Inspector Introspection

There’s something that’s been on my mind lately but I haven’t known exactly how to frame it. I’ve decided I’m just going to jump in anyway. You may have heard the County Council member Liz Walsh will be introducing legislation to create an Office of the Inspector General in Howard County. You can learn more here.

Intellectually, it feels like supporting this is a common sense sort of thing to do. I mean, if the whole purpose if this office is to “investigate waste, fraud, and abuse” who could be against that, right?

But, the incident in 2023 with the Howard County auditor has left such a bad taste in my mouth that I find I have deep ambivalence about Ms. Walsh’s proposal.

The county auditor essentially ‘hid in the bushes’ (shielded himself from view) to spy on a library event because some internal ‘gut’ feeling motivated him to believe that Black women were not to be trusted and needed policing. By him and the powers of his office.

“Who Are the Real Lurkers?” Village Green/Town² February, 2023

If that’s what an Inspector General in Howard County is going to look like, I don’t want one. If I had not seen how this played out in the community, I probably would be the first to support Walsh’s proposal. I have followed the work of Inspector Generals in other jurisdictions with interest. Heck, I follow Baltimore City’s Inspector General on Twitter - - although largely for her photographic sunrise content.

He used the powers of an official Howard County office to take actions that were deeply racist and based on racist assumptions, and caused unnecessary harm to the credibility of the library director, Tonya Aikens, and the Howard County Library system as a whole.

I am sure he’d deny my assessment of this and I’ve seen plenty of online supporters of his actions. As I noted at the time:

The overwhelming majority of racism happens unintentionally, without white people’s knowledge. Racism is so engrained into our society’s infrastructure—indeed, at our nation’s social and economic foundation—white folks’ actions are often racist accidentally, even automatically. - - Johnathan Perkins, Director of Diversity and Inclusion, UCLA

So tell me. What are we going to do in the establishment of an Inspector General that will create a different outcome? I’m open to learning more.

If it’s going to result in more white folks centering white folks and policing those that they see as “other”, then I’m not interested. Our community is full of way more than enough of that already.

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