Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 September 1994 — Page 2

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THE INDIANAPOLIS RECORDER

SATURDAY. SEPTEMBER 10.1W4

Judicial balance is heavier for people of color

EDITORIALS

Media, white lies and crime Americans probably fear crime more than just about anything, but we seem to have an insatiable appetite for watching crime on television and at the movies. A classic love, hate relationship if ever there was one. The more significant and harmful aspects of this fascination are played out in the news media. Crime and its somewhat obvious relationship with ratings, listeners, readers and sales of media products has somewhat distorted the average person's view of crime in America. For example, very few people realize there have been periods in American history that have had much more violence and crime than now. There were more murders in San Francisco in the late 1800’s than there were in the late 1980’s. A more alarming fact is the mass media and many leaders try to portray crime as a minority problem. Because of this, hardly anyone knows the majority of violent crimes and all crimes reported in America are committed by whites. This is not the impression you get from watching television or from reading various news publications. Instead, the media rather subtly focuses on percentages, and talks almost exclusively about proportionality as it relates to crime. Why is that? One of the most telling statistics in the criminal justice arena reveals that while whites commit the majority of both all crimes reported and of violent crimes, African-Americans get sent to jail more often. No media analysts ever talks about this strange proportion. If an individual commits the most crimes then that individual should be most often jailed. Perhaps the lawyers that get these folks sent to jail at higher rates are suspects, or perhaps this simply stresses the fact that justice has never been blind in America. The media on the other hand are blind whenever it wants to be. And as it concerns crime this creates the false impression that minorities commit all the crimes. This is simply not true. The criminal justice system routinely hands out longer sentences to minorities than it does to whites convicted of the same or equivalent offenses. This proportionality is hardly ever mentioned and nothing has ever been done about the obvious injustice it reflects. Being poor and accused of a crime is probably twice as risky as being middle class and accused of the same crime. That of course means that equal justice under the law is largely a theory^ but hardly a practice. Americans should be more concerned about the system of unequal justice that haunts the halls of justice rather than crime. We should also be aware that our love affair with crime shows and crime reports has distorted both the popular perception of who commits crime and the actual crime. But perhaps the most serious lie is the illusion that nothing can be done about crime other than to incarcerate people. The proportion of Americans in jail defies logic, science and common sense. We’re not helping solve the crime problem by locking up more people than any other nation of comparable means. There are ways to discourage crime and very few of them have anything to do with incarceration. The more people you lock up, the higher your crime rate gets. This is a little secret that is widely understood by those involved in the criminal justice system. Case in point. Washington D.C., is the most heavily policed district in the U.S., and D.C. has more people in jail than anybody else but yet it has the worst crime you’ve ever seen. The media has told us that, when you lock up these people the crime rate is supposed to fall, not rise. The media is wrong and most people who have been led to believe this lie, also believe that crime and punishment only effects AfricanAmericans and Latinos. Well you’ve been sold down a river of lies and tears that has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry called the criminal justice system, that has produced more failure than any industry ever invented. Its the only American enterprise along with the welfare system that gets paid large amounts to create more business for itself. In fact, it should more properly be called the criminal manufacturing system. The more it fails the more it costs.

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In the past month or so that I have been speaking to various groups and churches, I have felt compelled to speak the truth about love. Because the reality is that too seldom do Black and white Americans speak'truth to each other. Too often we have shied away from sharing each other’s pain and joy. And while AfricanAmericans know the world of white America, very few of white America knows the world of African-Americans. The result of our failure to be truthful with each other has been that often. It’s as if we are speaking two different dialects of the same language in the best of times and two distinctly different, unrelated languages in the worst of times. We have, too often, based our common life in America, on lies or half-truths. For example, criminal justice issues. In the eight months since I have been executive director ofthe Commission for Racial Justice, ISperoent20 percent of my letters have been about the criminal justice system. They come ftom prisoners themselves, sometimes admitting their guilt, but still pointing to the inequities of sentencing or the racism they feel in treatment they receive by guards and prison authorities. They tell of how the Klan is active in one prison in Florida. They tell of how they have received unequal treatment in New York, Illinois and in states all across this country. The most difficult letters and calls come from mothers with sons on death row. I have written about one such case, the Chain of Rocks Bridge case in St. Louis, where four young AfricanAmerican men sit on death row after a trail which included questionable testimony and evidence which mysteriously disappeared. But there are dozens of other stories. Indeed, AfricanAmericans still are disproportionately on death row. That’s why the Congressional Black Caucus held up its support of the President’s Crime Bill for inclusion of a racial justice provision, which would be used as long as people of color remain disproportionately represented on death rows. Time Magazine recently wrote, “the perception among Blacks that the criminal justice system discriminates against them is pervasive and deep.” ! pointed to the fact that justice in America still seems swifter when the murder victim is white. Sixty-three African-Americans have been executed for murdering white, while one white has been executed for murdering a Black in the past 17 years. Interestingly, while many African-American probably would agree with Time's statement, the magazine received letters from whites who strongly disagreed. It was one more indication of the gulf between what Black America perceives is reality and what white America perceives. The letters I receive don’t just come from

prisoners or their hunily members, either. They come from ordinary citizens, such as the woman in southern Illinois who wrote that in her entire lifetime her town never has had an African-American on a jury. Or like the person in Georgia whose

Gvil Rights Journal ByKRNKl POWEll JACKSON

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does not treat all citizens equally, then the perceived injustice is a

reality.

It was the judicial system which ruled that Blacks were only twothirds human, through the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision. Not since the days of lynchings in the South, when Black men were supposedly looking at a white woman or for not stepping off the

routine speeding ticket is becoming a real struggle curb when a white person passed them on the for justice. Or the case in Virginia where an ill street, have African-Americans felt that they could African-American man was taken off a bus, and receive equal treatment by the U.S. judicial system, even after his relative informed the bus driver and Even as the African-American leaders and the sheriff that he was ill and not intoxicated, the groups who fought for integration of schools and man was forced to leave the bus and the relative public accommodations in the 1940’s, 50’s and forced to stay on. The man was then left by the 60’stumed to thejudidal system for these changes, sheriff at a local truck stop, known to be KKK they were experiencing the water hoses and dogs stronghold, rather than taken to a hospital. That of the local sheriffs all across the South. The man has not been seen since. scales of justice have not always been balanced These are just a few of the stories I have heard, when it comes to people of color.

The fact is that if there is a perception that the laws of our land and the system which enforces them

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The Uptown Kids show positives of ‘hoods’

In the U.S. today, there are approximately 3.5 millin people living in 1.3 million’spublichousing projects. In New York City alone, there are nearly 600,000 adults and children residing in the city’s public housing, a population that would constitute the nation’s 19th largest city. And almost half of the residents of these projects are under 21. Many Americans think of inner-city projects as drug-infested and crime ridden jungles where a society of children live hopelessly. But the Uptown Kids show that along with the struggle, there is hope for children in the projects. The Uptown Kids, written by Terry Williams and William Komblum, shows us that not all inner-city projects are hell holes with dealers, addicts, thieves and others out to make a quick buck. This insightful book shows us the other side of life in housing projects and proves children raised in public housing are not doomed from birth. The authors who insist that urban public housing can be good places to raise children and adolescents, wrote outstanding accounts which examine the lives of young people from the

Child

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By MARIAN

WRIGHT EDE1MAN

Radio asked Dexter if he would like mainstream society are challenged to write commentary for a program: by the poverty, racism and He would be paid modestly for three discrimination they face daily, they minutes of his comments on teenage can overcome. With the suppmt of life in the projects. Dexter accepted the community and family who trust the offer and happily rushed home to and believe in them, they cam make tell his mother. She was interested their dreams come true, only in how much he would be paid. This book serves asagift of hope This was neither the first time nor the to urban families and all families last that she would ignore his and as an eye-opener to individuals achievements and focus on what sheltered from the harsh trials and

Harlem projects to support their Dexter considered the most cress tribulations of inner-city life, theory. aspect of things.” Children caught in the tangles web The street language used by the His mother’s only concern is that of urban projects did not choose youth in thisstudy tell their lifestories he brings money into their single- their circumstances and if given the — bitter tales harbored inside their parent, two-child household, opportunity, can achieve just as minds which nibbled at their souls according to Dexter. She could care much or more than other children. —allowing all to gain insight to the less how he earns it What Dexter Williams and Komblum’s The future of America’s youth. Readers doesn’t care about is the fact that his Uptown Kids isanexcellent,eyewondrously discover that if youth in mother cannot afford to pay bills and opening book that every American public housing are given the same keep food on the table. should read. As the teenagers in this support and guidance offered to Dexter’s mom is a familiar face in book share pain and hopes, they middle and upper class youth, they the projects. Some urban single remind us that teenagers in public will blossom. parents are so bogged down by the housing projects want the same Dexter (not his real name), one real problems their families face, that things as their peers everywhere, teen from East Harlem who they fail to adequately support and They will respond to the positive participated in the study had to nurture their children. influences just like other kids, if we struggle to survive on the streets of But the book is fact that inner-city give them a fair chance. I hope we Harlem and under his mother’s roof, youth drew in color just like their will bear and respond to their moving In one of the book’s fascinating peers across the nation. voices,

accounts: While their hopes and dreams of "Aproducerfrom National Public success and assimilation into

Young people need more things to do

PHONE (317)924-5143

Last May 18, at the Project Excellence Scholarship Dinner here, in Washington, D.C., 18-year-old Kea Prather stunned an audience of this city’s movers and shakers when she told them why so much violence, drug abuse and teenage pregnancy plague the urban areas of America. “Young people need more things to do and places to go,” she said. “Do you realize that within the limits of Washington, D.C., there is not one bowling alley, not one roller-skating rink, not one underage club? Movies are $7 a seat!... Young people need more things to do on Friday night besides smoking weed, drinking, fighting and having sex.” This bright young woman, bound for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a scholarship made possible by a grant from The Freedom Forum, was telling us that more prisons and jails alone offered no panacea for rampant crime in any inner city because ghetto teens are already “incarcerated” in communities that offer few jobs or other opportunities within, and little in the way of transportation or other vehicles for getting out. Prather was offering America a vital element «

of any workable anti-crime bill — an element that President Bill Qinton articulates when he says it is not enough to ask young Americans to “say no to drugs” or “say no to sex.” Clinton has argued that we have to give youngsters like Kea Prather “something to say yes

to.”

Wise members of Congress responded by including in the pending crime bill facilities for midnight basketball leagues and for many other crime prevention programs that Prather was praying for. But Neanderthals in the House have rejected the crime bill, mostly on grounds that the provisions to meet Prather’s pleas are all “pork,” that nasty word that suggests congressmen are virtually stealing federal money for worthless projects in their district. The anti-crime bill now before Congress is a monstrosity. It loads on more reasons for capital punishment, which would make this everviolent society more brutal and disrespectful of human life. It has a “three strikes and you’re

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out” provision that would guarantee long and costly imprisonment for millions of unlucky souls who have been marginal violators of laws of marginal value. The sad truth is that both houses of Congress, and powerful members of both parties, are prisoners of the myth that if we just “lock

’em up” or “fry ’em” we can incarcerate and execute our way out of our grisly social sickness. I wish that I could lock Congress up for a few hours and force members to listen to Prather and other Project Excellence teenage scholars who have lived with crime and risen above it I think these teenagers could stop the political posturing over who is really “tough on crime.” I think they would shame into silence all but the moat conscienceless who cry “pork” when efforts are made to provide poor, entrapped American youngsters with something to do “besides smoking weed, drinking, fighting and

having sex.”