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<h1 class="title">2005's Ten Worst Places to be Black</h1>
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<div class="submitted">Tue, 07/31/2007 - 17:00 — <a
href="http://endmassincarceration.org/user/126"
title="View user profile.">Bruce A. Dixon</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://endmassincarceration.org/node/11">http://endmassincarceration.org/node/11</a><br>
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<p><span style="color: rgb(47, 79, 79);"><strong>by BAR Managing Editor
Bruce Dixon</strong></span></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><span
style="color: rgb(47, 79, 79);"><strong>This article was originally
published in Black Commentator on July 14, 2005 </strong></span></p>
<div align="left">
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><span style="color: rgb(144, 9, 0);"><em>"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."</em></span></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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. </p>
</div>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p class="bc_2"
style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0.9em; padding: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit;"><span
style="color: rgb(47, 79, 79);"><span
style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit;"><strong
style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit;">2005's
Ten Worst Places to be Black</strong></span></span></p>
<p class="bc_2"
style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0.9em; padding: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit;"><span
style="color: rgb(47, 79, 79);"><strong
style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit;"><span
style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 12px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit;"><strong
style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-size: 13px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit;">by
BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon</strong></span></strong></span></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<div>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>Measuring
the quality of life in black America</strong></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.<strong> </strong> 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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><span style="color: rgb(144, 9, 0);"><em>"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."</em></span></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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 “<a href="http://www.cul-chicago.org/RP/rp1a.htm"
style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank">The Vicious Circle</a>: Race, Prison, Jobs and
Community in Chicago, Illinois and the Nation.”</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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 <strong>BC</strong> did,
and here are the results.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>The
Ten Worst States in the US to be Black</strong></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><span style="color: rgb(144, 9, 0);"><em>"Wisconsin,
and in particular the Milwaukee area justly merit the invidious
distinction of the worst place in the nation to be black"</em></span></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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. </p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><a
href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/images/stories/2005_10worst_chart1.gif"
style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;"><img alt=""
src="cid:part1.01090507.07010209@freedomarchives.org"
style="border-width: 0px;" height="271" border="0" width="388"></a></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>How
Much Better is Better? How Much Worse is Worst?</strong></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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. </p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>Dishonorable
Mentions</strong></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">This
distinction goes to New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota, Pennsylvania,
and New York. </p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><span style="color: rgb(144, 9, 0);"><em>"Minnesota had
the fastest growing prison population in the country as of mid-year
2004."</em></span></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>BC</strong>’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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">STATE...........BLACK-WHITE
DISPARITY</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">New
Jersey............13.15 to one</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">Connecticut...........12.77
to one</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">Minnesota.............12.63
to one</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">Pennsylvania..........10.53
to one</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">New
York.............. 9.47 to one</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>What
About the South?</strong></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><span style="color: rgb(144, 9, 0);"><em>"The old South
is just not a good place to be poor, whether one is black or white."</em></span></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">Alert
readers may have noticed that except for Delaware and Texas, not a
single southern state made <strong>BC</strong>’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? </p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><a
href="http://blackagendareport.com/content/images/stories/2005_10worst_disparities.gif"
style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;"><img alt=""
src="cid:part2.05030107.05060307@freedomarchives.org"
style="border-width: 0px;" height="367" border="0" width="390"></a></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><span class="bc_2">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, t</span><span
class="bc_2">he Old South is just not a good place to be poor, whether
one is black or white.</span></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>Federal
Prisoners: Another Texas and then some</strong></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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? </p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"
align="center"><span style="color: rgb(144, 9, 0);"><em>"Problems
created by bad public policies demand solutions that include changing
those destructive policies." </em></span></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">The
missing incarcerated, who did not figure in <strong>BC</strong>’s
calculations for the Dishonorable Mentions and Ten Worst list because <strong>BC</strong> 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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><strong>Better
Lives, Better Families, Better Communities</strong></p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">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, <strong>BC</strong> 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. </p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;">The
problem is that public policy in America only moves in the direction of
addressing human needs when under the insistent pressure of <a
href="http://www.blackcommentator.com/144/144_cover_movement.html"
style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0); text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank">mass movements</a>. 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.</p>
<p class="bc_2" style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em;"><span
style="color: rgb(144, 9, 0);"><em>Bruce Dixon is the Managing Editor
at Black Agenda Report. He can be reached at
bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com <br>
</em></span></p>
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