the media has started calling it “stealth racism,” though it’s hardly stealthy: the blatant criminalization, selective enforcement and draconian punishment of people of color in the United States. recently across the country, and particularly in the south, cases of gross injustice on the part of police, courts and prisons against people of color have been cropping up in the news. some noteworthy examples:

when push comes to shove
last year, 15-year-old Shaquanda Cotton of Paris, Texas, was convicted of “assault on a public servant” after shoving a hall monitor in the hallways of her school. though she had no prior arrests, Cotton was sentenced to seven years in prison by a white judge. just weeks earlier, the same judge had sentenced a 14-year old white girl, convicted of burning down her parents’ house, to probation. do i smell something fishy in dixieland?

BET featured a particularly scathing article on the Cotton case in the midst of broad public uproar, noting that, in the same town, a 19-year old white man convicted for killing a black woman and her grandson with his truck was also sentenced to probation and told to “send [the family] a Christmas card every year.” after months of petitioning and speaking out that involved the NAACP, Shaquanda was ultimately released – after she’d spent a full year of her life behind the walls. you can read more on her blog, and there’s a wikipedia article too.

but wait, there’s more
unfortunately, Shaquanda Cotton’s case isn’t unique at all. i just came across a similar story on the BBC about a high school in Jena, Louisiana. according to the BBC, in the summer of 2006

a black student, Kenneth Purvis, asked the school’s principal whether he was permitted to sit under the shade of the school courtyard tree, a place traditionally reserved for white students only. He was told he could sit where he liked.

The following morning, when the students arrived at school, they found three nooses dangling from the tree.

apparently the school board refused to expel the white students responsible for the noose-hanging, and thus the dubious pseudo-Klannery led to escalating racial tensions in Jena. a separate CounterPunch article states that:

In the first weekend of December, a Black student was assaulted by a group of white students, and a white graduate of Jena High School threatened several Black students with a shotgun. The following Monday, white students taunted the Black student who was assaulted over the weekend, and one of the white students was beaten up.

Within hours, six Black students were arrested.

though the victim of the last assault “was treated at the local hospital and released, and that same evening felt able to put in an appearance at a school function,” the arrested black youths had their charges upgraded to “conspiracy to commit second degree murder and attempted second degree murder.” they now face decades in jail – while no charges have been brought against any white youths for the previous incidents.

considering that cases like these are on the rise, one has to wonder: how “stealth” is racism in the United States? is it limited to a few towns in the deep South? or does it exist in multiplicitous forms in our own schools, neighborhoods, and police departments?

comprehension questions:

• what is the prison industrial complex?
• who was jim crow, anyway?
• are there any prison abolitionist groups out there?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.