What is "the new Jim Crow"? Our guests discuss the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and some helpful ways to re-shape the discussions about defunding the police.
Transcript: The New Jim Crow and De-funding the Police
Eric: You cannot police well, when the majority of your police force is white and the majority of the people, the citizens of Ferguson are African-American and you respond to a case like Michael Brown and people protesting in the streets with militarized vehicles.
Penny: Welcome to the Diversity and Inclusion for All project supported by Calvin University and the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. Together, we'll listen to key perspectives, build our knowledge, inform our thinking, and get a little better equipped to engage our world.
Today's episode is part of our mini-series on the broader topic of Race in America. And I'm joined again today by my two amazing colleagues and guests, Eric Washington and Wil Katerberg. Let's begin by looking a little bit at the new Jim Crow. And I … from what I know about that term, the new Jim Crow is really related to a book by Michelle Alexander, by that name. And I'm wondering if we can unpack that a little bit, what it is, what it refers to, and why it's so important for understanding our context and race in America today.
Eric: The term that we use popularly is from the book by Michelle Alexander, who's a lawyer and legal scholar. And in the introduction of her book, she came across the title, or at least the name, the phrase when looking at a poster. And she saw that something like: Incarceration or mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. So, it reflects a racial caste system in this country that has never gone away, but has has morphed and changed with with with the times. So, yes, it deals with the incidence of mass incarceration that really began in this country during the Nixon presidency. So, ‘68, ‘72, then obviously he did not complete the second term. But during that era and then you have incremental increases in the amount of African-American, or the disproportionate amount of African-American men and women who are who are in prison. And then it just explodes in the 1990s in the aftermath of the crime bill that was, that was passed. So those those like Alexander and others who have who have written and thought about this, she.. that the state or municipal levels, state level, and federal level as using…using the legal system and using certain laws that that they know would negatively affect communities of color, but particularly African-American communities, to imprison folks on charges that were petty much milder if you compare to other types of crimes. And it was a way to continue to oppress African-Americans.
Penny: Can you give a couple examples of how the laws that were passed, especially in the 90s with the crime bill, how that really disproportionately affected communities of color, especially African-American communities? Because some people might say, well, there's laws, if you break the law, you should go to prison, period. And I think what we're trying to understand is how the laws themselves were sort of biased against… sort of almost designed to put more African-Americans in prison. I wonder if you can help me understand that a little better.
Eric: Yeah. One example is, you know, in the crime bill, for example, made a difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Crack crack cocaine was a drug, a street drug that was in majority African-American communities and neighborhoods, at least from my recollection, going back into the 80s and definitely into the 90s. And so if you are caught with a couple of rocks of crack cocaine, you would have been sentenced to like three to five years in prison, according to these new laws. Whereas if you had powder cocaine, which was associated with white usage, you would definitely not get three to five years. Your sentence would be much shorter. So that's one example of really a color-coded law without mentioning color, because that's that's part of the the whole argument that Michelle Alexander makes is that these laws became on the books when idealogues, politicians, and others were saying that our society is now evolving into a colorblind society. And the legal system is colorblind. That's just one example. And that was a huge example, because there were thousands, tens of thousands, probably more than tens of thousands of African-American men and women who were in prison because of possession of crack cocaine.
Penny: So crack cocaine was an example where there were different sentencing minimums or policies or practices for different kinds of drug possession, different kinds of drugs, like possessing the crack cocaine versus powder. But that actually effectively, because of the communities that tended to use each kind, it ended up basically being a huge disadvantage that the African-Americans more would get these longer sentences, whereas white users, drug users would kind of get off easy, comparatively.
Eric: And then overall, I mean, statistics show and these statistics do hold to date that the number of or the percentage of African-American drug users versus that a white drug use is basically the same. You know, why the disproportionate number of African-Americans going to jail on drug sentences than than their white counterparts.
Penny: So the whole drug issue is definitely part of it. But it's it's a little bigger than that, too, right. Could you help us understand a little bit more about how significant the mass incarceration, especially of African-American men, is in our in our country today?
Eric: Yeah, definitely is bigger than the drug laws, because with that, we have to get into policing. And and and when talking about mass incarceration, the new Jim Crow, we have to talk about how uneven policing has been historically in African-American communities compared to white communities, especially white communities. Policies such as going back to the 90s in New York City. But we can go all the way back back to …really we can go of back to the 19th century in terms of the type of policing, but the whole policy of stop and frisk, for example, in in New York City and other places. Rudy Giuliani at the time in trying to clean up crime in New York City will say, look, we will if you look suspicious, we will stop you. The police will stop you, question you, frisk you upon a whim if you look suspicious. That opened up so much in terms of of of police corruption. They will find something or they will plant something on you. They will lie and falsely imprisoning or arresting and imprisoning African-Americans. And this this was and this was a disproportion of African-American men with that police intimidation, which … and all of this gets into perceptions and racial biases. And that's why now the work is going on to undo …at least address unconscious racial bias that we talked about before, because you can't understand policing and the history of policing in African-American communities without understanding the biased nature of policing.
Penny: I think it's also just the biased nature of of people. If the threshold for stop and frisk is “something here looks suspicious,” on the one hand, you know, you want the police to be able to pursue things that are in the interest of public safety. But on the other hand, if the threshold is “it looks suspicious,” that's pretty subjective. And unfortunately, people of color, brown and black people are, I think, perceived in many instances as being more suspect, more like “what are they up to,” while as a white or white skinned person doing exactly the same activity just doesn't seem as suspicious. And and that could be true for a police officer or for another person as well.
Will: I used to where I lived, I used to regularly drive down Hall Street in Grand Rapids. And there was often on my way home, a car pulled over and a police officer talking to the police sitting in the squad car, presumably looking up the license plate and stuff like that. And for a year, I just made it a habit of counting, you know, was it a person of color or was it a white person? And in my memory, it was about 20 to one person of color.
Eric: Shish.
Will: You know, and I don't know what the demographics of the population of travels down Hall Street is, but I somehow imagine it's not 20 to one people of color. This is as common as anything else. And I remember, I think I talked about this with three or four African-American colleagues and I've seen it discussed on television and in journalism, about the kind of conversations that black parents have to have with their children or their white parents who've adopted a black child or adopted child about what to do when a police officer pulls you over. It clearly reflects this long history of fear and legitimate fear. For me when I get pulled over, I'm usually just mad at myself. And what a pain in the neck. You know, I might have to pay a fine because I was speeding. I don't think about the question of: am I going to get home tonight or am I going to end up in jail or injured or killed. But that's a live question for my African-American colleagues.
Penny: Also, I identify Asian-American, and I have one son who definitely looks like a person of color. And I remember seeing … actually I was living in New Zealand and we were watching Australian news. So this must have been like 2015. And there was a hostage situation. And they … it would appear that the hostage takers, the you know, like people who were doing the bad stuff were sort of Middle Eastern and they were in a building and then slowly certain hostages were being let go. And so you’d see a person like scuttling out the door and running towards the police with their hands up in the air. And my son, he looks kind of Middle Eastern, like you can't quite figure out where he’s from, but he definitely looks like a person of color. And the whole time, I'm just thinking, if my son were to come running out of that building as a hostage being freed, he might be mistaken for one of the people doing the the crime and be injured or shot or assumed. And so just these… because of the way people look people will make assumptions or have suspicions, even if unfounded, that can result in someone dying. I mean, it's that serious.
Eric: Absolutely. You know, as someone who has been stopped and frisked while I was in college. You, you don't know. I, I did not have the freedom to question the police officer about why are you stopping me? I'm just walking to campus. He didn't know I was a college student. He didn't know I lived about four blocks away. But I had crossed I had crossed that line. I crossed that red line in my neighborhood. And I was walking through a prosperous white neighborhood. But he just saw me walking 10 o'clock in the morning and he used authority. And and it was nothing that I really could do in that moment, because if I would have resisted. And you know, there could’ve been some bodily harm done. So, yeah, I mean, it’s right …it’s that fundamental. But is that is that is that crucial that for for for many members of the population here in the United States, You know, speaking of African-Americans, especially, it’s a matter of life and death. It's it's raw survival when you have an encounter with a law enforcement officer and (it doesn’t) have to be a white enforcement law enforcement officer. It’s the badge. It’s the gun. It's the the club. It's whatever. It's the uniform… institution.
Penny: So, defunding the police has been a topic and the last definitely the last year or two. And I think it's important for us to understand where that comes from and to sort of address the concern that people say, you know what, the police also serve a function in our society. They're supposed to protect and maintain law and order. Right. Is a phrase we hear. And how can we respect some of those perspectives, but also shed light on why other people are saying we need to reform; we need to change police policies and structures and practices.
Eric: I think what we just talked about is: historically there’s this is disproportionate number of African-American men and women who have been incarcerated. And this this I alluded to this. I'll say it now. This goes all the way back to the 19th century in northern cities where you had free African-Americans and northern cities, both men and women, who were incarcerated for any and every reason. Innocent people put in jail. It's been a form of oppression of African-American communities, North-South, 19th century, 20th century, 21st century. And African-American folk are tired. Other folks are tired who who who understand this long train of history, this long train of abuse. So on one hand, you have this history. And people are crying out: This has to …this has to stop. You cannot treat one segment of the population differently than the other segment of the pack or another segment of the population, because it has …it has grave effects on the family, on people's incomes, people's ability to vote, so forth and so on. On the other hand, you can't turn a blind eye to real problems that occur in African-American neighborhoods. And it is systemic. It is institutional. But real people do get caught up in some bad situations. So that has to be addressed.
So what I think where those two streams come together in the defund the police movement, again, there are many voices on on defunding. Some will argue that defunding of police means redirecting funds of a bloated police budget in in any municipality and slicing some of that money off that can be used to reinvest in communities that have historically been communities that have been disinvested, to build up the community, to create opportunities. That's one argument that Gary Chambers down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, my neck of the woods, that’s one argument that he makes. Those are the voices in this in this conversation says that you should just eliminate policing because of the history of policing, having to do with slave patrols. And and policing is inherently racist and anti-black racist at that. So eliminate it. Start something totally new that is equitable. So that's that's that's just a couple of things.
Penny: So I'd like to dig a little bit deeper into this idea that policing is inherently racist. So first of all, I… I've had, you know, the parents of students. My husband has an uncle who is in the police force. And I mean, I think we can all say we have bias and prejudice, and to some extent we're all racist. But how can we understand the police system or law enforcement in general is inherently racist when we know people and and we like them. Right? How do we balance that out?
Eric: Yeah, that's a great question. And this is where I think people get lost in the conversation because there's a lot of heat in this conversation. So when when when proponents of defunding the police and who argue that the policing in the United States is at its root, is rooted in the system of slavery and maintaining slavery, therefore it is inherently racist. That's looking at policing as practice and also institution. Those those who make that argument are not making the argument that every individual police officer is a racist or as bad, but that the institution is is faulty. It is. It is just against black people. And that's the element that needs to either be deconstructed or reformed. So I think I think that people automatically hear defund the police, they think, oh, you're calling all cops are bad. I think there is a segment of people who say that, you know, all cops are bad. So there are people who say but a lot of other folks do not go that far in terms of their arguments for defunding the police. They, I think, were …former President Barack Obama during the campaign season last year, made a controversial statement saying that some some of his fellow Democrats who are probably more left than he is on certain issues. He said you can't you can't start a conversation with defunding the police because it's going to lose a lot of people. And I think in that in that case, in terms of conversation, I think he's right. I think we can argue about the merits of the argument. But that's… the rhetoric is is different than the substance of the argument, I would say.
Penny: So there's sort of a range of beliefs or perspectives on defund the police, everything from get rid of the whole practice institution and just do something completely different. In the middle maybe there is sort of how can we reform, how can we use some of the funding to build communities and address sort of the root issues of incarceration and some of the crime that happens, to perhaps at the other end, really more training and figuring out how to change practices and unconscious bias so that the practice of policing as it's lived and experienced becomes less disadvantageous to people of color and African-Americans.
Eric: It’s a whole range. And the people who argue for defunding are looking at the issue holistically, historically, sociologically, psychologically, economically, politically, so forth and so on. I can remember when I really and this this is this is this is before the cries of defunding were occurring last year. But I remember when when Ferguson broke out in August of 2014, and I saw tanks and like military style vehicles and weaponry that the Ferguson, the city of Ferguson in Missouri had, I was like, why do these people why why does this local police force have all this stuff? They don't need the stuff. You cannot police well, when the majority of your police force is white and the majority of the people, the citizens of Ferguson are African-American and you respond to a case like Michael Brown and people protesting in the streets with militarized vehicles. You're occupying these people's spaces So, occupation is also …police occupation is also part of this conversation of defunding the police. People don't want their communities occupied. Plain and simple.
Will: All of this is part of the, quote, war on drugs. Yeah, and that war on drugs rhetoric goes back to the 90s, maybe even the 80s. And at the same time, in the 80s and 90s, especially in the 90s, police departments started militarizing. There's a program that's called something like 1033 program or one thousand thirty-three program. And it was a federal act that allowed police and sheriff's departments to get access to military gear, all those created in the 90s. And so the US military gave law enforcement agencies billions of dollars worth of equipment, from assault rifles to grenade launchers, batons, combat vehicles, all sorts of stuff like that. And if you have police who are armed and being trained like soldiers and being told they're fighting the war on drugs, it's no surprise that a militarized approach has the impact that Eric was describing, particularly on communities of color, which are associated more than white folk with the problem. The war on drugs has as a racial cast to it.
So the efforts to defund the police are about that militarized culture and try to shift it towards, say, a culture that has police departments working and social workers. So, I could imagine police officers getting more social work, kind of training or perhaps police units coordinated with local social workers so that when they respond to certain kinds of calls, it's a police officer and a social worker who's trained to deal with these kinds of situations and maybe even given a little bit of the kind of training that the police have traditionally gotten. But directing policing away from this highly militarized approach that's been being promoted for the past 40 years towards something that is more, as Eric was describing, preventative by solving or addressing problems in communities before they become violent problems. Or when there are certain kinds of violent problems of having police and perhaps police accompanied by social workers, be the ones to deal with the problems. I'm thinking of these classic tragic cases associated with Black Lives Matter, where an African-American person calls the police because they need help with a family member and the police come and the person ends up getting shot. And this is not to blame individual police officers, but to recognize that there are cultures of policing and those cultures of policing shape how people view things.
Penny: I think it's helpful for me to think about reshaping or rethinking what policing is. So, even the word policing in my mind brings up images of people in uniform with weapons, keeping the bad elements under control and keeping the good elements safe. You know, read elements like people. And then as soon as you do that, you have images and like the bad elements might be the people of color. Right. And the good elements are the the white people. And that it could move in the direction of building in partnership with people, diverse people in a community building, safer communities. Right. Safer community practices and a kind of trust between community safety officers and the community. Rather than “I'm going to police you to keep the good people safe and the bad people under control.” Rather, “I'm going to police our community in partnership with you so that our whole community is safe and works together well.” Like if we can rethink that, I think that's that's a helpful way for me to think about (it). Defunding the police isn't isn't necessarily saying all police are bad or all police officers as individuals are always acting on racist impulses. That's not what that's about. But that just rethinking what what can we do as law enforcement or community safety initiatives and practices that's going to get us to a better place and not be disadvantageous, you know, systemically disadvantageous regularly and frequently to persons of color, especially African-Americans.
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