-----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 6:18 PM Subject: [Fwd: [BRC-NEWS] Race-ing Justice: The Prison-Industrial Complex]
>[bounced for a taboo word]
>
>Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 09:59:08 -0500
>From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
>
>From: Manning Marable <mm247 at columbia.edu>
>Subject: [BRC-NEWS] Race-ing Justice: The Prison-Industrial Complex
>X-WWW-Site: http://www.blackradicalcongress.org/
>
>Along The Color Line
>
>September 1999
>
>Race-ing Justice: The Prison-Industrial Complex
>
>By Dr. Manning Marable <mm247 at columbia.edu>
>
>Several months ago, 650 people attended the "Race-ing Justice" Conference
>in New York, sponsored by the Institute for Research in African-American
>Studies at Columbia University. In more than two dozen panels and
>workshops, black people examined the destructive impact of the police, the
>courts and the prison system upon the African-American community. Our
>current situation today, however, must be understood against the
>totalitarian history of racial domination in America.
>
>For two centuries, the black community was confronted with the
>totalitarianism of slavery. All people of African descent, slave or free,
>were oppressed and subordinated by this structure of unequal racial power.
>For nearly a century after the Civil War and Reconstruction, black people
>experienced the systemic subordination of Jim Crow segregation.
>Regardless of one's income, education or social status, to be black under
>the totalitarian restrictions of Jim Crow meant confinement to second
>class status. In the twentieth century, the construction of the urban
>ghetto imposed another kind of social control on black development,
>certainly less pervasive than slavery had been, but in some respects was
>more destructive to the human spirit. Today, the new totalitarian mode of
>racial domination has become the prison industrial complex, an ever
>expanding archipelago of prisons across the American countryside.
>
>In the United States today, about four to five million Americans receive
>criminal records every year. Roughly one in five U.S. citizens has a
>criminal record. In a society severely stratified by race and class, most
>of those who are pushed into the penal system are not unexpectedly black,
>brown and poor. One third of all prisoners were unemployed at the time of
>their arrest, with the others averaging less than $15,000 annual incomes
>in the year prior to their arrest. About one half of the 1.8 million
>people in federal and state prisons and jails are African Americans.
>
>As researcher J.W. Mason noted, "The proportion of black men in prison
>about 6 percent is approximately 20 times the corresponding rate for white
>men . . . In Baltimore, 56 percent of black men are in prison or jail,
>out on bail, on probation or parole, or being sought on an arrest warrant.
>At least 90 percent of black men can expect to be arrested and jailed for
>a non-traffic offense at some point of their lives." Although the
>majority of black prisoners are young men in their twenties and thirties,
>the fastest growing sector of the penal population consists of men
>fifty-five years old and above.
>
>Even outside of the prison walls, the black community's parameters are
>largely defined by the agents of state and private power. There are now
>about 600,000 police officers and 1.5 million private security guards in
>the U.S. Increasingly, however, black and poor communities are being
>"policed" by special paramilitary units, often called SWAT ("Special
>Weapons and Tactics") teams. Researcher Christian Parenti cites studies
>indicating that "the nation has more than 30,000 such heavily armed,
>military trained police unites." SWAT team mobilizations or "call outs"
>increased 400 percent between 1980 and 1995, with a 34 percent increase in
>the incidents of deadly force recorded by SWAT teams from 1995 to 1998.
>
>What are the political consequences of regulating black and poor people
>through the criminal justice and penal systems? Perhaps the greatest
>impact is on the process of black voting. According to an October, 1998
>study, "Losing the Vote," produced by the Sentencing Project and Human
>Rights Watch, two nonprofit research groups, about 3.9 million Americans,
>or one in fifty adults, have currently or permanently lost the ability to
>vote because of a felony conviction. In 32 states, convicted offenders
>are not permitted to vote while on parole. In fourteen states, former
>prisoners who have fully served their terms remain disenfranchised, and in
>ten of these states, ex-felons are prohibited from voting for life. For
>African Americans, these figures can be translated into 1.4 million men
>who are denied the right to vote, compared to 4.6 million who actually
>voted in the 1996 elections. The racial impact of ex-felon
>disenfranchisement cited by the study is truly astonishing
>
>o In Alabama and Florida, 31 percent of all black men are permanently
>disenfranchised.
>
>o In five other states Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Virginia, and
>Wyoming one in four black men (24 to 28 percent) is permanently
>disenfranchised. In Washington state, one in four of black men (24
>percent) are currently or permanently disenfranchised.
>
>o In Delaware, one in five black men (20 percent) is permanently
>disenfranchised.
>
>o In Texas, one in five black men (20.8 percent) is currently
>disenfranchised.
>
>o In four states Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin 16 to
>18 percent of black men are currently disenfranchised.
>
>o In nine states Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri,
>Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma and Tennessee 10 to 15 percent of black men are
>currently disenfranchised.
>
>In effect, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed millions of
>African Americans the right to the electoral franchise, is being gradually
>repealed by state restrictions on ex-felons from voting. A people who are
>imprisoned in disproportionately higher numbers, and then systematically
>denied the right to vote, can in no way claim to live under a democracy.
>
>*********************************************************************
>Dr. Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science and
>Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at
>Columbia University. "Along the Color Line" is distributed free of
>charge and appears in over 325 publications throughout the U.S. and
>internationally.
>*********************************************************************
>
>
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