To understand the intractability of racism, we must understand the nature of institutional racism. Given the upheaval caused by George Floyd’s death, a good place to start is our criminal justice system. Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow is a great resource in this regard.
Between 1970 and 2005, our incarcerated population increased by 700%. From 1990 to 2005, a new state or federal corrections facility was opened an average of every 10 days. Though the U.S. population represents 5% of the world’s population, its prison population is now 25% of the world’s prison population. How did this era of mass incarceration come about? Simply put, drug convictions.
The war on drugs started under the Nixon administration, accelerated under Ronald Reagan, and was embraced by every president since, each seeking to prove to U.S. voters that he was “tough on crime.” As we were criminalizing drugs, countries like Portugal saw drugs instead as a public health crisis, to which they responded with drug treatment, prevention and education. They also focused economic attention on crime-ridden neighborhoods.
Before 1986, the maximum incarceration for the possession of any drug was one year. The Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988 changed that dramatically. Punishments for drug convictions became much harsher and mandatory minimum sentencing was introduced. A life sentence could now be levied for a first offense. President Clinton later introduced “three strikes and you’re out.”
How did the war on drugs play out with policing in cities and towns? Huge amounts of money were made available to local and state law enforcement agencies, incentivizing them to make the war on drugs a priority.
The Drug Enforcement Administration was funded to provide free training (e.g. how to leverage a traffic stop for a minor infraction into a drug bust), intelligence, and technical support. Byrne grant programs funded local drug task forces. Military materials and vehicles were provided by the Pentagon; SWAT teams started to appear. Forfeiture laws allowed state and local law enforcement agencies to keep for their own use most of the cash and assets seized in drug arrests. The more arrests they made, the more money they received.
Meanwhile the Supreme Court was producing judgments that gave police officers greater leeway in pursuing drugs: Terry v. Ohio (stop and frisk, consent searches), Florida v. Bostick (pretext stops and police sweeps of buses), Ohio v. Robinson and Whren v. US (police fishing expeditions). In short, law enforcement officers were given extraordinary discretion on whom to stop, interrogate, search, and arrest. So-called “proactive policing” became the new normal.
It’s widely known that people of all colors use and sell drugs at similar rates; yet people of color are disproportionately targeted by police and incarcerated at higher rates. The seeds for this were planted during the Reagan administration in response to an “epidemic of crack cocaine.” Coded phrases like “crack whores,” “crack babies,” and “gangbangers” were used. Black women were characterized as irresponsible “welfare queens”; Black men were “criminal predators” (e.g. George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton).
In a 1995 survey, which asked respondents to close their eyes and picture a drug user, 95% pictured a Black person. The groundwork was being laid for a criminal crusade “that would disproportionately sweep up men and women of color into the criminal justice system. ”
Not surprisingly, the police have targeted primarily poor communities of color, conveniently segregated for easy access. Drug sweeps in neighborhoods and schools, stop and frisk tactics, military-style operations (think Breonna Taylor) and stopping Black motorists (“driving while Black”) for minor traffic violations (think Samantha Bland or the police practices in Ferguson, Mo.) became standard operating procedure in the war on drugs. More recently we’ve heard about the “jump out boys” (out-of-uniform police in unmarked vehicles) who terrorized Baltimore streets and more recently appeared in Portland and New York City.
The above tactics would have produced outrage if used in white middle-class communities. After all, it was claimed, white youths were just harmlessly experimenting with drugs and selling only to their friends.
Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court has made racial bias in police work and prosecutorial behavior very hard to prosecute. No matter how clearly an overall pattern of discrimination is supported by data, the defendant must prove overt racism in the specific encounter (Alexander v. Sandoval). We have no idea how many white supremacists work in our criminal justice system.
There are other obstacles to holding police accountable. Police departments can function as a tight-knit, self-protective brotherhood, and police union contracts can make it difficult to remove bad apples. In an effort to maintain a working relationship with police, prosecutors might choose not to bring charges against a police officer. Grand juries very often give police officers the benefit of the doubt when considering charges. The result: Officers are charged with a crime only 1.7% of the time there is alleged police misconduct (Mapping Police Violence).
The cumulative effect of all these forces produces a grossly unjust system. While “the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white (reflecting the general population), three-quarters of all people imprisoned for drug offenses are Black or Latino . . . In at least 15 states, Blacks are admitted to prisons on drug charges at rates from 20 to 57 times greater than that of white men” (The New Jim Crow). And though police violence kills roughly 1,100 Americans each year, African Americans are killed at a rate almost twice their share of the population.
If you made a laundry list of all the issues raised in this article, perhaps you can understand why institutional racism is so intractable. It will take prolonged and persistent activism for change to occur. We’ll need a change in our nation’s leadership as well.
The last four words in our Pledge of Allegiance are “and justice for all.” For 400 years, people of color have had good reason to see those words as a broken promise. The latest chapter of that oppression has put a vast amount of human potential behind bars instead of contributing to our country.
Elie Weisel speaks about a moral imperative: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Your move.
(Allan MacDonald lives in New London.)