Nasty Little Man

Race matters: "Let's go save our boys"

Last Friday, I was at the state conference of the PA NAACP. I stayed long enough to have lunch and attend the afternoon workshop on criminal justice. Listening to the speakers, it was clear that the point I made in last week's post that whites can never truly understand what minorities go through was right on target. The workshop opened with a viewing of the Frontline report "Snitch," which documents the case of Clarence Aaron, who received three life sentences for driving some friends to buy drugs. Clarence was convicted solely on the testimony of the other conspirators. There was no other evidence for conviction. Thanks to mandatory minimums, Clarence got life.

The moderator of the workshop noted that in 1954, just before the Brown v. Board of Education decision, there were 87,000 blacks in prison. Today there are 1.2 million. What is wrong with this picture?

I couldn't help but think of some other statistics. (I hope I'm remembering this correctly) 1 in 3 young adults black males (18-35, I think) are in the care of the Department of Corrections, either incarcerated, on parole, or on probation.

The government claims that this is the result of the war on drugs, but that policy has been so ineffective that the drug supply on the street hasn't changed. Meanwhile, an entire generation of black men is being lost, which prompted the moderator to say, "Let's go save our boys."

And another statistic that popped to mind, although it is history: In the early 1900s, as lynchings dropped, state executions rose.

Is it just a coincidence that state policy seems to encourage the ongoing oppression of black males?

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 11:25 PM