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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 586
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 08, 2006 - 03:53 am: | 
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Socioeconomic status aids social justice
September 8th, 2006
Jason Vick
Imagine you have been blindfolded, placed on a plane and transported to an unknown destination. Stepping out of the plane, you are released, your blindfold cast aside. You glance around and see a neighborhood block much like any other. Upon the main street is a sign that reads “Population 100.” People are outside, tending gardens and mowing lawns, children are playing in the streets, couples are dining at the street corners, and in your curiosity you begin to count. On and on you count, until you reach 99. Curious.
Wandering onward, you encounter another town. Very similarly arranged, although the population sign here reads “Population 110”. Once again you observe the families in their yards, in their streets and parks, and once again you count. 109.
This continues for some time, each neighborhood containing one less person than its stated population, until you reach a neighborhood somewhat different in composition. The houses are much larger, the grass thicker, the cars more shiny and luxurious. Counting on, you stop at 100. You backtrack and count again. 100. Stepping back to the population sign, you see that it clearly states 100.
Can this be? Why the sudden change?
The following neighborhood is eerily similar and a headcount produces the same result. All people accounted for. After traveling through several more blocks of affluence, the development comes to a sudden stop. You spot some sort of development off in the distance and make your way towards it. Upon your arrival, you notice that the houses are conspicuously smaller, more dilapidated. The population signs are comparable, but no neighborhood seems to have more than half of its listed population. Driven by curiosity, you approach one of the inhabitants and ask her where all the people are. Jail, she flatly responds. One out of every hundred adults is locked away in jail.
What do you make of a society that incarcerated one of every hundred adults? Could these neighborhoods possibly be considered free? And yet that is precisely what we do in the United States each and every day.
It is time to call attention to one of the great lingering evils of American society. It is our racist, class-oriented, massive incarceration system, by far the largest in the world. Beginning with President Reagan, our country took its first steps down the path that would lead us to imprison nearly two and a half million Americans. For anybody opposed to the essentially fascist idea that the best way to deal with troublemakers is to lock them up, our current incarceration system is a travesty of justice. Furthermore, the implementation of the justice system disproportionately affects the poor.
Consider the role wealth plays in an arrest and trial. Bail, the quality of legal defense and the resources available are all greatly affected by the defendant’s wealth. While the wealthy enjoy the benefits of a quality legal team, poor defendants must make do with a state-provided public defender, operating on severely-limited resources and a heavily curtailed scope thanks to Republican-led legislation transparently aimed at depriving the poor of what little legal defense they can pull together.
It comes as no surprise that the wealthy enjoy far more favorable verdicts than do the poor. And since the division of wealth within our country so strongly reflects the divisions of race, it should come as no surprise that minorities are heavily over-represented in prison. While blacks comprise approximately 12 percent of our nation, they account for nearly half of all prison inmates and nearly 45 percent of those on death row. The implementation of the death penalty confirms the bias — a third of the Americans executed in the last thirty years have been black.
The use of capital punishment takes on a further racist twist when one looks at murder rates in recent years. Amnesty International reports that blacks and whites have been killed in almost identical numbers over the past three decades, but “80 percent of the people executed since 1977 were convicted of murders involving white victims.”
The organization also notes that 20 percent of blacks executed since 1977 were “convicted by all-white juries.”
No, not every black person is imprisoned — far from it — but studies estimate that if current incarceration rates continue it will be less than 10 years before a majority of blacks between 18 and 24 are in prison. Is this what we want as Americans? What about the great strides towards black freedom, you may ask?
It is true that the Civil War brought many benefits to black people, and it is also true that the historic legislation of the ’60s, brought on by the Civil Rights movement created an environment more open to the political and social needs of blacks.
However, as long as minorities dominate our underclass and as long as our justice system unfairly targets the poor, we will be sentencing ourselves, as a nation and a people, to an unjust and racist “justice” system.
Of course there are many steps we can readily take if we wish to approach constructive solutions to the problem. The first would be to transfer those incarcerated for non-violent drug-related offenses into therapy programs. The second would be to dramatically shorten the terms of those convicted of other non-violent crimes, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, coupled with government funding for housing and the providing of jobs once they are released.
Finally, we must tackle the monstrous problem of poverty. Poverty does not account for all violence or drug use, but it is elementary that those who face what they deem a dark, hopeless future will express their anger in various ways, from drug use to violence. It is our responsibility as progressive citizens not to chain them up but to address the root causes of their despair.
http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/2/ARTICLE/7435/2006-09-08.html |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6426
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 08, 2006 - 07:36 am: |
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This article started out like an ambiguous episode of "The Twilight Zone".
But it ending was less entertaining. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2712
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 08, 2006 - 09:41 am: |
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This article is definitely on the one.
But this is no accident. This is what is SUPPOSED to be happening. This is every society's reaction to having surplus labor and population--and another method by which we can compete with China's slave labor--these guys are in there making all kinds of stuff, telemarketing for what, thirty cents a day.
The Question, as ABM has put it, is what do we DO about it? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6431
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 08, 2006 - 10:13 am: |
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Chris,
Our BEST (if ONLY) chance is to begin to pool and synthesize our resources and to encourage our most talented to become scientist, engineers, inventors and entrepeneurs.
If we DON'T do that, we're going to end up in the dustbin of history. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2716
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 08, 2006 - 10:40 am: |
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I think we are doing that.
But we must face facts. Capitalism has winners and losers--a lot more losers than winners. It must to function, though we keep telling ourselves that it doesn't have to be that way, when was it not that way and what is anybody doing to change it?
What becomes of those inevitably left behind? Is this not what the prisons are for? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6437
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, September 08, 2006 - 10:57 am: |
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Chris,
Not all losers TOTALLY lose. And not all winners TOTALLY win.
There are degrees and gradations amongst both.
That's why this country had a middle class for much of 20th Century. Yes. There were a few who won big. But for most of the population there was at least some opportunity to live a decent, honorable life.
Alas, however, THAT is becoming a much more precarious option.
The scary thing about where we are now is that even when we begin to see the big picture and act as needed, there won't be ENUFF of us for that to really matter. |
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