Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Love, Joy, Feminism

Home
Nonreligious
In the VP Debate, Pence Was Wrong about Crime

In the VP Debate, Pence Was Wrong about Crime

Last updated on: October 5, 2016 at 12:25 pm by Libby Anne

In the VP Debate, Pence Was Wrong about Crime 2016-10-05T12:25:13-04:00 Libby Anne

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Oh boy. I watched the vice presidential debate clear through last night with a group of friends. It was . . . interesting. I’m curious whether unconscious sexism played a role in both candidates completely ignoring the moderator, Elaine Quijano. Would they have responded differently if it had been a man telling them to stop speaking so they could move on to the next question, chiding them for interrupting each other, and asking them to please stay on topic? It got to the point where I really wanted her to raise her voice and actually chew them out. Kaine especially should have stopped interrupting, though Pence did eventually join heartily in his habit.

But that’s about style. What about content? That’s where things get really interesting. Kaine focused on promoting Clinton, reinforcing her positions, and articulating her vision, and (I thought) effectively doing all three. In other words, he did what a vice presidential candidate is supposed to do. Pence, on the other hand, spent much of his time either “explaining” ridiculous things Trump has said or (frequently) arguing Trump never said what he actually said. This exchange, for instance, was amazing:

PENCE: No, it’s really not. Donald Trump and I would never support legislation that punished women who made the heartbreaking choice to end a pregnancy.

KAINE: Then why did Donald Trump say that?

PENCE: We just never would.

KAINE: Why did he say that?

PENCE: Well, look, it’s — look, he’s not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton. And so … you know, things don’t always come out exactly the way he means them.

This is amazing, because it effectively gives Trump carte blanche authority to say whatever he wants to say, and for Pence to then come do clean up behind him, claiming that what he said doesn’t matter, because he’s “not a polished politician” and “things don’t always come out exactly the way he means them.” I’m sorry, but this isn’t about being a “polished politician” or not. This is about basic communication skills. Here, again, is what Trump said about punishing women who obtained abortions:

MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle?

TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.

MATTHEWS: For the woman.

TRUMP: Yeah, there has to be some form.

MATTHEWS: Ten cents? Ten years? What?

TRUMP: I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know.

But then Trump isn’t a polished politician, so we shouldn’t take what he says at face value—apparently—or assume that he means what he says. And that’s a problem.

Lately, Donald Trump has continued to promise that he will build a wall on our border with Mexico and deport any immigrant who has committed a violent crime. He’s been less vocal on what he will do with the millions and millions of undocumented immigrants not convicted of a violent crime. When pressed, he says no undocumented immigrant will be allowed to become documented without first leaving the country and then applying to come back. Given the time this would take, this would require these immigrants to give up their homes and jobs, to take their kids out of school and spend thousands of dollars to leave the country and find somewhere else to live until the completion of the (likely lengthy) paperwork process.

During the vice presidential debate, Quijano did something I’ve been wanting reporters and others to do for some time—she pressed Pence on what would happen to the millions of undocumented immigrants not convicted of a violent crime.

QUIJANO: So, Governor, how would these millions of undocumented immigrants leave? Would they be forcibly removed?

PENCE: Well, I think Donald Trump laid out a series of priorities that doesn’t ends with border security. It begins with border security. And after we secure the border, not only build a wall, but beneath the ground and in the air, we do internal enforcement.

But he said the focus has to be on criminal aliens. We just — we just had a conversation about law enforcement. We just had a conversation about the — the violence that’s besetting our cities. The reality is that there’s heartbreak and tragedy that has struck American families because people that came into this country illegally are now involved in criminal enterprise and activity. And we don’t have the resources or the will to deport them systemically.

Donald Trump has said we’re going to move those people out, people who’ve overstayed their visas. We’re going to enforce the law of this country. We’re going to strengthen Immigrations and Customs Enforcements with more resources and more personnel to be able to do that. And then Donald Trump has made it clear, once we’ve done all of those things, that we’re going to reform the immigration system that we have …

That’s the order that you should do it. Border security, removing criminal aliens, upholding with law, and then — but then, Senator, I’ll work you when you go back to the Senate, I promise you, we’ll work you to reform the immigration system.

Pence started his answer with a sentence so incomprehensible that the entire room of people I was watching with burst out laughing when he said it. But did he ultimately answer Quijano’s question? Not really. Pence said Trump wants to focus first on securing the border and second on deporting criminal aliens. He said that next, Trump wants to “enforce the law of this country.” This presumably includes deporting the millions of immigrants Quijano was asking about, but Pence didn’t come right out and say that, because that would be unpleasant. Pence said that fourth and finally, Trump is going to work to reform the immigration system, by which I assume he means creating new rules for who is allowed to enter, and how.

Let’s talk about criminal aliens. Check out the Wall Street Journal’s summary of the research on undocumented immigrants and violent crime:

They might start by pointing out that numerous studies going back more than a century have shown that immigrants—regardless of nationality or legal status—are less likely than the native population to commit violent crimes or to be incarcerated. A new report from the Immigration Policy Center notes that while the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled between 1990 and 2013 to more than 11.2 million, “FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined 48%—which included falling rates of aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Likewise, the property crime rate fell 41%, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.”

A separate IPC paper from 2007 explains that this is not a function of well-behaved high-skilled immigrants from India and China offsetting misdeeds of Latin American newcomers. The data show that “for every ethnic group without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants,” according to the report. “This holds true especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population.”

It also holds true in states with large populations of illegal residents. A 2008 report by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants are underrepresented in the prison system. “The incarceration rate for foreign-born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared [with] 813 per 100,000 for U.S.-born adults,” the study concludes. “The foreign-born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population.”

In other words, all of this talk about criminal aliens is exactly backwards. In fact, undocumented immigrants are actually far less likely than native-born Americans to commit a crime. In fact, some researchers have suggested that increased immigration is a factor in the reduction of crime the U.S. has seen over the past two decades. In other words, it appears that immigration (documented or not) decreases crime.

This focus on criminal aliens makes sense only if it is part of a larger attempt to make the average American associate immigration with crime in order to ensure that they will support mass deportations of completely benign undocumented immigrants, men, women, and children. And that is heinous to the extreme.

And then there’s this, too:

PENCE: But also, Donald Trump and I are committed to suspending the Syrian refugee program and programs and immigration from areas of the world that have been compromised by terrorism.

Shutting the door to refugees is a horrible idea. We’ve done it before and it went terribly. It’s the reason Anne Frank is dead. And here Pence is reinforcing it. I should note, of course, that this is perhaps not surprising—last fall Pence unilaterally barred Syrian refugee settlement in Indiana, even as several families were en route.

Pence’s comments on race were equally tone deaf. Speaking of Charlotte, Pence said:

PENCE: Senator, when African-American police officers involved in a police action shooting involving an African-American, why would Hillary Clinton accuse that African-American police officer of implicit bias?

Are we really doing this? Really? It seems Pence needs a history lesson. He must not have heard about the doll studies presented as evidence in arguments against school segregation in what became Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Check it out:

In the 1940s, psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark designed and conducted a series of experiments known colloquially as “the doll tests” to study the psychological effects of segregation on African-American children.

Drs. Clark used four dolls, identical except for color, to test children’s racial perceptions. Their subjects, children between the ages of three to seven, were asked to identify both the race of the dolls and which color doll they prefer. A majority of the children preferred the white doll and assigned positive characteristics to it. The Clarks concluded that “prejudice, discrimination, and segregation” created a feeling of inferiority among African-American children and damaged their self-esteem.

In other words, systemic discrimination and profiling doesn’t just affect the perceptions held by white people. It also affects the perceptions held by black people. It doesn’t just affect children, either, and the effect isn’t something that ended in the 1950s. You’ve probably heard of studies that show pictures of individuals, some holding guns and some holding other items like cell phones, and ask subjects to hit one button to shoot and another to stand down. These studies have found that:

These studies have demonstrated that the decision to shoot may be influenced by a target person’s ethnicity. In four studies, par- ticipants showed a bias to shoot African American targets more rapidly and/or more frequently than White targets. The implica- tions of this bias are clear and disturbing. Even more worrisome is the suggestion that mere knowledge of the cultural stereotype, which depicts African Americans as violent, may produce Shooter Bias, and that even African Americans demonstrate the bias.

Note that last line. Even African American respondents (the last of the four studies they analyzed compared a group of white students with a group of black students) hit the shoot button more frequently when shown an unarmed black man than when shown an unarmed white man, and hesitated longer before hitting shoot when the image was of a white man than when it was of a black man. In other words, African Americans are frequently exposed to and emersed in similar cultural stereotypes to those most whites adopt, and that does not leave them unaffected.

I’m really surprised Pence went into the debate not knowing this. Hearing Hillary’s comments and thinking “that’s really weird that she said that black cop suffered from implicit bias when he shot that unarmed black man” should be followed up by taking the time to find out why she said what she did. Simply deciding that it must not be true because it doesn’t make sense to you, without doing any research or legwork, and then stating that on national TV, is the kind of irresponsible laziness that ought to disqualify one from running for president in the first place.

Let’s stop treating Pence like he’s your average Republican. He may look it compared to Trump, but he wasn’t seen that way until he had Trump as a foil. Pence passed a law requiring women to bury or cremate their miscarriages. Can we just remember that for a moment? His bill was so outrageous that he had women across Indiana calling his office to determine whether their period could possibly be an early miscarriage, and thus in need of burial or cremation. If elected, he will also be the most theocratic politician to occupy the White House (as president or vice president) since I don’t know when. Maybe ever. And unfortunately, even if Pence isn’t elected, it’s very unlikely he’ll go away any time soon.

Politics

Previous Post

October 5, 2016

Christian Homeschooling and the Battle of Peer Dependency, Part 2: Family, Not Friends

Next Post

October 6, 2016 Big Families and the Fine Print

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Atheism Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism Family Feminism Homeschool Meta Parenting Patriarchy Politics Purity Quiverfull Social Justice Uncategorized Worthwhile reads

Select a Month February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What happened to the golden calf?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Set up for worship Burned, ground to powder Taken to Canaan Hidden