America's Institutionalized Racism

The news reports continue to swarm with articles about the shooting of Michael Brown, and unarmed 18-year-old black man who was shot to death Saturday by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri.   Although it has a high black population, Ferguson's police force by some reports is almost all white.  The shooting has lead to stories of the worries of black mothers and what many of them try to instill in their sons in the face of a world that for them will be far more dangerous than for most of us. Sadly, young black men face a form of automatic discrimination all too often and encounters with the police are all too often deadly.  As a white male, I cannot imagine what such a world does to one's soul.  It is bad enough in our society to be gay in many parts of the country, but at least as a white gay male, I don't face the level of automatic discrimination and danger that these young men face.  A column in the New York Times looks at the world these young men - and racial minority members in general - face.  Here are excerpts:

There is an eerie echo in it all — a sense of tragedy too often repeated. And yet the sheer morbid, wrenching rhythm of it belies a larger phenomenon, one obscured by its vastness, one that can be seen only when one steps back and looks from a distance and with data: The criminalization of black and brown bodies — particularly male ones — from the moment they are first introduced to the institutions and power structures with which they must interact.

Earlier this year, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released “the first comprehensive look at civil rights from every public school in the country in nearly 15 years.” As the report put it: “The 2011-2012 release shows that access to preschool programs is not a reality for much of the country. In addition, students of color are suspended more often than white students, and black and Latino students are significantly more likely to have teachers with less experience who aren’t paid as much as their colleagues in other schools.”

Attorney General Eric Holder, remarking on the data, said: “This critical report shows that racial disparities in school discipline policies are not only well-documented among older students, but actually begin during preschool."

But, of course, this criminalization stalks these children throughout their school careers.

A 2010 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that while the average suspension rate for middle school students in 18 of the nation’s largest school districts was 11.2 percent in 2006, the rate for black male students was 28.3 percent, by far the highest of any subgroup by race, ethnicity or gender. And, according to the report, previous research “has consistently found that racial/ethnic disproportionality in discipline persists even when poverty and other demographic factors are controlled.”

The bias of the educational system bleeds easily into the bias of the criminal justice system — from cops to courts to correctional facilities. The school-to-prison pipeline is complete.

A May report by the Brookings Institution found: “There is nearly a 70 percent chance that an African American man without a high school diploma will be imprisoned by his mid-thirties.”

This is in part because trending policing disparities are particularly troubling in places like Missouri. As the editorial board of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch pointed out this week: “Last year, for the 11th time in the 14 years that data has been collected, the disparity index that measures potential racial profiling by law enforcement in the state got worse. Black Missourians were 66 percent more likely in 2013 to be stopped by police, and blacks and Hispanics were both more likely to be searched, even though the likelihood of finding contraband was higher among whites.”

Parents can teach children how to interact with authority and how to mitigate the threat response their very being elicits. They can wrap them in love to safeguard them against the bitterness of racial suspicion.

It can be done. It is often done. But it is heartbreaking nonetheless. What psychic damage does it do to the black mind when one must come to own and manage the fear of the black body?

[H]opelessness takes hold when one realizes that there is no amount of acting right or doing right, no amount of parental wisdom or personal resilience that can completely guarantee survival, let alone success. 

Brown had just finished high school and was to start college this week. The investigation will hopefully clarify what led to his killing. But it is clear even now that his killing occurred in a context, one that we would do well to recognize. 

This reality is a national disgrace!  Where are the professional Christians and "godly folk" demanding institutional change?  Oh, I forgot something: if they are like Virginia's foul "Christian" group The Family Foundation, they are thinly veiled white supremacists.  They simply don't care about blacks and non-whites.  Or worse yet, they actively hate them.  All they see is skin color.