If you’re Black and live in Wisconsin, you’d be locked up in the joint for smoking one
Had Barack Obama lived in Wisconsin versus Illinois, chances are he’d be watching the presidential elections from a prison cell instead of the campaign trail.
Obama admitted in his biography that he tried illegal drugs as a college student. Had he been a Wisconsin student, there’s a 50% chance his political career would have been detoured by a lengthy prison term (assuming the judge determined Obama to be "Black" instead of half White).
According to two recently released reports analyzing national statistics on drug related imprisonment patterns, if Obama’s White side were taken into consideration, he would at best received a slap on the wrist for his transgressions, if he were arrested at all. If instead the judge focused his gaze on his nappy hair, Obama would be providing advice to Alderman Michael McGee, Jr., while "Jail House Rock" played in the background.
Studies released Monday by the Human Rights Watch and the Sentencing Project reveal that along with hosting the nation leading Black high school drop out, teen pregnancy, mortgage lending disparity, poverty, and incarceration rates, Wisconsin can now boast of leading the United States (and the rest of the world) in the gap between Blacks and Whites incarcerated for drug offenses.
A Black drug offender is 42 times more likely to get a prison sentence than a White. Moreover, Black Milwaukeeans are seven times more likely to be arrested. Nationally, Black men are 12 times more likely to be imprisoned for drugs than Whites, the study revealed. Multiply that figure by four if you’re referencing Wisconsin.
As we’ve always assumed, those figures are all the more startling given studies that confirm Whites use and distribute drugs at the same rate as Black Americans. The studies cite statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that reveal nearly 50% of Whites, compared to 42% of Black Americans have used illicit drugs in their lifetime (consistent with Obama’s admission). Approximately nine percent of Whites and 9.5% of Black Americans have used an illicit drug in the last month!
So, given that Whites outnumber Black Americans by approximately six to one, why the disparity?
Some suggest racial profiling. Since African Americans supposedly commit more crimes than Whites, law enforcement focuses more attention on Black neighborhoods.
Another possible reason rests in the variances in laws. Use of marijuana is a misdemeanor in many neighboring suburbs. White kids get tickets, while in the city law enforcement send our children to the "electric chair"--so to speak.
Poverty obviously plays a role. People without hope, frustrated by their conditions tend to seek escape. Drugs provide their panacea, their escape from the depressing realities of poverty, powerlessness and despair. Poverty and social depression--rampant in the Black community--fuel drug use (and sexual promiscuity, loud music and even cruising; it’s all a form of escapism, another way to get high).
Federal laws also play a role. Under the Clinton Administration, revisions in the federal criminal justice codes made a discriminatory distinction between cocaine and crack, the latter of which is apparently the drug of choice in the Black community. Granted, crack is 10 times more addictive and dangerous, but the disparity in sentencing for the two drugs has fueled incarceration disparities.
I tend to agree with the assumption that drug sales are more prominent in the Black community than in the suburbs. Let’s be honest, drug dealing is the backbone of the underground economy in Milwaukee’s central city. Thousands of young Black men, unprepared for the few available jobs, turn to the streets for "survival."
Law enforcement easily fill their quotas arresting small time drug dealers, while those who truly profit are allowed to return to their mansions in the suburbs, where they snort coke while sipping on their expensive cognac.
Their children partake in similar vices. But if they are "busted," usually they face a slap on the wrist, or sent to rehab.
Apparently, that’s another perk of White privilege.
Tyrone Dumas refers to that dichotomy as selective enforcement, and puts part of the blame for the disparity in incarceration rates on the police and judges who consciously, or unconsciously play a game of racial favoritism. "All any one wants is a system of fairness. No one says not to prosecute Black drug dealers; we’re only saying arrest the White ones too."
Let’s not ignore the obvious: The criminal justice system is tainted. Judges are not colorblind; the scales of justice are not balanced. You can’t ignore the racism, prejudices and bias. Nor can you turn your back on the political paradigm that defines Wisconsin. You can’t explain away Wisconsin’s ranking as the leader in incarceration rates for African Americans with the racist assumption that we are more criminally inclined.
But whether or not you buy into that stereotype, the reality is that many, if not most White folks feel that way. And included among their midst are politicians and policymakers who support the criminal justice system the way it is--biases and all.
Take your choice: Either they don’t give a damn that Wisconsin is viewed around the country, if not the world, as the "Black lock ’em-up state," or they don’t see it as a cancer in need of medical attention.
True, they come up with task forces to "study" the problem, which is exactly what the governor did with his signature disparity commission--not by coincidence right before the last election. But nothing has happened since. And don’t hold your breath waiting.
Just like the studies on racial profiling in the suburbs, and before that the juvenile justice system, and before that about the impact of poverty on crime.
When politicians don’t want to do anything, they create task forces, and then file those findings away until the next public uproar.
We’ve been talking for years about the real roots of crime, and everybody acknowledges that the only solution is to tackle the social ills that impact our community.
But in truth, there’s not the political, civic or religious will to do anything about it but talk.
And it’s not like you have to reinvent the wheel. We can go next door to Minnesota, study their criminal justice system, analyze the drug courts that view addiction as a public health issue.
We can ask why Minnesota has a similarly sized Black population yet has less than half the number of Black inmates.
We can ask about their emphasis on rehab for nonviolent crimes instead of incarceration.
If nothing else, their correction’s budget is far less than half ours, thus freeing millions of dollars for education, social welfare and economic development. But, our politicians don’t care that we spend $30,000 to incarcerate an abuser, but only $11,000 to educate a child.
They don’t mind, cause we don’t matter, as Mike McGee says. They support a racist system, despite its cost in dollars, human misery and social dysfunction.
Who knows, if Obama becomes the first Black president, he’ll address the issue of racial injustice--the justice system versus a system that’s apparently for "J.U.S.T. U.S." He would have the opportunity to do so because his road to the White House is through Illinois. If he lived in Wisconsin, he would probably be in the joint, for smoking one.
