[Ppnews] 2005's Ten Worst Places to be Black - Black Mass Imprisonment

Political Prisoner News ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Sat Jul 14 12:59:47 EDT 2012


  2005's Ten Worst Places to be Black

Tue, 07/31/2007 - 17:00 --- Bruce A. Dixon 
<http://endmassincarceration.org/user/126>
http://endmassincarceration.org/node/11

*by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon*

*This article was originally published in Black Commentator on July 14, 
2005 *

/"It's high time to begin constructing useful indices with which to 
measure the quality of life, not for just a fortunate few, but for the 
broad masses of our people."/

The pervasive corporate media bubble, which grossly distorts the views 
most Americans have of the world beyond their shores, and of life in 
America's black one-eighth, operates to fool African Americans, too.  
While a fortunate few of us are doing very well indeed, and many more 
are hanging on as best we can, the conditions of life for a substantial 
chunk of black America are not substantially improving, and appear to be 
getting much worse.

*2005's Ten Worst Places to be Black*

**by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon**

This is a truth which can't be found anywhere in the corporate media, 
but it is nevertheless one with which we must familiarize ourselves in 
preparation for the upcoming national black dialogue.  It is high time 
to begin constructing useful indices with which to measure the quality 
of life, not just for a fortunate few, but for the broad masses of our 
people in America's black one-eighth.

*Measuring the quality of life in black America*

Painting an accurate picture is not difficult.  Useful measures of 
family income and cohesiveness, of home ownership, life expectancy, 
education levels, of unemployment and underemployment abound.  But among 
all the relevant data on the state of black America today one factor 
stands out: the growth of America's public policy of racially selective 
policing, prosecution, and mass imprisonment of its black citizens over 
the past 30 years.* * The operation of the crime control industry has 
left a distinctive, multidimensional and devastating mark on the lives 
of millions of black families and on the economic and social fabric of 
the communities in which they live.

/"More than any other single public policy, America's crime control 
industry magnifies and exacerbates racial inequality. deepens black 
poverty, and wreaks widespread destabilization on black families and 
communities."/

About half the nation's 2.2 million prisoners are black.  With only 36 
million of us, that's an astounding 3% of African Americans, counting 
all ages and both sexes, languishing behind bars, with a roughly equal 
number on probation, parole, house arrest or other court supervision. 
Almost one in three 18-year-old black males across the board is likely 
to catch a felony conviction, and in some communities nearly half the 
black male workforce under 40 have criminal records.  A felony 
conviction in America is a stunningly accurate predictor of a life of 
insecure employment at poverty-level wages and no health care, of 
fragile family ties, of low educational attainment and limited or no 
civic participation, and a strong likelihood of re-imprisonment.  Each 
month, tens of thousands of jobless, skill-less, stigmatized and often 
anti-socialized ex-prisoners are released back into communities that 
lack job and educational opportunities, where intact families are more 
the exception than the rule, and where upward social mobility is a myth.

Clearly, more than any other single public policy, the day to day 
operation of America's crime control industry magnifies and exacerbates 
racial inequality, deepens black poverty, and wreaks widespread 
destabilization on black families and communities.  Among the many 
scholars and researchers who have persuasively argued and extensively 
documented these conditions is Dr. Paul Street of the Chicago Urban 
League in "The Vicious Circle <http://www.cul-chicago.org/RP/rp1a.htm>:  
Race, Prison, Jobs and Community in Chicago, Illinois and the Nation."

So if you want to know where black families fare the worst, where the 
lowest wages and life expectancy are, where to find the highest 
unemployment and the greatest number of single parent households among 
African Americans, you don't need an online survey.  You certainly don't 
count the black businesses or the black elected officials.  You count 
the black prisoners, and the former prisoners, and the ruined 
communities they come from and are discharged into.  That's what 
*BC* did, and here are the results.

*The Ten Worst States in the US to be Black*

/"Wisconsin, and in particular the Milwaukee area justly merit the 
invidious distinction of the worst place in the nation to be black"/

Wisconsin leads the nation in the percentage of its black inhabitants 
under lock and key.  Just over four percent of black Wisconsin, 
including the very old and the very young of both sexes, are behind 
bars.  Most of the state's African Americans reside in the Milwaukee 
area, and most of its black prisoners are drawn from just a handful of 
poor and economically deprived black communities where jobs, intact 
families and educational opportunities are the most scarce, and paroled 
back into those same neighborhoods.  So Wisconsin, and in particular the 
Milwaukee area justly merit the invidious distinction of the Worst Place 
in the Nation to be Black.

Iowa, with only a small black population, is not far behind.  The crime 
control industries in Wisconsin and Iowa seem to have learned to make 
the most efficient use of the preferred human material available to 
them, locking up the few black inhabitants of those states at a rate 
11.6 times higher than whites.

<http://blackagendareport.com/content/images/stories/2005_10worst_chart1.gif>

Texas, the nation's second largest state, is the third worst place to be 
black in America, and is in a class by itself, first because its 
extraordinary rate of black incarceration affects such a large 
population.  Only New York has more African Americans than Texas, and 
only the two relatively small states previously mentioned lock up a 
higher percentage of their black citizens.  Though California has 50 
percent more people, Texas has a slightly larger prison population and 
only a 5 to 1 ratio between its black and white rates of imprisonment.  
We may safely assume that since very few of its wealthy Texans are 
behind bars, Texas is just a very bad place to be poor, whether you're 
black or not.

A total of 900,000 African Americans live in Oklahoma, Arizona, 
Delaware, Nevada, Oregon and Colorado, and another 2 million-plus in 
California, where the proportion of prisoners among total African 
Americans hovers just under 3 percent.

*How Much Better is Better? How Much Worse is Worst?*

The answer in both cases is, unfortunately: not much.  Only one 
hundredth of a percentage point separates Iowa's 3.30% rate of black 
incarceration from that of Texas, with 3.29%.  Twenty-seven more states 
manage to lock up between 2 and 3% of their African American 
inhabitants, and only Maine, Hawaii and North Dakota fail to incarcerate 
more than 1.55% of blacks.  For whites, the national average ratio of 
prisoners to the general population is less than 4 tenths of one percent.

The damning truth laid bare once again by this fact, is that America's 
policy of racially selective policing, prosecuting and imprisonment of 
its black one-eighth is a truly consistent and national one, even though 
it is implemented with arbitrary severity by countless state and local 
authorities.

*Dishonorable Mentions*

This distinction goes to New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota, 
Pennsylvania, and New York.

/"Minnesota had the fastest growing prison population in the country as 
of mid-year 2004."/

*BC*'s Dishonorable Mention is reserved for those states not already 
enumerated which have the highest disparity between black and white 
incarceration rates.  Wisconsin and Iowa belong here too, with disparity 
rates between 11 and 12 to one, but they have already been mentioned.  
This dismal category is especially significant because black populations 
in three of the states with extraordinary disparity rates fall largely 
within the New York City Metropolitan Statistical area, the largest 
concentration of black people in North America.  Suffice it to say that 
for practical purposes, New York City and its environs are not that much 
better a place to be black than Texas.

STATE...........BLACK-WHITE DISPARITY

New Jersey............13.15 to one

Connecticut...........12.77 to one

Minnesota.............12.63 to one

Pennsylvania..........10.53 to one

New York.............. 9.47 to one

The second largest concentration of African Americans in New Jersey lies 
within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Statistical Area.  Note 
Pennsylvania's fourth place ranking on the Dishonorable list.

The "enlightened" state of Minnesota has two more peculiar 
distinctions.  First, it commits one of the nation's largest percentages 
of offenders to community corrections, the generic name for "non-prison" 
sentencing alternatives.  With one of the nation's highest rates of 
disparity between its black and white inhabitants, it appears that 
Minnesota's white offenders are disproportionately funneled into 
alternative sentencing situations, but we have no data to support such a 
conclusion.  Secondly, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of 
Justice Statistics, which together with the US Census Department is the 
source for all numerical data in this article, Minnesota had the fastest 
growing prison population in the country as of mid-year 2004, the latest 
date for which stats are publicly available.

*What About the South?*

/"The old South is just not a good place to be poor, whether one is 
black or white."/

Alert readers may have noticed that except for Delaware and Texas, not a 
single southern state made *BC*'s Ten Worst or its Dishonorable Mention, 
even though Louisiana is well known to have the nation' highest per 
capita rate of incarceration for its whole population.  How is this 
possible?

The answer is that our ranking is based solely on the percentage of a 
state's black population behind state and local prison walls.  The 
following table sorts the top 13 states in order of their relative black 
populations, from Mississippi with 36% to Illinois with 15%. This 
statistical approach catches all the states of the old South except 
Texas and Florida, and reveals an interesting pattern.

<http://blackagendareport.com/content/images/stories/2005_10worst_disparities.gif>

All eleven southern states in this table lock up noticeably higher per 
capita numbers of their whole populations, black, white and otherwise, 
than do New York and Illinois.  But southern rates of disparity between 
black and white imprisonment do not approach those of Illinois at 7.5 to 
one or New York's 9.5 to one.  Like Texas, nine of these eleven Southern 
states achieve their overall high imprisonment rates by confining white 
people to prison twice as often as New York and Illinois.  Furthermore, 
the five states with the highest black percentage of their total 
populations have rates of black imprisonment closer to those of Illinois 
and New York than to Texas.  Like Texas, the Old South is just not a 
good place to be poor, whether one is black or white.

*Federal Prisoners: Another Texas and then some*

Finally, discerning readers have probably noticed that near the 
beginning of this article the proportion of all African Americans in the 
nation's prisons and jails was given as about 3%, but the numbers quoted 
for only three states reached or exceeded that figure.  How did we get 
three percent?

/"Problems created by bad public policies demand solutions that include 
changing those destructive policies." /

The missing incarcerated, who did not figure in *BC*'s calculations for 
the Dishonorable Mentions and Ten Worst list because *BC* was unable to 
sort out their states of origin, race or region, are those in federal 
prisons and jails.  The federal gulag held about 170,000 people as of 
mid-year 2004, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, slightly 
more than the Texas prison system, and growing much faster.  We have not 
yet obtained racial breakdown data for federal prisons, but if and when 
it becomes available it may show racial disparities as severe as those 
in Illinois, which would suffice to make almost half of federal inmates 
African American.

*Better Lives, Better Families, Better Communities*

The work of reclaiming lives, families and communities shredded by 
America's incarceration binge must take place in hundreds of cities and 
towns and in several arenas.  Thousands of churches and local 
organizations are trying with scant resources to provide re-entry 
services to former prisoners.  While their efforts deserve praise and 
support, *BC* believes that problems created by bad public policies 
demand solutions that include changing those destructive policies. In 
fact, it is misleading and foolish to portray the problem of racially 
selective mass imprisonment as one addressable by a million individual 
solutions, by several hundred thousand family solutions, or by ten 
thousand black church and small business solutions.

The problem is that public policy in America only moves in the direction 
of addressing human needs when under the insistent pressure of mass 
movements 
<http://www.blackcommentator.com/144/144_cover_movement.html>.  Where 
will the mass movement come from to change America's racially selective 
policy of mass incarceration?  What will be its first tasks, and what 
will it look like?  These are among the key questions before black 
activists for the immediate future.

/Bruce Dixon is the Managing Editor at Black Agenda Report.  He can be 
reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com
/

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863-9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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