RACIAL DISPARITIES

This is in response to "Blacks more likely to be imprisoned for drug
crimes; African-Americans nearly 5 times more likely than whites to
get prison sentence for low-level violations, Illinois study says"
(News, Jan. 31).

This Chicago Tribune headline, broadcasting prison sentencing
disparities Illinois African-American citizens face, underscores what
our nation is unwilling to address: From housing to hunger,
employment and prison, racial disparities are all too real.

The article plainly states our reality. Blacks in Illinois are almost
five times more likely to be sentenced to prison for low-level drug
crimes than whites. And in Cook County blacks charged with low-level
drug possession were eight times more likely than whites to be
sentenced to prison.

David Olson, chairman of Loyola University Chicago's criminal justice
department, noted that minorities were not necessarily more likely to
use more drugs than whites but are much more likely to be arrested.

Nationally, even though white drug users outnumber blacks by a
five-to-one margin, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that in
2003 blacks constituted 56.7 percent of all drug offenders admitted
to state prisons while whites constituted only 23.3 percent.

According to the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights under the Law,
in the area of equal justice and access to justice, racial minorities
continue to suffer a higher incarceration rate than non-minorities.
Widespread disparities on account of race continue to persist. At
least three-fifths of all state court criminal defendants are
minorities. Blacks in particular constitute 44 percent of state court
criminal defendants, while only 13 percent of the general population.
Black men are 6.5 times as likely to be incarcerated as white men.
And approximately one in nine black males between the ages of 25 and
29 are incarcerated, and one in three can expect to go to prison in
their lifetime.

These disparities are driven by structural and institutional
inequality. Civil rights laws have all but been abandoned or
drastically underfunded and unenforced.

We vote in record numbers. We serve in the military. We're playing on
athletic fields. We sing. We dance. We entertain. Yet, there's a
painful indifference to the reduced life options of
African-Americans. We're No. 1 in infant mortality. We have lower
life expectancy. There's an obvious health gap, but more than that, a
broad range of structural gaps that must be addressed.

- - Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., founder and president, Rainbow PUSH
Coalition, Chicago