Handling this gross inequity on the cheap

 

January 27

GUEST: Tracy Givens Hunter, Director of Public Policy and Education Fund of New York Navigator Program, Board DEI Co-Director for NYCLU, and organizer for Black Lives and End the New Jim Crow Network, talks about the Justice Roadmap and the evils of mass incarceration.


The Justice Roadmap makes interesting reading. The report delves into all the ways that the criminal justice system targets poor and Black people. Many of the ways aren't well known, so it is more like a primer on injustice for the rest of us who have never been incarcerated.

The Kerner Commission Report that came out in 1968 was also great on details. This voluminous study was a roadmap for the future, with a dire warning that injustices would continue to fester unless certain steps were made. But the steps were not little ones. It called on a massive infusion of resources and funds to bring the nation's Black population out of Jim Crow. 

“White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”   -Kerner Coommission

Without this monumental effort, the report warned that society would "fracture" into two radically unequal societies, one for African Americans and the other for whites. President Johnson, who had ordered the report, ignored it. So did the general public. Perhaps today's incarceration nightmare is more about handling this gross inequity on the cheap then it is about oppressing the nation's Black population. 

We have Adamer Usmani coming up as a guest. He is assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University, and we talk about his article in the Jacobin, "Did Liberals Give Us Mass Incarceration?" Stay tuned to Activist Radio!


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