We have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
Mass incarceration
in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and
well disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner
strikingly similar to Jim Crow.
The United States
imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at
the height of apartheid.
In 1972, fewer than
350,000 people were being held in prisons and jails nationwide, compared with
more than 2 million people today.
The concept of race
is a relatively recent development. Only in the past few centuries, owing
largely to European imperialism, have the world's people been classified along
racial lines. Here, in America, the idea
of race emerged as a means of reconciling chattel slavery -- as well as the
extermination of American Indians -- with the ideals of freedom preached by
whites in the new colonies.
The Thirteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had abolished slavery but allowed one major
exception: slavery remained appropriate as punishment for a crime.
Clinton -- more than
any other president -- created the current racial undercaste.
Convictions for drug
offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration
rates in the united States. Drug
offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate
population.
There are more
people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated
for all reasons in 1980.
By the end of 2007,
more than 7 million Americans-- or in every 31 adults -- were behind bars, on
probation, or on parole.
In some states, such
as Ohio, as many as 90 percent of children charged with criminal wrongdoing are
not represented by a lawyer.
Once a person is
labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which
discrimination, stigma, and exclusion are perfectly legal, and privileges of
citizenship such as voting and jury service are off limits. It does not matter whether you have actually
spent time in prison.
About as many people
were returned to prison for parole violations in 2000 as were admitted to
prison in 1980 for all reasons. Of all
parole violators returned to prison in 2000, only one-third were returned for a
new conviction; two-thirds were returned for a technical violation.
Black men have been
admitted to state prison on drug charges at a rate that is more than thirteen
times higher than white men. The racial
bias inherent in the drug war is a major reason that 1 in every 14 black men was
behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men.
The sense that black
men have disappeared is rooted in reality.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2002 that there are nearly 3 million
more black women than men in black communities across the United States.
Hundreds of
thousands of black men are unable to be good fathers for their children, not
because of a lack of commitment or desire but because they are warehoused in
prisons, locked in cages. They did not
walk out on their families voluntarily; they were taken away in handcuffs,
often due to a massive federal program known as the War on Drugs.
The mass
incarceration of people of color 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.
Most people assume
that racism, and racial systems generally, are fundamentally a function of
attitudes.
The unfortunate
reality we must face is that racism manifests itself not only in individual
attitudes and stereotypes, but also in the basic structure of society.
All racial caste
systems, not just mass incarceration, have been supported by racial
indifference.
If we hope to return
to the rate of incarceration of the 1970s -- a time w hen many civil rights
activists believed rates of imprisonment were egregiously high -- we would need
to release approximately four out of five people currently behind bars today. Prisons would have to be closed across
America.
The U.S. spent a
record $185 billion for police protection, detention, judicial and legal
activities in 2003.
The overwhelming
majority of incarceration -- 75 percent-- has had absolutely no impact on
crime, despite costing nearly $200 billion annually.
