Discrimination in America

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Big Shots Not Interested *

The fact that he had stayed out of trouble, and that his parents were strict, and that he'd graduated from high school in three years and was serious about his college work - none of that afforded him any protection . . ."He was laid down with his eyes open and his mouth open, like he was saying, 'Oh, God!' " said Ms. Thompson. . .: 'Yes, that's my son. That's my son. He's dead.' " . . .. .The big shots have other things on their minds. In New York there's a football stadium . . . In Washington, the focus of presidents of the United States, past and present, has been on who would get to go to the pope's funeral. In Los Angeles the other day, the black celebrity elite turned out en masse to profile at Johnnie Cochran's funeral.  Youngsters dead and dying? Nobody of importance is much interested in that.  Bob Herbert, NY Times, 4/8/05  MORE

 

Bush's Racist Triumph*

The ballots left uncounted, and that will never be counted, are so-called spoiled or rejected ballots -- votes cast by citizens, but never tallied. This is the dark little secret of U.S. democracy: Nationwide, in our presidential elections, about 2 million votes are cast and never counted, most spoiled because they cannot be read by the tallying machines. . .  Cleveland State University Professor Mark Salling analyzed ballots thrown into Ohio's electoral garbage can. Salling found that, "overwhelmingly," the voided votes come from African American precincts . . .A U.S. Civil Rights Commission investigation concluded that, of nearly 180,000 votes discarded in Florida in the 2000 election as unreadable, a shocking 54 percent were cast by black voters. . .In Florida, an African American is 900 percent more likely to have his or her vote invalidated than a white voter. Jackson & Palast, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1/26/05 MORE

 

Alabama Approves Segregated Schools in 2004

Black Ballots Not Counted*

A dive into the electoral dumpster [of spoiled ballots] reveals something special . . .In a careful county-by-county, precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Florida 2000 race, the US Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54% of the votes in the spoilage bin were cast by African-Americans. . . .Ohio Republicans, simul-taneously in charge of both the Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote drive and the state's vote-counting rules, . . . insured the spoilage pile would be as high as the White House. . . Add to the spoiled ballots a second group of uncounted votes, the 'provisional' ballots, . . .Over 155,000 Ohio voters were shunted to these second-class ballots.. . . the direct result of the national Republican strategy that targeted African-American precincts for mass challenges on election day.  Greg Palast, 11/12/04 MORE

 

Individual Freedom Does Not Matter to Ashcroft

Mr. Joseph is a refugee from Haiti who is seeking asylum in the United States. He is not a terrorist, and no one has even suggested that he is a threat to anyone. And yet he's been in federal custody for nearly two years.  An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals have ruled that he should be freed on bond, pending a final ruling on his asylum request. But the attorney general of the United States, John Ashcroft, won't let him go.  Playing his ever-present, all-encompassing terrorism card, Mr. Ashcroft personally intervened in Mr. Joseph's case, summarily blocking his release. According to the attorney general, releasing this young Haitian would tend to encourage mass migration from Haiti, and might exacerbate the potential danger to national security of nefarious aliens . . . Senator Specter urged Mr. Ashcroft to consider a policy in which the Justice Department would address cases like Mr. Joseph's on a less sweeping, "more individual" basis, which would enable officials to determine whether there was any real basis for concern about terrorism.  Mr. Ashcroft was unmoved. He told Senator Specter: "Sometimes individual treatment is important. Sometimes it's important to make a statement about groups of people that come." 
So David Joseph, a threat to no one, sits and waits and prays at Krome.  Herbert, NY Times, 8/13/04
 

Abu Ghraib -- No Surprise

President George W. Bush said he was "disgusted" to learn about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca detention sites in Iraq. He further said the abuses do no not represent the America he knows.  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld characterized the conduct of those U.S. troops involved in torture and humiliation as "un-American."  These comments raise a serious question in my mind - whether such conduct was indeed "un-American" and represented the America I know. . .While most Americans cringed in disbelief at the various pictures of abuse at the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca detention sites, African-Americans, many of whom have experienced abuse at the hands of authority, had a different, more subtle reaction. . .The abuses in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca were more than prohibited acts of torture under international law, but anti-Islamic and anti-Arab hate crimes born of a legacy of American racism and xenophobia. Jeremy I. Levitt, The Arizona Republic, 8/1/04
 

Bush's Compassionate Economy*

A new study of black male employment trends has come up with the following extremely depressing finding: "By 2002, one of every four black men in the U.S. was idle all year long. This idleness rate was twice as high as that of white and Hispanic males." . . .Among black male dropouts, for example, 44 percent were idle year-round, as were nearly 42 of every 100 black men aged 55 to 64. . .Things fall apart when 25 percent of the male population is jobless. (This does not even begin to address the very serious problems of underemployment, such as part-time or temporary jobs, and extremely low-wage work.) Men in a permanent state of joblessness are in no position to take on the roles of husband and father. Marriage? Forget about it. Child support? Ditto.  Herbert, NY Times, 7/19/04

 

1 Million Black Voters Didn't Count

In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
This year, it could get worse. . .It is about to get worse. The ill-named "Help America Vote Act," signed by President Bush in 2002, is pushing computerization of the ballot box.  California decertified some of Diebold Corp.'s digital ballot boxes in response to fears that hackers could pick our next president. But the known danger of black-box voting is that computers, even with their software secure, are vulnerable to low-tech spoilage games: polls opening late, locked-in votes, votes lost in the ether. Greg Palast, San Francisco Chronicle, 6/20/04

 Tribal Prison Scandal

Federal investigators have uncovered abuse, neglect and inhumane conditions in the Native American prison system that could have contributed to some deaths, Interior Department officials said Thursday.  An undisclosed number of deaths are being investigated by the department's Inspector General's Office as part of an investigation into run-down prisons on tribal lands across the nation, said Dave Anderson, Interior's assistant secretary for Indian affairs. He declined to elaborate on the number of deaths being investigated, how the victims were killed or whether they included employees as well as inmates. . . Several facilities with no running water, heat or working toilets are depicted in a videotape that was prepared by Ed Naranjo, a retired law enforcement official with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The bureau oversees the prisons as part of the Interior Department.  The tape, which also shows areas in which inmates could get access to guns seized in criminal cases, was given to Interior investigators earlier this year.  Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY, 5/20/04

Discrimination in Convictions*

The study, "Exonerations in the United States, 1989 through 2003," includes what is believed to be the most comprehensive listing of exonerations in the United States to date and was conducted by U-M [University of Michigan] law professor Samuel Gross and four students. The study reports that since 1989—when the first DNA exoneration occurred—328 defendants have been exonerated in the U.S. after being convicted of serious crimes such as rape and murder.
Another key finding in the research involved racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. Ninety percent of exonerated juvenile defendants are African-American or Hispanic.  U-M News Service, 4/19/04

Water in Zanesville, OH.

The [Ohio Civil Rights] commission found that on Coal Run Road, none of the 17 black or mixed-race homes had city water service, while two white homes did. On nearby Langan Lane, all of the 18 white homes on top of the hill had city water, while five of the eight black or mixed-race homes in the hollow did not. (The other three families had connected to the municipal lines by themselves.)

The commission concluded there was probable cause to believe that the city, county and local water authority had "failed to provide the complainants with access to public water service because of their race."

One month after the report was released, Muskingum County announced it had found enough money to issue a $730,000 contract to extend water lines into the hollow. (Officials had used a much higher estimate — $2 million — when they told hollow residents a few years ago that it was too expensive to connect them to the water system, residents said.).  JAMES DAO, NY Times, 2/17/04
 

New Research from The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University

The Darryl Hunt Case

Nearly two decades ago, on the morning of Aug. 10, 1984, a 25-year-old white woman named Deborah Sykes was attacked on her way to work in downtown Winston-Salem. The assailant was a black man, and the crime was incredibly violent. . . Darryl Hunt became a suspect. He didn't fit the initial descriptions given to the police, or look like the composite drawings being circulated. But he was 19 and black, which was enough. The former Klansman — who was mentally disturbed and was paid a reward for his information — said yes indeed, Mr. Hunt was the man he had seen with Ms. Sykes. And the alleged eyewitness who had fingered Terry Thomas with such certainty now claimed to be equally certain about Darryl Hunt. . . .A judge ordered the tests, which showed that the semen could not have come from Mr. Hunt — or from the two alleged accomplices. Incredibly, that didn't matter. The judge refused to order a new trial. There was obviously a fourth man, the judge said, and he may have been an accomplice of Mr. Hunt's as well. The state liked that idea, and adopted it as its own.
Another, even weirder idea was advanced by a federal magistrate who reviewed the case. He said he couldn't exclude the possibility that "an alleged sexual pervert" had deposited the sperm after Ms. Sykes had been killed.
The authorities did not want to release Darryl Hunt under any circumstances.
Monday: The mystery is solved.  Herbert, NY Times, 1/2/04
his attorney, Mark Rabil, who is white, and several dedicated supporters in the black community, including a former city alderman named Larry Little, spent many long disheartening years fighting a hateful, racist system that was never interested in dispensing justice or finding the real killer. . . There are many terrible things about this case. The awful attacks on at least two women. The years lost to Mr. Hunt in prison. And the fact that the relentlessly bad behavior of the law enforcement authorities — the use of unreliable witnesses, the illegal withholding of exculpatory material, the refusal to acknowledge clear evidence of innocence — is so ordinary. This sort of thing goes on all the time.

Mr. Hunt told me he was not bitter, but he did think someone should be held accountable for what happened to him. "If people feel they can get away with anything," he said, "then you will have other Darryl Hunts, from now until the end of time."  Herbert, NY Times, 1/5/04
 

Torture of Poor and Minority Children in Mississippi

The state of Mississippi is scrambling to make changes in its juvenile justice system. Federal investigators found unsafe and inhumane living conditions and evidence of abuse at two residential training schools. . . ELLIOTT: Girls, sometimes on suicide watch, were stripped naked and put in a windowless isolation cell with no lights, no toilet and no running water. Former Columbia student Makia Palmer(ph) says they called it the hole. . .

Ms. BROWNSTEIN [Southern Poverty Law Center]: They hog-tie children, which means that they handcuff their wrists and their ankles and then they chain them together behind them. All of this is the kind of things that you would hear about in some torture chamber in a Third World country, not how we treat our children in the United States, one would think.

ELLIOTT [NPR Reporter]: For rule breakers, there was what they called lockdown. Randy, who didn't give his last name, says kids would be locked in a bare cell with only bars covering the windows.

RANDY: They'd take your clothes from you, have you sleeping on the slab naked, and it's cold and freezing outside and you'd be balled up trying to get warm.Ms. MAKIA PALMER: It's a dark room. You can't see nothing. When they put you in there, you don't have nothing on. Only way you can use the bathroom is through the hole in the floor. . .

ELLIOTT: Girls, sometimes on suicide watch, were stripped naked and put in a windowless isolation cell with no lights, no toilet and no running water. Former Columbia student Makia Palmer(ph) says they called it the hole.

Ms. MAKIA PALMER: It's a dark room. You can't see nothing. When they put you in there, you don't have nothing on. Only way you can use the bathroom is through the hole in the floor.

Profile: Justice Department places Mississippi officials on notice for abuse and inhumane conditions at juvenile facilities, NPR, December 5, 2003, http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1534507

Racial Disparity in Marijuana Use and Arrests

FACT 1:  Fewer Blacks than Whites use marijuana

 In 1999, fewer Blacks ages 12 to 17 than Whites or Hispanics had used alcohol in the past month, the past year, or ever in their lifetime.  In addition, a statistically significantly lower percentage of Blacks than Whites or Hispanics had used any tobacco products, and more specifically, cigarettes, in the past month, the past year, or in their lifetime. Apparent differences among Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics in the use of any illicit drugs were not statistically significant; however, fewer Blacks than Whites had used marijuana in the past year and in their lifetime. Status and Trends in the Education of Blacks, p. 84 U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, NCES 2003–034 September 2003

 

Fact 2:  Blacks are arrested 2.59 times as often as Whites for marijuana use

Data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the United States Census Bureau are used to characterize racial disparities in marijuana and other drug offense arrest rates in 700 metropolitan area counties.  National drug arrest rates for blacks and whites are compared from 1991 to 1995, showing dramatic and consistent disparities.  The disparity between black and white arrest rates for marijuana offenses has grown during this period

Appendix 2.  Racial Disparities in 1995 Arrests 

1995 Uniform Crime Report Data

Arrest Rate Per 100,000

 

 

 

Offense

 

 

All

 

 

black

 

 

white

 

Am.

Indian

 

Asian/

Pacific

Ratio

of

 black:

white

Possession of Marijuana

192.84

429.22

165.64

102.83

23.10

2.59

 

United States Marijuana Arrests, Part Two:  Racial Differences in Drug Arrests, Copyright © 2000 by Jon Gettman and the NORML Foundation

Discrimination in Public Services

The map below shows the sewer lines (green lines) in a small town in North Carolina.  The white areas indicate a place with 20% or fewer African-Americans.  Darker areas indicate higher percentages of African Americans.  Notice that the green sewer lines are primarily in white areas and make sharp turns to avoid areas with high concentrations of African Americans.  

Map fromThe Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities