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September 11, 2004
Black Eye for the White Guy
The Black Commentator
This website qualifies as one of my "stumble-upons"; I was doing a google-search for I-don't-know-what and landed here. I have to say I was quite impressed. Needless to say, the general political leanings of the ethnic community mirror my own, when the church-goers are filtered from the mix.
The periodical features cartoons, which is always a favorite place to go to for me. I found offense however, in this one. The cartoon is split down the middle, featuring a typically ethnic group in a crowded prison on the right and white, "white-collar" criminals in a barely-crowded prison situation on the left. The intent is honorable, although the cartoonist apparently knows little of actual prison life.
I have seen the inside of a "white-collar" prison, and I am intimately acquainted with an inmate of one. Let it be said here and now that Prison is Prison. The conditions are overcrowded, the food is terrible, and inmates suffer as much abuse, and sometimes more, from the guards as they would in a maximum security prisons. While I can't speak for other places, Eglin, the camp that used to be known as "Club Fed", is also no longer an "all-white joint." While it continues to house non-violent offenders, the population is ethnically diverse, with a roughly even mix among European, African, and Latin American inmates.
The disparity is therefore not within the prisons, but in the sentencing. Once in prison, the experience is destined to be the same for Martha Stewart, as it would for anyone else entering a Prison facility; demeaning, degrading, and humiliating. The Westport Now Article, Report: Martha Stewart Waits Out Cell Crunch remarks that Martha hasn't gone in yet because she has to wait for a bed at the overcrowded Danbury Prison. But all to often, the rich folk that break the law are not subject to the same sentencing guidelines as the rest of us, white or otherwise. The OJ Simpson trial showed us that it doesn't matter any more what color you; if you have the money and the notariety, you can buy a "Not Guilty" sentence.
The reverse is also true. Judges don't say in their chambers, "He's a white man, he won't survive in that prison. Let's send him to the work camp." If you can't afford a decent defense, the color of your skin doesn't matter, you can expect to be convicted to the fullest extent of the law.
One of the biggest problems the American underclass is facing is the misconception that "It's all about being black." One statistic that doesn't get stated is that the number of European-Americans that are falling beneath the poverty line is growing. Many of these people hear African-American complaints about the racial division but they see Oprah, Condaleeza Rice, Shaquille O'Neal and Don King, people who can go anywhere they want, and do anything they want and buy anything they want. They can't. They are white and poor and everyone they know is white and poor and they are not being courted by Democrats, but Republicans, who are quick to manipulate their minds with Fox News and other outlets, pointing out that they are not the ones causing the grief.
We're not suffering so much a racial disparity but a class disparity. Yes, African-Americans are still greatly overrepresented below the poverty line, but the overrepresentation is much smaller than it was years ago. Considering the massive exploitation of African-Americans by whites only fifty years ago, some racial disparity is to be expected. In fact, however, it's harder to stop being poor than it is to start being poor, and the change in representation is more due to an increase of European-American membership in the underclass.
It is my conclusion that blacks are overrepresented in prisons due as much to the fact that the poor in general are overrepresented in prisons, and blacks are overrepresented among the poor, notably in southern states. Furthermore, the decrease in black representation is not so much due to cultural advancement as it is due to the increase of whites below the poverty line.
Racism still exists today, but in the 00's it is far less a concern than Classism. Despite all that, The Black Commentator features many intellegent commentantors, and it's a great read.
Posted by Bastique at September 11, 2004 11:14 AM