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For Too Many African-Americans, Prison is a Legacy Passed from Father to Son
Today is Martin Luther King Day. But with more African-American men facing jail than were enslaved in 1850, there is little to celebrate
According to Jeffrey Gamble, the luckiest day of his life was when his car hit the kerb at the corner of Jefferson and National in Los Angeles while he was drunk-driving. It flew over a fence, falling 80ft into a creek below, leaving him with a broken neck and paralysed. "If I hadn't had that accident, I would be dead – or in jail for the rest of my life, just like my brothers," says Gamble, 47. Prison, for the Gambles, is as common a destination as university might be for a middle-class family. His two brothers are both in jail. Ricky, who was convicted for burglary and assault with a firearm under the three strikes law, is in for 110 years to life. Mike got life without parole for the murder of a local councillor. His father was in jail for a series of alcohol-related offences. His son, Khalif, has also been in jail for dealing drugs and possession.
In the US almost one in 10 young African-American men are behind bars. (Photo: Ric Francis/AP)
"It's not just that we didn't fear jail," says Jeffrey, who now uses his experience to warn youngsters away from gangs and prison. "It was like a rite of passage. You needed to go to jail so you could have that badge of honour." Three generations of African-American men enmeshed in the criminal justice system. A legacy of incarceration passed from father to son. A cycle that just won't break.
When Martin Luther King, whose birthday is marked across the United States on Monday with a national holiday, adopted Mahatma Gandhi's call to "fill the jails" 50 years ago, he didn't mean this. Back then, the aim was to delegitimise the prevailing power structure by removing the stigma from protesting against unjust laws. Today, imprisonment is not an act of resistance but a fact of life. It is both the product and cause of social collapse in many black communities, where full jails do not challenge racial inequalities but sustain them.
For decades the issue never entered mainstream debate unless an increasingly desperate right wing decided to ramp up its race-baiting rhetoric. (The man who delivered the racist Willie Horton ad for George Bush Snr's campaign in 1988 now works for Team Romney). On a local level it is back on the agenda because the states simply cannot afford it: California spends $47,102 per inmate per year. It is a national disgrace. The mass incarceration of African-Americans is the civil rights issue of the day. The statistics are horrific.
One in three African-American boys born in 2001 stands a lifetime risk of going to jail, according to the American Leadership Forum. In 2007, one in every 15 black children had a parent in prison. According to Ohio State University law professor and author Michelle Alexander, there are more African-American men in prison, on probation or on parole in the US now than there were enslaved in 1850. Alexander also calculates that because felons lose the right to vote, more African-American men were disenfranchised in 2004 than in 1870, the year male franchise was secured. There are now roughly the same number of black men in American prisons as the populations of Glasgow and Derby combined. Black women are seven times more likely than white women to be in prison. Almost one in 10 young black men are behind bars.
Exclusion does not end with prison but begins there. In many states, felons lose the right to vote and sit on juries for ever. Sometimes conviction isn't even necessary, arrest is enough. Whether you are eventually found guilty or not, the fact you have been arrested can be enough to thwart your chance of getting a job or housing.
Broadly speaking, there are two opinions about how so many African-Americans could have ended up in this situation. The first is that black people are genetically pathological; the second is that societal factors are at play. For those who believe the former, turn the page. There are other papers for you and other days. The very fact that King's birthday is commemorated indicates that such bigotry is no longer officially accepted.
Like many Conservatives, Mike Reynolds, who launched California's three strikes initiative after his daughter was murdered by convicted felons, believes the key societal factor is an over-generous welfare system that encourages black women to have children and black men to abscond. In the case of the Gambles, nothing could be further from the truth. Jeffrey's mother says she had no idea he was involved in crime from the age of eight because she was holding down two jobs.
Indeed, the extent to which the problem is economic means that for most of those who end up in jail it's not too much welfare, but too few jobs. Black unemployment currently stands at almost 16%. For young black men between the ages of 16 and 19 (those at risk of entering the criminal justice system) it is almost 50%. "In the past in the civil rights movement, we have been dealing with segregation and all of its humiliation; we've been dealing with the political problem of the denial of the right to vote," King said, just 10 days before his death. "I think it is absolutely necessary now to deal massively and militantly with the economic problem." But that shift in emphasis from race to class demanded allies who were too few, and too weak.
As Jeffrey saw it when he was growing up, he had two choices: a long life scraping by on the minimum wage, if he was lucky, or a shorter one on the streets that promised fast money and either death or prison. He grew up in the shadow of the university of southern California, but it might as well have been a foreign country: "The only thing we went to USC for was to break into their cars when there was a game on, and sell weed," says Jeffrey.Khalif's choices are not much different. He wants to be a truck driver. But with a criminal record, work is as hard to come by as the $500 he needs to enrol in a driving course. To escape the lure of crime, he moved 70 miles away to Lancaster, where he stands on the street for five hours a day earning the minimum wage for holding up a sign directing hopeful house buyers. "It's a struggle," he says. "But it's better to go that way than the wrong way."
Each of the Gambles must, and does, take personal responsibility for the decisions they make; but society must answer for the options that were available to them and others. As King wrote in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail": "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."
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Show Allbtw. more whites are in prison and more whites are on welfare
the cia runs the drug trade
wall street launders the cash
the black don't get a dime
the beat goes on....
There are at least as many whites in prison and/or on public assistance.
In one tough white working class section of Boston, which was noted for its vicious code of silence, bank and armored car robberies, and (frequent) subsequent incarcerations that ensued from such crimes was also passed from father to son.
So, it seems that (poor) African-Americans and poor whites, in at least some respects, are in a similar situation.
However, per capita, more blacks are in prison.
Blacks are more likely than whites to get prison time for the same crime. They are also more likely to get higher sentences for the same crime.
Whites have more opportunity than Blacks which likely does explain the per capita problem. That opportunity goes right back to graduating from High School let alone college.
I work in the computer industry. I've worked with 2 black men(zero black women) who were also in technical positions(I'm a server admin/network engineer), in 20 years and at least 15 major corporations(I was a contractor for 5 years.) I've worked with hundreds of white men who were doing computer tech/network engineer/programmer related jobs, and only about 7 white women. Blacks have been nearly non-existant in the computer world in Redmond and Seattle, WA.
My experience matches yours. I spent 25+ years in the industry, in tiny startups and in mega-corps, and the only place Black or Brown faces were to be seen was lower-status (mfg, support) or non-tech jobs.
At the biggest place I worked, there was one Black engineering manager. He'd been there forever and still wasn't at VP level; evidently he was a token despite his skill. I hired 2 new-grad Black men into my department, but they left after a year -- the corporate culture was hostile to them, as to women. I transferred in 1 Black woman engineer from another department and she did fine, possibly because she had no career ambitions; engineering was just a pleasant way to pay the bills. And that was at "one of the best companies in the industry".
One also must bear in mind, Sundome, is that while there is a double standard of justice here in our system, it's also true that at least 50 percent of the crime here in the United States is perpetrated by young black men against other young black men, which is also part of the reason that so many young black men are incarcerated. One cannot dismiss the fact, however, that many more blacks are victims of violent crime, as well.
Racism is the evil thread that weaves its way through the fabric of Western Civilization, particularly the American branch of it. Hundreds of years of slavery; hundreds of years of exploiting Africa by Europeans; followed by decades of Jim Crow, which included at a minimum 5,000 lynchings that continued all the way into the 1960s; then the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, followed by extreme white backlash manifested in many forms, such as the murder of MLK and the beginning of Nixon's war on drugs.
Americans believe they have a god given right to murder brown skinned people. And white Americans have exported their god given right to kill brown people all over the world. Even African Americans have adopted this belief and happily join in the lynching of brown skinned people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, etc. Abu Gharib anyone? Americans, when you look at the iconic photo of the hooded man standing arms akimbo with wires attached to him, does it make you proud? It should because it symbolizes all you have become.
Not to pile it on, but I believe after MLK's assassination the rest of the black "leadership" gave up and joined the main stream war mongers and oppressors of the poor. I have not heard a loud powerful voice against war from the African American religious community. The few black leaders who have spoken out, such as Cornel West, have been relegated to the back of the bus by their compatriots who, lamprey like, have attached their suction like lips to Obama's posterior.
But what of MLK's friends and successors like Vincent Harding and James Cone? The same bullet that silenced MLK silenced these men, too. Instead of standing up and fighting for social justice for all poor people, the black "leadership" in America has taken high paying sinecures and blamed the victim. Just as powerful women express disdain for those who suffer from domestic violence, many wealthy blacks have nothing but contempt for poor blacks, and many who express some "concern" have the tough love attitude that if you only tried harder you wouldn't be such a loser. Take Herman Cain and Bill Cosby, two examples of the same attitude.
"Fear is the mind killer, the little death that brings complete obliteration." Frank Herbert. America has become a nation of cowards.
It's not just America, it's the whole world. The problem is that it really shouldn't be in America. Not that is should be anywhere.
Read about Rowanda sometime. It was a completely racist genocide with blacks who looked more black, killing blacks who had lighter skin and whiter features like narrow noses. This was because the British instilled a racism in them for the hundred years before Rowanda where lighter Blacks ended up getting the higher paid/profile positions and of course suppressing the more African looking blacks until the more African looking blacks finally rebelled. Both sides were wrong in Rowanda but it certianly shouldn't have turned into the genocide it became. Rowanda and neighboring countries are gearing up for another genocide, by the way.
Thanks for bringing that up, Sun dome. Apart from the programming of European outsiders, there's also the need for a scarcity paradigm. This makes it easier for those with physical distinctions to attack one another in competition for the item that's made to be scarce. The pattern also ensues as a direct legacy of the dominator societies that replaced earlier societal formations that were based on sharing, as opposed to endless conquest. Modern Amerika shows the natural conclusion to where this ethos leads. After all, our nation sells the very arms to unstable nations that will insure that more militarism will inevitably be required as "peace keeping" force up the road. It also leads the world (with China catching up) on a model of resource depletion that essentially carries the mode of aggression over into how the natural world and its vital ecosystems are perceived, seized, raped, and plundered without the slightest regard for recycling or sustainability. In short, it is a death model, and the consciousness behind it is the key item that must be altered for humanity to have a shot at Century 22.
Physical distinctions are not the issue. After all, the biggest wars in history were fought largely between peoples whose features were similar, and had little to do with "scarcity".
The US may be the largest and most wasteful economy in the world nowadays, but other peoples have gone on rampages of destructive conquest and devastation all through history. The fact that nowadays technology makes it possible to devastate more effectively than in former times is an accident of history. Genghis Khan would have been happy to use nuclear weapons if he had possessed the, As it was, he did untold damage with fire and sword.
The US is similar to other empires and will suffer their fate.
Don't limit my meaning, Leez. "Physical distinctions" can be those of dress, the styles that distinguish one tribal group from another. The point is that scarcity plays off these distinguishing qualifications because they allow persons to identify with one group at the expense of another. If you regularly read my posts, you'd know that the first primal difference, that which is in evidence between the genders, is what cleaved the whole into two parts made unequal by the patriarchal "our fathers" that continue to govern his-tory like old, deranged ghosts. The premise for hierarchy, or what Riane Eisler refers to as the "ranked" society begins there.
You may have forgotten that Rwanda was ruled by the Germans and then the Belgians, who allied themselves with the minority Tutsis, who had dominated the majority Hutus for centuries. The Europeans racialized the cultural differences between the two peoples, favouring the Tutsis. The Hutus identified colonial rule with Tutsi dominance, and rebelled against both, leading to the sequence of events that ended in the genocidal attack by the Hutus against the Tutsis. Both groups "look African", since both groups have always lived in Africa.
This was not light skin against dark skin, but a contest for power between two African peoples whose differences had been deepened and manipulated by European colonialists..
What you describe is the legacy of the 14th century Doctrine of Discovery. This pernicious hidden history is something that every human being must become aware of.
http://www.doctrineofdiscovery.org/
Reaffirmed in US law it has become an essential part of western property law. It has become obscured under the socioeconomic layering and so ubiquitous as concept that no one gives it a second thought. Virtually invisible relative to African American because of the high profile racism, it is visible relative to indigenous peoples BECAUSE of early recognition of the strategy of monoculture inherent in predatory capitalism - known early on as Manifest Destiny.
Key is maintaining the mindset of externalization/marginalization/exceptionalism and the hierarchy of the ersatz right/responsibility to establish a pecking order of extraction of value. Utterly unsustainable, like a virus it invades the spirit, emotions and mind, takes root and enslaves. It is the reasoning that exalts mass wealth over all else.
In 2009 the Episcopal Church formally repudiated the DoD, the following year the Quakers of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting also repudiated. In 2012 the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues will be presenting information.
This is essential to stem the tide of genocide by monoculture and transnational corporate mindset, the poisoning of the earth, the destruction of millennial socio-ecological diversity so resiliently nurtured among so many indigenous peoples, the communities in resistance and hence all of us.
Vincent Harding is still standing up for human rights and serves as an deeply respected elder and founder of Veterans of Hope
Tom: A lot of what you say is true, until you use the popular right wing meme and its particular brand of inverted reasoning to suggest that all Black leaders sold out to $ and position, as did women's rights advocates. I guess the full implications of your own post never dawned on you, given your own admission that: "The few black leaders who have spoken out, such as Cornel West, have been relegated to the back of the bus by their compatriots."
Media is the all-powerful machine that makes and breaks celebrity. If you don't march to its drummer, not only do you not get heard, you are castigated with all manner of objectionable characterizations if you suggest ideas inconsistent with its pervasive narratives.
So here you take some solid evidence and use it to blame the few Blacks who may be clinging to pulpits where they can be heard at all.. instead of casting your aspersions at a system that so marginalizes rights, liberty, and privilege as to make the few who climb over The Cuckoo's Nest responsible for the condition of said nest.
I raise this same objection when posters like Moon Pie assure us that the OWS is accomplishing nothing, and has no germane goals. Or when Jennifer B used to post repeatedly, that feminism was dead, added to a small chorus of redundant CD posters stating that the Left was dead.
It is far more honest and intellectually comprehensive to speak about those conditions (and forces) that make the voices resonant with these positions SEEM to no longer exist, so fully are they marginalized from the mainstream media. This penchant for blaming those who lack power is reminiscent of expensive media campaigns to link Saddam with 911, or Acorn (and the poor) with the housing melt-down. It's also of a mind akin to those who still push the LIE that there's no solid proof (or scientific consensus) for Climate Change.
Because media indoctrination is so pervasive, and often reliant upon studied tools of propaganda (those which bypass the intellect and speak right to the centers of primal emotion), it is possible that you, yourself, are so conditioned by these memes so as not to realize you're trapped in the ideology that's created them. Or else... you want the lies to hold. I hope it's the former.
Old Goat: Great posts.
I work with incarcerated black men on a daily basis. Few blacks in positions of power help those in prison. The paths of power in America require punishment of the weak and poor, and that means that many blacks in power have gotten there by punishing other blacks -- prosecutors, judges, attorneys general, etc. I notice no one has stepped up and named all the black leaders standing up against injustice. Read Black Agenda Report for a while to get an idea of what I mean.
Sure, we do have a lot of blacks who stand up for the oppressed, but those people often get demonized or marginalized, and they never make it mainstream. Take the examples Jeremiah Wright or Van Jones.
Okay. That's a valid piece of anecdotal material. I think you need to examine how much the current brand of Christianity cum Calvinism pushes the ethos of the saved versus the damned, the privileged by god, versus those condemned to suffer to penetrate why there isn't more of an incentive to help those in need.
I live in the Bible belt and I watch this uber: punitive form of Christianity up close and personal.
I'll refrain from explaining the astrological reasons for a YOY ethos that spans racial and ethnic lines in these emotionally walled off, hard, cold, cold times.
Siouxrose, I agree that these problems span racial and ethnic lines. Our prisons have tons of white men, too, and really a lot of women. I don't know about other states, but in Colorado, women get the short end of the stick when it comes to prison services. They have zero minimum security women's prisons in Colorado, but at least 6 minimum security prisons for men. As an example -- man kills his baby, gets 16 years, goes to a minimum security prison where he trains dog. Man's wife does not harm baby, but due to very bad laws and a very bad lawyer, she also gets 16 years, but the best prison job she can get is working in the fields as a farm hand picking vegetables all day. (True story).
To make it worse, they eliminated a section of one of 2 women's prisons and put men in that section. They had to double up the women and convert their classrooms into bed space.
I really can't see much of anything to disagree with in this post; I enjoyed it and agree with it. Thanks tomcarberry for the reality based commentary.
As for the article, on the whole it’s on point, but to get critical, it is a little too establishment for me, since for example it quotes official unemployment percentages. The unemployment rates reported by the US government are so understated that they are essentially lies. As a rough rule of thumb, whenever you see an official unemployment rate, figure the real unemployment rate is at least double the official rate or the official rate plus 10 percent, whichever is less. For example, if 16% is the reported rate, a reasonable but still conservative estimate of the real rate is 26%. If 9% is the reported rate, a good estimate of the real rate is 18%. These adjusted rates are still very conservative and the real rates are definitely to one extent or another higher still.
Unfortunately, for African Americans, Obama has been nothing more and nothing less than the equivalent of a horror movie character: someone who was supposed to be a force for good but turned out to be anything but. For example, Obama's lame economic recovery program failed to revive the economy as much as a stronger, smarter, and less right wing program would have. And ironically, his lame program proportionately helped more whites than blacks; in other words, his program was not strong enough to reach more than a very small number of black folks.
Gary Younge's article is about an issue that Martin Luther King would certainly have been raising if he had lived. America has used its well known creativity and can do spirit to restore much of the regime that was supposedly done away with by the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement.
Instead of Jim Crow legislation, the US now uses incarceration and disenfranchisement to exclude and oppress its African American citizens. Instead of slavery, the US relegates millions of African Americans to the low prestige, low wage jobs that ensure exclusion and marginalization. Public education has been defunded in large part to prevent African American children from breaking into the middle class: higher education has been priced to exclude African American youths from going to college.
It's true that there is a huge element of non racial class oppression involved here, and many white Americans face similar barriers. But the weight of oppression bears down far more heavily on African Americans than on whites, and there can be no explanation for this aside from racism, tacit or outspoken, coded or blunt.
'"The economy" is the issue on the minds of most Americans these days. White Americans should look at what has befallen their African American fellow citizens and see what will befall them if current trends are not reversed.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's famous words about "First they came for the Communists, but I am not a Communist, so I didn't care" etc etc should cause Americans who feel protected by their white skin to realize that if they can do it to African Americans, they can do it to anyone at all.
Excellent post (3:55 PM), Leezasky. This one is truly on the mark.
By joining Drug Warriors, taking money to fight drugs and voting for conservative politicians, minorities are shooting themselves in the ass. Alcohol prohibition gave us the Mafia, Drug prohibition gives us the Drug gangs and cartels. Drug legalization must eventually happen, but at what cost in lives and money?
Some personal (white) observations from my life in Florida, USA:
1. In 1978 I went to a bar in New Smyrna Beach, with my girlfriend, to enjoy their Monday night free buffet. While we were there, I noticed the bartender passing plastic cups and small "airline" liquor bottles through a small window to a room in the back. My girlfriend explained that there was a separate rear entrance for black people and that they got their drinks through that small window. They didn't have a buffet, either.
2. 2001 - I was driving along when some youngsters (black) in a passing car threw some trash onto my hood. Shortly, I pulled off the side of the road to talk to the sheriff (Lake County) about it. He flagged down the kids (we had passed at a light) and gave them a stern warning. Meanwhile, his partner engaged me in conversation back at my car and said, "What do you expect? Look at them! They're sub-human." I was speechless.
3. 2008 - I was passing through the town of Inverness, Florida when I decided to mail a letter. The drive-by post box is on a street adjacent to the town square. It was then that I first noticed the street sign for Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. Frequently these commemorative streets are located in traditionally black neighborhoods. In Inverness, Florida, however, Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. is only about 2 blocks long and is situated between the Citrus County Court House and the Citrus County Jail. It's actually just a short renamed section of S. Park Ave. Here is an abbreviated link to the Google Maps page showing it (zoom and drag as needed).
http://tinyurl.com/7ftvn7k
Maybe I'm reading too much into this last one but I don't think so.
We have a lot of work to do if we are ever going to overcome this level of institutionalized racism. I'm in my 50's. Let's get there in my lifetime.
I agree with your last paragraph. There is some tragedy in the fact that some people believe that President Obama's election signaled the dawn of a new "post-racial" society here in the U.S. That is not true by FAR.
Thank you for this excellent article, Gary Younge.
As an aside: what is interesting to note is that, after the Alabama anti-immigration law was passed, there have been actual proposals to use prison labor in the place of "illegal" immigrants on farms (see: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/12/06/382852/alabama-agriculture-department-promoting-plan-to-replace-immigrants-with-prisoners-to-farmers ). Noting that the majority of prisoners in Alabama are African-American (see: http://eji.org/eji/deathpenalty/racialbias ), the suggestion seems to imply a yearning for the days of ye old plantation.... Kinda like what can already be seen at the notorious Angola prison in Louisiana.
"there are two opinions about how so many African-Americans could have ended up in this situation. The first is that black people are genetically pathological; the second is that societal factors are at play"
I'm sorry, but the author is writing in elite frames that ensure that we respond to his message, as elites would, with something like: That's a shame, but what can we do?
There may be two opinions, but opinions do not mean a thing. Liberalism preaches that they do, but they don't. This is because facts supplant opinions. Notice that when we decree that facts supplant opinions, we set the stage for a showdown, where the elites are doomed to lose their opinion-built influence/prestige. Liberalism exists to stop this from happening. But liberalism is slated for the compost heap today. We're going to have our showdown, as the facts supplant the opinions.
Blacks are not the most genetically pathological. Whiteys are much more so. Certain progress among some whiteys in certain realms does not dismiss the monumental destruction of whitey imperialism over the centuries.
Most of the pathology among the people is fueled by the oppression. Stop the oppression and you stop most of the pathology. The more you investigate, the more you'll recognize the facts. When you decide you're ready for an honest debate, you'll quickly uncover the facts. On toward the showdown.
Prisons both public and private are big money-makers and provide jobs for many people. The prison unions support this status quo. Ron Paul wants to legalize drugs, release all those emprisoned for drug crimes. He is supported by many black citizens for this and other reasons. The spin-doctors bring up the alleged racism of Ron Paul. They don't want anyone in power who cares about the natural rights of ALL Americans. They don't want to end the great big job/money supplying machine. Too bad about all the imprisoned losers. Ron Paul's mainly libertarian outlook would guarantee our natural rights regardless of the personal biases of the powerful and the powerless.
The key is not to focus on the power centers he would destroy, but the ones he *wouldn't*.
It's no good getting rid of symptoms while leaving the disease in place, because the disease will replicate the symptoms as quick as your back is turned. The prison industry is a symptom. Concentrated private wealth/power --which Paul would never touch, it being the ne plus ultra of his rightwing Libertarianism-- is the disease.