MANY PEOPLE INCARCERATED BY ILLUSIONS

I think it was the great American philosopher and psychologist William
James who said (and I'm paraphrasing): Some people think they are
thinking when really they are only rearranging their prejudices.

Such "thinking" colors the popular "debate" on race and the American
criminal justice system. Whenever I write a column that highlights
the numerous studies, indicating that anti-black racism is part and
parcel of our criminal justice system, some self-proclaimed
conservative writes me to point out the obvious reason there are a
disproportionate number of blacks behind bars: Blacks commit more
crimes than white people do. (Is that so? How enlightening.)

It's that kind of thinking - if it even deserves to be called thinking
- - that probably led J.S. Mill to say: "Although it is not true that
all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that all stupid people
are conservative." I think that's a little unfair, but the point is
well-taken. It's easier to follow the status quo than it is to
critically examine the ideological assumptions that undergird
state-sponsored, violence and oppression.

Imagine if a white South African during apartheid, said the reason
there were so many blacks in prison in South Africa is because the
custodians of their legal system were simply doing their job: locking
up criminals.

Any outside observer, with even a slight sense of history, would at
least raise a skeptical eyebrow, understanding that there is a high
probability that the numbers are skewed because of a thing called
white-skin privilege. Are we to believe white supremacism has been
completely wiped out.

In 1950, whites accounted for 65 percent of all state and federal
prisoners. Non-whites made up the other 35%. Today, nearly 50 percent
of all inmates in American prisons are black, even though African
Americans are only 13 percent of the US population.

Of course, people should be protected from violent criminals. But no
sane advocate of prison reform is calling for the unconditional and
indiscriminate release of all inmates. What is at issue, as the
distinguished sociologist William Chambliss points out, is that police
flagrantly focus their crime-fighting resources on black communities,
i.e. the war on drugs. This, in spite of the empirical fact that
whites consume far more drugs than do blacks.

"Police look for crimes in the ghetto, and that's where they find
them," Chambliss told Boston Globe reporter Louise Palmer. In other
words, we have millions of white illicit drug users who get treatment
and widespread sympathy for their drug problem, but it's
three-strikes-you're-out for the blacks who supply white drug users.

The so-called conservative analysis of crime downplays or completely
overlooks the obvious correlation between crime and poverty - not to
mention the relationship between crime and lack of education. (Most
inmates are functionally illiterate.) Unfortunately, some black youths
have succumbed to an absurd let's-not-be-like-white-folks mentality
that ridicules African American intellectual achievement.

It's ironic that it is these same black youngsters who - with the
encouragement of profit-hungry corporate advertisers and economists -
subscribe to the market-morality that infects the American body
politic. In a letter written to H.G. Wells in 1906, William James
diagnosed the sickness: "The moral flabbiness born of the
bitch-goddess success. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put
on the word success - is our national disease."

When you combine market morality with the indisputable fact that the
black underclass has been effectively lock out of our booming economy
- - as study after study has shown - is it any wonder that drug dealing
is so appealing?

Largely because of the mental and moral laziness of our politicians
and policy-makers, a systematic effort at black disempowerment and
disenfranchisement is being carried out. (Convicted felons can't
vote.) Such ethically and intellectually indefensible policies should
be opposed by all people of good will if we are to have some semblance
of civilization.

In their fight to end affirmative action programs, right-wing brothers
and sisters love to quote the Rev. Martin Luther King (almost always
out of context) -individuals should be judged "not by the color of
their skin but by the content of their character." Well, here's
another quote from King worth pondering: "There is nothing more
dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in
that society who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have
a stake in their society protect that society, but when they don't
have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."

(And pundits have the nerve to label my generation stupid and
lazy.)

Sean Gonsalves
Columnist with the Cape Cod Times.