The New Jim Crow: Caging the Evil Bird

Most Americans who were paying attention in their high school U.S. History classes are familiar with Jim Crow laws.  African American citizens over the age of 50 who grew up in the former states of the Confederacy didn’t need a history lesson about these laws because they lived them.  Here’s a refresher course.

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enacted after the Reconstruction period which mandated “de jure” racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern U.S. states.  It started in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans.  The laws mandated the segregation of all public schools, public places, public transportation, restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks.  Conditions for African Americans were consistently inferior.  The laws institutionalized educational, economic and social disadvantages.

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled the segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional with their decision in Brown v. Board of Education.  Many of the remaining Jim Crow laws were overturned legislatively with the passages of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  However, countless discrimination cases continue to come before the courts even today demanding clarification for all races, women, religious adherents, and members of the LGBT community.

Given the discriminatory prosecution, incarceration, and the resulting systemic disadvantages faced by people ensnared in the War on Drugs, it is clear that Jim Crow is still alive and well.  The new Jim Crow is now an epidemic that swept the nation.

In 2012, author Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow credited modern drug laws with a new wave of discrimination.  Richard Nixon was the first president to actively target drug abuse as “public enemy number one” in a 1971 special message to the Congress on Drug Abuse Prevention and Control.  Nixon called for federal funding to prevent addiction and to facilitate rehabilitation.  The propaganda of the day made it clear that drugs were to be treated as crimes that would not be tolerated.  Nothing has changed.

Drug related arrest rates remained fairly stable through the 1970’s, but in the 1980’s with the popularity of crack and powder cocaine, everything changed.  Though arrest rates for all crimes rose 28 percent in this decade, drug arrests increased by and astounding 126 percent.  According to a Washington Post article in 2010, statistics from 1998 demonstrate wide racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and deaths. African-American drug users reportedly made up 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession crimes.  Upon release from prison, these people often reportedly were denied public assistance and licenses.

Many community activists, church leaders, and even President Obama have pointed out the disastrous effects of these public policies in communities with high African American populations.  Cities that have erupted into riots in recent years could not withstand the losses of brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons.  The communities could not survive the fact that these former felons could not find jobs and often had to return to drug sales or petty theft just to eat each day.

One politician in particular has spoken out repeatedly on this discriminatory system.  Surprisingly, it is the Republican Senator and presidential aspirant from Kentucky, Rand Paul.  When he announced his candidacy for president on April 7, 2015 Paul stated: “I see an America where criminal justice is applied equally, and any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color is repealed.”  He points out repeatedly in speeches and radio interviews that one-third of African American males are banned from voting due to the War on Drugs.

Paul blames mandatory minimum sentencing standards and the fact that many state and local governments still treat minor drug offenses as felonies rather than misdemeanor crimes.  By making very minor offenses felonies, the person convicted of the crime is denied the right to vote, cannot own a fire arm, becomes the victim of future job discrimination, poverty, and much more.

While all other Republican presidential candidates seem to be avoiding conversations about race as if it were Ebola, I can appreciate Paul’s fortitude in this regard.  He is right, of course, and he is not backing down.  It will not make me vote for him; but if I ever met him, I would thank him for his stance.

Which brings me to my final thought:  If this problem is so obvious to the gentleman from Kentucky, a state with a population that was over 86 percent white in the last census, why isn’t this obvious to everyone?  How can America continue to act like the three monkeys that refuse to hear, see, and speak of this evil?  Jim Crow never went away.  That evil bird is still pecking at the beating hearts of our citizens and communities.  If there was ever a bird that needed a cage, that’s the one.