40 Reasons Our Jails and Prisons Are Full of Black and Poor People

40 Reasons Our Jails and Prisons Are Full of Black and Poor People
These are our brothers and sisters and cousins and friends of our coworkers.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) reports 2.2 million people are in our nation’s jails and prisons and another 4.5 million people are on probation or parole in the US, totaling 6.8 million people, one of every 35 adults. We are far and away the world leader in putting our own people in jail. Most of the people inside are poor and Black. Here are 40 reasons why.
One. It is not just about crime. Our jails and prisons have grown from holding about 500,000 people in 1980 to 2.2 million today. The fact is that crime rates have risen and fallen independently of our growing incarceration rates.

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Something to Remember on Memorial Day’

As Memorial Day approaches our nation pauses to remember those men and women who served, and many of whom died in defense of freedom at home and around the world. I remind my fellow citizens that African Americans also fought and died in all of our nation’s wars. Even though there was great resistance by many in this country to allowing African Americans to enlist and serve in the armed forces or even to work in the defense industries, these black men and women made great contributions to the nation during the challenging times when the nation was at war.

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A Beat Calls Puerto Ricans to their African Roots

Jose Ortiz stood on the steps of the Andrew Freedman Home on the Grand Concourse, a gorgeous Bronx palazzo bathed in sunshine, his barrel drum by his side. Before him, on the lawn, a circle of people gathered, passing a calabash or sage leaves as they blessed one another. As the faint scent of gardenia and lavender wafted through the air, Mr. Ortiz straddled his drum and played.

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Why am I insulted when people mistake me for a samba dancer?

brazilLet me give you some snippets of what it is like to be black in Brazil: A few months ago Ana*, a well-to-do, Afro-Brazilian friend of mine, dressed in head-to-toe perfection, was asked to go into the service entrance of her (white) friend’s apartment building (yes, residential buildings in Brazil have separate service entrances for the exclusive use of housekeepers, gardeners, plumbers etc.). She was livid and spewed her wrath at the doorman, insisting that she be shown the regular entrance..

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A Nation Built on the Back of African Slavery

It began with 246 years of legal slavery that extracted wealth from the lives of Africans in America. At the time of the Civil War, close to a little over 4 Million African were enslaved 23 per center of the American's total population. After the war which institutionalized injustices focused on stealing their land and jobs and ensuring that Africans did not build wealth as fast as the rest of Americans.


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