Friends of Justice

Much has been accomplished since I introduced you to Bunkie, Louisiana.  A mid-March protest rally drew regional media attention.  Police Chief Mary Fanara has forcefully denied that her department conducts warantless searches, engages in racial profiling or files sketchy narcotics cases.  The only problem in Bunkie, Fanara asserts, is that drug dealers want to ply their trade without interference.

This is an effective, time-tested dodge; no one wants to be associated with drug dealing criminals.  However, most of the Bunkie residents who have reached out to Friends of Justice aren’t primarily concerned about family members; they care about their community. 

It is always easy to find lots of folks who are tired of property crime and open-air drug dealing (who can blame them).  But many of these people are also concerned about the lack of respect the Bunkie Police Force had consistently shown for poor, low-status Bunkie residents.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Louisiana ACLU, black residents in Avoyelles Parish are 1.26 times more likely to be arrested than white residents.  No surprise there; poor people are more likely to be arrested than their affluent neighbors and black residents are disproportionately poor. 

But in Marksville, black residents are 1.72 times more likely to be arrested than whites; and in Bunkie, blacks are 3.5 times more likely to be arrested by the Bunkie Police Department than their white neighbors.

Does Bunkie have a drug problem?  Of course it does–what town in America doesn’t?  But when the local cops are arresting blacks at almost three times the parish-wide rate, we have prima facie evidence of racial profiling.  Bunkie is not the crime capital of Louisiana.

Fortunately, there are strong signs that change is on the way.  The Community Relations Service of the Department of Justice saw my blog piece and decided to pay a visit to Bunkie (they were already in Jena, and Bunkie is less than an hour away).  Not surprisingly, the DOJ has been assured by Chief Fanara and detective Chad Jeansonne that all is well. 

At the very least, however, the Bunkie PD has a serious public relations problem.  It may be an exemplary police force in America; but that’s not how it is perceived by many residents.  Police officers have a sworn to duty to protect and serve everybody, and law enforcement can’t function effictively if the local police department is seen as a foce of occupation.

US Attorney, Donald Washington, recently signalled his willingness to attend a meeting of public officials and local residents on April 17th.  This is very good news.  I have no idea what Mr. Washington will make of the situation in Bunkie, but his mere presence signals to public officials that it’s time for spring cleaning.  Bunkie residents deserve a high level of professionalism, procedural integrity and simple respect from law enforcement.  A thorough airing of grievances, coupled with public assurances from public officials, might help Bunkie, Louisiana turn the page.

In an encouraging development, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox (known as the Angola 2) were recently moved from solitary confinement to a dorm environment.  This came in the wake of a dramatic visit to Angola prison by John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee and longtime civil rights advocate.  Listen to today’s story from National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. 

Friends of Justice is part of an impressive coalition of organizations and individuals who have rallied to the defense of the Angola 2.  We are proud of the work that our board member, Tory Pegram, is doing in defense of these two brave men (she is responsible for getting us involved in the Angola 2 fight).  Tory was one of the unsung heroes of the Jena struggle–the first person I called when I started building a coalition around the plight of the Jena 6.  Now she’s working fulltime (and then some) on behalf of Wallace and Woodfox (or Herman and Albert, as they are known by veteran advocates).

When the media latches onto a story this egregious it sometimes appears that the stark facts drew the journalistic world naturally and inevitably.  This is almost never the case.  Friends of Justice is new to the Angola 2 struggle, but some folks have been working for Herman and Albert for decades.  These folks are never mentioned in the press, but recent breakthroughs would have been impossible without them. 

You can find more coverage of this story here, background information is available here, and you can sign a petition calling for the full release of these two innocent men here.

Attorneys for Albert and Herman have issued this response: ”Herman and Albert need to be released from prison because they are innocent: they were framed for a murder they did not commit.
 
“After thirty-six years of solitary confinement, recent media scrutiny, a press conference
by Louisiana House Judiciary Committee Chairman Cedric Richmond, and a visit by
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers have caused the Angola prison
authorities to panic and move the two men into new quarters without informing them or
their lawyers about the terms of their new situation at the prison.
 
“We will redouble our efforts to gain justice and therefore freedom for Wallace and
Woodfox. Changing their cells is not enough.”

When I met Jeff Sharlet a couple of years ago at a conference in Austin, his revelations about “The Family” sounded like conspiracy theory.  But the stodgy Harpers magazine is rarely associated with the American lunatic fringe.

Sharlet argues that a shadowy organization called “The Family” excercizes a profound influence on prominent politicians, Republican and Democrat.  Hillary Clinton, he says, has been profoundly influenced by the family’s peculiar religious outlook.  (You can find helpful background information here and here.)

The Family was founded in 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norweigen immigrant living in Seattle who was alarmed by the rise of militant labor activists.  Vereide believed that the liberal “social gospel” of his day gave too much attention to the “down and out”.  Vereide wanted to influence the folks he called the “up and out”. 

Unlike most conservative religionists, Vereide ignored the teeming masses; his goal was to attract, in varying degrees, the loyalty of the powerful to the simple religion of Jesus.  Vereide followed a savvy and sophisticated savior who pursued world domination through “the elect”: a small cadre of the wealthy and the powerful.

According to Jeff Sharlett, Hillary Clinton was prepared for this elite religious outlook in the 1960s by the theological reflections of repentant liberals like Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr.  Sharlett isn’t saying that Clinton is a member of a secret sect; but he does suggest that her policies and outlook have been influenced by the distinctive moral vision of The Family.

I mention Sharlet’s work because it may shed light on a recent firefight about race and religion that bears directly on the criminal justice system.  What does the current controversy tell us about the prospects for criminal justice reform in the near future?

Jeremiah Wright claims that America earned God’s wrath by turning its back on the poor, the disenfranchised and the desperate.  Wright wants to know why some Americans are being sucked into a vortex of addiction, dysfunction and mass incarceration while the rest of the America prospers. 

Barack Obama has been critical of some of his mentor’s conspiracy theories (a) because they are unsubstantiated and (b) because they reflect a malevolent and cynical view of the powerful.  Nonetheless, Obama appears to share his pastor’s concern for the down and out.  How else could he abide decades of his mentor’s preaching?

No American president since Jimmy Carter has evinced any real empathy for poor people.   In America, only fools and suckers are concerned about the social roots of crime, poverty and human dysfunction.  Like The Family, we believe that what’s good for Wall Street will trickle down to main street.  By helping those who help themselves we hope to find ourselves in the best of all possible worlds.  If a few million poor folks fall through the cracks, that’s just the price of admission.

Our passion for mass incarceration is rooted in this outlook.

I like Bill and Hillary Clinton.  In 1992, I took my young children to a Bill Clinton rally at Freedom Hall in Louisville.  The night he was elected president, I dreamed that I had been personally invited to the White House to meet the First Family.  Hillary served me blueberry muffins in a basket.  It was a lovely dream.

I recently heard Bill Clinton speak at the New Baptist Covenant gathering in Atlanta and couldn’t help but be impressed with his folksy eloquence.

But when it comes to criminal justice policy, Bill Clinton was no better than either George H.W. or George W. Bush.  For thirty years, mass incarceration has been a bi-partisan enthusiasm.  Is this just because tough-on-crime rhetoric wins elections?  I don’t think so.  As a nation, we prefer Abraham Vereide’s up-and-outs to Jeremiah Wright’s down-and-outs–and it shows in our policies.

Why have the televised clips of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons so alarmed white America? 

In part, we object to the “static” view of America that Mr. Obama has correctly rejected.  Post 9-11, some of us have a hard time with the suggestion that our actions have encouraged the rise of Islamic terrorism.  Finally, for white Christians unfamiliar with the dynamics of black preaching, the sheer volume and intensity of Rev. Wright’s preaching is downright scary.  This explains why black Americans, though unimpressed by some of Wright’s ideas, have a hard time understanding what the fuss is about.   For anyone who has spent serious time in progressive black churches (or in the writings of the Old Testament prophets), the “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” remark has a familiar ring.

The contents of Wright’s comments, per se, cannot explain the sensation they have created in the media.  When Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson interpreted 9-11 as God’s wrath against the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and other “secularizing” influences, the media played it up for laughs.  But no one demanded that politicians linked to these southern preachers renounce their views and cut off all association with the Christian Right. 

When evangelical icon, Francis Shaeffer suggested, back in the 1970s and 80s, that God would ”damn” America unless the American people staged an armed revolt against the aborionists, nobody seemed concerned.  Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan welcomed the old man with the funny accent to visit the White House.

Only when the “God is judging America” theme is associated with our treatment of the down-and-out do we become upset.  Everybody assumes that John McCain, whatever he may say in public, harbors a secret disdain for the Religious Right.  But Obama chose to associate with Wright; this isn’t a marriage of convenience.

Why, we ask, would Barack Obama choose to attend a church where the poor are celebrated and the powerful mocked?  Why would the Senator from Illinois tolerate the sermons of a man who gives a damn about drug addicts and felons?  Is this the sort of person we want in the White House?

Jeff Sharlet’s book on The Family will be out in May.  Will his views create a media sensation, or are The Family’s values too mainstream to warrant comment?

Alan Bean, Friends of Justice

Last year, the Jena saga revealed a disturbing perception gap between white and black Americans.  The controversy sparked by brief snippets from the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright provides another indication that black and white Americans have a fundamentally different understanding of the great nation we all call home. 

Bill Kristol’s column in today’s New York Times typifies the response of white America.  Kristol refuses to expose himself to the African American perspective on either the past or the present.  The state of race relations is quietly and consistently improving, he suggests, largely because black and white America don’t talk much. 

I guess that’s why Kristol printed Charlotte Allen’s “Jena” story in which Alan Bean comes off as a self-promoting race baiter, black America’s concerns about equal justice are dismissed out of hand, and the revisionist history cobbled together by Jena Times editor, Craig Franklin is swallowed whole.

Message: it’s okay to have a national conversation about race so long as conservative whites do all the talking.

Like all preachers, Jeremiah Wright sometimes gets his facts wrong.  The US government didn’t invent AIDS to cripple blacks and gays as some, including Wright and Bill Cosby, have asserted.  The well-worn notion that crack cocaine was introduced into poor African American communities to neutralize the poor black people is also a gross simplification of a complicated story.  Poor people are uniquely vulnerable to contagions of every kind; gross economic and educational inequalities have consequences. 

So where does this tendency to demonize white America originate, and why are black and white Americans so quick to believe the worst about one another?

The answer, my friend, isn’t blowing in the wind; it’s hidden in the pages of history books–not the sort of history-lite we encounter in school history classes, I’m talking about the work of serious historians willing to face sober facts.

White America has an insatiable desire to be lied to about race and racial history.  Black America hungers and thirsts for the truth, no matter how painful it may be.  If black preachers and intellectuals sometimes exaggerate white transgressions, their white counterparts are inclined to minimize and deny. 

A few days ago, at the conclusion of a charming ceremony in Grand Prairie, Texas, I became an American citizen.  As I recall, 362 newly minted Americans left the building gripping little American flags and precious citizenship documents. 

We sang God Bless America and the Star Spangled Banner and we repeated the Pledge of Allegiance with hands held over our hearts.  I choked up on more than one occasion–this is powerful stuff, even for a Canadian transplant.  While we waited for the ceremony to begin, I read every word of the little pamphlet containing the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights that I had been given.

The America described in these materials is an experiment in freedom, equality and justice.  The America referenced in the course of the citizenship ceremony was quite different.  This America is a mighty empire.  “You will soon be a citizen of the most powerful nation in history,” one speaker told us, “Isn’t that awesome!”

Well, yes, it is awesome.  But for lovers of liberty, it is also a bit frightening.  I did my doctoral dissertation on W.O. Carver, professor of missions and world religion at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville between 1898 and 1954.  Carver frequently lamented that with each major war, America’s standing army had increased in size and influence and the flame of American liberty was left to burn a wee bit lower.  Power and liberty have never been on good terms.

American exceptionalism, the idea that America is God’s last and best hope to the world, is a staple of white America civil religion.  White America conveniently forgets what black America remembers all too well.  Hence the racial perception gap revealed, this time, in the reaction to Jeremiah Wright.

Those of us who read our Bibles on a regular basis cannot be surprised by the tone of Wright’s comments.  He sounds a great deal like his namesake, the biblical prophet.  Consider this brief excerpt from the 38th chapter of Jeremiah:

. . . Jeremiah was saying to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, He who stays in this city (Jerusalem) shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out to the Chaldeans (the Babylonians) shall live; he shall have his life as a prize of war, and live.  Thus says the LORD, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the king of Babylon and be taken.”

The response was immediate:

Then the princes said to the king, “let this man be put to death, for he is weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them.  For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm.”  King Zedekiah said, “Behold, he is in your hands; for the king can do nothing against you.”  So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes.  And there was no water in the cistern, but only mire, and Jeremiah sank in the mire.”

Does any of this sound familiar?  Listen to Jeremiah Wright’s comments in their entirety and you will understand why Barack Obama chose to sit under his teaching.  Wright is a man of loving compassion who preaches like a prophet only when harsh circumstance demands it. 

This is why Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas will be honoring Rev. Wright on March 29th.  The Divinity School is on the campus of Texas Christian University.  The University has washed its hands of the affair.  Free speech is one thing, a university spokesperson says, but the university would not be so reckless as to hand an award to a person as controversial as Jeremiah Wright.

The Divinity School, to its credit, has resisted the temptation to throw Jeremiah down the well, even though several graduates say they are prepared to renounce their alma mater over the matter.

“Contrary to media claims that Wright preaches racial hatred,” Brite representatives say, ”church leaders who have observed his ministry describe him as a faithful preacher of the gospel who has ministered in a context radically different from that of many middle class Americans.

In refusing to throw this latter day Jeremiah down the well, Brite Divinity School has maintained its commitment to biblical authority.  Handing the award to a lesser, but less controversial, candidate would have been tantamount to trampling on the cross of Jesus Christ–another outspoken prophet who suffered for his candor. 

The specific accusations flung at Jesus by false witnesses were intensely political: claiming that he, not Caesar, was the true King of the Jews, and threatening to tear down the temple in Jerusalem.  Like the sermons of Rev. Wright, the words of Jesus were cherry picked from their original context, yet his accusers were essentially right–the preaching of Jesus has always constituted a grave threat to the Roman Empire . . . and to every other empire that has ever existed.

These insights are standard fare among biblical scholars, but they become rank heresy when they enter the pulpit.  There are exceptions of course.  No one excoriated Billy Graham for saying that if God didn’t judge America he would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.  But then, Graham was talking about sexual sin, not racial sin.  href=”http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/NationalLies.html” mce_href=”http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/NationalLies.html”>Tim Wise has recently pointed out, white Americans have a curious understanding of their national history.  We don’t deny the fact of slavery or Jim Crow or community lynching, we just don’t like to be reminded of these things and often speak as if they did not exist. 

The white conservative historical narrative describes a glorious and godly nation striding majestically from glory unto glory as brave white people founding a brave white nation.  As a practical matter, black people don’t enter this story until the mid 1950s, and it has been straight downhill ever since.  Black people, the white conservative narrative states, are whiners.  While they should be thanking their luck stars for the slave ships that carried them to such a wonderful place, they insist on bringing up ancient indignities and rehearsing lamentable anachonisms.  We have moved beyond racism, the white conservatives say–end of story!  People like Jeremiah Wright who insist of stirring the turds of history are whiners, at best, and traitorous terrorists at worst.

In America, we bury the losers and move on.

No empire built on myths, however glorious, can long survive.  Those who refuse to learn the lessons of history, as the wise man said, are doomed to repeat them.

Last week, a woman in Washington DC directed my attention to a book on “Sundown towns”, all-white communities that have historically excluded black people, often with signs reading, “Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.” 

My research into the history of Tulia, Texas made me familiar with the concept.  James W. Loewen (a blessed exception to the white stereotype I have been developing) has built a career around unearthing unpleasant bits of Americana (I first stumbled across his work in the excellent, Lies my teacher told me.)  This review of Dr. Loewen’s book on Sundown towns provides an excellent primer on the kind of historical detail white Americans studiously ignore.

Barack Obama has accused his pastor of holding a static view of America–a nation that does not and cannot grow and mature.  There is a modicum of truth here.  For most black Americans, the latter half of the 20th century was a time of significant, even sweeping, change.  This is why Bill Kristol thinks black folk should shut up and move on.

Unfortunately, for the least fortunate 20% of black America, change, though undeniable, has not always been for the better.  If suburban nirvana is the American heaven and prison is our version of hell, the poorest Americans are moving in the wrong direction and people of color have been disproportionately affected.

I am not suggesting that Barack Obama emphasize this point–not if he wants to be elected; but somebody needs to say it.  The inequities of the present are firmly anchored in the past.  Ergo, if we refuse to talk honestly about the past, ain’t nothin’ gonna get better no time soon.

In times of crisis we inevitably haul our prophets out of their muddy prisons.  As the hand of God continues to scrawl across the American wall, we may soon find ourselves turning to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his spiritual kin, for guidance.

Alan Bean, Friends of Justice

This has been a remarkable morning.  It started with a phone call from Tony Brown, a radio talk show host in Alexandria, Louisiana.  On the show with me were Jerriel Bazile, whose brother stands accused of selling drugs to an FBI agent in Bunkie, Louisiana, and a woman whose son has been charged in a shooting.  We talked about the adversarial relationship between the Bunkie police force and the poor black community.  Yesterday, Mr. Bazile reported, 100 bunkie residents gathered to protest and organize.

I ended the interview, showered, and headed down to the ballroom of the Omni hotel in Washington DC to listen to civil rights historian Taylor Branch, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Roger Wilkins (an assistant US Attorney in the Kennedy administration and relative of NAACP leader, Roy Wilkins) talk about the difficult relationship between politicians and movement leaders in the 1960s.

When the three men had concluded a lively and informative discussion, the crowd drained out of the room and a small band of enthusiasts gathered around the speakers.  Jesse Jackson found himself face-to-face with an aggressive reporter from Fox News.

“Is this the end of the Obama candidacy,” the young white man was asking, his microphone thrusting forward–an assault with a deadly weapon.  “Can the Obama candidacy recover from the incendiary and hateful remarks of Jeremiah Wright?” the reporter wanted to know.  I sensed that the reporter devoutly wished it so.

“I simply believe that we need to make this a contest between candidates,” Jackson retorted.  I was standing two feet away and his irritation was palpable.  “We need to keep the comments of surrogates out of the discussion,” Jackson concluded, “this isn’t about them.”

Suddenly, a young black man was thrusting his own microphone into the face of the startled reporter.  “Mr. Fox News, I have a question for you,” he barked.  “Why aren’t you combing through the sermons of the preachers aligned with John McCain looking for controversial remarks?  How come this is just about the black candidate.  Answer me that, Mr. Fox News.  What are you even doing here today?”

“Who are you with?” the man from Fox asked.  The implied message was obvious: “I speak for a mainstream news organization, so I have a right to ask questions.  You speak only for yourself, so you have the right to remain silent.”

Rev. Jackson brushed by me to break up a confrontation that was getting ugly. 

I headed back to my room just in time to hear Barack Obama address his former pastor’s remarks head on.  

It may be that my unusual morning made me unusually receptive, but my heart tells me that I just listened to one of the pivotal speeches of the early 21st century.  Obama’s tone was earnest, sincere and unsentimental.  He spoke as a man who has decided (in opposition to many of his handlers) to face the music and dance.

And what a dance!  The democratic presidential candidate from Illinois (and Kansas, and Hawaii, and Kenya) may be only person on American soil capable of addressing America’s racial demons without inviting hoots of outrage.  He spoke of the frustration a generation of young black activists who came of age in the 1960s has experienced, and how it has enlightened and also blinded them.  He spoke of the frustrations of blue collar white factory workers and how their private pain sometimes shades into bigotry.  He spoke of the politicians whofeed off the anger and ignorance of the misguided.  

These comments were not made in a critical or dismissive spirit.  Obama was talking about normal human beings responding to the pressures of life in perfectly predictable ways.  Ordinary Americans of every racial background have made unfortunate mistakes, he acknowledged, but their concerns are not imaginery and their pain is real.  We can’t transcend the racial impasse that defines America by siding with one set of grievances while ignoring others.  Only the whole messy truth can bring us together. 

Finally, Mr. Obama called for a new day and a better way.  We can keep parsing the poll numbers to see if white males are abandoning one candidate for another or whether a rift is opening between whites and blacks or between blacks and Latinos, he said.  And if we do that, when the next election cycle rolls around we will be blind-sided by the next distraction and then the next.  Progress on the substantive issues will be impossible.

Obama has tried to avoid the issue of race because he knows that America is not prepared for that conversation.  But he also knows that, regardless of the political consequences, the time for straight talk has arrived.

This is not a political blog, and Friends of Justice isn’t in the business of supporting or endorsing candidates.  We are in the criminal justice reform business.  But, as we learned from the Jena tragedy, the cruel machinery of mass incarceration will continue to grind until the various factions of the American community start talking honestly about the racial history of our nation.  We can’t take a baby step forward until we acknowledge where we stand and how we got to this particular patch of ground.

From a strictly political perspecitve, Barack Obama’s speech may help him and it may hurt him; but the man started a conversation this morning that only he could start.   My most fervent prayer is that this is the beginning of a painful healing process our great nation needs so desperately. 

Please give a quick look at this important story featured this evening on NBC.  Two men have been held in solitary confinement for well over three decades–the longest solitary stretch currently being served in America.  Moreover, the charges that hold them do not stand up to scrutiny.  This is one of the few pieces of major media attention this case has received, and it took long years of dedicated advocacy work to bring the story to this point.  Friends of Justice recently joined the team of dedicated groups and individuals working to free these two men.  Friends of Justice board member Tory Pegram (who worked with us on the Jena story) has been hired by the Angola Three team to head up this effort.  As always, Tory is doing amazing work.

I met Ed Burns and Radley Balko at a summit on snitch testimony in Atlanta in March of last year.  A few months later, I spent a few days with Mr. Balko in the Lafayette area last year researching a story on the snitching crisis.  Radley is probably the best journalist on the drug war beat in America.  Check out his libertarian-leaning blog, The Agitator, here.

My wife and I get together with Ed Burns and company every free night to watch another episode of The Wire (delivered to our door by Netflix).  We are currently half way through the third season and we’re hooked.  A few days ago, Balko did a telephone interview with Burns that serves as a splendid companion piece to my Prison-shaped Communities rant and my Hard Times in Bunkie Louisiana narrative. 

If you don’t believe Alan Bean, then perhaps you’ll listen to a guy who has spent his life fighting in Viet Nam, the Baltimore school system and as a Baltimore cop.  Burns may sound burned-out and cynical, but pay particular attention to his glowing review of Geoff Canada’s work in Harlem near the end of Balko’s interview.  Burns is highly critical of most established non-profits working, ostensibly, for the poor and underprivileged.  His arguments are compelling and comport fully with my experience.

Alan Bean, Friends of Justice

Richard Cohen checked out the Pew report on mass incareration and has responded with a simple question: Why are all these young black males killing one another?

The Washington Post columnist isn’t a tuff-on-crime zealot–he’s asking an honest question.  The same question frequently surfaces at predominantly African American gatherings.

The Pew study, which I discussed in a recent post, doesn’t address black-on-black crime, so why is Cohen bringing it up?  Two reasons: (1) Americans don’t want to rescind the policy of mass incarceration if it’s going to put dangerous people back on the streets, and (2) unlike arrest and convictions statistics, homicide stats can’t be fudged.  The number of stiffs in the morgue is unaffected by the ideology of the person doing the counting.  We can argue that black males are in the joint on drug charges due to institutional racism, but how do we explain all the violence?  Are white racists responsible for that too?

The current criminal justice debate (to the extent there is one) bounces between liberals screaming about racism and conservatives waxing righteous on the personal responsibility theme.  Cohen, for his part, is willing to stipulate to high degrees of racism in the system (personal and institutional); he is merely suggesting that the cultural implosion of “the black underclass” is also part of the problem.

Richard Cohen poses a good question, but he is a bit short on answers.  Like most Americans, the man is confused.  We don’t like to be called ”the incarceration nation”; but our public safety concerns and our commitment to the American virtues of hard work and personal responsibility make us uneasy about government-driven solutions.  If the problem is fundamentally spiritual and moral, what does Washington have to offer?

At root, mass incarceration isn’t about spirituality or morality; it’s about economics.

The political success of Barack Obama, Cohen suggests, gives the lie to the complaint that African Americans can’t make it in America.  A valid point.  Most black Americans have prospered since the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.  We don’t have anything approaching economic or political parity, but amazing progress has been made . . . unless we are talking about poor black males who drop out of school.

In 1960, only 1.4% of black male dropouts was incarcerated; by 2000, the incarceration rate among this demographic had risen to a shocking 25%.  That’s right: one-in-four black male high school dropouts is currently locked up.  In 2004, 72% of black dropouts were out of work, compared to 34% of white and only 19% of Hispanic dropouts.

How do we account for this shocking free fall in employment among the most vulnerable members of the black community? 

In the late 1960s, just as the civil rights movement was beginning to bear fruit, a fundamental economic shift began in America.  We moved from an industrial-manufacturing economy desperate for cheap, unskilled labor to a post-industrial, service-based economy with a steadily declining demand for uneducated and unskilled workers.

The vast majority of drug dealers and prison inmates are high school dropouts who haven’t adapted to the new economy.  The erosion of conventional economic opportunity in poor black communities spawned an underground street economy. 

Most black-on-black crime is rooted in a lawless street environment where competition for turf and (far more frequently) mindless squabbles over girls and petty slights easily devolve into gun play.   

Mass incarceration is America’s public policy response to the street economy.  Unfortunately, the solution has encouraged the problems it was designed to alleviate.

A young, street level drug dealer goes to prison where he congregates with equally uneducated street punks.  Eventually, usually within a year or two, he is back on the streets dragging a felony conviction behind him like a ball and chain.  Felony status functions like a negative credential.  If a college degree translates into opportunity; a felony record slams doors wherever you turn.  You can’t get the kind of job that would allow you to support a family.  You can’t get a Pell grant.  You can’t get public assistance.  In some states, you can’t even vote.

Driven even further away from the conventional economy, the young man returns to the streets.  Soon he lives so far from the rhythms of the straight marketplace he becomes virtually unemployable–unless we’re talking drugs. 

A year after being released back to the streets, 75% of uneducated inmates are unemployed and 45% are back behind bars.  In time, a prison stretch becomes an expected part of the game.

Street punks make atrocious fathers, but that doesn’t stop them from begetting children.  Partners and children are negatively impacted by the dysfunction of absentee dads.  The children of incarcerated parents are six times as likely as more fortunate children to experience incarceration themselves.

But it doesn’t end there.  The stigma associated with young black males extends from unemployed ex-offenders to the hard-working and the ambitious.  Young black males are treated with suspicion by law enforcement.  Charged with a crime they often take a plea bargain even if they are innocent.  Studies show that the average employer is more likely to employ a white felon than a black applicant with a clean record. 

We are now dealing with entire communities shaped by incarceration in which young children grow up surrounded by unemployed grown-ups with little personal ambition.  The values and survival skills required for street survival are antithetical to the values and survival skills demanded in the mainstream working world. 

Eventually, a separate society emerges: a nation within a nation.  On HBO’s The Wire, police officers and gang bangers inhabit a world inhabited by two distinct groups of people: “niggas” and “citizens”.  For members of the prison-shaped community, the presumption of innocence is a polite fiction.  Convictions are obtained with ittle evidence or, as happened in Tulia, Texas, no real evidence at all. 

As a practical matter, participatory democracy is limited to citizens.  A we’re-all-in-this-thing-together spirit gives way to a hardboiled us-against-them sentiment.  A politics of fear stalks the land.  As prison-shaped communities grow, public safety erodes.  Everyone is affected.  Together we are being sucked into a tragic death spiral.

So, what’s the answer?  First, let’s stop the bleeding.  The war on drugs needs to be mothballed–the law of supply and demand insures that street punks will be peddling their wares no matter how much tax money we invest in stopping them.  Let’s take the incarceration rate back to where it was in 1980, before the madness began.

Finally, let’s realize that our problem is primarily economic.  We don’t have enough low-skilled jobs for all the low-skilled workers and we don’t have enough high-skill workers for the high-skill jobs.  Let’s send our best teachers to the worst schools and pay them accordingly.  Let’s find a new way to finance public education–a system limited by the local tax base will never bring good education to poor communities.

Thanks to mass incarceration, the social mores of the prison have become the central shaping reality in poor African American communities.  The almost universal failure of Americans to grasp this basic concept frustrates productive debate. 

Liberals have a solid grasp of the tail of racism and conservatives have a strangle hold on the trunk of personal responsibility.  But the elephant in the room is economic.  Our musical chairs economy leaves too many people standing when the music stops.  We’ve been sending the losers to prison when  the only workable solution is to find some more chairs.

Once we grasp the dynamics of the prison-shaped community (something conservatives and liberals should be able to agree on) we will be free to talk productively about race and responsibility.