Fact check: Tammy Duckworth on Mark Kirk, mass incarceration and race
December 17, 2015
By Charles Aull
Did U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R) call for the mass incarceration of African Americans and suggest that "we just drive faster through African American neighborhoods"?
Yes, according to a recent campaign email from his 2016 challenger, Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D). But when we looked into the statements upon which these claims are based, we found that Duckworth’s campaign oversimplified and misrepresented what Kirk actually said.
Background
Mark Kirk is a first-term U.S. senator from Illinois seeking re-election in 2016. Second-term Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who represents Illinois’ eighth congressional district in northwest Chicago, is running against him. A recent email to supporters from Duckworth's campaign touched on some of Kirk's past comments on crime and race. The email stated:[1]
| “ | We need your help immediately: Mark Kirk launched a new ad recently attacking Tammy for her position on Syrian refugees. ...
Tammy believes that the U.S. should lead in welcoming refugees, rather than allow terrorists to scare us into abandoning our values. But Kirk is resorting to reckless fear-mongering in a cynical attempt to shore up support from his base. He's done it before too: he has called for the mass incarceration of African Americans and suggested we just drive faster through African American neighborhoods [emphasis added]. He suggested the President’s goal was to arm the Iranians with nukes, and compared the Iran nuclear agreement to Nazi appeasement. He wanted to place coffins outside the offices of his political opponents. Now, like Donald Trump, he’s appealing to base xenophobia, sowing fear of refugees in the midst of one of the largest humanitarian crises of our time. Kirk should be ashamed. Stop his fear-mongering by making a contribution now.[2] |
” |
We wondered if the Duckworth campaign’s characterization of Kirk’s stances on mass incarceration and black neighborhoods was accurate.
See also: "Getting the numbers right on Syrian refugees in Illinois' Senate race."
Kirk’s statements in context
A spokesperson from Duckworth’s campaign informed us via email that these claims were based on two statements made by Kirk, one in 2013 and another earlier this year.[3]
The first claim came from a statement Kirk made in May 2013 calling for the arrest of the Gangster Disciples, a mostly decentralized gang with members in cities across the country, including Chicago.[4] Kirk told a local FOX affiliate in Chicago:[5]
| “ | My top priority is to arrest the Gangster Disciple gang, which is 18,000 people. I would like to do a mass pickup of them and put them all in the Thomson Correctional Facility. I will be proposing this to the assembled federal law enforcement: ATF, DEA and FBI.[2] | ” |
Kirk made this comment following the death of fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton in January 2013. Pendleton, who performed in President Barack Obama’s (D) inauguration ceremony earlier that month, was killed by a stray bullet fired in a gang-related shooting in Chicago’s South Side.[6] Kirk’s comment drew a significant amount of criticism at the time. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D), who represents Chicago’s South Side in the U.S. House, called Kirk’s plan a “sensational, headline-grabbing, empty, simplistic, unworkable approach” and an “upper middle-class, elitist, white boy solution,” according to a Politico article from June 2013.[7] Kirk walked back his comment in July 2013 after a meeting with Rush. He stated, “Bobby Rush has been somewhat correct in his criticism of me that a mass arrest all at once is not actually that practical.”[8]
Does Kirk’s call for the mass arrest of the Gangster Disciples equate to a call “for the mass incarceration of African Americans”? We argue that it does not. The characterization of Kirk’s statement by the Duckworth campaign overlooks the context in which Kirk spoke and gives the impression that Kirk was talking about African Americans in general. In reality, his comments were aimed specifically at the Gangster Disciples. Moreover, he later walked back the statement and suggested that it was “not actually that practical.”
What about the claim that Kirk “suggested we just drive faster through African American neighborhoods”? This was based on an April 2015 statement made by Kirk in an interview with the Peoria Journal Star. An interviewer asked him how Illinois could encourage more entrepreneurial innovation in local industry. Kirk responded by saying:[9]
| “ | We make them heroes, publicly. … There’s one thing I would say, I’m very focused on fostering an African-American entrepreneurial class using my position as senator. The most valuable thing I own is probably my electronic Rolodex where I can open doors for people. I’ve held an 'Entrepreneurial Idol' competition at Chicago State University, and the guy who won it runs a company that’s very innovative. The fact that he’s a Motorola engineer tells us he’s probably on the cutting edge. The essence of this company is to offer Medicaid (patients)—which is typically going to be African-American patients—a series of pieces of equipment that wirelessly talk to their doctor and provide clean, clear data on weight, blood pressure. We know this kind of managed care really lowers healthcare costs.
I want to make sure we have elected people constantly looking at helping the African-American community. With this state and all of its resources, we could sponsor a whole new class of potential innovators like George Washington Carver and eventually have a class of African-American billionaires. That would really adjust income differentials and make the diversity and outcome of the state much better so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through [emphasis added].[2] |
” |
As with his statement from 2013 about the mass arrest of the Gangster Disciples, this comment also attracted criticism. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is reported to have said that Kirk’s statement “reinforced an offensive stereotype.”[10] According to a Huffington Post article from April 13, 2014, George Mitchell, the president of the NAACP Illinois State Conference said, “I think what he was trying to say is, he was trying to relate that to crime. But boy, it was a poor choice of phraseology.”[11] Days later, Kirk told the Chicago Sun-Times, “I would say that whenever a targeted member talks about race or ethnicity, it is impossible for him to get it right. So I’ll leave it at that.”[12]
We argue that the manner in which Duckworth’s campaign described Kirk’s comments was misleading and disregarded their larger context. The Duckworth campaign phrased its statement as Kirk "suggested we just drive faster through African American neighborhoods." But what Kirk actually appears to have said is that he thinks driving faster through African American communities is something people already do and that he would like to help create a situation where that is no longer the case.
Conclusion
In a recent email to supporters, Tammy Duckworth’s campaign stated that Mark Kirk “has called for the mass incarceration of African Americans and suggested we just drive faster through African American neighborhoods.” We found both of these statements to be mischaracterizations of what Kirk actually said.
In May 2013, Kirk called for the mass arrest of a gang called the Gangster Disciples, a proposal that he later referred to as “not actually that practical.” This, we argue, is different from calling for the “the mass incarceration of African Americans,” which oversimplifies Kirk’s original statement and takes it out of context.
We came to a similar conclusion for the Duckworth campaign’s claim that Kirk has “suggested we just drive faster through African American neighborhoods." We found that this misrepresents a statement that Kirk made to a local Illinois paper in April 2015 in which he said he would like to provide opportunities for entrepreneurial innovation for African Americans in Illinois in order to “adjust income differentials and make the diversity and outcome of the state much better so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through.”
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Sources and Notes
- ↑ Campaign email from Tammy for Illinois on December 13, 2015
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Email exchange with Matt McGrath on December 16, 2015
- ↑ Kontos, L. and David Brotherton. 2008. Encyclopedia of Gangs. Westport, CT: Greendwood Press, pp. 106-110
- ↑ Mark Kirk YouTube Channel, "Fox 32 Reports: Senator Kirk on Fighting Drug Gangs," May 7, 2013
- ↑ Huffington Post Chicago, "Hadiya Pendleton Dead: Chicago Teen Who Performed At Inaugural Events Fatally Shot," January 30, 2015
- ↑ Politico, "Kirk, Rush declare cease-fire," June 5, 2013
- ↑ WBEZ 91.5, "U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk repudiates his mass arrest idea," July 19, 2013
- ↑ Peoria Journal Star, "Sen. Kirk offers his viewpoint," April 8, 2015
- ↑ DSCC, "Mark Kirk’s Grand Slam Of Offensive Rhetoric," April 14, 2015
- ↑ Huffington Post, "Mark Kirk Says People Drive Faster Through Black Neighborhoods," April 14, 2015
- ↑ Chicago Sun-Times, "Exclusive: Sen. Mark Kirk: No more talking about race, ethnicity," April 15, 2015
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