Clinton Helped Create the New Jim Crow

Yesterday, former U.S. President Bill Clinton addressed the NAACP National Convention. During his address, he acknowledged that he was wrong for increasing sentences for drug offenses.

In Michelle Alexander's brilliant masterpiece, The New Jim Crow, she fully explains how truly wrong Clinton was.  He paved the way for the New Jim Crow.  Ms. Alexander states that:

Despite the jaw-dropping impact of the "get tough" movement on the African American community, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans revealed any inclination to slow the pace of incarceration. To the contrary, in 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he...

Once elected, Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal "three strikes and you're out" law...The $30 billion crime bill sent to President Clinton in August 1994 was hailed as a victory for the Democrats, who "were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own." The bill created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and expansion of state and local police forces. Far from resisting the emergence of the new caste system, Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives imagined possible a decade earlier. As the Justice Policy Institute has observed, "the Clinton Administration's 'tough on crime' policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history." (page 55)

Ms. Alexander further asserts that Clinton "ended welfare as we know it" and established a "life-time ban on eligibility for welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense-including simple possession of marijuana."

Yet, this is the man that y'all adore. This is the man that y'all call the first black president. Smoking weed, playing the saxophone, being raised in a single parent household and being a womanizer don't make you black or "colored". Such a suggestion is racist.

While Clinton was locking up massive numbers of black people, his wife, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, stood by his side and supported those oppressive policies. We need much more than an acknowledgement of the obvious. We need clear answers to tough questions. We need reforms to correct the disaster that Bill Clinton helped create.

Obama Discusses the New Jim Crow

This past Tuesday, President Barack Obama spoke at that NAACP National Convention. For me, that was the highlight of the Convention. Unlike some of his past speeches to black audiences, he did not lecture us about personal responsibility.  He did not entertain us with singing and other Negro antics. In his speech, President Obama discussed real problems plaguing the black communities, problems such as mass incarceration, sentencing disparities, poverty, unemployment and housing discrimination. Obama talked about hope, redemption and reformation. His speech was substantive, timely, relevant and solutions oriented. Even Obama's critics on the left will have a hard time criticizing that speech.

The brother talked about how America incarcerates more people than all of Europe combined. Obama explained in stark terms how the black incarceration rate greatly exceeds the white incarceration rate. He explained how African Americans receive much harsher sentence than whites who commit the same crimes.

No only did Obama discuss the problem, he put forth concrete proposals to address the problem of mass incarceration. He discussed reducing sentences for non-violent drug offenses. He mentioned how he commuted the sentences of over 40 people. He discussed increasing educational programs and other beneficial programs for people who are in prison. Such programs will reduce the recidivism rate and help transform ex-offenders into productive citizens. He mentioned the need to restore voting rights for ex-offenders.  Obama further discussed how investing more in education and other preventive measures is fiscally responsible. The costs of such measures is much lower than the cost of mass incarceration.

The President's proposed reforms are crucial. We must make sure that Obama's speech is not just another speech. We must pressure Congress and the President to actually implement and enact those proposals.

By the way, today, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit a federal prison.

Dear Black People: You Are Invisible and Irrelevant

So far, I have watched all three of the 2012 Presidential and Vice Presidential debates. Each debate lasted approximately 90 minutes. All three moderators were white. The final debate is on Monday. Again, the moderator will be white. The last debate will focus on foreign policy. During these debates, the candidates have discussed important issues such as the economy, taxes, education, women's rights, health care reform and terrorism. However, none of the debates discussed race or affirmative action.

Race is still a major issue in America. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether the University of Texas' affirmative action policy is constitutional. If the Supreme Court strikes down UT's affirmative action policy, the doors to higher education will be closed to many African American young people. Universities and colleges will become more and more segregated. However, that issue was not important enough for the debate moderators.

Moreover, the moderators failed to raise the problem of racial profiling. New York city's racist stop-and-frisk policy has been a major issue in the civil rights community. In New York and many cities around the country, young, innocent black men and women are constantly stopped, harassed and humiliated by police just because of the color of their skin.

Another example of racial profiling is the tragic Trayvon Martin case. This year, self-appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman hunted and shot down Trayvon Martin just because he was black. After great struggle and massive protests, Zimmerman was finally charged with murder.

In addition to racial profiling, mass incarceration was not raised during any of the debates. As explained in Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow, the so-called War on Drugs has led to the mass incarceration of black people. Due to the mass incarceration problem, a disproportionate percentage of African Americans have been reduced to second class citizens even after they leave prison. In most states, they lose the right to vote and other precious rights.

In this mythological post-racial era, none of those issues matter. Unfortunately, the debates are fixated on issues that mainly impact white, moderate, middle class, undecided voters. As far as the presidential debates are concerned, black people are invisible and our concerns are irrelevant.

These debates have taught me one thing. In the eyes of the debate organizers and most of the viewers, the plight of Big Bird is far more important than the plight of my people. "Binders full of women" are more important than prisons full of black people.

This article is cross-posted on Jack and Jill Politics.

The Ongoing Crisis in the Black Community

In his New York Times Op-Ed titled Too Long Ignored, Bob Herbert writes:

The Schott Foundation for Public Education tells us in a new report that the on-time high school graduation rate for black males in 2008 was an abysmal 47 percent, and even worse in several major urban areas — for example, 28 percent in New York City.

The astronomical jobless rates for black men in inner-city neighborhoods are both mind-boggling and heartbreaking. There are many areas where virtually no one has a legitimate job.

More than 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. And I’ve been hearing more and more lately from community leaders in poor areas that moms are absent for one reason or another and the children are being raised by a grandparent or some other relative — or they end up in foster care.

Black men, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, have nearly a one-third chance of being incarcerated at some point in their lives. By the time they hit their mid-30s, a solid majority of black men without a high school diploma have spent time in prison.

Homicide is the leading cause of death for young black men, with the murderous wounds in most cases inflicted by other young black men.

White families are typically five times as wealthy as black families. More than a third of all black children are growing up in poverty. In Ohio, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty, the percentage is more than half.

The aspect of this crisis that is probably the most important and simultaneously the most difficult to recognize is that the heroic efforts needed to alleviate it will not come from the government or the wider American society. This is a job that will require a campaign on the scale of the civil rights movement, and it will have to be initiated by the black community.

During the Civil Rights Movement, the problem was easier to identify and target. Through sustained demonstrations, litigation and legislation, we were able to break the chains of the oppressive Jim Crow era. Similarly, today, it is easy to demonstrate against high profile incidents of police brutality. It is easy to boycott or condemn modern manifestations of blatant racism such as the rantings of Don Imus, Glenn Beck or Dr. Laura Schlissinger.

However, Bob Herbert's call to action is a far greater challenge. Every weekend, I hear about another shooting in Baltimore. Such violence is the norm in Baltimore, D.C., Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, Chicago, Gary and other major inner cities. The other weekend, 12 young African Americans were shot by other African Americans in Baltimore. We can march in the streets until our feet fall off. Will that stop the drugs and guns from flooding the inner cities? Will marches and prayer vigils ever stop young brothers and sisters from shooting and killing each other? Will lawsuits increase the black high school graduation rates? Will legislation force fathers to raise and guide their own children? Of course not.

To address these problems, some activists have advocated for more mentoring programs. Others have urged religious institutions to play a more significant role in community. Unfortunately, such efforts alone will not remedy our myriad of problems. Such problems stem from entrenched, institutionalized racism and structural inequality.