{"id":11547,"date":"2011-04-18T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=11547"},"modified":"2011-04-12T15:13:50","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T14:13:50","slug":"more-black-men-now-in-prison-system-than-enslaved-in-1850","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/04\/more-black-men-now-in-prison-system-than-enslaved-in-1850\/","title":{"rendered":"More Black Men Now in Prison System than Enslaved in 1850"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMore African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,\u201d Michelle Alexander<\/a> told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday [6 Apr 2011], the first of many jarring points she made in a riveting presentation.<\/p>\n

Alexander, currently a law professor at Ohio State, had been brought in to discuss her year-old bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness<\/a>. Interest ran so high beforehand that the organizers had to move the event to a location that could accommodate the eager attendees. That evening, more than 200 people braved the pouring rain and inevitable traffic jams to crowd into the library\u2019s main room, with dozens more shuffled into an overflow room, and even more latecomers turned away altogether. Alexander and her topic had struck a nerve.<\/p>\n

Growing crime rates over the past 30 years don\u2019t explain the skyrocketing numbers of black \u2014 and increasingly brown \u2014 men caught in America\u2019s prison system, according to Alexander, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice \u00a0Harry Blackmun<\/a> after attending Stanford Law. \u201cIn fact, crime rates have fluctuated over the years and are now at historical lows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color,\u201d she said, even though studies have shown that whites use and sell illegal drugs at rates equal to or above blacks. In some black inner-city communities, four of five black youth can expect to be caught up in the criminal justice system during their lifetimes.<\/p>\n

As a consequence, a great many black men are disenfranchised, said Alexander \u2014 prevented because of their felony convictions from voting and from living in public housing, discriminated in hiring, excluded from juries, and denied educational opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do we expect them to do?\u201d she asked, who researched her ground-breaking book while serving as Director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California. \u201cWell, seventy percent return to prison within two years, that\u2019s what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Organized by the Pasadena Public Library and the Flintridge Center<\/a>, with a dozen or more cosponsors, including the ACLU Pasadena\/Foothills Chapter and Neighborhood Church<\/a>, and the LA Progressive as the sole media sponsor, the event drew a crowd of the converted, frankly \u2014 more than two-thirds from Pasadena\u2019s well-established black community and others drawn from activists circles. Although Alexander is a polished speaker on a deeply researched topic, little she said stunned the crowd, which, after all, was the choir. So the question is what to do about this glaring injustice.<\/p>\n

Married to a federal prosecutor, Alexander briefly touched on the differing opinion in the Alexander household. \u201cYou can imagine the arguments we have,\u201d Alexander said in relating discussions she has with her husband. \u201cHe thinks there are changes we can make within the system,\u201d she said, agreeing that there are good people working on the issues and that improvements can be made. \u201cBut I think there has to be a revolution of some kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

However change is to come, a big impediment will be the massive prison-industrial system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we were to return prison populations to 1970 levels, before the War on Drugs began,\u201d she said. \u201cMore than a million people working in the system would see their jobs disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s like America\u2019s current war addiction. We have built a massive war machine \u2014 one bigger than all the other countries in the world combined \u2014 with millions of well-paid defense industry jobs and billions of dollars at stake. With a hammer that big, every foreign policy issue looks like a nail \u2014 another bomb to drop, another country to invade, another massive weapons development project to build.<\/p>\n

Similarly, with such a well-entrenched prison-industrial complex in place \u2014 also with a million jobs and billions of dollars at stake \u2014 every criminal justice issue also looks like a nail \u2014 another prison sentence to pass down, another third strike to enforce, another prison to build in some job-starved small town, another chance at a better life to deny.<\/p>\n

Alexander, who drew her early inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., devotes the last part of \u201cThe New Jim Crow<\/a>\u201d to steps people can take to combat this gross injustice. In particular, she recommended supporting the Drug Policy Alliance<\/a>. At the book signing afterwards, Dr. Anthony Samad recruited Michelle Alexander to appear this fall at one his Urban Issues Forums, typically held at the California African American Museum next to USC.<\/p>\n

____________________<\/p>\n

Dick Price is Editor of the LA Progressive. With his wife Sharon, he publishes several other print and online newsletters on political and social justice issues. He has worked in publishing as a writer, editor, and publisher for a quarter century, currently serving as associate publisher for the IEEE Computer Society. In earlier releases, he was a cab driver, bartender, construction worker, soldier, and farmhand, and for many years helped operate a nonprofit halfway house for homeless alcoholics and addicts.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 laprogressive.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMore African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,\u201d Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday [6 Apr 2011]… Alexander, currently a law professor at Ohio State, had been brought in to discuss her year-old bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}