- Originally published In These Times August 2004
Copyright 2004 Institute for Public Affairs
Prison in the Cards;
Many black men face a rough new rite of passage.
By: Silja J.A. Talvi
ACCORDING TO TWO recent research studies, the path that awaits young,
undereducated African-American men is more likely to lead them to
prison than anywhere else.
In fact, with the expansion of the nation's sprawling prison industrial
complex since the 1980s, things have gotten far, far worse for black
men everywhere.
Consider that in 1954 -- the year that the Supreme Court weighed in
favor of desegregation with their Brown v. Board of Education decision
-- an estimated 98,000 African-Americans sat behind bars. Today, that
figure stands at 884,500, or nine times the number of black men and
women incarcerated at the advent of the Civil Rights movement.
Given current trends, one of every three African-American men born
today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. According to the
authors of The Sentencing Project's recent report, "Schools and
Prisons: Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education," the situation
is largely attributable to the War on Drugs, particularly the grossly
disparate crack and powder cocaine federal sentencing guidelines.
Despite a U.S. Sentencing Commission recommendation to fully eliminate
such sentencing differentials, these guidelines have been supported by
both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Imprisonment is now so common for young men of color that it serves as
a veritable rite of passage. And no community has been as badly
impacted as African-American inner city neighborhoods, leading to a
phenomenon that many sociologists have begun to call the "mass
incarceration" of young, low-income black men.
"American society loses the contribution of those men going to prison,
in their roles as parents, workers, and citizens," says Professor Bruce
Western, professor of sociology at Princeton University.
Along with University of Washington sociology professor Becky Pettit,
Western recently co-authored an extensive research study, "Mass
Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S.
Incarceration," which was first published in the American Sociological
Review. Their study, conducted over a period of several years,
demonstrates conclusively that African-American men are now more likely
to end up in prison than to earn a bachelor's degree or even serve in
the military.
"I think the findings also indicate an institutional failure," says
Western. "The idea of universal rights of citizenship, social
membership, is a central part of American political culture, yet mass
incarceration has systematically limited the full participation of
low-education black men in American society. Democracy and civil
society are diminished and that is a collective loss."
Pettit and Western's dramatic findings further demonstrate that fully
60 percent of African-American male high-school dropouts born between
1965 and 1969 ended up doing time in prison by 1999.
These statistics cannot simply be reduced to notions of overt or subtle
racial prejudice in arrest, sentencing and incarceration rates, says
Western. Access to opportunities plays a key role.
In fact, when Pettit and Western analyzed Census 2000 data, they found
that while racial inequalities in imprisonment rates continued at
exactly the same exorbitant rate, class and education inequality had
become the more significant marker of the American mass incarceration
trend. Based on Pettit and Western's analysis, the lifetime risks of
imprisonment for all men roughly doubled from 1979 to 1999, but nearly
all of this increased risk was experienced by those who never make it
to college.
"Virtually the whole burden of the prison boom has fallen on those with just a high school education," Western notes.
The Bush Administration has taken a do-nothing approach to the fact
that the imprisonment of underprivileged African-Americans has reached
epidemic proportions.
On July 23, President Bush stood before the Urban League's National
Convention in Detroit and lauded the diversion of additional funding to
federal prosecutors, before asserting that "progress for
African-Americans . . . depends on safe streets."
The only mention of prisoners during the President's speech related to
the fate of the more than 600,000 men and women who are released from
prison each year. "Let's make sure we're the country of the second
chance," President Bush told the crowd, without mentioning how his
administration would rectify the federally-instituted denial of student
loans, public housing, or welfare to any person convicted of a drug
crime. (Most states still have such bans in effect, although some
legislatures have taken minimal steps to ease the plight of
ex-offenders.)
The White House spin, in this regard, seems to be working. Even in this
crowd of seasoned civil rights supporters, President Bush's comments
were met with a strong round of applause.