Robert Penn Warren conducted several interviews with civil rights activists and leaders as part of his research for his book Who Speaks for the Negro? These interviews are collected in the Robert Penn Warren Civil Rights Oral History Project and housed in the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. “Pure joy” comes from tape 1 of his interview with Wyatt Walker on March 18, 1964.
The argument that the trickster tales informed the civil rights movement has been made before. For example: Don McKinney, “Brer Rabbit and Brother Martin Luther King, Jr: The Folktale Background of the Birmingham Protest,” The Journal of Religious Thought 46, no. 2 (winter-spring 1989–1990): 42–52. McKinney writes (page 50):
Just as Brer Rabbit’s cunning tricked Brer Tiger into doing exactly what the small animals wanted (i.e., he begged to be tied up), so the nonviolent techniques that issued from King and his cadre of shrewd advisors had a similar effect in getting Bull Connor to do what they wanted; namely, to imprison black protestors in such numbers that not only drew national attention, but also virtually immobilized the city of Birmingham.
See also Trudier Harris, Martin Luther King, Jr., Heroism and African American Literature (University of Alabama Press, forthcoming).
The detail from the conversation between Pritchett and King about Pritchett’s wedding anniversary is cited in Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South (Penguin, 1983), 363–65.
Walker’s explanation for why the movement needed Bull Connor’s opposition (“There would be no movement, no publicity”) is quoted in Michael Cooper Nichols, “Cities Are What Men Make Them: Birmingham, Alabama, Faces the Civil Rights Movement 1963,” Senior Thesis, Brown University, 1974, page 286.
Walker’s reaction to the use of K-9 units (“We’ve got a movement. We’ve got a movement”) appears in James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries: A Personal Account (Macmillan, 1972).
King’s reprimand of the photographer from Life (“The world doesn’t know this happened”) is given in Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation (Random House, 2006).
Chapter Seven: Rosemary Lawlor
“For God’s sake, bring me a large Scotch” is from Peter Taylor, Brits (Bloomsbury, 2002), page 48.
Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf Jr.’s report on how to deal with insurgencies is Rebellion and Authority: An Analytic Essay on Insurgent Conflicts (Markham Publishing Company, 1970). “Fundamental to our analysis” appears on page 30.
The description of Ian Freeland is by James Callaghan in A House Divided: The Dilemma of Northern Ireland (Harper Collins, 1973), page 50. Freeland and the officials and journalists being likened to “the British Raj on a tiger hunt” is from Peter Taylor, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein (Bloomsbury, 1998), page 83.
Seán MacStiofáin’s quote about revolutions being caused by the stupidity and brutality of governments appears in Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (Oxford University Press, 2003), page 134.
The principle of legitimacy has been articulated by a number of scholars, but three deserve special mention: Tom Tyler, author of Why People Obey the Law (Princeton University Press, 2006); David Kennedy, author of Deterrence and Crime Prevention (Routledge, 2008); and Lawrence Sherman, coeditor of Evidence-Based Crime Prevention (Routledge, 2006). Here is another example of the same principle. The following is a list of developed-world countries ranked according to the percentage of their economy that is underground—that is, the amount that is deliberately concealed by their citizens in order to avoid taxes—in 2010. It’s one of the best ways to compare the honesty of taxpayers in different countries.
U.S.A. 7.8 Finland 14.3
Switzerland 8.34 Denmark 14.4
Austria 8.67 Germany 14.7
Japan 9.7 Norway 15.4
New Zealand 9.9 Sweden 15.6
Netherlands 10.3 Belgium 17.9
United Kingdom 11.1 Portugal 19.7
Australia 11.1 Spain 19.8
France 11.7 Italy 22.2
Canada 12.7 Greece 25.2
Ireland 13.2
The list is from Friedrich Schneider’s “The Influence of the Economic Crisis on the Underground Economy in Germany and other OECD-countries in 2010” (unpublished paper, revised edition, January 2010). The list is not surprising. American, Swiss, and Japanese taxpayers are pretty honest. So are most of the other Western European democracies. Greece, Spain, and Italy are not. In fact, the level of tax evasion in Greece is such that the country’s deficit—which is so large that Greece has teetered on the brink of outright bankruptcy for years—would all but disappear if Greek citizens obeyed the law and paid what they owed. Why is America so much more law-abiding when it comes to taxes than Greece?
Leites and Wolf would attribute that to the fact that the costs of tax evasion in the United States are much greater than the benefits: that if Americans cheat, there’s a good chance they’ll get caught and punished. But that’s completely untrue. In the United States, a little more than 1 percent of tax returns are audited every year. That’s tiny. And if they get caught underreporting their income, the most common penalty is simply paying back taxes plus a relatively modest fine. Jail time is rare. If American taxpayers behaved rationally—according to Leites and Wolf’s definition of the word—tax evasion in America should be rampant. As the tax economist James Alm puts it:
In countries with effective audit rates of one percent, you should observe cheating levels of 90 percent or above. If you declare one more dollar of income, you would pay 30, 40 cents in tax. If you don’t declare that dollar, then you keep all of it and there is some chance you will get caught. But it’s .01 or less. And if you are detected then the IRS has to determine whether it is intentional. If it is not, you pay back taxes plus about ten percent. If you are audited and you are found to be fraudulent you pay back taxes plus about 75 percent. So the expected cost of getting caught is just not that large. The calculus is tilted very, very heavily in favor of cheating.
So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won’t be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice, and predictability, and the U.S. government, as much as Americans like to grumble about it, does a pretty good job of meeting all three standards.
In Greece, the underground economy is three times larger in relative terms than that of the United States. But that’s not because Greeks are somehow less honest than Americans. It’s because the Greek system is less legitimate than the American system. Greece is one of the most corrupt countries in all of Europe. Its tax code is a mess. Wealthy people get special insider deals, and if you and I lived in a country where the tax system was so blatantly illegitimate—where nothing seemed fair, and where our voices weren’t heard, and where the rules changed from one day to the next—we wouldn’t pay our taxes either.
The discussion of parades in marching season in Ireland comes from Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition and Control (Pluto Press, 2000).
Desmond Hamill’s account of the British Army in Northern Ireland is Pig in the Middle: The Army in Northern Ireland 1969–1984 (Methuen, 1985). The ditty that begins “On the 15th of August” appears on page 18. “The [IRA] retaliated” is on page 32.
The statistics on deaths and violence in 1969 Northern Ireland are from John Soule’s “Problems in Applying Counterterrorism to Prevent Terrorism: Two Decades of Violence in Northern Ireland Reconsidered,” Terrorism 12 (1989): 33.
The account of when General Freeland descended on the Lower Falls is told by Seán MacStiofáin in Seán Óg Ó Fearghaíl’s Law (?) and Orders: The Story of the Belfast Curfew (Central Citizens’ Defense Committee, 1970). The details a
bout Patrick Elliman’s death appear on page 14. A good source on the curfew is Taylor’s Provos. The detail about the man in his pajamas comes from Nicky Curtis, Faith and Duty: The True Story of a Soldier’s War in Northern Ireland (André Deutsch, 1998).
Chapter Eight: Wilma Derksen
The account of the history of Three Strikes relies on several sources, chief among them: Mike Reynolds, Bill Jones, and Dan Evans, Three Strikes and You’re Out! The Chronicle of America’s Toughest Anti-Crime Law (Quill Driver Books/Word Dancer Press, 1996); Joe Domanick, Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America’s Golden State (University of California Press, 2004); Franklin Zimring, Gordon Hawkins, and Sam Kamin, Punishment and Democracy: Three Strikes and You’re Out in California (Oxford, 2001); and George Skelton, “A Father’s Crusade Born from Pain,” Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1993.
Richard Wright and Scott Decker’s interviews of convicted armed robbers appear in Armed Robbers in Action: Stickups and Street Culture (Northeastern University Press, 1997). The comments cited are on page 120. Wright and Decker’s book is fascinating. Here’s a bit more from them on the psychology of criminality:
Some of the armed robbers also tried not to think about getting caught because such thoughts generated an uncomfortably high level of mental anguish. They believed that the best way to prevent this from happening was to forget about the risk and leave matters to fate. One of them put it this way. “I don’t really trip off getting caught, man, ’cause you’ll just worry yourself like that.” Given that almost all of these offenders perceived themselves not only as being under pressure to obtain money quickly but also as having no lawful means of doing so, this makes sense. Where no viable alternative to crime exists, there clearly is little point in dwelling on the potentially negative consequences of offending. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that the offenders usually preferred to ignore the possible risk and concentrate instead on the anticipated reward: “The way I think about [the threat of being apprehended] is this: I would rather take a chance on getting caught and getting locked up than running around out here broke and not taking a chance on even trying to get no money.”
David Kennedy’s discussion of criminal motivations appears in his book Deterrence and Crime Prevention (Routledge, 2008). Anthony Doob and Cheryl Webster’s analysis of punishment studies is “Sentence Severity and Crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis,” Crime and Justice 30 (2003): 143.
The charts showing the relationship between age and criminality are from Alfred Blumstein, “Prisons: A Policy Challenge,” in Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control, James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia, eds. (ICS Press, 2002), 451–82.
Todd Clear’s book on the effects of mass incarceration on poor places is Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse (Oxford University Press, 2007). You can find Clear’s hard-to-get-published paper “Backfire: When Incarceration Increases Crime” in the Journal of the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Research Consortium 3 (1996): 1–10.
There is an entire library of studies on the effects of Three Strikes on California’s crime rate. The best book-length academic work is Zimring’s Punishment and Democracy, mentioned above. Here is a sample from one of the most recent scholarly examinations of the law. It’s from Elsa Chen’s “Impacts of ‘Three Strikes and You’re Out’ on Crime Trends in California and Throughout the United States,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 24 (November 2008): 345–70:
The impacts of Three Strikes on crime in California and throughout the United States are analyzed using cross-sectional time series analysis of state-level data from 1986 to 2005. The model measures both deterrence and incapacitation effects, controlling for preexisting crime trends and economic, demographic, and policy factors. Despite limited use outside California, the presence of a Three Strikes law appears to be associated with slightly but significantly faster rates of decline in robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft nationwide. Three Strikes also is associated with slower declines in murder rates. Although California’s law is the broadest and most frequently used Three Strikes policy, it has not produced greater incapacitation effects on crime than other states’ far more limited laws. The analyses indicate that the toughest sentencing policy is not necessarily the most effective option.
There are two excellent accounts of the Candace Derksen case: Wilma Derksen, Have You Seen Candace? (Tyndale House Publishers, 1992); and Mike McIntyre, Journey for Justice: How Project Angel Cracked the Candace Derksen Case (Great Plains Publications, 2011). The story of the Amish mother whose son was critically injured by a car is told in Donald B. Kraybill, Steven Nolt, and David Weaver-Zercher’s Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (Jossey-Bass, 2010), 71.
On the British use of power and authority in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, see Paul Dixon, “Hearts and Minds: British Counter-Insurgency Strategy in Northern Ireland,” Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 3 (June 2009): 445–75. Dixon says (page 456):
Paddy Hillyard estimates that one in four Catholic men between the ages of 16 and 44 had been arrested at least once between 1972 and 1977. On average, every Catholic household in Northern Ireland had been searched twice, but since many homes would not be under suspicion, some houses in certain districts would have been searched “perhaps as many as ten or more times.” One account claims the Army conducted routine four monthly checks on the occupants of certain houses in selected areas. “It has been estimated that by mid-1974 the Army had details on between 34 and 40 percent of the adult and juvenile population of Northern Ireland.” Between 1 April 1973 and 1 April 1974 four million vehicles were stopped and searched.
John Soule’s paper written at the height of the Troubles is “Problems in Applying Counterterrorism to Prevent Terrorism: Two Decades of Violence in Northern Ireland Reconsidered,” Terrorism 12, no. 1 (1989).
I read about Reynolds’s taking visitors to the Daily Planet in Joe Domanick’s Cruel Justice, 167.
Chapter Nine: André Trocmé
For an excellent overview of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and its culture, see Christine E. van der Zanden, The Plateau of Hospitality: Jewish Refugee Life on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon (unpublished thesis, Clark University, 2003). For books about the Trocmés, see Krishana Oxenford Suckau, Christian Witness on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon: Narrative, Nonviolence and the Formation of Character (unpublished dissertation, Boston University School of Theology, 2011); Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (Harper, 1994); and Carol Rittner and Sondra Myers, eds., The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (New York University Press, 2012).
“Loving, forgiving, and doing good to our adversaries” is from Christian Witness, 6.
From Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: “‘The bell does not belong to the marshal,’” 96; “Lamirand swept up the mountain,” 99; “A sense of duty exuded from his pores,” 146; “A curse on him who begins in gentleness,” 266; “What is this?” 39; “‘It was not reasonable,’” 233; “His identity card gave his name as Béguet,” 226; “When Trocmé was ten years old,” 51; and “‘Jean-Pierre! Jean-Pierre!’” 257.
From The Courage to Care: “And I said, ‘Come in,’” 101; “‘The people in our village knew already,’” 101.
Trocmé’s question “How could the Nazis ever get to the end…?” is cited in Garret Keizer’s Help: The Original Human Dilemma (HarperOne, 2005), 151.
About the Author
Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996. Prior to that, he was a reporter at the Washington Post. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He lives in New York.
gladwell.com
Books by Malcolm Gladwell
David and Goliath
What the Dog Saw
Outliers
Blink
The Tipping Point
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction: Goliath
PART ONE: THE ADVANTAGES OF DISADVANTAGES (AND THE DISADVANTAGES OF ADVANTAGES)
Chapter One: Vivek Ranadivé
Chapter Two: Teresa DeBrito
Chapter Three: Caroline Sacks
PART TWO: THE THEORY OF DESIRABLE DIFFICULTY
Chapter Four: David Boies
Chapter Five: Emil “Jay” Freireich
Chapter Six: Wyatt Walker
PART THREE: THE LIMITES OF POWER
Chapter Seven: Rosemary Lawlor
Chapter Eight: Wilma Derksen
Chapter Nine: André Trocmé
Acknowledgments
Notes
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants Page 25