DEBACLE OF TULIA DEFENDANTS AN ONGOING OUTRAGE

More black men are in jail in this country than are in college. More than
one-third of black men between the ages of 18 and 35 are involved in the
criminal justice system.

The gross miscarriage of justice in Tulia is a small example of how this
evil can occur. In that case, a rogue cop/informant helped put 46 residents
of Tulia (39 of whom were black -- 16 percent of the town's black
population) in jail following a drug sting in the summer of 1999. Even
though a state district judge said that the one and only informant was
guilty of blatant perjury, 13 people remained in jail until Monday because
the system is stacked against them. Twelve of the 13 people were released
on Monday (the 13th defendant was technically freed on bail, but remains in
custody on a drug charge), but their convictions have yet to be overturned.

Compare this outrage with the treatment the Enron thugs are receiving. In
Tulia, innocent people were convicted, yet remained in jail for years. The
criminals at Enron shattered the financial lives of thousands of people,
yet they keep most of their stolen money and the system is so stacked in
their favor that it will be years before any of them goes to prison.

Imagine how much jail time would have been served by the black people of
Tulia if they had been fortunate enough to have been defended by the
lawyers who defend the Enron crowd. Now imagine how many Enron thieves
would be making license plates if they had the lawyers the state appointed
to represent the Tulia defendants.

It is to our great shame that what happened in Tulia happens every day
somewhere in our country.

How can this be? Why is there little or no outrage over such obscene
statistics? What is wrong with us as a people?

Would we accept a school system that flunked more people than it graduated?
Would we go to a hospital where more people died than were cured?

I have only questions. I can think of no logical or rational reason why
more black men are in prison than are in college. I am deeply troubled that
I live in a society where such an insult to a group of people can occur and
hardly anyone raises a voice of concern.

The only possible explanation is that we have institutionalized racism
beyond the wildest dreams of any white supremacist, and that is not logical
and rational. It is twisted and evil. How did this happen?

Don't we know what we are doing to ourselves? Can we not see the terrible
devastation we are inflicting on society, families and individuals?

Who is to blame for this horrendous state of affairs? Can we trace it back
to when Ann Richards and George W. Bush were running for governor of Texas
in 1994 and both bragged that they would build prisons faster than the
other one? Can we blame federal lawmakers, who criminalized crack cocaine,
preferred by blacks, to a greater extent than they criminalized straight
cocaine preferred by whites?

In his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain captured the depravity of
Southern slave-holding values when he described Huck's inner turmoil over
whether to turn in runaway slave Jim or help him escape. Huck's conscience
was derived from the society in which he lived, and his conscience told him
he would be a low-down scalawag if he didn't turn Jim over to the
authorities. Slavery was evil, but society said it was good. Mark Twain
resolved this conflict when Huck saw a higher authority than society and
said that even though he would go to hell, that would be better than
turning in his friend. Twain's genius was in pointing out the obvious
through the eyes of a boy.

The bumper sticker morality of today provides cover for the evil of putting
more black men in prison than in college. "If you do the crime you're gonna
do the time." This evil of institutionalized racism has society so
bamboozled that we accept it as good old law and order. Like the society
that defined Huck's conscience, today's society allows us to brutalize an
entire segment of our population with not even a whimper of protest.

I realize that making an analogy with slavery might be considered by some
to be an overstatement of the issue. In my mind, however, the numbers
justify the comparison. More black men are in prison than in college and a
third of young black men are involved in the criminal justice system.
Substitute "white" for "black" in the previous sentence and imagine the outcry.

There is something terribly wrong with our system of justice. People of
good will have to change it just as the media, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
and the American Civil Liberties Union righted the wrong in Tulia.

Shields is a Houston-based writer.