AG at this point.   "There's your Attoryney General," he said pointing to Comey there in the room.   Comey of course refused to sign;  and later he, the FBI Director, the solicitor general and others were all prepared to resign rather than carry out Bush's orders.    Bush backed down.

Comey was the real hero in this tawdry matter by standing on principle and defying Cheney/Bush.    And it is hard for me to admit that such a man of integrity and courage and decency could be one of them.

Which focuses the sad truth that one of the terrible consequences of the high-jacking of the Republican Party by its fringe right wing and FoxNews is the erosion of respect that some of us now lack for the whole tribe.    I admit I am guilty of generalizing and stereotyping.    We need a few more like James Comey to help re-balance and re-establish the Republican party as a needed ideological adversary that we can respect.

This speech today only doubled that respect for James Comey.   Putting him in charge of the FBI was one of Obama's best appointments.

Ralph