[The cover story in the Black Commentator from two weeks ago had an alternate explanation for the behavior that black role models attribute to bad character: the effects of living in the shadow of the black gulag. And they point out that while black moral failings seem to pop up perennially on the post-prandial agenda, mass black incarceration is the elephant in the room that is never mentioned. The one hides the others.]
[BTW, apropos the recent thread on the Roma, BC had another article a few months ago provocatively comparing the mass jailing of blacks in present day America to the mass jail to the mass jailing of gypsies in present day Hungary that is linked to in the article: http://www.blackcommentator.com/82/82_prisons.html
URL: http://www.blackcommentator.com/95/95_cover_prisons.html
Issue 95 - June 17, 2004
Cover Story
Mass Incarceration and Rape
The Savaging of Black America
Mass incarceration is by far the greatest crisis facing Black America,
ultimately eclipsing all others. It is an overarching reality that
colors and distorts every aspect of African American political,
economic and cultural life, smothering the human and humane
aspirations of the community. Even the boundless creativity of youth
cannot escape the chains that stretch from the Gulag into virtually
every Black social space. We hear prison, talk prison, wear prison and
to a horrific degree have become inured to the all-enveloping presence
of prison in virtually every Black neighborhood and extended family.
After more than three decades of mass Black incarceration as national
policy, Black America teeters at the edge of an abyss, unable to
muster more than a small fraction of its collective energies to
advance its agenda in housing, employment and education. The community
has been poisoned by massive, ever increasing infusions of the prison
experience a debasement that now permeates much of the fabric of Black
life.
Yet mass Black incarceration is not a political priority for much of
what passes for Black leadership. A deep and historical current in
Black America feels far more shame than anger at the ever lengthening
line of march through the prison gates. For others, the incremental
blending of community and prison through the constant human traffic
between the two, seems like a natural state of affairs. [end_mark.gif]
Associate Editor Bruce A. Dixon writes:
<quote>
Much as black Americans of two and three generations ago adjusted to
pervasive segregation as a normal condition of life, many in our
communities have learned to treat the phenomenon of mass incarceration
like we do the weather. It's hot in the summer, cold in the winter,
and a third of the black males between 18 and 30 are in jails and
prisons, on parole or probation. It's life. Get over it.
<end quote>
When Black anger does erupt, it is too often directed only at those
who are already paying for having been caught up in the induction
mechanisms of the Prison Nation. Although it is true that few inmates
are political prisoners in the narrow sense of the term, Americas rise
as the worlds prison superpower was certainly the result of calculated
political decision-making. Mass incarceration was the national
response to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, a white
societal reaction to Black intrusions onto white space [as argued in
Black Commentator, March 18
http://www.blackcommentator.com/82/82_prisons.html] White society
clearly approves of the results: massively disproportionate Black and
Latino incarceration.
Since 1971, U.S. prisons and jails have grown ten-fold from less then
200,000 inmates to 2.1 million while whites have dwindled to only 30
percent of the prison population. With only five percent of the worlds
people, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of the planets prisoners
fully half of them Black. One out of eight prisoners on Earth is
African American. Thats race politics with a vengeance.
The U.S. broke with historical patterns of incarceration a little over
100 prisoners per 100,000 population in the mid-Seventies. Then, with
roughly equal fervor, Presidents Reagan, Bush, Sr. and Clinton and
each of the states methodically assembled the worlds largest Gulag. As
the Justice Policy Institute reported in 2001, the Black prison
population exploded.
From 1980 to 1992, the African American incarceration rate increased
by an average of 138.4 per 100,000 per year. Still, despite a more
than doubling of the African American incarceration rate in the 12
years prior to President Clintons term in office, the African American
incarceration rate continued to increase by an average rate of 100.4
per 100,000 per year. In total, between 1980 and 1999, the
incarceration rate for African Americans more than tripled from 1156
per 100,000 to 3,620 per 100,000.
The Institute notes that, In 1986 and 1988, two federal sentencing
laws were enacted that made the punishment for distributing crack
cocaine 100 times greater than the punishment for powder cocaine. No,
Black crack dealers and users are not political prisoners but they are
imprisoned for long stretches and in huge numbers for what are clearly
political reasons.
Unless there exists a Black prison gene, politics is the reason that
12 percent of African-American men ages 20 to 34 are in jail or
prison. The evidence is irrefutable: mass incarceration of African
Americans is national policy.
Last month the U.S. Justice Department announced that the U.S.
incarceration rate had risen to 715 per 100,000 up from 703 the
previous year, and seven-times the levels that existed before mass
incarceration of Blacks became national policy. Crime rates remain
historically low a disconnect that Attorney General John Ashcroft
rationalized, this way: "It is no accident that violent crime is at a
30-year low while prison population is up. Violent and recidivist
criminals are getting tough sentences while law-abiding Americans are
enjoying unprecedented safety."
Thus, the engines of mass Black incarceration keep turning, faster and
faster every year, whether crime is up or down. The only constant:
more Blacks in prison.