African American History Month 2013
By Frank Bolden
February 3, 2013
Isaiah 42: 1, 6, 7, 16
[ Audio
(mp3, 7.9Mb) ]
day even after the second inauguration of an African American President of the United States, African American History Month is needed more than ever before. And why is that? You may ask. The answer cannot be found in the headlines or sound bites of daily news topics. It's a largely unreported story. The answer is a subterranean sore festering just below the radar of the press seething into a potentially dangerous threat to the stability of our country.
During the last thirty years, we have allowed the hard
earned rights gained from the abolition of slavery, the dismantling of Jim Crow
and the sacrifices of the Civil Rights struggle to be stripped away from a
large segment of our society-young black men. They have been systematically
marginalized and relegated to a status of darkness characterized by exclusion
from sustainable employment, a permanent bar from any federal assistance and no
way to voice their despair or reverse their misfortune.
Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in
the Age of Colorblindness,[1] details
how we have reached this point through the enactment of federal laws to fight
drugs, massive grants to enforce those laws at the state level, modifications
of Constitutional protections against search and seizures and other factors
during a period of inattentiveness by the public.
African American young men represent 14 percent of the
population of young men in the United States, but they comprise 40 percent of
young men in prison.[2]
As of 2008 one in 106 white men ages 18 or older was behind
bars. For Black men between the ages of 20 and 34, one in 9 was in prison.[3] In our nation's capital it is
estimated that 3 out of 4 young black men can expect to serve time in prison.[4] That's just
the tip of the iceberg. Those appalling numbers are just for the men behind
bars. Add in the number who have already served time and are now on probation
or parole and we get the unbelievable
fact that in many of our large cities more than half of young black men are under control of the
criminal justice system.
That means they cannot vote and can be legally discriminated
against in employment, housing, assistance for education and so on. ”These
racial disparities cannot be explained by rates of drug crimes.”[5] More
black men are disenfranchised today than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth
Amendment was ratified.[6]
Young Black men suffer disproportionately higher rates of
death, incarceration, unemployment and lower levels of college and high school
graduations than others in our country. Look
at unemployment where the rate for Young black men is over 40%. As alarming as that
number is, it is insignificant because 75% of the group is not included since
they are no longer looking for work. And why should they? Consider the barriers
they are likely to encounter on the trail to seeking a job. First barrier, They're Black; second some are
felons; third some don't have a high school diploma-the dropout rate for the group in a number of
large cities is now over 50%. They may as well rip up the application form and
walk out the door. Can you imagine the effect of so much rejection on the
psyche of a person already perceived by some as inferior and labeled by others as-
“approach with caution
The mantra for the United States might well be ”Pull
yourself up by your own bootstraps.”
These young men no longer have boots-no straps-no jobs-no
housing-no power- no rights-no hope- except for us and God. They are human
beings, sons, brothers and fathers (More than 50 percent of prison inmates are parents of minor children.)[7]who are
being forced into a status that is untenable.
Langston Hughes asked “What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore. Does it stink
like rotten meat?... Crust like a syrupy sweet? Or does it explode?”[8]
The plight of these young men is an explosion building to an
eruption.
What's wrong with this picture? Can we as a civilized
nation, the world leader in liberty, freedom and justice for all stand idly by
and allow this trampling of human rights to continue?
We currently imprison a higher percentage of black men than
South Africa did at the height of apartheid.[9] And yet
we hear little about this deplorable,
potentially explosive situation in the news. Columnist, Michael Gerson calls
this “vast segregation of young African American men and boys from the promise
of this country the greatest single threat to the unity of America.”[10]
In the United States in 2013, this situation is shameful and
it will continue to get worse unless action is taken to stop the slide.
What is even more shameful is the probability that the marginalization
of young black men is the
result of deliberate measures implemented by highly revered leaders of our
country.
In the early 1980s our inner cities faced an economic crisis
caused by the loss of manufacturing
and other blue collar jobs, globalization
and great technological resultant
changes. The concern
about race.”[11] The initiative allowed him to keep his
campaign promise to get tough on high unemployment rates increased incentives
for selling drugs. President Reagan
tackled this problem by announcing the War on Drugs in 1982 at a time when drug
use was on the wane and no one thought drugs was a major problem. “This was of
little concern to President Reagan because from the outset the drug war had
little to do with public concern about drugs, but much to do with public crime,
ie. go after ”welfare queens” and other blacks.
In 1985 crack cocaine
surfaced. Crack is chemically about the same as powder cocaine. The less expensive of the two, crack was erroneously
associated with Blacks and powder cocaine with whites;[12]even
though, whites actually use crack, powder coke, heroin marijuana and ecstasy
more than Blacks.
The War on Drugs escalated over the next decade with more
legislation harsh penalties, mandatory minimum sentences for the distribution
of cocaine including far more severe punishment for crack than for powder
cocaine. Other legislation allowed anyone connected with any type of drug
activity to be barred
from public housing; eliminated the possibility of receiving any federal
benefit, including student loans, for anyone convicted of drug offenses and
established 5 year mandatory minimum sentences for possession of cocaine with
no intent to sell.[13] Comparable punishment for a similar offense
in other western countries
is no more than six months in jail, if jail time is imposed at all. [14]
To this mix was added a relentless media campaign warning
about the dangers of crack and vilifying “crack whores,” “crack babies” and
“gangbangers”—all code words for Blacks. The War on Drugs and a tough stance on
crime was the formula that Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton used to capture
votes. Harsh punishment was coupled with massive grants to law enforcement agencies to fight the war. For example between 1981
and 1991 Department of Defense antidrug
allocations increased from $33 million to over a billion dollars. Similar
increases occurred for other agencies. At the same time the budget for the
National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 million to $57million.[15] In
1994, a $30 billion crime bill to fight the drug war included $16B for prison
grants.
The US prison population from 1980 to the turn of the
century grew from 300,000 to 2,300,000
making us the world's leading jailer. At the end of 2007, we had less than 5%
of the world's
population but 23.4% of the world's incarcerated population.[16]
During the same period, the Supreme Court, in a series of
decisions, completely eviscerated the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures contained in the Fourth
Amendment to the point where today police can stop and search just about anyone for any reason or no
reason at all as long as
orders are posed as questions. The results of all these changes is that in some states 90% of
those admitted to prison for drug offenses are Black or Latino[17] many of
whom committed no crime at all, but because of lack of adequate legal representation
and mandatory minimum sentence guidelines pleaded guilty to crimes they did not
commit in order to avoid jail or to receive shorter sentences.
Those of you who watch a lot of television are probably thinking
that can't be so because everybody
knows once the defendant says he wants an attorney one is provided. Right?
Wrong. According to Alexander, “when people are charged with extremely serious
crimes … they may find themselves languishing in jail for years without meeting
with an attorney, much less getting a trial.”[18] She
cites the extreme example of a person who was charged with murder and waited in
jail eight and a half years for his case to go to trial. It never did. [19] “David
Carroll, of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association explained that,
“There's a real disconnect in this country between what people perceive is the state of indigent
defense and what it is”.[20]
Alexander further explains that ”Almost no one ever goes to
trial. Nearly all criminal cases are resolved through plea bargaining-a guilty
plea by the defendant in exchange for some form of leniency by the prosecutor…
The pressure to plead guilty to crimes has increased exponentially since the advent of the War on
Drugs''[21]
because… the typical mandatory sentence for a first time offense in federal
court is five or ten years… Now simply by charging someone with an offense
carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of ten to fifteen years or life, prosecutors
are able to force people to plead guilty rather than risk a decade or more in
prison.” [22] She also points out that prosecutors are the most
influential officials in the criminal justice chain because they have the
discretion to decide which matters are dismissed outright, which go to trial
and on what charges.[23] In 2011
97% of federal criminal cases were resolved through plea bargains. [24]
Skeptics might ask,” What's the problem here? Aren't we
talking about people who committed the crime? If so shouldn't they do the
time?” That's partially true, but there is much more to the story. Data
indicates that drug use is statistically
the same among Blacks and whites,[25] but
because of the difference in the laws regarding powder cocaine and crack,
changes to the law on search and seizures and the discretion of prosecutors,
young Black men suffer an inordinate amount of the burden for these
transgressions. A young white man caught with powder cocaine is charged with a misdemeanor and released. A young Black man
is caught with crack convicted as a felon and forever forfeits his right to pursue a life- no more
voting-no more jobs-no
more housing no more, no more, no more.
Picture a nineteen year old Black man with no criminal
record, a high school dropout, maybe the father of a child, riding down the
street with some of his buddies, one of whom is a gang member with a loaded
pistol used in a previous crime and a little pot in his pocket. The police
flash their lights to stop the car, the gang member knowing he is in trouble
throws the pistol and the pot in the car, runs and shouts for everybody to do the same. The gang member
and our young man are caught.
They are charged with possession of a banned substance,
possession of an unlicensed firearm resisting arrest and the previous crime in
which the pistol was used. Our young man is told by his legal defender, whom he
meets just ten minutes before he is to be arraigned, that as a three strike
offender his charges can net him twenty five to life but the prosecutor is
willing to cut him a deal of five years for plea for possession.
End of story, end of the pursuit of happiness, end of
fatherhood. When our young man, who can't afford an attorney, accepts the deal
he will become a felon, another statistic. Upon release from prison five years
later, he won't be able to get a decent job and even if he gets his GED in
prison, he won't be able to get a student loan to go to college.
He won't be able to live with his child and the child's
mother if they reside in public housing. He won't be able to do a lot of things
and the numbers say he will probably end up back in prison and why not.
Recidivism rates are very high about 68%[26] and we
make it extremely difficult for ex-prisoners to survive on the outside.
“Eighty percent of criminal defendants are indigent and
unable to hire an attorney.”[27] In
2004, The American Bar Association released a report on the status of indigent
defendants stating that “all too often defendants plead guilty even if they are
innocent without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring.
“ [28]
In The New Jim Crow, Alexander explains how a number of factors
coalesced to permit establishment of a new caste of underclass people –young black
men- “who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society.” [29]
My disappointment is that this disenfranchisement of African
American men has occurred on my watch on our watch. I have been focused on equality,
affirmative action, diversity, etc. and have allowed the warning signs about
the plight of these young men to go unheeded. Way back in the 1980s I noticed
their absence at
commencements at high schools and colleges. There would be one young male graduate
for every three female graduate. Sadly, I did not pay sufficient attention to
that sign. Occasionally there would be an article in the Black press about the war on Young Black
men. There were also small outcries mainly from the Congressional Black Caucus
about various pieces of legislation to further The War on Drugs and finally
there were strong dissents by Justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice John Paul
Stevens warning about the Supreme Court's steady weakening of the Constitutional
protection of the Fourth Amendment- all to no avail.
I am not proud of the fact that my country is now depriving
so many of our young black sons and brothers of the liberty, freedom and
justice that are the hallmarks of the United States. History has shown that we
are a strong people of undying faith. We are survivors. The American dream of
equality and the right to the pursuit of happiness is real and alive. The
American people will not allow that dream to be tarnished.
I don't know how the New Jim Crow will be dismantled. The
system is extremely well entrenched, sanctioned legally, funded by the federal
government, enabled by decisions of the Supreme Court and the basis for the
employment for a very large industry-$74B as of 2007. It is estimated that one
out of every nine government employees work in corrections.[30]
The new Jim Crow is an unjust system designed to fasten the
shackles of impoverishment, despair and hopelessness on droves of young Black
men. That did not work for slavery. It did not work for Jim Crow and we won't
let it endure now.
I don't have the key for unlocking those chains and you, who
maybe just hearing about this situation for the first time also may not have
the answer yet, but together we will find a way to insure that the AMERICAN
DREAM SURVIVES FOR ALL OUR PEOPLE.
It won't be easy because there are enormous economic,
political and cultural concerns deeply involved in this phenomenon, but we will
find a way to do the right thing. We will need the attorneys to fight the legal
battles. We will need the media to ferret and disseminate the truth but mostly
we will need people to learn about this
atrocity and to demand a change. The historical lessons about the abolition of slavery, the
dismantling of Jim Crow and the victory for civil rights will be valuable in
the fight to free our brothers.
My high school history teacher told me we study history to
avoid the pitfalls of the past and to learn lessons that will help us build a
better world. If that is true, African American History Month is needed today more
than ever before-not to review past contributions of African Americans to our
society, but rather to herald this new threat to the idea that is America. We
need African American History Month this year to remind us how we worked
together in the past and now must work together in the present to secure the type future we would like
for all our children.
