Law and Social Control

-- By KhurramDara - 15 Feb 2012

Social Control

**use this section to explain how other forms of social control are more powerful than law. **general comment: what's my point? the combination of law (government social control, according to D.Black) AND other forms of social control (like social interaction, friendship, etc.) would benefit American Muslims. So this is about combining short term benefits that the law may be able to provide (lawsuits for immediate relief, community organizing, etc.), and long-term effects that can be derived from basic social interaction in communities, is a way to maximize the level of social control for one particular group in America (American Muslims). Expand on D.Black's proposition that law and other social control are inversely related. Perhaps this not simply a temporal argument (short term and long term), maybe it's that if we (American Muslims) ratchet up other forms of social control, we would have less litigation!

I don't know how you come to the historical conclusion that you come to. You don't show us: you merely tell the story leaving out the parts that might have resulted in a different conclusion. A summary of the history of the civil rights struggle that leaves out the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the 1876 election, the Civil Rights Cases, Plessy, Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, the Second World War, Brown, Rosa Parks, Martin King, the Voting Rights Act, the Watts riots, Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," and so on and so on is probably not going to be complete enough to judge from.

White supremacy in America from about 1650 about 1968 was supported by de jure racial segregation. That makes the role of the law in maintaining and then weakening its grip a different question than the general one of whether law is a weak form of social control or (more pertinently) whether legal remedies are generally useful in abating social tensions across ethnic, class or religious divisions.

First Amendment Protections and Behavior

**use this section to outline the overarching challenges Muslims face (irrational suspicion, anti-Sharia legislation, Spencer/Geller/Gaffney type group, mosque protests)

I don't think the measurement of "severity," is the most useful one. Social situations have historical and psychological contexts, as well as sociological and legal ones. What is happening to Muslims in the US is tied more deeply to what has happened, is happening and internally tends to happen within Christian and Islamic societies and people than to what has happened or is happening or internally tends to happen between black and white people in the Unites State.

He was accused of both. The opposing candidate publicly rejected efforts by voters to describe Obama as a Muslim in his hearing. But he made no effort to stop his running mate from repeatedly saying that Obama "palled around with terrorists." I'm not sure why this matters, but if it does we should be accurate about it.

We could find many more examples of this form of criminal violence directed against Muslims, qua Muslims. But burnings and other criminal desecrations of churches and synagogues also occur in the US, every year. And, unfortunately, there are very few ways, in a large, highly-armed and rather violent society to determine the social meaning of isolated acts of murder. So interpreting these facts as presented is not a particularly promising line of persuasion for any proposition.

The premier Muslim advocacy organization, the Council on American Islamic Relations, has filed lawsuit upon lawsuit for every incidence of harassment or violence. They point to the law, not a statute or common law principle, but a fundamental right in the First Amendment, which protects freedom of religion.

**change this section to explain how this is a short term strategy, it is to be "that" AND "this." Law can be a good form of attaining short term goals (if one has the resources and ability to use the judicial process).

This would make sense as a strategy in the event of the passage of state laws that impeded Muslim freedom of worship or religious practice for non-secular reasons. But it isn't the legal response appropriate to mosque burnings or hate crimes. I think you're probably imprecisely characterizing the precise legal positions taken and actions brought in the specific situations described. That will confuse a reader with some legal knowledge but no specific knowledge about these matters.

As an American Muslim, I can see how law is not the most preferable form of social control. A far better approach for the Muslim community would be to mirror some of the factors that led to successful integration and reduced discrimination towards blacks in America. Building personal connections and social bonds with other Americans would probably be a stronger antidote to negative stereotypes. How likely is it for a man who has a positive working relationship with a Muslim, or even a friendship with one, to protest a Muslim’s ability to practice their faith freely? A societal change in mindset is need for actual change to take place.

**this needs to be an "American exceptionalism" argument. An American Muslim is not the same as a Syrian Muslim, Saudi Muslim, or Eyptian one. There is something about the way American society works that makes what I am saying better suited for American Muslims, than any other type of Muslim. Think about what those unique qualities are. Then write them down here.

Is this actually the historical and social lesson concerning the treatment of Muslims living in non-Islamic society? Is it how Indian society works? How Yugoslavia worked? How Russians and Caucasian Muslims or Turks and Greeks have interacted over centuries? Or is this a point about American society that draws an exception from the usual condition of Muslims in the Dar al-Harb?

Much like Arnold highlights the irrationality of politics, there's a certain irrationality in some of the fear that exists about Muslims in America. For example, fact that most would fear bearded men, wearing traditional Islamic garb with a Qur'an in hand at the airport, when in reality every single one of the hijackers on 9/11 was clean-shaven or with minimal facial hair, wearing jeans or khakis and button down shirts. Educating people about the flaws and inaccuracies of negative stereotypes would be the rational response, but of course, you can't reason with someone who can't reason himself.

**ask Eben what his comments mean.

Which is all of us. Because our rational processes are the secondary rather than primary forces in our minds. Secular people who have absorbed the ideas we call "Freud" know this. But the very idea of submission to the law of an external all-powerful God is another recognition of the same proposition, whether the God so described exists or not. No accurate psychology, religious or secular, would lead us to expect secondary processes to be all we need to concern ourselves with on such an inquiry, or to affect such a change in society as your description implies.

Social control succeeds by appealing to the non-rational, unconscious motives of the human animal. Law is weak because it does so weakly. The creation of fear of Muslims in American society was deliberate, careful, rational and purposive, intended to manipulate people to create irresistible power. It is slowly and intentionally turning the US from a free society into a technologically-enabled despotism. But it was also an unconscious process, spreading outward from hidden roots in an increasingly ill-educated Christian society losing its faith.

Utility of the Law as a Form of Social Control

If law is not a powerful form of social control, than why do we spend so much time and energy drafting penal codes, writing legislation, and interpreting the Constitution? Wouldn’t we be better off using some other form social control?

Not if the weakness of the form of control is part of its utility and importance.

Is the reason we don’t murder children or use crystal meth because of laws the tell us not to? If not, then why have laws at all? Some would probably say that the reason we have laws is for the few people that do engage in activities like murder and drug use. Deterrence is often argued, yet many felons, for example, are repeat offenders. A report from the Bureau of Justice statistics found that 61% of felony defendants had at least one prior conviction.

So it would make sense to ask the same question without limiting yourself to a view of human psychology that ignores everything below the surface.

While laws don’t appear to be a strong form of social control (in that it is unclear whether laws actually prevent crimes from being committed) it may have some utility. If one has the resources, short term relief can be granted. An injunction or a court order will meet an objective in the short term. But it must be met with other forms of social control. With a Muslim woman who wears a hijab (headscarf), for example, winning an employment discrimination lawsuit will help the individual who was discriminated against. But does it actually change the perceptions the employer has of Muslims? Social pressures (a friend who is Muslim, a neighbor who is Muslim) are likely to result in more lasting change.

This last point, I recognize, is for you—in the world of present politics—the reason all the rest of the analysis has been written. Because politics is about appealing to non-rational elements in the human mind, this is—as we have discussed before—an approach that it makes sense for you to take. But considered as a form of rational argument, as you present it here, it's completely unestablished. Events in Toulouse over the past several weeks, and their effects on French society at large, would give a different turn to the analysis. And the much more serious and complex laboratory constructed in India over the last quarter-millennium would yield different, more uncertain, more appalling and more fascinating propositions. Once again, it makes a good deal of difference whether this is an argument based on another form of "American exceptionalism," or a general social claim.