Black Leaders : The United States

The United States features a prison population that is more than quadruple the highest prison population in Western Europe (Pettit, 2004). In the 1980s, U.S. legislation issued a number of new drug laws with stiffer penalties that ranged from drug possession to drug trafficking. Many of those charged with drug crimes saw longer prison sentences and less judicial leniency when facing trial. The War on Drugs has furthered the boom in prison population even though violent crime has continued to decrease steadily. Many urban areas in the U.S. have a majority black population. With crime tendencies high in these areas, drugs are also prevalent. This means that a greater percentage of those in prison are going to be black because law

Across the nation, millions of Americans of all races turn on the television or open a newspaper and are bombarded with images of well dressed, articulate, attractive black people advertising different products and representing respected companies. The population of black professionals in all arenas of work has risen to the point where seeing a black physician, attorney, or a college professor are becoming more a common sight. More and more black people are holding positions of respect and authority throughout America today, such as Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Condelezza Rice and many other prominent black executives. As a result of their apparent success, these black people are seen as role models for many Americans, despite their race.

Alexander’s main premises focuses on the large majority of African American men imprisoned today, as she reflects on the direct result of it that “young black men today may be just as likely to suffer discrimination in employment, housing, public benefits. And jury service as a black man in the Jim Crow era- discrimination that is perfectly legal, because it is based on one’s criminal record.” (Alexander, 181) Alexander points out not only how a significant portion of black men are ending up in prison, but how when released they face discrimination because of their criminal record making them unable to rehabilitate their lives and putting them back into the ghetto. Discrimination is a main factor which puts people of color in the penal system, and a main factor which when getting out keeps them from changing their lifestyle for the better.

Webb claimed,“Thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine — a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA’s army started bringing it into South-Central in the 1980s at bargain-basement prices.”

African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population, 13% of the drug using population and fully 74% of the people sent to prison for drug possession. Studies have shown that minorities are subject to disparate treatment at arrest, bail, charging, plea bargaining, trial, sentencing, and every other stage of the criminal process. These disparities accumulate so that African Americans are represented in prison at seven times their rate in the general population; rates of crime in African American communities is often high, but not high enough to justify the disparity. The resentment destabilizes communities and demeans the entire nation. (Justice, 2004)

The “War on Drugs” established that the impact of incarceration would be used as a weapon to combat the illegal drug problem in this country. Unfortunately, this war against drugs has fallen disproportionately on black Americans. “Blacks constitute 62.6% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons in 1996, whereas whites constituted 36.7%. The drug offender admissions rate for black men ranges from 60 to an astonishing 1,146 per 100,000 black men. In contrast, the white rate begins at 6 and rises no higher than 139 per 100,000 white men. Drug offenses accounted for nearly two out of five of all black admissions to state prisons (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” The disproportionate rates at which black drug offenders are sent to prison originate in racially disproportionate rates of arrest.

Of the many tribulations that plague Americans today, the increase in the amount of African American men and women in prisons is unbelievable. It would be naïve to say that the increase is due to the fact that more African Americans are committing crimes now than before. When in actuality it has very prevalent connections to a systematic plan to incarcerate a race of people by creating harsh drug laws to

In 1994 there was 15,000,000 incarcerations, in 2002 there were 13,500,000, and by 2012 there were only 12,000,000 incarcerations. The notion of a historic boom in incarceration after the 1994 crime bill was passed is completely false. This fact takes away the movies narrative of social injustice and the massive incarceration that is taking over our modern society today. This section of the movie then goes on to claim that black people are targeted for the consumption and dealing of drugs in the 90’s. However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics states that 50% of drug incarcerations were white people and 49% was black and the 1% was other races. If black people were targeted in this time era so heavily, why were there more white people in jail for drugs compared to African-Americans? At this same time SAMHSA did a survey in prison asking inmates whether they are in prison for selling drugs or consumption. 82% of the people were white and 16% was black. The percent of African-American drug users was 13% and the incarceration rate was 13%, at this time 60% of blacks lived in intercity metropolitan areas were the majority of arrests were made. This shows that it isn’t the polices fault for making these arrest, but the people in the intercity who involved themselves in using drugs knowing well that there was a higher chance of being arrested due to higher police force in areas that require it.

The past quarter century has seen an enormous growth in the American incarceration rate. Importantly, some scholars have suggested that the rate of prison growth has little to do with the theme of crime itself, but it is the end result of particular U.S. policy choices. Clear (2007) posits that "these policy choices have had well-defined implications for the way prison populations have come to replicate a concentrated occurrence among specified subgroups in the United States population in particular young black men from deprived communities" (p. 49).

Since the inception of mandatory minimum cocaine laws in 1986 to the advent of the Armstrong case, not a single white offender had been convicted of a crack cocaine offense in federal courts serving Los Angeles and its six surrounding counties. Rather, virtually all white offenders were prosecuted in state court, where they were not subject to that drug’s lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. The impact of the decision to prosecute the black defendants in federal court was significant. In federal court they faced a mandatory minimum sentence of at least 10 years and a maximum of life without parole if convicted of selling more than 50 grams of crack. By contrast, if prosecuted in California state court, the defendants would have received a minimum sentence of three years and a maximum of five years (United States v. Armstrong, 1996).

Sometimes just one person standing up with courage to spread their beliefs change the course of history for the better or worse. As an example, in 1872, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi won a seat in the U.S. Congress. Mr. Lamer was a strong Democratic leader, which his beliefs and desires influence many other white leaders to fight against African-American civil rights. He wrote “It does seem to me that if there ever was a time when the white people of this state…should rise & with one unanimous voice protest against the domination about to be piled upon them the present is that time.” (Fraser, 440). Together, Democratic and white supremacist leaders manipulated the social and political development in the United States by prohibiting

“The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison” (Alexander, 2012). The numbers tell the story better than words can: black people are more likely to go to prison than any other race in the United States, shown by the fact that more than 60% of the prison population is composed of people of color (The Sentencing Project, 2016). These statistics can be traced back to several different cause, including the Era of Jim Crow and the War on Drugs, both of which led to higher policing in minority areas.

Many historians would agree without doubt that leaders in the United States played a crucial role in shaping the fortunes of the civil rights revolution during the mid-twentieth century. Without concentrating on what national leaders in Washington, D.C., did to influence the path of events leading to racial equality, it is impossible to understand how Blacks received equal treatment in the Southern United States . For President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was only a matter of time when he realized that the treatment of African Americans was horribly wrong. Throughout time, many other presidents were the few to tackle on racism in the United States. Eisenhower didn’t publicly support the civil rights movement but later took action when he realized

Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton argued influentially in their book American Apartheid that “the missing link” in each of the underclass theories prevalent at the time was their “systematic failure to consider the important role that segregation has played in mediating, exacerbating, and ultimately amplifying the harmful social and economic processes they treat” (Massey & Denton, 1995, p. 7). Residential segregation has had a negative effect on African Americans in the United States for years. It puts people at a disadvantage for social and economic success. This residential segregation “was manufactured by whites through a series of self-conscious actions and purposeful institutional arrangements that continue today” (Massey & Denton, 1995, p. 2). Segregation is maintained by institutional arrangements and individual actions. This segregation seems to be the outcome of impersonal social and economic forces. “Residential segregation lies beyond the ability of any individual to change; it constraints black life chances irrespective of personal traits, individual motivations, or private achievements” (Massey & Denton, 1995, p. 3). Individuals cannot change this by themselves it is up to policymakers and the government to make a change. The “missing link” to understand the urban poor is segregation. Society has to understand that by having segregation in the U.S., we will never truly be as one instead of separated.

Studies have suggested that ethnicity is related to illness, impairment and death rates (Williams, Mohammed, Leavell, and Collins, 2010). Communities in American are often segregated by SES, race, and ethnicity. Minority communities commonly share characteristics of low economic development, poor health conditions and low levels of educational attainment. Low SES has consistently been implicated as a risk factor for many of these problems that plague communities. Research indicates that there are large health disparities based on social status that are pervasive and persistent (McGuire, and Miranda, 2008; Fiscella, Gold, and Clancy, 2008). These health disparities reflect the inequalities that exist in our