04 February 2007

For Black History Month: Lessons not learned

February is Black History Month in the U.S. It gives us an extra reason to ponder the journey of African-Americans from the early days of slavery, through Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, an on through the present day.

As we do so, most of us are thankful that our society has evolved to where African Americans are no longer bought and sold, treated not like people but rather as property, without reward, without a voice, and virtually without any rights at all.

Yes, we have evolved - somewhat. African-Americans are free. Like most Americans, they live their lives, go to school, have careers, have families. They are our teachers, our doctors, our stockbrokers, our Secretary of State.

But, even so, is our society really as enlightened today as we might like to believe? Have we really learned enough from the horrible mistake of slavery?

Perhaps not so much after all.

The Declaration of Independence proclaims that all persons are created equal. But, while we no longer practice slavery in this country, are people of color truly equal in our society?

While African-Americans are certainly much better off than they were in centuries past, the socio-economic disparity between the races remains pronounced in the U.S. today.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2005 median income for white households was $48,554, while that of black households was only $30,858.

The Bureau also reports that in 2001, 22.7 percent of blacks lived below the poverty level, while only 7.8 percent of non-Hispanic whites lived below the poverty level.

And racism and race-based discrimination, while not politically correct in this day and age, are still rampant. People - especially white people - are just not comfortable talking about it.

Witness Hurricane Katrina. We didn't see very many white people trapped inside that stadium.

On a wider scale, race-based inequity is perhaps most apparent in the criminal justice system, where the color of the defendant's skin and the victim's skin play a significant role in determining who receives the death penalty in the U.S.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), people of color have accounted for a disproportionate 43 percent of all executions since 1976, and currently account for 55 percent of inmates currently awaiting execution. While white victims account for approximately one-half of all murder victims, 80 percent of all death penalty cases involve white victims. Furthermore, according to the ACLU, "as of October 2002, 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim black, compared with 178 black defendants executed for murders with white victims."

Sometimes when I quote these statistics, the listener (usually white) will speculate that perhaps black people proportionally commit more murders than white people, and therefore are more likely to end up on death row. While this theory is racist by its very nature, and not based on facts, we can easily disprove it with actual numbers. A 1997 study of death sentences in Pennsylvania from 1983 through 1993 showed that a black defendant was 38 percent more likely to receive a death sentence than a white defendant accused of a similar crime. Yet Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, like several other governors across the nation, continues to sign death warrants and propagate this racially biased system.

None of this will change until our society evolves a whole lot further. None of this will change until WE change. All of us.

None of this will change until each of us - white, black, brown, yellow, purple, or polka-dot - can look in the mirror and look at each other and see humanity, not color.

None of this will change until, to paraphrase the great and wise Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., all people are judged not for the color of their skin but the content of their character.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous3:54 PM

    Mary:

    It will change. One way or another.

    The subversion of the Voting Rights Act with the drug war is hitting a critical mass with some 16 million Americans forming what the New York Times describes as a "criminal caste" in America. http://blog.leap.cc/?p=48

    The Jim Crow situation in America will resolve itself in one of two ways. either Americans will finally see the greater REAL danger of building an ever growing criminal underclass in society. Or American democratic society will break down under the combined stresses of mass political subversion and ever increasing criminal subculture. Both the outcome of the American drug war.

    I offer these essays, one is mine the other Ira Glasser formerly director of the ACLU, to expand on this issue.

    The invidious economics of Jim Crow

    Drug Busts=Jim Crow by Ira Glasser

    Crime and violence in Philadelphia will not be reduced while there is a $ 700 million black market for drugs in the city that entices ever younger children into drugs, bling and criminal culture.

    There is an ever greater urgency now because the U.S. government has allowed much of the record amount of Afghan opium that was produced last year to make its way here to America. The flow of heroin is a tsunami of destruction washing down on our streets that promises more crime and violence and mass disenfranchisement of poverty oppressed communities. America needs to quickly wake up to the fact that the drug war is undermining our democracy. Our public safety. Our public health. And even our national security.

    "The international drug control regime, which criminalizes narcotics, does not reduce drug use, but it does produce huge profits for criminals and the armed groups and corrupt officials who protect them. Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies." Afghanistan expert and New York University Professor Barnett Rubin, Sept. 21, 2006 testimony before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

    Dr. Rubin concluded: "If it were not illegal, it would be worth hardly anything. It's only its illegality that makes it so valuable."

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