Is our Criminal Justice system really just a way to keep large numbers of African-Americans out of mainstream society, like we did under Jim Crow?
This debate has been raging for decades, but is only recently reaching the ears of White America, thanks in part to Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Professor Alexander's numbers are impressive, convincing, and depressing: In many states, blacks make up 80 percent or even more of the prison population of drug offenders. Is that because blacks do more drugs than whites? If that's the theory, how do you explain white kids being hospitalized for drugs at three times the rate of black kids? Prison rates are five times higher than they were 30 years ago. Is this because crime has gone up? Numbers have fluctuated, but within a range that is relatively narrow. It certainly hasn't quintupled. And right now crime rates are at all-time lows. About a quarter of black people are below the poverty rate today, which is about the same as it was in 1968.
The effect of imprisonment doesn't end when a person gets out of jail. A felon can be legally discriminated against when looking for work, housing, public benefits, and even education. Did you know that the 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act disallow financial aid, loans, and even work-study to drug convicts? A person can reverse it by completing rehab and having random drug tests, but there is no parallel for people convicted of robbery or rape. And of course, felons can't vote.
Now hold all of this in your mind while you consider some statistics from the Department of Education. Black students, who made up 18 percent of students in the study, accounted for 35 percent of those suspended once, 46 percent of those suspended more than once, and 39 percent of expulsions. Teachers in high-minority schools are paid $2,251 less on average. In New York high schools, the difference is over $8,000. It's over $14,000 in Philadelphia.
So we start punishing African-American kids when they're in school. We continue it throughout adulthood. And we wonder why there are still race issues in this country.
One of many racial dividing lines in the U.S. is over the question of how intentional all of this is. It's pretty clear to anyone who looks that one of the effects of our out-of-control penal system is that African-Americans, men in particular, are locked up disproportionately, and then discriminated against legally for the rest of their lives -- not because they are black, but because they are felons. But many African-Americans hold the idea that this is at least in part not an accident. While most liberal whites think it's oh so unfortunate, but certainly could not have been designed this way intentionally.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm really not. But I can't seem to get around the fact that the War on Drugs was started by Nixon. He whipped up support with fearsome speeches, he called drugs "public enemy No. 1," he created the DEA from scratch. It all started with Nixon, whose Chief of Staff later told us in his diary that the president "emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this without appearing to."
I'm not saying that a cabal of racists gathered in a smoke-filled back room to devise our prison system. I'm just saying that if they had, it wouldn't look all that different.
Follow Joshua Shulman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joshuashulman
Molly M. Gill: How Would Jesus Punish Drug Use?
I have privilege just because my skin is white. I've been immersed in the black culture for years and I've seen the racism, the DWB, being followed around in a store, women grabbing their children and purses when black men walk by - I've seen it with my own eyes. This country is racist. It's done one helluva good job convincing American people that black men are all dangerous criminals and black women are welfare queens. As a white person, you have so many more opportunies from birth than a black person. You want to believe the playing field is level but it is not. It's much easier to say it is and turn your head. It's much easier to say our justice system is fair, but it is not. Our justice system is not just - it's racist. ...open your mind to the fact that although the Jim Crow era may be gone, there are plenty of other laws in place doing the exact same thing.
.
Heaven forbid if Republicans were to think he was showing favoritism to black people. He made baby steps towards sentence reform, and reduced it from 1000 to 1 disparity to 100 to 1 , and hasnt said a word since about anything else.
No our Criminal Justice system is a way to keep criminals away from the law abiding (mainstream society) and keep the rest of us as safe as possible. Is it always even handed in the dispensing of justice, no of course not? But by design it is as fair as possible. It can't and never will be 100% correct. But nothing is 100% correct and still we manage to do the best we can. Mistakes yes. Intentional mistakes, no.
It is widely accepted that racism is by definition institutional. Racism is a "system of advantage based on race" (Tatum, 1992). Prejudice, which is not systematized or institutionalized, refers to individual unjust biases and does not carry the implication of systemic disadvantaging included in "racism." The terms "institutional racism" or "cultural racism" are sometimes used in an attempt to make this more explicit. (See prejudice, racism.) FROM Multicultural Terms In Use. http://astore.amazon.com/memandrec-20?node=1&page=2
We live in a racist country, and this country has practiced this racism, white supremacy, for over 300 years.
Face the facts people.
This is racism, pure and simple.
It's called health insurance
In 1948 a supreme court case in my hometown, Shelley -v- Kraemer, put an end, theoretically at least, to housing covenants that were keeping blacks out of white neighborhoods. The census 2 years later put St. Louis' pop. at ~ 856,000 - it's decreased every census since until it is at less than 400,000 now. I don't know which factor had more to do with the 'white flight' that brought this about - it was probably a little racism + a little suburban expansion, but does it really matter?
I can tell you, it's tougher coming up in North St. Louis than it is in Ladue. For any rough, tough righties that don't believe me, spend an afternoon in Fairgrounds park sometime, then tell me how well you'd do under those circumstances. Some people have done well, worked their way out of a tough start, but kids that start out at Ladue High have a better chance than kids that attend Sumner or Riverview, white, black or purple. That's reality, and the causes go straight back to 1865.
You should try it.