We, as a society, must do better for the black community. As an ally for the Black Lives Matter movement, I aim to highlight the vast inequalities black people face through an interdisciplinary lens. I am by no means an expert, but I am learning to be a better advocate for the black community. I implore you to do the same: educate yourself on what it means to be anti-racist, donate to the many organizations supporting the movement, and join me in this fight for equality. -Sarah
Study finds the criminalization of blackness has imprisoned black Americans more than any other race, further exacerbating racial wealth gaps in America.
Written by Sarah Chu
The question lies on every American job application: “have you ever been convicted of a felony?” For one-third of America’s working-age population, the answer is “yes.”
Everyone who has a criminal record may be branded for life. A felony is debilitating for a person’s employment opportunities, making it difficult to transition back into society. Even those who have minor offenses, such as the possession of marijuana or having a broken headlight, face permanent barriers to higher education, housing, and high-paying jobs. Most individuals have trouble finding steady work – or jobs at all.
Not every American is treated equally in the criminal justice system; in fact,
– 40.2 percent of incarcerated people are African American. This statistic raises questions about why black people are being incarcerated at such alarming rates. Let’s look at the most recent example.
We’ve all seen the confrontation between Amy Cooper, a white woman calling 911 on Christian Cooper, a black bird-watcher of no relation, telling the cops that “an African-American man is threatening her and her dog” after Mr. Cooper kindly asks Ms. Cooper to restrain her dog in Central Park. Though Amy Cooper has since apologized for this altercation, white people calling 911 on black people for simply walking their dogs, sitting in Starbucks or eating at Subway shows America’s deeply rooted issues of criminalizing black people for just being black.
This criminalization of black people has consequently led to higher risks of being racially profiled, harassed, violated, and incarcerated. Moreover, the prison pipeline partially explains the vast wealth gaps among racial groups, according to Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendron, and NBER economists Maggie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter. In their paper, “Race and Economic Opportunity,” the authors find that black Americans have lower rates of upward mobility across generations compared to white families of comparable income levels.
To understand how to improve the economic welfare of black Americans in the long-run, we must first understand the history of incarceration in the U.S.
The rise in incarceration began in 1970 with the Nixon Administration. At a time when conservatives were emotionally fragile from the Civil Rights Movement, President Nixon used racially-charged rhetoric against people of color to point blame for the War on Drugs. This hateful rhetoric stuck: the number of incarcerated people – many of whom were unarmed black men – increased from 300,000 to 2.3 million under his presidency.
This abhorring trend was further exacerbated by the Reagan administration and intensified by the Clinton administration. Today, the number of incarcerated people has increased by sevenfold to 2.3 million people in jail, far outpacing population growth and crime, the ACLU reports. The staggering escalation of incarcerated people is known today as mass incarceration.
Mass incarceration can be attributed to public policy, which still remain because of institutionalized racism. As suggested in the economists’ findings, the racial wealth gap persists even among black boys who grow up in the same area as white boys by approximately 13 percentiles. This means that even if a black boy grew up in the same exact neighborhood as a white boy, the black boy is less likely to climb the social mobility ladder.
Racial bias is not the sole reason for the wealth gap, but the effects have irreparable damage on earnings potential for many black people. To push toward economic equality, the economists suggest the following policies: mentoring programs for black boys, reducing racial bias, and efforts that encourage diversity and inclusion across racial groups. In my opinion, there is much more to be done than the traditional policies proposed. Mentoring programs will not get to the crux of the systemic inequities that have held down black people's wages for centuries. Reducing bias and diversity and inclusion programs are also beneficial; but the solutions are vague, leaving their conclusion somewhat unresolved.
In addition to the proposals above, firms should consider the divestment in incarceration. There are a number of publicly traded companies that profit from mass incarceration; namely, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group, Inc. (GEO), and G4S, a large private prison corporation. Investing in a system that criminalizes black people sustains the same societal problems that people of color have fought so long to achieve.
Congress must also incorporate anti-racist education across elementary schools in America. We must acknowledge that America was built on the foundation of slavery — one that consistently excludes migrants and exploits people of color. But by actively combating racism, questioning our own cognitive biases, and slowly dismantling these entrenched systems and beliefs, we can pass on this understanding to the next generation, and create a more equitable America.
Recognizing that racism is not an ideal of the past, but an ongoing issue is crucial in the fight toward equality and justice for black Americans. At a pressing time with nationwide protests over the unjust deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and countless other black Americans, the time for change is now.