THE COLOR OF JUSTICE

Thank you to Paul for summing up the history of Jim Crow and segregation in the US. I'd like to talk to you today about some of the current issues affecting African Americans, based on the book The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.

I will not ask you for a show of hands, but I want you to be honest with yourself - are you always a perfect driver? Have you ever failed to track properly between lanes? Especially at intersections where the lanes shift over? Did you ever fail to stop the correct distance behind a crosswalk, fail to pause for the right amount of time at a stop sign, or fail to use a turn signal at the appropriate distance from an intersection? Have you ever driven with one of your taillights not working? Did you often get pulled over for these infractions? If you were pulled over, were you asked to get out of your car? Were you frisked? Was your car searched? These are common occurrences for African Americans, and in some places Latinos. I've been pulled over a couple of times in the 17 years I've lived in the Bay area - once for a rolling stop at a stop sign, and once for a broken tail light. Both times I was given a warning and sent on my way. Have you ever been stopped and frisked while walking down the street - an everyday occurrence in some neighborhoods across the country.

First, let me clear up a few facts:

1) Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates, with one exception - they frequently find that white youth are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color. You might not assume that, based on what we see in the media and even looking at who is being imprisoned for drug offences.

2) We mistakenly think that the War on Drugs is aimed at getting the kingpins and big-time dealers off the streets - but the vast majority of those arrested are not charged with serious offenses.

3) It is also believed that the War on Drugs is concerned with dangerous drugs like crack or meth. In fact half of all drug arrests are for marijuana, and blacks are 4 times as likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana.

Author Michelle Alexander points out that the drug war could have been waged primarily in white suburbs, or on college campuses. She says, "SWAT teams could have rappelled from helicopters in gated suburban communities and raided the homes of high school lacrosse players known for hosting coke and ecstasy parties after their games. The police could have seized the televisions, furniture, and cash from fraternity houses based on an anonymous tip that a few joints or a stash of cocaine could be found hidden in someone's dresser drawer. Suburban homemakers could have been placed under surveillance and subjected to undercover operations designed to catch them violating laws regulating the use and sale of prescription 'uppers'. All this could have happened as a matter of routine in white communities, but it did not."

Alexander quotes a former prosecutor who says, "It's a lot easier to go out to the 'hood, so to speak, and pick somebody than to put your resources in an undercover [operation in a] community where there are potentially politically powerful people."

Don't get the idea that this is isolated to the South. During the course of a 1999 lawsuit by the ACLU of Northern California, the CHP produced data that showed that African Americans were twice as likely, and Latinos three times as likely, to be stopped and searched by its officers as were whites. The data also revealed that these searches were non-productive; only a tiny percent of them led to discovery of drugs or other contraband. Yet thousands of black and Latino motorists were subjected to unnecessary interrogations, searches, and seizures as a result of minor traffic violations.

When caught with drugs, whites are most often charged with lesser crimes, and sometimes cases are dismissed or we aren't charged at all. You may know young people this has happened to. Often people of color are charged with a crime or multiple counts with a stiff penalty and then offered a plea bargain: cop a plea and do less time. Without adequate legal representation that usually seems like an easy way out. But now the person is likely felon. Having a felony record makes it very hard to get a job, yet also ineligible for assistance. If you are on probation or parole, the police can arrest you for all kinds of things, including missing an appointment or not having a place to live! The cards are stacked against you, so recidivism is common. And felons can't vote in most states. Ever.

Why has this system been allowed? The bottom line is that young black men have been criminalized by our culture. It's easy to overlook if you are not directly affected; and hard to do anything about if you are! Court decisions detailed by Alexander have all but shut down any litigation about discriminatory practices, and politicians don't want to look soft on crime.

There is reason to believe it is this very same criminalization that leads people to believe that drug users and dealers are black, that black youth are violent, and that Zimmerman had reason to perceive Trayvon Martin as a threat. Young men lose their rights and also their lives at the hands of police and vigilante citizens. The War on Drugs successfully "others" those whom it targets.

Alexander says without changing the underlying, often unspoken, attitudes about race, the end of mass incarceration as a means of domination will just lead to a yet unimagined new system of domination. Racism is systemic.

Bob Lawrence, an Oklahoma transplant from California and a UCC minister, says it well in a recent blog:

"I am not talking about the jury trial or the verdict, or about legal definitions of guilt or innocence. Rather I am talking about the systemic racism that is apparent in comments that say a young black man, who was doing nothing other than walking home in his own neighborhood should have known to "walk away" from a larger, older man who, for no apparent reason, was aggressively following him, while ignoring the most obvious truth that the older, presumably more mature man, should have been the one to walk away... And yet, despite my repeated comments about the systems of racism, white people continue to respond with explanations on why individual situations are not an example of that. I'm talking about a broad social ill, and my...fellow whites are saying that there is a reasonable doubt about an interpretation of the law in a specific incident. We would do well to remember that the law has been written by and is enforced by people of privilege. To use the law to justify oppressive behavior is simply proof that the law is working, and is meeting its goal of keeping systems of oppression in place."

Alexander advocates for a human rights approach, as did Martin Luther King, Jr. which "would offer far greater hope for those of us determined to create a thriving, multiracial, multiethnic democracy free from racial hierarchy - it would offer a positive vision of what we can strive for - a society in which all human beings of all races are treated with dignity, and have the right to food, shelter, health care, education and security."

If we want to do more than just end mass incarceration - if we want to put an end to racial caste in the US, Alexander says "we must...join hands with people of all colors who are not content to wait for change to trickle down."

White middle-class Americans would never allow these drug war tactics in their own communities. The fact that this remains a segregated country in many ways makes it possible. Those of us in a position of privilege have been called to action. We need to stand on the side of love and find ways to bring about true equality. This is a starting point. Won't you join me in reading the The New Jim Crow and discussing it this fall?

Benediction:

The Low Road by Adrienne Rich

It goes on one at a time,
It starts when you care
To act, it starts when you do
It again after they said no,
It starts when you say We
And know you who you mean, and each
Day you mean one more.

So what do we do now?

We speak ever more and more in "We."

We grieve and we rage and we weep,
And we hold each other in that depth of emotion.
We recommit.
We educate ourselves.
We shout the truth when it would be silenced.
We talk to each other.
We remember that safety lies neither in weapons nor in wealth,
but in the strength of our connections to our communities.
We organize, and we show up for one another.

We keep showing up.

My liberation is bound up with your liberation. Period.