History Of The Relationship Between African Americans And Law Enforcement In America
It is not unknown that the relationship between African American men and law enforcement has been historically and currently tense, to say the least. Due to obvious racial disparities in American prisons and the sheer amount of incarcerated people calls into question the origin, and the events that brought The Land of the Free to this point in time. This study reviews the events, and the statistics of the Thirteenth amendment effects, emancipation and its impact on southern economy, Birth of a Nation and Jim Crow Laws, Nixon’s enforcement of Law and Order, Reagan and his crack cocaine strikedown, Bush and the Federal Crime Bill of 1994 and the current status of race as it is connected with American law enforcement and the prison system.
The exception stated in the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution allowed for the racism of slavery to be redirected into the form of criminalizing and incarcerating African Americans and this racism sweeps through United States history and has manifested in a variety of political, social and governmental forms, bringing the status of incarceration and criminalization of African Americans to where it is today. The United States holds less than 5% of the world’s population, however, it has over 23% of the world’s incarcerated people. It has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with the amount of 2.2 million people in American prisons in 2006. The Land of the Free has almost a quarter of the entire world’s prisoners. As surprising as that is, it also found that African Americans, specifically young men, are over six times as likely to be incarcerated as to white men. From a population perspective, black men make up 6.5% of the U.S. population, but they make up 40.2% of the prison population. Further, the likelihood of a white man to spend time in prison is 1/17, while the likelihood of a black man to spend time in prison is ⅓.
The Conventional Wisdom is the obvious disparity in prisons and there has been a clear tendency within the United States to enact policies that reform a connection between race, crime and unequal justice in the legal system, as seen in history up until this very day. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution declares that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." After the Civil War, the Amendment was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. This severely damaged Southern economy, as its success was greatly tied up in the slave economy. In 1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States was valued more than all the nation’s railroads, factories and banks combined. Cotton prices dropped from 1870-1900 and they fell below the cost of production in the 1880s. As cotton symbolized poverty to those who grew it, reformers scrambled for procedures to change the destroyed economy in the South.
By 1900, while African Americans could no longer be called slaves, history shows that most were still held for labor and a significant prison boom occurred. Black men were picked up for petty crimes like loitering and vagrancy and held for large amounts of time. Conventional Wisdom here is the exception stated in the 13th Amendment was exploited in order to restore the flailing economy. Also, immediately after emancipation, the foundation of slavery as a forcible labor form and social system began as the U.S. began its investment in the trade of humanity.
“Birth of a Nation” was released in 1915 and was shown in the White House and abroad, depicting a black man as both a rapist and animal. The continued criminalization enforced public opinion to keep ‘black bodies working’ and from there the Klu Klux Klan regained strength. When public terrorism and lynchings became less acceptable, Jim Crow Laws began, holding African Americans in a permanent second class status. They found themselves in a war, with the opposing side owning the law, the police, the government, the press and the court system. They were denied a voice, lacked equal access to education, were mocked in popular culture, were denied hope in economic system and were pushed back in place time and time again by police and by the justice system.
The ongoing debate is that the criminalization continued to attack the African American culture during Jim Crow and continues to do so. The old forms of discrimination found in Jim Crow- discrimination in employment, housing, denial of education opportunities and denial of the right to vote, food stamps and other benefits. These all become legal once you hold the title and check the ‘yes box’ of convicted felon status. It is argued that once a person is criminalized, you have the same rights and the same respect as an African American did during the times of Jim Crow. By the 1960’s, Nixon found his political footing and used opposition against Civil Rights activists as leverage to win over the American people. He was worried that the United States was ‘rapidly becoming a lawless society’ and promoted a renewed respect for the law. The Nixon administration, after he assumed office in 1969, continued to use this law-and-order theme by increasing expenditures for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. LEAA’s expenditures went from 63 million dollars in 1968 to a height of 895 million in 1975. The federal share held 75% for programs for improvement of police capability to ‘handle riots, civil disorder and organized crime’.
Nixon continued to use this ‘War on Drugs’ platform, calling for total war on what he called the number one enemy: dangerous drugs. After the election of Ronald Reagan, the number of drug arrests grew by 126% and with significant sentencing disparities in tow. Crack cocaine was new and highly popular within black communities in the United States during this time and in 1986, Congress passed a 100:1 sentencing disparity for trafficking or possession of crack cocaine. Mandatory minimum for those convicted in federal court of possession of 5 grams was 5 years, while the sentence was the same for those found with possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine. Entire black communities were criminalized and then, when some of those were convicted, were met with harsh judgments and an extreme amount of time in federal prison. War on Drugs continued with Bush, specifically through gaining momentum through Willie Horton. Willie Horton’s case of rape against a white woman was used as an attack ad against Dukakis, to gain votes as Bush being ‘tough on crime’. By 1990, the prison population had reached 1,179,200. By 1999, 2% of the black population was incarcerated and 1 in 10 black males in their twenties were either in state or federal prison.
When Bill Clinton was elected he brought in another wave of mass incarceration but with new policies. Three-strikes law implemented, mandatory minimums larger than ever before, new truth in sentencing with loss in parole, all in effect. Also, Clinton signed the 1994 Federal Crime bill which gave $30 billion for building more prisons and increasing the number federal and death penalty crimes. The ongoing debate is this bill began laying the foundation to the ‘militarization’ that we find in our police force today.
Today in the 21st century, 89% of African Americans believe that the criminal justice system is biased against blacks. In some black communities, experience with incarceration is becoming a normal-life expectation, with 60% of black men without a high school diploma having been incarcerated for a period of time. It is found that the likelihood for a black man to be incarcerated is higher than the likelihood of him to obtain a bachelor degree. In several states a felony conviction does not only mean loss of voting rights for the time of incarceration, but also loss of voting rights permanently. Almost 2 million African Americans are impacted by felon disenfranchisement.
