Jim Crow Redux: Is mass incarceration the ‘new racial caste system’?

[marmar]

from In These Times:




March 16, 2010

Jim Crow Redux
Is mass incarceration the ‘new racial caste system’?

By Micah Williams


A specter is haunting post-racial America. As pundits trip over themselves to declare that racism is dead in the era of a black president, ever-increasing numbers of African Americans are imprisoned and condemned to second-class citizenship.

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press), legal scholar and former ACLU attorney Michelle Alexander examines the American criminal-justice system and its propensity for decimating black lives and communities. She argues that prisons—and the consequent stigmatizing of a permanent “criminal” population—have created a “new racial caste system” whose effects are stunningly similar to those of the Jim Crow era.

Many critics have cast doubt on the proclamations of racism’s erasure in the Obama era, but few have presented a case as powerful as Alexander’s. From racial profiling in policing to imprisonment rates to post-incarceration discrimination, criminal justice is perhaps the most striking example of racial inequality in the Unites States. Nearly half of young black men are imprisoned or on parole/probation, and in some states, black incarceration rates for drugs are 20 to 50 times those of whites, despite near-parity of drug use across racial lines. As a result, millions of African Americans cannot find housing, receive social services or obtain employment. They are denied even the most basic right in a democratic society—the right to vote.

Alexander argues that the devastation in black communities is no coincidence. It is a “redesigned racial caste system” that duplicates the oppression of past racial eras without relying on the explicit racism of those eras. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5685/jim_crow_redux

[eShirl]

1. Absolutely.

[LARED]

2. Huh?

On the 2008 campaign trail, Barack Obama gave a stern speech to black fathers in which he assailed their alleged absenteeism. The assumption, echoed by many commentators, was that these men shirked their responsibilities because of moral shortcomings developed in a culture rife with social pathology. Nowhere in these self-righteous accusations was there a discussion of the fathers who did not abandon their children but were instead snatched away from them.

If I understand this correctly a crack dealer that happens to be a "good" father gets thrown in jail for dealing death in his own neighborhood is actually snatched away from his children when he gets caught?

Please tell I've misunderstood the intent.

[unabelladonna]

4. we're supposed to ignore any crimes

committed by african americans. seems the old saying "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime" is not applicable. however, i do agree that the "war on drugs" is a farce and if the crime is non-violent or doesn't involve personal property, incarceration is a crock.

[marmar]

5. Do you even believe your own bullshit?

nt

[miscsoc]

9. no

i think almost everybody thinks the real drug criminals should pay, african american or otherwise. the problem is those non-violent, non-property related crimes you mention. if you look at the history of those laws against fairly harmless drug use etc, you can see that they've very often been used basically as an excuse to lock up poor or minority people for being poor or black or both, while pretending it's for another reason.

[miscsoc]

10. also i think that class here is as important

as race. e.g. your unemployed white meth addict will probably be tracked down and sent to jail, whereas your stockbroker cokehead will get off scot-free

[chollybocker]

6. You read that paragraph and come up with "crack dealers?"

Yes, you misunderstand.

[LARED]

13. Crack dealer was my description of

a "good" dad somehow breaking the law, and because of this was incarcerated. Fill in whatever criminal activities you like, and my issue is still the same.

If people are breaking the law and get caught it make little difference whether they are good or bad parents. Of course those factors should be addressed during sentencing, but to characterize them as being snatched away is silly.

[bemildred]

3. The drug war is a racist enterprise, yes. nt

[naaman fletcher]

7. no, its not about race, its about the drug war. nt.

[miscsoc]

8. the drug war's about race

the sheer scale of the racial divide in incarceration rates, combined with the prominence of drug related convicts in the prison population, makes that pretty hard to deny.

[naaman fletcher]

11. i don't buy that, sorry..

yes, the push initially played on racial fears, and it's continued existence depends on whites being afraid of drugged out blacks, but it doesn't exits for the purpose of racism, it exists for the purpose of money and power.

[miscsoc]

12. i basically agree

it isn't solely race based - i didn't mean to say it was about just race, but I think racism's a very important factor. I agree that the drug war exists for the purposes of money and power; I consider racism to be a part of that.