HARD TRUTHS FROM BEHIND THOSE BARS

Noted 20th-century philosopher Richard Pryor once told a funny but poignant
story about filming a movie in an Arizona prison where most of the inmates
were young black dudes.

He talked, among other things, about a profound sense of loss, about how
these strong young warriors could be out helping to build a better world
but instead were locked up, victimized by "the man."

After weeks spent getting to know these noble "warriors" -- one of whose
heinous crimes had earned him a triple life sentence -- Pryor reached a
different conclusion. He chucked his romanticism for their plight and
gleefully proclaimed, "Thank God for prisons."

Some of the inmates I've known -- some of whom I've shared cells with --
made me equally grateful for our penal system. Most black people, who are
overwhelmingly the victims of these violent black miscreants, feel the same
way.

Thank God for prisons, indeed.

But I've also known men who had no business being in prison and who
wouldn't have been there had it not been for the color of their skin.

Before I became the paragon of virtue you see standing before you today,
I'd been to jail four times. I was sent there by black cops and white cops,
white judges and black judges. For instance, one egregious case was for
something called verbal assault: I called some chump everything but a Moon
Pie for accusing me of stealing his basketball. I didn't even know that was
a crime, but I discovered that it was when I found myself manhandled,
handcuffed and tossed into the back of a cop cruiser and taken to jail. By
a black cop.

After a few nights in jail, for which taxpayers footed the bill to feed and
house me, and a trial, I received probation. I can't say race was solely
responsible for my 16-year-old self being locked up and receiving a record
for such a minor "crime" -- at the time I was so mean I couldn't stand my
own self -- but I have a hard time imagining one of my white classmates
from the good side of town being locked up for committing the same offense.

Whether bias was at work in my case or not, the racial inequities in
sentencing for drug crimes are beyond dispute.

An N&O story earlier this week reported that 92 percent of the people in
state prisons for the two most common categories of drug charges -- selling
and possessing with intent to sell certain types of narcotics -- were black
men, despite surveys showing that blacks, whites and Hispanics use illegal
drugs in roughly the same proportion.

Any so-called black leader -- religious, social or civic -- who read that
story and wasn't jolted into action ought to be ashamed. And then ignored.

The incarceration of young black men devastates black women, black children
- -- many of whom will grow up without fathers, making them more likely to
become incarcerated black men -- and society as a whole.

Oh, you think it doesn't adversely affect you? OK, where do you think that
$1.2 billion the state needs to build even more new prisons will come from?