Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America
By ORLANDO PATTERSON
Cambridge, Mass.
THE miscarriage of justice at Jena, La. — where five black high school students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted murder — and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations. However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times.
What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men.
Absolutely Agree here, and the disconnect between whites and blacks here is that most white people do not see this happening, and do not notice that the courts are used more often and more harshly when black males are involved. If the courts did this to white children, it would have been stopped a long time ago.
America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.
The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.
I don’t think its particularly odd. The black community is saddled with many issues, and those issues make it more difficult for the community to come together and attack them. It’s a paradox. Why don’t we come out to address the issues? Because the issues we need to address are often getting the better of us. Plus, like most Americans, we are manipulated by the media, and the media helps to determine what issues get the spotlight, and as a result, what gets dealt with. And moreso than most Americans, a siginificant segment of the community feels hopeless to change any of this stuff it because it has been going on for so long. We have historically had to fight society so hard for basic things (like voting, and equal oppurtunity) that as times change and problems change and some of the responsibility begins to fall on our shoulders, it becomes uncomfortable to deal with. It isnt uncomfortable for
me to deal with, I am very clear on what my community needs to do, its just uncomfortable and difficult to talk with white people about it.
How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration?
Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here.
Not just drug crimes (white people uses more drugs , but particular kinds of drug crimes: it takes 5 grams of crack for a mandatory minimum of 5 years, yet it takes 500 grams of cocaine for the same sentence. Is 5 grams of crack really 100 times worse than 500 grams of cocaine? In addition, police exercise a tremendous amount of discretion in terms of who to suspect, stop, arrest, etc,. In both cases, laws are created and discretion is excercised, in a way that aims, not at addressing crime in a uniform manner, but in a way that addresses a certain kind of law breaker, and punishes them harsher than others. This is institutionalized racism.
But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites.
These numbers exist
because of a history of judicial bias, racism, and/or economic hardships. They are the
result of years of those things. There is no way to divorce one from the other, and this is the beginning of our disagreement. For example of we've had these things to deal with in the past which have destroyed our community, sent scores of men to prison, ripped apart families, etc. what happens to the men when they come home, or the women they left, or the kids who grew up without them? The cycle not only continues, it grows. These types of people will tend to have more children than a family where both parents have a college degree (like mine). So yes the violence continues or even grows, we have scores of people who have been scarred by conditions in the ghetto.
Why is this? Several incidents serendipitously occurring at around the same time as the march on Jena hint loudly at a possible answer.
I dont find these anecdotes very useful in any way other than to connect his data to current events. They dont prove anything. Talk about spurious.
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In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias suit brought by a black former executive for the Knicks, Anucha Browne Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a “bitch” and a “ho” by the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black woman in such terms, it was “not as much ... I’m sorry to say” for a black man to do so.
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Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks.
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O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the nation’s recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover stolen memorabilia.
These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor. Isiah Thomas’s outrageous double standard shocked many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation.
What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse.
This is where he and I disagree. He is flatly saying that black relationships fail because of violence against black women by black men, and there is no data that makes that claim. The data says that Black women deal with a higher rate of domestic abuse, but its my opinion that the same thing that causes some black men to be abusive, is the same thing that causes some black male-female relationships to fail at high rates. In other words, domestic violence is a symptom of larger problems and not thee problem itself. Black women experience a higher rate of domestic violence and so do black men!! The picture he is painting makes it seem as if black women have everything together and black men are just beating them down. While Black women, on average, do achieve greater success than black men, there is a dysfunction in the black community, particularly in the poor black community, which I would say effects both sexes more or less equally.
Furthermore, to support the argument that domestic violence is born from other social problems in the community, chew on these facts: Current data indicate that despite a more than two-decade decline, African American women continue to experience a higher rate of intimate partner homicide compared to women of other races. In addition, African American women's rates of intimate partner violence are higher than every other group's, except American Indian women (U.S. Department of Justice, 2001).
So black women and American Indian women have something in common, domestic violence. Well what else do they have in common? Centuries of brutal racism and various forms of state-sponsored oppression. We have had to deal with a similar kind of ordeal and have developed some similar community problems. I dont think thats a coincidence.
The resulting absence of fathers — some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers — is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency.
I agree with this as well, although he attributes this mainly to domestic violence and I disagree. The causes of this are far more complex, than domestic violence, imo.
The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face — the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children’s care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods — all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle.
Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial. Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system — as we should and must do — disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated.
He doesn’t ever give an explanation for why this is so. My position is this: If, you could remove racial bias in the criminal justice black males will continue to go to prison, because a history of incarceration, economic hardship, racism and social oppression have endured long enough to have a lasting impact on our community. People are products of their environements and drugs, poverty, alcoholism, violence, etc. have been allowed to thrive in our communities for decades. If we could eliminate all of those problems with the snap of a finger, our people would still be dealing with their impact for generations to come.
Until we view this social calamity in its entirety — by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children — it will persist.
I do not agree with a central part of his article about unstable relations between the sexes being the chief problem, although I do agree too many of them are unstable. I just think those unstable relations are symptomatic of other issues. I think the situation is much more complicated than his analysis leads one to believe. However, I think I agree with his solution which is that the community has a responsibility to itself regardless of what obstacles have been, and still are placed before it; and I believe the greater society has a responsibility to right a wrong that it has had a heavy hand in creating. And I believe our community should waste no time waiting for the society get it right. If history has taught us anything, it is that waiting on society to do the right thing is a bad idea.
9/30/2007 2:30 PM
I think this is going to be alot more fun AND productive than some of the other discussions.