RECENTLY, I made my way home to celebrate with my older brother who was just released from jail. He was serving time for the distribution of crack cocaine. While I should have been happy and excited to know that my brother made it (unlike so many who die in the custody of the state), I felt a profound sense of sadness and anger. These overwhelming emotions were directed toward the social and economic systems that create, maintain and benefit from the criminalization of poor people of color.
I do not mean to suggest that my brother and others do not exact agency in their decisions to use and/or sell drugs; however, individual decisions cannot and do not explain the systemic problems that are reflected by statistics about the rates of involvement in the drug trade and the rates of incarceration more generally. According to the latest report by the Pew Group, one in every 100 Americans was incarcerated in 2007. Moreover, the majority of those caught in the penal system's wide net belong to racialized and poor urban communities. According to the same Pew study, one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 is currently incarcerated. Black women between the ages of 35 and 39 constitute the largest population of incarcerated women with a current rate of one in a 100. Many of the individuals currently incarcerated were arrested for possession, use or sale of illegal drugs.
Without an analysis of how race and class play into our public dialogue about drug abuse and sales, we cannot expect to get to the root of the problem. Frankly, the media and many politicians have consciously criminalized non-white drug abusers and drug dealers, playing on age-old stereotypes about the supposed pathology of people of color and economically depressed groups. Anyone who has been to Rugby on a warm spring night knows that drug abuse isn't limited to poor black and Latino neighborhoods. Criminalization of the poor and non-white makes it seem natural that particular segments of our society should be relegated to marginal and impoverished social positions.
Black and brown bodies and psyches thus become the loci of discussion about the problems of society. In this way, the prison system and its criminalizing-racializing character serve as a crutch for social and economic inequality. Instead of a discussion about poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia or the state's violence against its citizens, we are urged to stand against the immorality of these wanton and depraved black or Latino criminals. Moreover, the real culprits in the erosion of our social and economic fabric bolster their profits by selling everything from toothpaste to airtime to the incarcerated. It is not surprising then that instead of ending poverty or social inequality, we should build prisons and work in earnest to fill them. As Angela Davis says, "the prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited." We relegate our social and economic problems to the prison system while a group of corporations profit from the whole mess.
We must reorient our discussions about the prison system toward a more productive conversation centered on inequality. We must then reorient the state's power away from the destruction of poor and colored communities and toward the destruction of poverty and racial inequality.
J.T. Roane is a fourth-year student in the College.
Read More
WILLIAMS: Donald Trump will be a threat to student loan forgiveness
By Ryan Williams | YesterdayTo be sure, this is not a problem of the University’s making. Nevertheless, understanding the uncertainty of financial accessibility in education, the University must step up to the plate.
PATEL: Personal development courses support students beyond the gradebook
By Heer Patel | 6 days agoThe University must rethink its approach to education beyond traditional major-specific requirements and mandate personal development courses.
EDITORIAL: Commercialization threatens U.Va.’s educational mission
By Editorial Board | 6 days agoAfter all, measuring the University’s worth in terms of accrued capital, operational efficiency and numerical rankings molds this space into just another cookie-cutter institution.
