My colleague and fraternity brother Darryl McMiller wrote today about the connection between the subprime mortgage crisis and the vicious land grabs that were commonplace in the South during the Jim Crow era in particular. There are some very important differences obviously, but the connection is worth noting.
In Congress, then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a Democrat whose Boston constituents couldn’t stop talking about Bias’s death, saw a political opportunity. Throughout the 1980s, the federal government had waded deeper into the war on drugs, part of a trend spawned by the turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s. Bias’s death offered a perfect chance to capitalize on the growing public outcry, especially over crack. “The speaker realizes, if the Democrats take the lead on this, if we play it right, maybe we can win the Senate back,” Eric E. Sterling said recently. He was assistant counsel to the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime in 1986 and now heads the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a Silver Spring nonprofit that educates the public about criminal justice issues.
O’Neill convened the steering and policy committee of the House Democrats and moved the formation of tougher drug laws to the top of the agenda. Sterling and other staffers were told to draft a law that would punish high-level traffickers, but they didn’t know what amount of drugs would qualify someone as “high-level” and, with the midterm election campaign season just a few days away, they didn’t have time to determine that, Sterling said. No hearings were held.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established the mandatory minimum drug sentences that remain in effect today. It imposed a five-year mandatory prison term for first-time trafficking of five or more grams of crack or 500 grams of powder, and a 10-year mandatory minimum for first-time trafficking of 50 grams of crack or five kilos of powder. In drug policy circles, this is known as the “100-to-1 drug quantity ratio,” and it has hit African Americans hardest because they are more likely to live in the neighborhoods where crack cocaine is used and sold, even though, in absolute numbers, most crack users are white. In 2006, 82 percent of crack offenders sentenced under federal law were African American, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency set up to develop a national sentencing policy for the federal courts.
Taken from this story about Michael Short, recently released after serving almost twenty years for dealing crack. I’d thought for a while that black legislators had actually come up with the draconian anti-drug laws that had people spending much more time dealing crack than cocaine. But I was dead wrong. I just wrote about Nathaniel Abraham. The quick response is that this is an example of rehabilitation done right. And this wouldn’t be…wrong necessarily. But the difference here is that Michael would have most likely been on this path had he served two years rather than almost twenty. This policy, created as noted above for crass political reasons, destroyed a generation’s worth of social and cultural capital.
Located 31 miles from Detroit in Oakland County, Michigan, Pontiac’s unemployment rate is high at 17.6%. Wealth levels within the city are low, as per capita income is 45% of the county, 65% of the state, and 63% of the national averages. GM concentration is significant, representing one-third of the city’s tax base. GM currently employs approximately 6,000 workers in Pontiac. In November 2006, GM announced plans to relocate 3,600 engineering and related employees from its Centerpoint campus in the city. The Pontiac Assembly center, which manufactures the Chevrolet Silverado and the GMC Sierra full-size pick-up trucks, accounts for a significant amount of remaining GM employment in the city. Last month GM announced it would reduce staff levels by several hundred at this plant.
Nathaniel Abraham received national attention when he was sentenced to prison for murder as an 11 year old. Michigan had enacted a draconian law that allowed prosecutors to charge juveniles of any age with serious felonies. He was released at 21.
He was arrested for drug dealing this week. Police caught him in the middle of a transaction and he had approximately 250 ecstasy pills in his possession. Here’s the money quote:
Nicole Edwards, sister of the murder victim, also expressed disappointment in Abraham’s drug arrest.
“I thought he would rehabilitate himself,” she said. “This is like a slap in the face.”
You don’t see the economic context of Pontiac that I provide above, anywhere in the story. Abraham is a convict. Pontiac’s unemployment rate is 17%. Once you add in the people who have stopped looking that figure is probably around 22% at best. People rarely rehabilitate themselves, particularly in a context where poverty is rampant and jobs are scarce.
Nearly 3 percent of homes that were once occupied by their owners in the country were vacant in March. That is up from less than 2 percent three years ago and is the highest since the Census bureau began publishing the number in 1956.
More here.
Combine that with this.
“At one point, bankruptcy seemed beyond the pale, but it’s something that one hears about a lot more now,” said John Quigley, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley. “And in California, you hear about a lot of cities being pushed to this sort of thinking by the housing crisis.”
More here.
Putting the pieces of this puzzle together it becoming easier and easier. If individuals don’t have the capacity to pay taxes, (taking for granted that the will is there), where will the taxes come from? Not the taxes needed to rebuild infrastructure, or to redesign our cities, the taxes necessary to keep water sources clean?
THE NATIONAL BLACK POLICE ASSOCIATION:
THE SEAN BELL VERDICT EMBOLDENS LACK OF CONFIDENCE IN JUDGES
© April 26, 2008. All rights reserved to NBPA
By Christopher C. Cooper
Saint Xavier University
Chicago, IL
cooper@sxu.edu
The acquittals of the three New York City Policeman who killed unarmed Sean Bell further damages the psyche and perception of the justice system by people of color. There was blatant disregard by Judge Cooperman, the Bell trial’s presiding judge, of the compelling evidence of recklessness. His verdict represents the highest level of judicial abuse. Sadly, his verdict is consistent with outrageous, decision-making by judges throughout America when people-of-color are victims. On the Civil side, it is the power of judges to prevent people of-color, victimized by the police, from ever getting their civil lawsuits against police before a jury. Judges nix a jury by routinely dismissing cases via what is called Summary Judgment. It is a judge deciding that allegations of a black man or woman are not credible enough to go to a jury. (more…)
