Race, Class, and Punishment

Teaching Strategies Part 2: Overview for Teaching Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America

The problem is systemic. Slavery ended but created a black underclass that whites were unwilling to allow to change, hence the rise of Jim Crow. Segregation then legally ended but this country still will not let go. When Civil Rights amped up, as Alexander points out in 13^th, a drug and crime epidemic was amping up that would change the face of incarceration in this country that pervades to present day.¹³ This is where we will further scrutinize the conditions in America and actions of leaders that built the modern prison system. Often struggle, desperation and fear were involved in decisions over policies that would not result in less crime, but still impact the African American experience in this country gravely.

Professor Forman opens his book with a simple yet devastating story. After working to become a defense attorney (he saw the modern civil rights battle as being in the courtroom), he watched a black judge summon Martin Luther King, Jr. in a lecture to a young black boy he was about to lock up. Major civil rights leaders were the reason Forman was in that room as well, but to keep young black boys with bright futures from being locked up for too small offenses with too few chances at rehabilitating, without the hopelessness of a jail sentence.¹⁴

The history and implications of police and the dynamics of black society in America are key factors in the story of how these two entities became opposing forces. While the black community is greatly affected, there is a class structure within it and most harsh modern policing and incarceration policies affect disproportionally those with the least amount of education, and the poorest.¹⁵ This is astonishing but not surprising, as we continue a human tradition of marginalizing the poor instead of helping them. This again is not a new or sudden phenomenon. “Mass incarceration is the result of small, distinct steps, each of whose significance becomes more apparent over time.”¹⁶ We will start with a study of the history of policing.

Policing and Black America

The earliest experiences African Americans had with police in America was not a positive harbinger for the future. A good number of the first police forces in the south were slave patrols, charged with capturing and returning slaves who’d escaped, and treatment once caught was anything but humane. After emancipation, police continued yet in this vain, enforcing Jim Crow segregation policies, and even working with the Ku Klux Klan, looking the other way, or hiding underneath sheets while lynching people.¹⁷ After a time, folks got fed up with all-white police forces and wanted a stake in law enforcement, presumably to even the playing field with at least modest representation. A protester in Atlanta in 1946 would don a sign demanding: “105,000 Negro Citizens Rate at Least 1 Negro Police.”¹⁸ Folks depended on the hope that integrating the police departments would allow justice to be carried out with less violence, and in turn inspire more faith in law enforcement professionals by the black community. They worried that if there was not enough representation on the force, the police would continue to fail to be regarded as peace-keepers, and simply keepers of the status quo in holding down blacks as an underclass.¹⁹ However once police forces started integrating, not much changed. The officers themselves did not by and large see themselves as the solution that was sought after. Many did not become police officers for social change, they just wanted a good, dependable job with good, dependable benefits. Overall, and as we look back into history, it’s easy to think many early black police officers would have been warriors for social justice. But taken individually, just like anybody, many just wanted a decent living. And to boot, many looked down upon the poor who would commit crimes just the same as any white officer. “A significant minority of black officers still expressed antiblack attitudes. . .Expecting them to change how police fought crime was like expecting black firefighters to change how the fire department fought fire.”²⁰

The War on Drugs: How a Public Health Issue became a Criminal Justice Issue

Integrating police forces didn’t change lopsided criminal justice, and, particularly in Washington, D.C., when crack began to decimate the city, this heralded in an era of mass arrests and harsh sentencing. From crack in D.C. to PCP in LA, communities started to degenerate into highly dangerous crime zones, seeing unprecedented assault, drug-dealing, murder. Community members and policymakers alike were swept up in a wave of fear and desperation, and the only way most of them could see solving it was more policing and harsher sentencing. There was early advocacy for focusing on the root causes of the epidemic – addiction, poverty, and social programs to address each, as opposed to the harsher policing. Jerome Page, president of D.C’s Urban League at the time, argued that these policies would not solve the problem, and in fact things like mandatory minimums would only serve to further flood an already over-crowded criminal justice system. If we did not work to alleviate root causes, he proposed, crime would only worsen.²¹

The policies didn’t change, and worsen it did. Policymakers kept dedicating more and more resources to heavy policing and treatment centers remained understaffed with too few beds for the city’s, and the nation’s, drug rehabilitation efforts. Furthermore, instead of being assigned to those beds, both drug dealers and users were assigned jail time. Citizens would write letters en-masse to the city’s officials, which would be referred then to the police, not to the departments of public health where those root causes may have been addressed. Amid all the fear and desperation, there might be some explanations found as to why no one thought to do that, but generally it “speaks volumes about the ways in which we as a society categorize drug use.”²² We have been unwilling or unable to give people a chance to redeem themselves after making a mistake, or being in a point in our lives that we’re too weak to say no, or find our own help. Instead of helping each other, we judge each other’s weakness, and have, to this point far too often, looked the other way when our fellow citizens are locked up for offenses for which they should be assigned treatment instead. And here we are, a nation containing 5% of the world’s population, while housing 25% of its prisoners.²³

And it didn’t work. For all their efforts, crime did not waver in the wake of mandatory minimums and other stiffer punishments. In the decades since, rampant drugs and crime have subsided to a point, but the machine of harsh criminal justice built in the 1970’s and 80’s pervades to this day.

Black communities have suffered from job outsourcing, and continue to reel from too-often mishandled crime. The school-to-prison pipeline is real and pervading, and impacts students from rough neighborhoods who need so much more, and better. Forman states: “In neighborhoods wracked by violence, young people must devote immense psychological resources to their day-to-day survival.”²⁴

And therefore it falls to…whom, to better it? Politicians, lawyers, educators…American citizens of all walks? This curricular unit leaves that decision up to the student. What follows enlightenment? Activism? And then, what does activism look like? Is teaching this material a form of activism? Is learning it? At least within my classroom, my kids will have the freedom to decide. I encourage educators to incorporate as many different perspectives as they can: other textual sources, field trips, guest speakers, student opinions. The more voices, the better. And so we continue with the use of voice, perspective, and argument in these texts, in order to further empower said students with said skills.