RACIALIZING CRIME AND THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE

THE DISPROPORTIONATE NATURE OF BLACK IMPRISONMENT: PAST AND PRESENT

BY: W.T.      

African Americans have a history in the United States that is relatively unique in relation to other minorities. Many of the minorities who have come to live in America have immigrated here by their own free will. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for African Americans. The inhumane practice of slavery involved kidnapping people from their home and forcing them to work in an unknown place for no wages. When this custom was threatened the South seceded and the Civil War began. The Emancipation Proclamation followed. After years of oppressing “their” slaves the southern slave owners were petrified that the newly freed African Americans would go on sprees of violence and crime. However no such widespread black on white violence occurred. That wasn’t the end to the oppression though. Only after another hundred years did African Americans truly gain the rights that were being kept from them. Discrimination continued to be prevalent but that wasn’t something that could be set right by a document. Today discrimination still rears its head in many different ways, but one of the most unfair and atrocious ways is in the criminal justice system. White people in this country historically have committed far more atrocities against African Americans than they could ever reciprocate. So why on Earth is it that African Americans among all racial factions are thought to be criminals? In this blog post I intend to unearth why it is that such a disproportionate amount of black people have been imprisoned in the past and why this discrimination continues today specifically in New York City.

Fredrick L. Hoffman’s publication of Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro was the first work to compile vast statistics on black criminality. He was “shaping racial statistics into a powerful, full-blown narrative of black self-destruction”. (Muhammed). Hoffman’s work inspired others to also keep track of such stats. A mix of discrimination and experimenter bias ensued and the numbers got out of hand. The police force which was comprised of exclusively whites in those days started arresting blacks in the street. Many such arrests were made either off suspicion or minor infractions. The statisticians saw what they wanted in the numbers of blacks imprisoned and didn’t stop to contemplate the validity of the figures. In Alabama in 1894 roughly eighty five percent of prisoners were black. According to R.M. Cunningham, a prison physician, these stats had nothing to do with discrimination. This discrimination in the prison system has been shown to no other minority to this extent. Such racism is inexcusable, but for the time period somewhat understandable. What is really ridiculous is how this discrimination hasn’t gone away.

Riker’s Island is New York City’s main jail complex. Its average population is roughly ten thousand inmates, six thousand and six of which are black. That’s over fifty five percent of inmates. The largest contributor to this disproportionate imprisonment is the racism and discrimination of law enforcement. In New York the policy of “stop-and-frisk” was used as a viable policing method. This practice gave police officers the power to search anyone on the street who possessed suspicious qualities. The police then got to decide what or rather who is considered suspicious, and what they considered a suspicious quality was shown when Jeffrey Fagan showed that blacks and Hispanics were stopped far more than whites. Force was used fourteen percent more on blacks than whites, even though that weapons were found more frequently on whites than blacks. (Coates) This racial profiling has been used since the late 1800s for discriminating against blacks and there is no excuse for it. The most prevailing reason keeps on returning to discrimination. It is time for the United States justice system to take responsibility for what is happening instead of just blaming the victims of the system. If they don’t then I fear that Coates was right when he said maybe nothing is broken at all.

Riker’s Island

http://nyc.pediacities.com/Resource/CommunityStats/Rikers_Island







Works Cited

Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010. Print.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016

Community Stats for Rikers Island." Community Stats for Rikers Island. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.