Failed Drug War Has Created a Human Rights Nightmare - How Can This Happen and Go Undiscussed?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:





Sojourners / By Michelle Alexander

The Failed Drug War Has Created a Human Rights Nightmare -- How Can This Happen in Our Country and Go Virtually Undiscussed?
If we fail to commit ourselves to ending mass incarceration, future generations will judge us harshly.

April 28, 2011 |


So much about our racial reality today is little more than a mirage. The promised land of racial equality wavers, quivers just out of our reach in the barren desert of our new, "colorblind" political landscape. It looks so good from a distance: Barack Obama, our nation's first black president, standing in the Rose Garden behind a podium looking handsome, dignified, and in charge. Flip the channel and there's Michelle Obama, a brown-skinned woman, digging a garden in the backyard of the White House -- not as a servant or a maid -- but as the first lady, schooling the nation on better health and the need to be good stewards of our planet. Flip the channel again and there's the whole Obama family exiting Air Force One, waving to the crowd, descending the flight of stairs -- a gorgeous black family living in the White House, ruling America, cheered by the world.

Drive a few blocks from the White House and you find the Other America. You find you're still in the desert, dying of thirst, wondering what wrong turn was made, and how you managed to miss the promised land, though you reached for it with all your might.

A vast new racial undercaste now exists in America, though their plight is rarely mentioned on the evening news. Obama won't mention it; the Tea Party won't mention it; media pundits would rather talk about anything else. The members of the undercaste are largely invisible to those of us who have jobs, live in decent neighborhoods, and zoom around on freeways, passing by the virtual and literal prisons in which they live.

But here are the facts. There are more African American adults under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. In major urban areas, like Chicago -- Obama's hometown -- the majority of working-age African American men have criminal records are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. Millions of people in the United States, primarily poor people of color, are denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement: the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free from discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits. They have been branded "criminals" and "felons" and now find themselves relegated to a permanent, second-class status for the rest of their lives. They live in a parallel social universe, the Other America. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/150785/the_failed_drug_war_has_created_a_human_rights_nightmare_--_how_can_this_happen_in_our_country_and_go_virtually_undiscussed/

[Scuba]

1. Take the short drive from Bethesda to Anacosta, then examine your own...

...opinion on whether or not there are "two Americas".

[hobbit709]

2. And there are those, some even on DU, that want more penalties.

[fasttense]

3. We have more people in jail then Communist China.

It's a big business now. One that is strongly supported and promoted by the Dancing Supremes.

"The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.

China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html

[nonperson]

6. Yep, we have five percent of the world's population

And twenty-five percent of its prisoners.

Our prison system rivals our military in sheer size.

Wars and prisons. The areas we concentrate our resources in define us as a nation.

[nonperson]

4. It happens and goes undiscussed because the "War on Drugs" isn't a failure

It's working exactly as planned. Justice system, prison/industrial/police complex, drug profits, gun running, all according to plan. Make billions arresting, trying, and locking up an almost inexhaustible resource; people. And make money on both ends by operating the supply side too.

[enough]

5. +1 (nt)

[raccoon]

7. And disenfranchising lots of voters, especially blacks. nt

[nonperson]

8. Yes, looking to solidify their gains indefinitely

By keeping voters out of the so-called "democratic" process.

[Uncle Joe]

9. This is an excellent and most crucial read,.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.:thumbsup: