Is Jim Crow back? Are African Americans, particularly African American men, once more suffering systematic discrimination on the basis of race -- a discrimination that locks them out of equal rights and basic citizenship?
The question is incendiary -- and seems unreal. This is the post-racial America, where an African American can be elected president. Overt expression of racism is no longer socially acceptable. So, how could anyone allege the revival of Jim Crow laws, the laws that locked blacks into a permanent underclass under segregation?
Listen to the hard logic offered by Michelle Alexander, a law professor and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness. Professor Alexander makes the following points:
• More African Americans are under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
• More black men were disenfranchised in 2004 than in 1870, the year the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
• More than half of working-age African-American men in major urban areas -- according to one report, as much as 80 percent in Chicago -- have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination.
These staggering figures aren't because African Americans are more prone to violence and crime. As Alexander points out, incarceration rates are not related to the rate of criminal activity. Crime is at a relatively low level in recent years, but incarceration has remained high.
The primary reason for our high rates of incarceration is the war on drugs. The courts have given police a virtual exemption from the Fourth Amendment in the war on drugs. This freedom to stop, search, seize and arrest clearly has discriminatory effects.
This drug war has been waged intensively almost completely in communities of color, even though studies show that drug use is remarkably similar across racial lines. The use of drugs isn't much different, but young African American men are stopped more often, searched more often, arrested more often and prosecuted more often.
This isn't about drug-related violence or even about major traffickers. Alexander cites studies that in 2005, for example, four out of five drug arrests were for possession, while only one out of five were for sales. Most people in state prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or significant selling activity. Most of the increase in incarcerated drug offenders came from marijuana use, a drug widely available on campuses across America.
These are stunning facts. The U.S. has developed a prison-industrial complex -- with private prison companies listed on the stock exchange -- that, in Professor Alexander's words, "locks an extraordinary percentage of our population -- a group largely defined by race -- into permanent, second-class status for life."
Yet, this system is largely immune from constitutional challenge. The courts have decided that overwhelming evidence of the discriminatory effect of policies -- the fact that African Americans are deprived of their rights for life in disproportionate numbers -- is not sufficient. Proof of conscious, intentional racial bias in intent and action must be shown.
The result is shocking -- yet is accepted largely in silence. The drug war, the court system, the privatized prison-industrial complex have provided the means of disenfranchising African Americans in large number.
This has implications in elections, in juries, and in school and poverty subsidies. Clearly it is time to end the silence -- and confront the reality.
Follow Rev. Jesse Jackson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/revjjackson
Ben Daniel: A Time To Speak Out Against Racism
Men who think the devouring utilitarianism of women rules the world should know their own importance.
These facts do not have anything to do with discrimination - but they do lead to a host of other problems that AA's experience later in life and in their difficulty in finding a positive and productive place in society as adults.
I have sat in the court room and watched 3 different races of people charged with the same crime, but the African American always received the harsher sentence whereas others were dismissed for the very same thing. If you want to know exactly who waste your tax dollars, look at the judicial system.
Harassment of police officers has resulted in both officers and those harrassed, in a lost of life. You may want to think the police officer is good the guy - but that is not the case in most cases. They have a license to harass and profile African Americans and those that have had trouble with the law. Police Officers don't give most African Americans the freedom to just walk to the store or be in the store. Talk about losing freedom.
Thank you Rev. Jessee Jackson for speaking out on matters that are real concerns for African Americans. I applaud you for standing tall and strong in the midst of the face of great opposition against you as a human being and your values.
an affirmative action program where the cops start rounding up law-abiding citizens and locking
them up so the likes of Jesse Jackson can feel better. I'm sure the statistics would then be
reversed.
It's like there is a disconnect - is Obama on board with legalization? It has the support of all liberals and he's the most progressive president ever
The question is, do you want your federal reps taking up the voting rights of convicted felons, or trying to figure out how to get the economy going?
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
They key here is that they cannot deprive an inidividual without "due process". i.e. if you're convicted of a felony, your constitutional rights (including voting) can be restricted by the state government.
Proof of conscious, intentional racial bias in intent and action must be shown.
Well, crap. All the Supreme Court has to do is look in the mirror.
And btw.. police get more money from the fed based on the amount of drug arrests. The drug dealers, the big ones, end up working for the police and selling out the small time in exchange for a light sentence.
Besides my actual experience with the prison system in America AND talking to a lot of people who actually WORK in the prison system in America AND my close ties with numerous public defenders and defense lawyers Where would this "programming" as you put it, come from?
You probably watch a lot of TV.
I have very close ties to the prison system in America and I do indeed know what I'm talking about.
Maybe YOU should actually talk to someone who WORKS in a prison like I have and you will sing a different tune.
Now if you or the lady who wrote this book could get on a cable news show to speak about this issue.
Unfortunatly, Mr Jackson is correct. They use the drug war as a tool in higher crime areas to fight crime. The more people they arrest, the better their numbers look, but the less likely small time offenders will ever get a real job after a conviction... so it perpetuates the crime cycle. Job security for the police, and less security for the very citizens they are sworn to protect.
End the war on drugs, and put the 40 billion a year spent on it towards fighting real crime and giving a real education to our youth, and it might make a difference. But what we are doing now has only made the situation worse.
The original racism, which the US pretty much invented, supported slavery ... "Labor in the white skin can never be free so long as labor in the black skin is enslaved," said Abraham Lincoln.
We clearly have an Apartheid system of sorts, but I don't get what it supports? Globally we have a Bantustan system like South Africa, where the workers in China or Haiti or South Korea or Vietnam produce for owners and buyers, but they cannot buy what they produce.
How does this all it in?
You all on the left just appeal to moralism, but you offer no common interests.
The overarching idea is that the when you place people in private prisons which operate under a profit motive there will be pressure to increase profit, and that is acheived by increasing volume.