Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Ross Gay: Some Thoughts On Mercy
http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/451/some_thoughts_on_mercy?page=1This is from a wonderful writer worth reading. Ross is the author of two books of poetry and, simply, a great human being. The friend, Don Belton, that he mentions in this essay was murdered in what was considered a hate crime - not because he was black, but because he was homosexual. Don, too, was simply a great human being.
I've included a few paragraphs, but the essay ranges across many issues, not just the one I've included here.
AS ABOLITION became a real possibility in the nineteenth century, a mythology about black-male criminality was crafted by proponents of slavery, and that myth was then amplified after emancipation. Our current prison system, and the drug war that is responsible for that systems status as the largest in the world, actively cultivates the same story of a unique criminal blackness. I put drug war in quotes, because, as Michelle Alexander points out in her brilliant book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, if there were a true War on Drugs, then people of all colors, . . . who use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates, would be incarcerated at very nearly the same rate. But thats not the case.
Alexanders book is an incisive analysis of how the drug war has specifically targeted African American men, saddling huge numbers with ex-felon status, which makes employment, voting, housing, education, and more nearly impossible: in other words, effectively reinstating Jim Crow. Among her most striking observations is that in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan declared that he was running up a battle flag in the War on Drugs, fewer than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation. That figure jumped to 64 percent in 1989, thanks largely to a sensational (and racist) media campaign. She also points out that the police could make numerous drug arrests by raiding the fraternities and sororities at colleges, but for the most part they dont, because those students are not viewed as criminals: theyre just kids who use drugs.
A few years back I was teaching a summer enrichment class for public-school students in Philadelphia who were almost all black, and I had a discussion about drug use with them. One outspoken child told me, and the class, Mr. Ross, my names not Sally; my names Takeisha. I smoke weed. God bless this child and her weed. But what she didnt know, and wont until she makes some white friends or goes off to college, is that Sally probably smokes just as much weed as she does, or takes OxyContin, or snorts Ritalin, or uses cocaine or Adderall. Takeisha believed that she was different from white people in her habits. She believed she was a criminal, whereas her white counterparts were, well, white. I wish Takeisha and everyone else knew that people of all races use drugs. Its just that if youre black or brown, like the people in Takeishas neighborhood, your drug use is more often policed and punished. But the fantasy of black criminality continues. This, to a large extent, is what the drug war is about: making Takeisha along with her teachers, her local shop owners, her neighbors, her citys police, her prosecutors believe shes a criminal. It is, perhaps, the only war the U.S. has won in the last thirty years.
I shudder at the emotional and psychic burden weve laid on the young black and brown New Yorkers so many of them children being profiled in that citys stop-and-frisk program. One man featured in a New York Times video speaks with courage and dignity about having been stopped as a teenager at least sixty to seventy times. Another, in a video made by The Nation, talks about having been roughed up for looking suspicious and called a mutt. Eighty-seven percent of stop-and-frisk targets are black or Latino, though blacks and Latinos constitute only about half of New York Citys population. How, when their city believes them to be criminal, do these young people escape believing the same of themselves?
Alexanders book is an incisive analysis of how the drug war has specifically targeted African American men, saddling huge numbers with ex-felon status, which makes employment, voting, housing, education, and more nearly impossible: in other words, effectively reinstating Jim Crow. Among her most striking observations is that in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan declared that he was running up a battle flag in the War on Drugs, fewer than 2 percent of the American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation. That figure jumped to 64 percent in 1989, thanks largely to a sensational (and racist) media campaign. She also points out that the police could make numerous drug arrests by raiding the fraternities and sororities at colleges, but for the most part they dont, because those students are not viewed as criminals: theyre just kids who use drugs.
A few years back I was teaching a summer enrichment class for public-school students in Philadelphia who were almost all black, and I had a discussion about drug use with them. One outspoken child told me, and the class, Mr. Ross, my names not Sally; my names Takeisha. I smoke weed. God bless this child and her weed. But what she didnt know, and wont until she makes some white friends or goes off to college, is that Sally probably smokes just as much weed as she does, or takes OxyContin, or snorts Ritalin, or uses cocaine or Adderall. Takeisha believed that she was different from white people in her habits. She believed she was a criminal, whereas her white counterparts were, well, white. I wish Takeisha and everyone else knew that people of all races use drugs. Its just that if youre black or brown, like the people in Takeishas neighborhood, your drug use is more often policed and punished. But the fantasy of black criminality continues. This, to a large extent, is what the drug war is about: making Takeisha along with her teachers, her local shop owners, her neighbors, her citys police, her prosecutors believe shes a criminal. It is, perhaps, the only war the U.S. has won in the last thirty years.
I shudder at the emotional and psychic burden weve laid on the young black and brown New Yorkers so many of them children being profiled in that citys stop-and-frisk program. One man featured in a New York Times video speaks with courage and dignity about having been stopped as a teenager at least sixty to seventy times. Another, in a video made by The Nation, talks about having been roughed up for looking suspicious and called a mutt. Eighty-seven percent of stop-and-frisk targets are black or Latino, though blacks and Latinos constitute only about half of New York Citys population. How, when their city believes them to be criminal, do these young people escape believing the same of themselves?
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
0 replies, 3508 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (0)
ReplyReply to this post