Racializing Justice, Disenfranchising Lives: The Racism, Criminal Justice, and Law Reader

367 Pages·2007·1.871 MB·English

by  Manning Marable, Ian Steinberg, Keesha Middlemass (eds.)

Racializing Justice,
Disenfranchising Lives
The Critical Black Studies Series
Institute for Research in African American Studies
Columbia University
Edited by Manning Marable
The Critical Black Studies Series features readers and anthologies examining challenging top-
ics within the contemporary black experience—in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa,
and across the African Diaspora. All readers include scholarly articles originally published in
the acclaimed quarterly interdisciplinary journal Souls, published by the Institute for Research
in African-American Studies at Columbia University. Under the general editorial supervision
of Manning Marable, the readers in the series are designed both for college and university
course adoption, as well as for general readers and researchers. The Critical Black Studies Series
seeks to provoke intellectual debate and exchange over the most critical issues confronting the
political, socioeconomic and cultural reality of black life in the United States and beyond.
Titles in this series published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Racializing Justice, Disenfranchising Lives: The Racism, Criminal Justice, and Law Reader
Edited by Manning Marable, Ian Steinberg, and Keesha Middlemass
Seeking Higher Ground: The Hurricane Katrina Crisis, Race, and Public Policy Reader
EditedbyManningMarable and Kristen Clarke
Transnational Blackness: African Americans Navigating the Global Color Line
Edited by Manning Marable and Vanessa Agard-Jones
The Islam and Black America Reader
Edited by Manning Marable and Hisham Aidi
The New Black History: The African-American Experience since 1945 Reader
Edited by Manning Marable and Peniel Joseph
Beyond Race: New Social Movements in the African Diaspora
Edited by Leith Mullings
The Black Women, Gender, and Sexuality Reader
Edited by Manning Marable
Black Intellectuals: The Race, Ideology, and Power Reader
Edited by Manning Marable
Racializing Justice,
Disenfranchising Lives:
The Racism, Criminal Justice, and Law Reader
Edited by Manning Marable, Ian Steinberg, and Keesha Middlemass
Racializing Justice, Disenfranchising lives
Copyright ©Manning Marable, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7766-3
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles or reviews.
First published in hardcover in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan
®
division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a
registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries.
Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-53773-0 I SBN 978-0-230-60734-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230607347
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Racializing justice, disenfranchising lives : the racism, criminal justice, and law
reader / edited by Manning Marable, Ian Steinberg and Keesha Middlemass.
p. cm. — (The critical black studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-53773-0
1. Discrimination in criminal justice administration—United States. 2. Crime and
race—United States. 3. African Americans—Social conditions. 4. African American
criminals. 5. United States—Race relations. I. Marable, Manning, 1950– II. Steinberg,
Ian. III. Middlemass, Keesha.
HV9950.R34 2007
364.3’496073—dc22
2007003434
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
This volume includes articles which originally appeared in Souls, published by the
Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN paperback edition: September 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Introduction Racializing Justice, Disenfranchising Lives 1
Manning Marable
I. The Criminal Justice System and the New Racial Domain
1 The Hypercriminalization of Black and Latino Male Youth
in the Era of Mass Incarceration 17
Victor M. Rios
2 Reconstructing Race and Crime: The Radical Tradition Revisited 35
Tony Platt
3 The Condemnation of Little B 43
Elaine Brown
4 The Rockefeller Drug Laws 49
Robert Gangi
5 Racism and Capital Punishment 53
George Kendall
6 “In Defense of Mumia”: The Political Economy of Race,
Class, Gender, and Social Death 59
Leonard Weinglass
II. Women, Violence, and Incarceration
7 The Effect of the Prison–Industrial Complex on African
American Women 73
Natalie J. Sokoloff
8 Toward a Black Feminist Liberation Agenda: Race,
Gender, and Violence 91
Kristen Clarke
9 The Female Bogeyman: Political Implications
of Criminalizing Black Women 101
Julia S. Jordan-Zachery
10 A Bad Relationship: Violence in the Lives of
Incarcerated Black Women 123
Nikki Jones
vi Contents
III. Racism, Law, and Public Policy
11 Reassessing Race Specificity in American Law and Public Policy 133
Lorenzo Morris and Donn G. Davis
12 “Tell the Court I Love My [Indian] Wife”:
Interrogating Race and Self-Identity in Loving v. Virginia 159
Arica L. Coleman
13 Resistance, Redemption, and Transformation: African American
and Latino Prisoners Living with the HIV/AIDS Virus 175
Laura T. Fishman
14 The Cactus That Must Not be Mistaken for a Pillow:
White Racial Formation Among Latinos 197
Daniel M. Rochmes and G. A. Elmer Griffin
IV. Voting Rights and Disenfranchisement
15 Unfit to Vote: A Racial Analysis of Felon Disenfranchisement Laws 217
Keesha M. Middlemass
16 Felon Voting Rights and the Disenfranchisement of African Americans 237
Christopher Uggen, Jeff Manza, and Angela Behrans
17 Jim Crow is Alive and Well in the Twenty-First Century:
Felony Disenfranchisement and the Continuing Struggle
to Silence the African American Voice 247
Ryan Scott King
V. First Person: Inside U.S. Prisons
18 “A True Democracy”: Talking with Eddie Ellis 267
Bianca Vázquez
19 manipulator under Manipulation shhh: muMs 281
Geoff K. Ward
20 The Longest Hour 293
Craig Davis
21 “From Object to Subject”: Jazz Hayden 301
Russell Rickford
22 Political Riddles: Bitten, Seduced, and Fooled 313
Alejo Dao'ud
23 A Victim to Passion 317
Robert Sanchez
24 What Does the Ghetto Mean? 319
Robert Sanchez
Contents vii
VI. Challenging the Prison–Industrial Complex
25 State of Emergency 323
Angela Y. Davis
26 From Punishment to Rehabilitation: Empowering
African American Youth 329
Monique Williams and Isis Sapp-Grant
27 Crime Prevention in the African American Community:
Lessons Learned from the Nation of Islam 335
Shaun Gabbidon
28 New York Theological Seminary Prison Program:
Sing-Sing Correctional Facility Our Context 347
29 Wesley Robert Wells and the Civil Rights Congress Campaign 353
Theodore Hamm
30 Prepared to Govern Justly 367
Van Jones
VII. Conclusion: The Color of Justice
Conclusion The Carceral States of America 373
Keesha M. Middlemass
Index 381
I N T R O D U C T I O N
R J ,
ACIALIZING USTICE
D L
ISENFRANCHISING IVES
TOWARD AN ANTIRACIST CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Manning Marable
Professor of Public Affairs History and African American
Studies and Director, Center for Contemporary Black
History, Columbia University
Prison is a legitimate criminal sanction—but it should be used sensibly, justly, parsi-
moniously, and with due consideration for the principles of proportionality and
respect for human dignity required by international human rights law. The incarcera-
tion of hundreds of thousands of low-level nonviolent drug offenders betrays indiffer-
ence to such considerations.
Human Rights Watch, May, 20001
Throughout the entire racial history of the United States, a series of state-sanctioned
institutions have exited that have “regulated” the African American population for
the purpose of preserving white power and privilege. During the first two and a half
centuries of the black presence on the North American continent, the predominant
mode of black oppression was enslavement. Blacks as a group were relegated to life
outside of civil society; they were legally defined as private property, not citizens, and
were largely excluded from legal and constitutional rights. After a brief experiment in
biracial democracy known as Reconstruction (1865–77), African Americans were
relegated to a subordinate economic and social status through the regime of Jim
Crow segregation. Although technically “free,” the majority of blacks found them-
selves tethered to the land by sharecropping, debt peonage, “convict-leasing,” and
other forms of penury. In the twentieth century, as millions of rural southern blacks
migrated to the industrial northeast and Midwest, seeking employment and a better
way of life, they quickly confronted a newer form of racial exclusion and stigmatiza-
tion—the urban ghetto. Ghettoization once again relegated blacks to the margins of
America’s commercial, cultural, and political life; through policies such as “redlining”
M. Marable et al. (eds.), Racializing Justice, Disenfranchising Lives
© Manning Marable 2007
2 Manning Marable
by banks and financial institutions, blacks were denied the credit and capital needed
to purchase their own homes and businesses. They continued to encounter fierce
discrimination in employment and suffered from substandard schools, health
facilities, and housing. Each of these institutional barriers to racial access and
opportunity reinforced the deep-seated cultural and psychological assumptions of
black inferiority that millions of white Americans uncritically accepted as norma-
tive and customary.
American racial history was fundamentally altered by the dramatic events of
1954–75, when an unprecedented series of civil demonstrations, legal maneuvers,
and political interventions challenged the legitimacy of Jim Crow segregation. A for-
mation of civil rights groups with widely divergent tactics and political ideologies—
such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
theCongress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—all con-
tributed in different ways to barring segregation from public life. The pressure they
exerted on the political establishment produced major legislative victories, such as
the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Presidents John F.
Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon signed a series of Executive
Orders establishing the principles of “affirmative action” and “equal opportunity,”
creating avenues for advancing minorities and women in both the public and private
sectors. Under President Johnson, new social welfare programs, public housing pro-
grams, and health programs were extended to the poor, all of which reduced the per-
centage of blacks’ poverty and narrowed the historic wage gap between African
Americans and whites. Indirectly, the “hegemony” of the civil rights discourse had a
positive effect on other public policy debates, moving the nation to the left on a host
of issues. The Supreme Court, for example, outlawed the imposition of the death
penalty nationally and ordered in a series of decisions new measures required by local
law enforcement to protect the constitutional rights of citizens accused of crimes
(e.g., the Mirandadecision).
The consequences of these political victories on behalf of black freedom were
many and, in retrospect, somewhat unanticipated. There was a rapid, unprecedented
growth of an African American professional, administrative, clerical, and managerial
class making up, by 1980, nearly one-quarter of the formal black labor force. This
social group was the primary product of affirmative action and equal opportunity
enforcement. Black entrepreneurs as a social category also quadrupled in size in less
than two decades as the federal government and various cities adopted minority eco-
nomic set-aside provisions guaranteeing a certain percentage of government con-
tracts to minority and women vendors. Within electoral politics, African American
representation in Congress soared, from five in 1964 to over thirty-five three decades
later. Beginning in 1967, with the election of African American mayors in Gary,
Indiana, and Cleveland, black candidates won a string of impressive mayoral victo-
ries—in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Newark, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Denver,
and elsewhere. Such successes fostered the illusion by the 1970s that the nation, as a
whole, had somehow managed to purge itself of the debilitating effects of white
racism and black oppression. What went largely unexamined was the rapid growth of