Michelle Alexander: More Black Men Are In Prison Today Than Were Enslaved In 1850

More black men are behind bars or under the watch of the criminal justice system than there were enslaved in 1850, according to the author of a book about racial discrimination and criminal justice.

Ohio State University law professor and civil rights activist Michelle Alexander highlighted the troubling statistic while speaking in front of an audience at the Pasadena Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Elev8 reports.

Alexander, the author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," reportedly claimed there are more African American men in prison and jail, or on probation and parole, than were slaves before the start of the Civil War.

More than 846,000 black men were incarcerated in 2008, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice estimates reported by NewsOne. African Americans make up 13.6 percent of the U.S. population according to census data, but black men reportedly make up 40.2 percent of all prison inmates.

The criminal justice system is the newest in a long line of societal structures that have disenfranchised people of color, Alexander argues in her book, according to ColorLines.

In an excerpt from her book published on her website, Alexander writes that despite today's belief in "colorblindness," our criminal justice system effectively bars African American men from citizenship, treating them as a separate caste:

Denying African Americans citizenship was deemed essential to the formation of the original union. Hundreds of years later, America is still not an egalitarian democracy. The arguments and rationalizations that have been trotted out in support of racial exclusion and discrimination in its various forms have changed and evolved, but the outcome has remained largely the same.

More African American men were disenfranchised due to felony convictions in 2004 than in 1870, "the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race," she wrote in a Huffington Post blog published last year.

Although crime rates have dipped in recent years, the number of African American men who are incarcerated has surged, mainly due to a single law enforcement policy, Alexander contends.

"Most of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color," she said in the Pasadena lecture, according to LA Progressive.

That crime-fighting measure "is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery," she wrote in a 2010 Huffington Post blog.

Comments

[Debfrmgp]

10:38 AM on 10/13/2011

Why is it always a racial thing? Committing a crime does not mean that only blacks, mexicans, and immigrants are being targeted,,While we are working to put the food on the tables for the family they are not taking care of, We would rather the criminals come clean and get out here and take care of their own. I am not sorry for saying what I see as the truth, If a person does not take care of their responsibilities it is not my fault,

The war on drugs is not working and is costing us all,I don't have all the answers,just sick of hearing how unfare it is for blacks, mexicans and the immigrants,

[MistaO]

10:33 AM on 10/13/2011

A big "YEA RIGHT" to most of these comments.....You ever notice how the same racists who say crap like "they should get a job" ect...are the same ones who when a Black man is on the job they resent their very presence and whine and cry about the supposed affirmative action that supposedly took the job from a "more qualified" white!

Yea yea yea, this racist crap is too old and we are all hip to what really goes on out here. Like every Black man is a criminal and uneducated, humph. Whites commit crime at much higher rates the only difference is when a Black person does a crime they are 10x's more likely than a white to be convicted and sentenced to prison.

I've seen with my own two eyes where the same judge sentenced a Black man to 5 years for a possession charge and an hour later a white guy had the same charge and he sent him to a "diversion" program....All kinds of tricks.

[ghkusa]

10:30 AM on 10/13/2011

This is a rather disproportionate and, therefore, misleading and faulty comparison. It's similar to saying that X years ago bread cost five cents without revealing that income also was proportionately low then. An increase in population will inevitably result in an increase of the number imprisoned.

During 1850 there was nothing close to the 2008 US population of 304,000,000+. Given such a large current population, the number of black men incarcerated during 2008 was almost 2.8% of the total population (assuming that my math is correct -- and noting that these facts are totally ignored in this hit piece).

While that percentage and the raw number are nothing to brag about, they reveal a weakness if not fallacy of this article's main contention -- things are just as bad or getting worse for blacks.
Consider, if our population were three billion, would we be surprised to learn that FAR more people (of all races) were imprisoned than the TOTAL population of the US in 1860? To the contrary, it would be a shock if that weren't the case.

Also laughable is the attempt to blame voluntary family abandonment by black males on the War on Drugs. Under LBJ's "well intentioned" legislation, we offered money and an apartment to young women if they had a child sans live-in father. I've been told by young women that their "career" path was to "get a check, an apartment, you know, like my mother did -- when she had me [out of wedlock]."
.

[tojohnmiller]

10:28 AM on 10/13/2011

Here's the hard truth. In order to prevail, you can't be a victim. Black Americans had a very terrible star in this country and went through horrible hardship. But it doesn't have to be that way anymore. What seperates thugs from successful Americans? Successful people don't allow themselves to be vitctims. This is much easier said than done, I know that. To be a success it takes sacrifice - and very hard work. And sometimes, unfortuneatly, you might fail. But maybe, your sons and daughters and nephews and nieces will benefit from your work ethic, and become successful themselves. It's not selling out - it's an investment in your family's future.

[aviator59687]

10:27 AM on 10/13/2011

Why is this shocking??

[Louie Rey]

10:27 AM on 10/13/2011

It's unfortunate but it's also the truth. Blacks represent approximately 25% of the population in this country yet are responsible for about 70% of the violent crime. The year before Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor there were over 2100 murders in New York. He began what seemed to be a fairly benign program of arresting the squeegee men who would wipte windshields clean on stopped cars in traffic and then expect to get paid. He also started another program that was a bit more strict that was a stop and frisk program which resulted in a lot of criminals being taken off the streets due to outstaanding warrants or contraband or whatever. By his last year in office murders in New York were down to 600 which was the totals of the 1960s. The majority of these programs took place in MINORITY neighborhoods because that is where the majority of these crimes took place. 'Nuff said.

[bgatlake]

10:26 AM on 10/13/2011

No matter your color, if you commit a crime you should be put away to protect people from your actions. What's really sad is there have been so many social and welfare programs available to help people, at the cost of thousands of billions of dollars and it has only created more people with low expectations of themselves and aimlessness and criminal activities.

[careythehero]

10:24 AM on 10/13/2011

To all you White and Black ignorant people out there making disparaging remarks about Black men deserve to be in jail and they shouldn't have done the crime if they couldn't do the time consider this. There were not many Black men I knew of in the 80's who owned coca leaves or private jets. So the cocaine comes in from overseas pumped in and sponsored by the CIA, (ie Reagan Ollie North using the profits to back "freedom fighters) during the 80's crack cocaine carries a sentence 100 times greater than powdered cocaine. 100's of 1,000's of Blacks now enter the system. They can't vote, they are used by corporations as free labor or labor paid as much as 20 cents a day. Right now in the state of Georgia they are considering using prisoners as unpaid firefighters. go to the young turks on youtube to see for yourself. So corporations get slaves, maybe they give the prison a kickback - everybody wins EXCEPT THE NEW 2012 SLAVES. SLAVERY STILL EXISTS PEOPLE! THIS IS A TOTALLY MASTERMINDED PLAN BY ALEC, and corporations. Slaves are CHEAPER than illegal immigrants. Slaves, prisoners, are being set up to replace union workers. It's more than a Black and white issue, it's a corporation Koch brothers wicked ass control the world scheme that's working issue. You better wake the f up and smell the pimp game.

[vladmir vilanovich]

10:24 AM on 10/13/2011

And thats because the population is approximately 300 times what it was then ? What a ridiculous hook to snare readers.

[antipodal2u]

10:22 AM on 10/13/2011

Dont kid yourself. Prisons ARE slave camps. These inmates work for 40 cents? an hour. When it becomes privatized (And it will) Itll truly be modern slavery

[tteeghen]

10:25 AM on 10/13/2011

they gotta pay off their debt to society.

[renk175]

10:30 AM on 10/13/2011

Then don't go there. Simple.

[phillyfreedom]

10:19 AM on 10/13/2011

How many white men are in prison?

[MoeB]

10:42 AM on 10/13/2011

Your post is all the evidence I need that we have indeed "down dumbed" our education system.

[dgoldw]

10:16 AM on 10/13/2011

This is not a book. This is a LOAD OF CRAP !!! I practiced law for 25 years and much of it involved criminal defendant work. What this lady needs to write about is the sad state of the majority of black kids having no family unit , and specifically fathers, to show them how to live their lives as viable citizens. Black men in jail is not discrimination, it is a result of boys with no futures turning into criminals as they become men. The black leaders of this country need to spend less time trying to beat the dead horse of discrimination and more time trying to build a society that shows these young men that crime is not a career but a quick way to screw up your life. Write that book lady. It will help these kids more than talking about slavery. By the way,I do not apologize for slavery. I had nothing to do with it. My daddy was 3/4 Amercian Indian. Some of his kin folks died on the Trail of Tears. I never once heard him use it as an excuse to be less than what he knew he could be. Slavery was a horrible, despicable time in American history. But, it is just that - history. We must live our life in forward gear, otherwise we are just wasting our precious time.

[montanamountainman]

10:38 AM on 10/13/2011

Well said. Someone ought to put that paragraph in a book.

[renk175]

10:40 AM on 10/13/2011

Well said!

[haymorejt]

10:14 AM on 10/13/2011

What a stupid comparsion, so what does that mean? I see no useful or production conclusion that can come from such a study or comment. They are totaly unreladed. On the other han some very negative observation could be made.

[renk175]

10:13 AM on 10/13/2011

What is the point of the article? Come on HP, there have to be some Republicans you can go after.