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. Associate Editor Bruce A. Dixon writes:
"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."
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, America's rise as the world's 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,'" wrote , March 18. "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 world's people, the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of the planet's prisoners - fully half of them Black. One out of eight prisoners on Earth is African American. That's 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 world's 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 Clinton's 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.
[...]