The New Jim Crow

[Michael Tee]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175215/tomgram%3A_michelle_alexander%2C_the_age_of_obama_as_a_racial_nightmare/#more

From The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, a very interesting study of how the GOP appeals to white racist voters by using the War on Drugs to repress the black community and allow selective enforcement procedures which come naturally to all police forces to create a scary image of criminal black men, crack hos and welfare queens to serve as a backdrop to Republican politicians who can promise their white suburban voters they will be "tough on crime," i.e., tough on blacks.

Great quote from H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's Chief of Staff:  "The whole problem is really the blacks.  The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” [/b]GOP policy in a nutshell over more than three decades.  Alexander shows EXACTLY how the GOP (and its competitors like Bill Clinton) have done exactly that.  The article incidentally sets out the role of affirmative action in this farce - - providing a convenient escalator for the token blacks who are pushed to the front of every GOP or Fortune 500 group photo as proof (a) that the GOP is not racist and (b) that America has "transcended" its racist past.  The summit of this ludicrous nonsense was the election of Obama portrayed as the capstone of the post-racial age of American politics.

This article ties together a lot of "inconvenient truths" - - that the incarceration rate for blacks is 6.5 times that of whites, that while black youths rack up many times more drug busts than white youth per capita, that hospital emergency room visits for drug abuse are three times more common for whites than for blacks, etc.    This article connects all the dots and produces some startling facts - - for example that despite all the bullshit we hear about black "progress," their poverty rates today are more or less what they were when Martin Luther King was making his "I Have a Dream" speech, and the black child poverty rate has actually worsened over that time.

The title of the book - - The New Jim Crow - - is a reference to the genius of the Felon Laws to disenfranchise blacks and return them in many ways to the same civic disabilities as existed before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Alexander goes over in some detail how various Felon Laws resurrect legal discrimination against blacks in such key areas as housing and employment, in effect sending them back to the Mississippi of 1945 as far as those key areas are concerned.

Great article and I strongly recommend it.

[sirs]

Evidence of this "selected" enforcement would be..................?

Lemme guess, it's "obvious", right?  Tough on crime couldn't possibly mean tough on crime.  It "obviously" has to mean some far more nefarious            Boy, the levels that the desperate will attain to is quite, enlightening

[Plane]

In every state there is very solid evidence of governmental , institutional , pervasive prejudice against human beings of the male persuasion!

I speak of course of the wildly out of balance incarceration rates of men vs women. Nowhere are there less man than Women locked up, in most states the ratio is more than two to one.

This is either solid evidence that the government at all levels is stacked against men , elese one must accept the rediculous notion that men deserve to be locked up at high rates more than women.

[sirs]

Precisely


















*snicker*

[kimba1]

I remember a 20/20 episode which they talked about drug traffiking and the drug carrier of choice is college girls.

no matter how public this information is no one will ever think a college girl is carrying drugs.

with all these girls gone wild videos you can`t even say it`s not possible to convince a girl to do this.

[Michael Tee]

<<This is either solid evidence that the government at all levels is stacked against men , elese one must accept the rediculous notion that men deserve to be locked up at high rates more than women.>>

It's good to see you taking such an interest in statistical studies of prejudice, plane.  If you take the trouble to pursue your studies further, you will see that among males, there is an impressive difference in the stats between blacks and whites - - for example, the one quoted in the article that whereas the no. of prisoners incarcerated for drug use offences is highly skewed towards the black side, the rate. of those admitted to hospital ERs for drug-use-related complaints is three-to-one for whites.  Indicating that while more whites than blacks USE drugs, more blacks than whites are busted for doing so.

Even more impressive, though not reproduced in the article are dozens of studies indicating across-the-board insitutional bias and prejudice against blacks, such as percentage of first-time offenders in each race who are let off with warnings or referred onward into the criminal justice system, percentage of first-time offenders in the system who are given alternatives to incarceration or alternatives to convictions that leave a criminal record, a whole raft of studies associated with the well-known "criminal offence" of DWB - - driving while black, etc.

But it's good to see you're at least on the right track - - statistics.  Start with the male-female thing and them move on to the white-black thing.  Might open your eyes.  Don't worry, just kidding, let's say instead they might open your eyes if you wanted them to be open.

However, the article that I linked to was for those who have already reached the point where institutional bias and systemic prejudice are not novel concepts.  It assumed that its readers had already gone through Stats 101.  It was really dealing something entirely new and different, i.e., with the use of Felon Laws to roll back the advances made by blacks in the wake of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws.  This was the meaning of the title, The New Jim Crow. The GOP and their conservative Democratic fellow-racists are really on to something, have been for quite some time, and this book has sort of pulled it all together for us.

[Christians4LessGvt]

the sooner they throw away "the crutch"
given to them by the welfare pimps
the sooner they will reach their destiny
look...their poverty rate is the same after
all these "so called helping" liberal programs
but their graduation rates, crime/incarceration rates,
abortion rates, and illegitimate children rates have
sky-rocketed....as usual the liberal programs of
the nanny state have failed and actually made
things worse. the real racists are on the Left
that have produced these horrid results!

[Xavier_Onassis]

Being as the "welfare programs" you allude to were discontinued under the Clinton Administration, your screed is dated.
Aid for Dependent Children is about all that is left of this.

If you compare states where payments are small (Mississippi and Alabama) with those that pay more (NY and NJ) you will see that graduation rates are actually LOWER in the states that pay very little.

[kimba1]

well..

I can`t say I got anything against crutches
since I did use quite afew of these programs and I gotta say I`m very doubtful I would be better person without them.
but the one complaint i do have about them is the unstructured way it`s set up.
getting money to pay the rent is not too hard.
but using the system to find a job, not that easy.
getting my skills up to speed is a task.
not very much is done to simply get people working.
but then I got no idea how you`ll get a 65year old chinese lady who only knows how to knit hats to be a paralegal.it`s not like she`s unwilling to learn.
these are the people that needs these programs the most and  they`re very likely not using  them.

[Christians4LessGvt]

XO I never mentioned the word "welfare"
I speak of your failed nanny state....the nanny state..cradle to grave..it is much more than welfare
under many different names/headings....that has produced MISERABLE RESULTS
with that said in 2008...total government spending on welfare or aid to the poor amounted to $714 billion
the left traded in the plantation for other ways to keep the black man down and dependent on the state
alls wees needs is a few moes billionz to makes it right dis time for them po negroes!
the Left and their programs are an insult to African Americans....
the Left has been successful at keeping the black man down and dependent....
it's like a drug dealer giving out goodies to his customers....it assures more customers
the Left uses it's racist policies to get more votes.
what a sad and sick way to stay in office...using and extending the black man's plight

[Xavier_Onassis]

When rich people do not like to pay taxes, they naturally always appreciate the point of view that everyone would be better off if they were to just not pay taxes and keep all their money. The idea that lowering taxes always raises revenues is utterly delightful to such people. It isn't always true, but that is unimportant.

The idea that God gave them all their money as reward for hard work and proper living is a pleasant one, and so giving it away just has to be for the worse.

[sirs]

When rich people do not like to pay taxes, they naturally always appreciate the point of view that everyone would be better off if they were to just not pay taxes and keep all their money. The idea that lowering taxes always raises revenues is utterly delightful to such people. It isn't always true, but that is unimportant.

And the fact that it has consistently shown an increase in revenues, when such tax cuts have been implimented is also "not so important", isn't it

The idea that God gave them all their money as reward for hard work and proper living is a pleasant one, and so giving it away just has to be for the worse.

Not sure where the "God gave them their money" crack came from, but what Xo appears to be saying is that of course, we need folks who just know better to "make them give it away", via taxes, right??

[Michael Tee]

<<the sooner they throw away "the crutch"
given to them by the welfare pimps
the sooner they will reach their destiny>>

I'll bet that every black Republican that the GOP likes to use as window dressing to prove that they're not really racists is the beneficiary of one or more of those "crutches" that are made available by those "welfare pimps," a.k.a. underpaid, hard-working and conscientious civil servants working for the all levels of democratically elected governments in the U.S.A.  Whether we are talking Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice, I'll bet there isn't one of them that made it entirely on their own.  This myth of the self-made independent American hero is 99.99% bullshit.


<<look...their poverty rate is the same after
all these "so called helping" liberal programs
but their graduation rates, crime/incarceration rates,
abortion rates, and illegitimate children rates have
sky-rocketed....>>

Well, I'm not sure about the "sky-rocketing" and I'm not sure that the "illegitmate" birth rate hasn't gone down, but even assuming that what you said is correct in all respects - - Thank you.  Thank you for so readily demonstrating the power of entrenched systemic and institutional racism in your country and thank you for demonstrating the total inadequacy - - cheapness, in truth - - of the pathetic half-measures that your racist white government has been willing take to rectify the problem, while at the same time being perfectly willing to blow $3 trillion on a war of unprovoked aggression against people who posed no threat to you at any time.

<<as usual the liberal programs of
the nanny state have failed ...>>

No shit, Sherlock.  Question is, WHY did they fail and the answer is, they failed because they were half-assed, grossly underfunded and did not provide an across-the-board attack on ALL the contributory problems at the same time - - education AND housing AND neighbourhood policing AND health & welfare AND mental health AND Parks & Recreation.  Any nation that can spend $3 trillion on a criminal war of choice while ignoring the actual and real problems at home of such magnitude is bound to fail in every important respect and in fact IS failing as we speak.

<<and actually made
things worse. >>

That's impossible.  They prevented a deteriorating situation from futher deteriorating but they could not hold back the tide agaisnt the forces of racism and fascism.

<<the real racists are on the Left>>

Oh, sing it brother.  And War is Peace and Freedom is Slavery, etc.  We've all been there before.  We've all seen the Bizarro World of the lunatic fringe of the far right, where up is down and down is up. 

[Christians4LessGvt]

over the last 30 years the nation has turned towards bigger government
and now look at the results.....
spin it any way you want
but the botton line is the botton line
we are near bankrupt
we are not educating our kids
crime is worse than ever
and all you say "well we haven't spent enough"
big gvt has failed miserably!

[Michael Tee]

<< . . . and all you say "well we haven't spent enough">>

Happens to be the truth.  If the $3 trillion blown to hell in Iraq had been spent on a comprehensive, all-fronts attack on all the factors continuing to plague the victims of American racism you'd be half-way towards a solution.

You want results but you don't want to pay for results.  So you have half-assed educational solutions, half-assed housing solutions, half-assed policing solutions, always underfunded, never effective.  Well you know what?  THERE'S NO FREE LUNCH.  If you are not prepared to pay the price to redress the victims of your own American racism, the problem will never be resolved.