“The benefits of increased incarceration would be enjoyed disproportionately by Black Americans….”
Why the long faces. Black people? I mean really, did you actually believe that you were in fact penciled-in for his first one hundred days? The title of this commentary is not simply a quote from an ill-reputed research article, but it too has become a bipartisan, political truth. Unfortunately, it will remain the truth as long as companies like Microsoft, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Eli Lilly, Koch Industries, Nintendo, Starbucks, and a multitude of others need it to be the truth.
During the run up to the 2016 election cycle there were voices of dissent from two popular African American thinkers—Dr. Cornell West and Tavis Smiley. They shouted into the echo chamber, “Quit giving your vote away.” That message seemed to reverberate for a while with other African Americans, sending Democrats into a panic that bordered despair and Republicans so much more near an earthly nirvana. The Black vote just may be in play.
Throughout the primary season both sides of the aisle sought out data that would allow them to conjure up the perfect lie, permitting them to lock up this voting bloc. What do Black folk want? They had to figure out what promise, that need not be kept, must be made to both ensure the vote and secure their own political aspirations.
Oddly enough, they did not have to make promises that went beyond their populist message of gainful employment, a living wage, decreasing the wealth gap, guaranteed health care, and affordable education. For if they were to venture but one step beyond that threshold they would stand accused of increasing the size of government, political suicide. And really, aren’t these socioeconomic deficiencies, enumerated above, especially prevalent in many Black communities? One would think that a candidate would not only have to promise these voters these things, but that they would have to be promised in exponential quantities above and beyond what was promised to others. However, they came with the perfect message: a promise that both included all of what we have mentioned, and actually decreased the size of government. Their message to Black folk was a simple one, we will let your fathers, husbands, and sons come home, we will let them out of prison.
Criminal justice reform became every ones calling card, and suddenly all and sundry had the numbers memorized: We are but 5% of the world’s population, but we have 25% of the world’s incarcerated population….There are 2.3 million Americans behind bars….1.53 million of them are non-violent property and drug offenders…Nearly half of the prison population is Black, while Blacks make up but 13% of the American citizenry. Everyone was on top of his or her stump speech game. Nevertheless, most amazing to me was not the fact that Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and yes, the Donald were saying that something needed to be done about this surfeit abortion of liberty, but that Hillary Clinton was chiming in as well.
No one was more responsible for putting poor people and Black people behind bars than Hillary and her husband. While Papa Bush (President H.W.) had sponsored a paper entitled, “The Case for More Incarceration,” it was William Jefferson Clinton and Hillary Diane Rodham (Clinton) who actually implemented the recommendations of this poorly written, ill researched, and non-peer reviewed paper. In this paper Attorney General William Barr says in his cover letter, “…Of course, we cannot incapacitate these criminals unless we build sufficient prison and jail space to house them….” What is more, in the final paragraph of the the paper’s introduction one will find this insightful glimpse:
Finally, amid all the concern we hear about high incarceration rates of young black men, one critical fact has been neglected: The benefits of increased incarceration would be enjoyed disproportionately by black Americans living in inner cities….
Therefore, Billy Jeff decided, what the heck since they would enjoy having their menfolk taken away, that he would adhere to the advice of his Republican brothers from the previous administration. One hundred and fifty new prisons were built, 171 existing prisons were expanded, and 100,000 additional cops were placed on the streets. Meanwhile Madam Clinton made her rounds assuring one and all that not only were we prepared for the coming of this “super predator,” but too the ghetto was about to become a much better place. Because of these policies, America reached and exceeded the 2 million prisoners mark. Underprivileged communities became worse as there were hardly any men there to carry out the role of patriarch. In addition, taxpayers received an annual bill of $200 billion for criminal justice. The only net positive from this venture was that a bunch of otherwise unemployable people lucked up on good paying jobs as prison guards.
Depending on how closely one was paying attention, you will have noticed that once Clinton and Trump won their respective primaries each of them were mum on criminal justice, in fact, the former confirmed her belief in the death penalty, while the latter announced that he was the “law and order candidate.” The fact of the matter is that those companies that I mentioned earlier, along with the likes of AT&T, Bayer, Caterpillar, Costco Wholesale, John Deere, ExxonMobil, Fruit of the Loom, GEICO, Johnson & Johnson, Kmart, Mary Kay, McDonald’s, Merck, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Sarah Lee, Sprint, State Farm Insurance, United Airlines, UPS, Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart, and still a plethora of others are heavy campaign donors who have a vested interest in maintaining mammoth incarceration numbers. Given that set of facts, one has to know that neither of these Wall Street loyalists would have anything further to say about criminal justice reform after winning their primary, as the old adage goes, they ‘know which side their bread is buttered on.’ Why the criminal justice interest from these companies? Because those fathers, husbands, and sons that the politicians promised to send home are actually slaves for these companies. Yes, slaves, that is not a hyperbolic statement. These companies have constructed 21st century plantations within the walls of America’s prisons and as a result have watched their overhead decrease and their profit skyrocket. Not China (as the Donald is always so quick to point out), but in America.
There is no amount of ring kissing and boot licking that Kanye, Steve Harvey, or Jim Brown can do to change this, “power cedes nothing without demand.” A withholding of your nickels and dimes from the companies that were mentioned above (just as it was done during the Montgomery bus boycott) coupled with non-violent civil disobedience (which disrupts economics) will get the attention of the king. Economic warfare works, even the Republican governor of Nevada, who is a former prosecutor, walked back plans of building a new prison/plantation given the economic concerns. His majesty, Trump, will not incline to be nice to you simply because someone shows up to dance a jig, or that it will enrich his legacy. In his estimation, a couple more billion dollars to enrich his pockets will augment that legacy far better than any award from the Urban League.