Do they not go astray who devise evil? Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a
reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:22, 31, 32, 34)
Urban League report focuses on the Black male
'Empowering
Black men to reach their full potential is the most serious economic and civil
rights challenge we face today. Ensuring their future is critical, not just for
the African American community, but for the prosperity, health, and well-being
of the entire American family.'
NUL President Marc H. Morial
“The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives . . . . ‘When you act as
midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy,
kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live (Exodus 1:15-15.)’” This was Pharaoh’s edict to the Hebrew
midwives. We must pay careful attention
to this passage. Verses 9 and 10 tell us
that the problem was that Pharaoh saw that “there were too many of them (Hebrews)
and that they were “numerous and becoming more powerful.” He cautioned his advisors, “Let us deal
shrewdly with them (1:10).”
He thought he had the perfect plan.
The goal was not simply to eliminate the boys. THE GOAL WAS TO WEAKEN THE PEOPLE. It was to make them weak. It was to decrease their numbers. Seeing those who were supposed to bring and
nurture life, act instead to destroy it is a real psychological blow to any
community. The first strategy was to get
them to do the killing for him. It may
at first have seemed very arrogant and foolish of him to expect Hebrew midwives
to kill Hebrew boys, but Pharaoh understood something about human nature.
First, those who were to nurture life were being forced to serve as
immediate witnesses to the genocide. How
many drugged-out mothers have succumbed to the pain of seeing the genocide and
victimization of a white supremacist society over the hopes, dreams, futures
and very physical safety of their offspring?
In the nations of the Third Reich, when poor Jews started disappearing,
those with means could still buy a little food, a little freedom, and a little delay. The Jews who became guards in the ghettos, and those who supported them, actually came to believe that the
massive program of “relocation” (extermination) did not include them.
Desperate people will easily resort to
desperate denials and fantasies in the face of seeming overwhelming power and
influence. Oppressed people, especially
those whose faith perspective is limited by their conception of material
comfort, too often become the “Indian Scouts” for the colonial cavalry that
will eventually annihilate them. Then
those who have had some meager benefit or “funding” from the rich and powerful
are often all too ready to preserve their “privileged status” by doing
“whatever it takes” to satisfy their benefactors.
The Black African American middle class community understands that many
of even the most “progressive and enlightened” among whites in America (and
their immigrant American clones and wannabees) have no use for them. These people love to “help poor blacks,” to
conduct mission trips to poor black communities and poor black nations. They love to wring their hands about what
they call “black-on-black” violence.
They sit in Universities and whip out statistics and write papers on all
the remedial things they need to devise (of course with themselves in
leadership) to save the next generation of “African Americans.”
Yet they won’t step foot in a church, join a club, a lounge, or a
nightclub, shop at a grocery store, live in a neighborhood or a send their children
to a school where black middle class are in the majority. Many do not know famous black authors,
inventors or significant historical contributions made by blacks. Many, in spite of numerous advanced degrees
have never read a Black author of any kind.
They do not like living and working in situations where Blacks are their
“equal,” but prefer to take on the roll of beneficent paternalistic saviors to
poor blacks. They also work hard to pit
poor Blacks against middle class Blacks.
They seek to create a false consciousness among poor and middle class
Blacks about each other. Through
construct, myth and theory they seek to help all understand how the Black
middle class are distant and look down on them, all the while ignoring the fact
that these so-called “Poor Blacks” are the brothers, sisters, cousins—and often
children of Black middle class families.
Hence we saw television programs in the 70s like the “White Shadow” and
“Webster,” and the media still spends an inordinate amount of space and time focusing
on that one white teacher or principal who needs to be commended for just doing
the job they were paid to do in a “predominantly Black/Latino” school or
community center.
Nevertheless, the attempt to destroy the Black middle class and its
growth by destabilizing black communities, black households, black economy and
black families is working. The criminal
“just-us” system in America has been most effective in carrying out genocide
against Black (middle class and poor and underclass) America. Below are a few illustrations and statistics
worth repeating:
WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - The prospects are bleak. Genocide is no
exaggeration. Incarceration, AIDS,
unemployment and the school drop-out rate are all problems challenging Black
people in America—Black males in particular—and according to this year’s annual
report released Apr. 17 by the National Urban League (NUL) entitled “The State
of Black America: Portrait of the Black Male,” these problems represent the
most serious social crisis occurring in the United States today.
“A quarter of all Black Americans live below the federal poverty level,
a poverty rate about twice the national rate,” Illinois Senator Barack Obama
(D) writes in the report’s foreword. “In some cities, more than half of all Black
boys do not finish high school, and by the time they are in their 30s, almost
six in ten Black high school dropouts will have spent time in prison.”
The bad statistics concerning Black men go on and on. Half of all Black
men in their 20s are unemployed, and more young Black men are in prison than in
college.
“Empowering Black men to reach their full potential is the most serious
economic and civil rights challenge we face today,” NUL President Marc H.
Morial told reporters at the National Press Club.
“Ensuring their future is critical, not just for the African American
community, but for the prosperity, health, and well-being of the entire
American family.”
Black males are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as White
males, and nearly seven times more likely to be incarcerated, with their
average jail sentences 10 months longer than those of White men. In addition,
Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 are nine times more likely than
Whites to be killed by firearms, and nearly eight times as likely to have AIDS.
As a solution to the problems, the report recommends universal
early-childhood education; all-male schools which emphasize mentoring programs
and longer class hours; more “second chance” programs for dropouts and former
offenders; a restoration of the Summer Jobs Program; and an effort to convince
children that education pays dividends later in life.
The NUL report bears witness to the condition of the Black man and the
conspiracy to destroy Black males. Some have argued that the conspiracy to
destroy the Black male is a “theory,” however, the scripture of the Bible gives
proof of the reality of a plan to destroy the male child.
During the time of Moses, the Pharaoh of that day issued a decree to
destroy all of the male children of Israel, as well as during the time of the
birth of Jesus, when King Herod issued a decree to kill all of the boy babies
to stop the birth of The Messiah.
The conspiracy and plan to target the Black male is best expressed in
the Bible in Exodus 1:10, wherein Pharaoh states “Come let us deal wisely with
them, lest they multiply and join onto our enemy and come against us in war.”
Although the NUL report stated there are solutions, but they don’t
operate on a large enough scale, the report, however, fails to reflect the
decades of work and admired results achieved by the Honorable Minister Louis
Farrakhan.
Beginning in the late 1980s, Min. Farrakhan toured the country, alerting
young Black men to a planned genocide against them by the U.S. government
through his “Stop the Killing” tour.
This series of lectures was aimed at informing the community, and young
Black men in particular, of the government’s plan to target young Black men for
destruction. It was also during this period that Min. Farrakhan worked with
youth gangs to help promote peace, and with rappers in the hip hop community to
help decrease conflict.
In the mid-1990s, Min. Farrakhan launched another national tour entitled
“Men Only Meetings” where he again alerted Black males of the government’s plan
to promote a negative image of the Black man in the U.S. and in the world as a
“menace to society.” This image, according to Min. Farrakhan, was largely
promoted through movies and other negative imagery to set up the Black male for
destruction.
It was during these series of men only meetings that Min. Farrakhan
spoke of A Million-Man March that he began to mobilize for in 1995. The Million
Man March was the most successful mobilization of Black men in U.S. history,
when more than two million men rallied on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in
Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1995.
Growing out of the Million Man March, more Black men voted in the 1996
election than had ever voted before, and tens of thousands of Black children
were adopted by families headed by Black males.
“We must close the jobs gap. We must close the education gap. We must
close the high school graduation gap. But I suggest to you, that we’ve got to
close—as Senator Obama says in his foreword—the empathy gap. We’ve got to close
the gap of concern in this nation today,” said Mr. Morial.
Explanations of black juvenile homicides in the 1980s that focus on
the “super-predator” theory have no basis in fact. Justice Department data show
that the entire rise in such homicides for the period 1984-1994 was related to
firearms, as has been the decline in homicides beginning in 1995. Thus, the lethality of young offenders
increased by having access to guns, rather than there being a new “breed” of
young killers. Further, if the 15-19-year olds who were committing violent crimes in the late 1980s were
actually“super-predators,” then they should have displayed these tendencies in
the early 1980s as well, when they were in the 10-14 age range. Data for this
period, though, show no indication of that (FBI-3, Crime in the United States, 1996, 1997).
This therefore lends support to the explanation that the greater
availability of firearms, much of it related to the drug trade, was the primary
source of the increase in violence.
Criminologist Alfred Blumstein has conducted prominent analyses of the
overall racial composition of the prison population. In an examination of the
1991 state prison population, he concluded that 76% of the higher black rate of
imprisonment could be accounted for by higher rates of arrest for serious offenses. While
this held true for most crimes, the critical exception in this regard was drug
offenses, which will be detailed further below. The remaining 24% of disparity
might be explained by criminal histories, racial bias, or other factors.
Offenses by blacks are more likely to lead to arrest than those of
whites. While the self reported involvement of adolescent males represents a
3:2 black/white differential, the arrest ratio is 4:1.
While there are no dramatic differences in the degree to which blacks
and whites become involved in offending at
some point, blacks are nearly twice as likely to continue offending into their twenties. The key variable in this
regard is the adoption of adult roles. Thus, among young adults who are
employed or living in a stable relationship there are no significant
differences in the persistence of offending by race.
Research on sentencing in a number of jurisdictions
has concluded that disparity based on race does in fact occur. One of the more
sophisticated such studies examined case processing and sentencing outcomes for persons arrested for a felony
offense in New York State for the years 1990-92. Controlling for factors including prior
criminal history, gender and county, the researchers found that for the more serious offenses,
there was relatively little difference in sentencing, although it was estimated
that 300 black and Hispanic offenders who received prison terms would not have had they been white.
For property offenses and misdemeanors, though,
minorities were considerably more likely to receive jail terms.
Sources:
(Charles Pulaski,
and George Woodworth, “Comparative Review of Death Sentences: An Empirical
Study of the Georgia Experience,” Journal
of Criminal Law and Criminology 74 (fall 1983): 661-753.
Stephen Klein, Joan Petersilia, and
Susan Turner, “Race and Imprisonment Decisions in California,” Science,
(February 16, 1990).
John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson,
“Criminal Inequality in America: Patterns and Consequences,” in John Hagan and Ruth D. Peterson, Crime and
Inequality, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 28.
The key issue in this regard appears to lie in the use
of discretion by the courts when sentencing offenders. Violent offenders, regardless
of their race or ethnicity, are quite likely to be sentenced to prison.
But for less serious offenders where there is an
option, but no obligation, to
sentence an offender to prison, prosecutors and judges are making decisions in
each case about whether an offender will receive six months in jail, for example,
or be required to enter a treatment program and make restitution to a victim.
It would be a mistake simply to attribute the results
of such studies to prosecutorial and judicial racist beliefs; in some
jurisdictions a significant number of prosecutors and judges are minorities prosecuting and sentencing other minorities to terms
of incarceration. The results instead may reflect the degree to which offenders
bring different sets of resources with them to the court system. For example, do white offenders have greater
access to private defense attorneys who can devote more time to their cases to
try to convince prosecutors and judges that a jail or prison term is not warranted? Do they have greater access to
expert psychiatric testimony or can they afford to subsidize placement in a
substance abuse treatment program? Or, is unconscious racism at play: do whites speak in a language and
manner that is more comfortable to the decision makers in the courtroom?
These questions have important implications for
developing remedies for the racial disparities that are so prominent in the
criminal justice system. While some might advocate that a solution to minority over-representation in the prison system
would be to sentence more white offenders to prison, such an approach would be
extremely costly and would not alleviate any of the harms suffered by minority communities.
The alternative approach is to examine the factors
that enable white, or middle class, offenders to be sentenced to non-prison terms more frequently and
to replicate those conditions for low-income people. For example, if middle
class offenders have greater access to drug treatment resources, courts and
communities could expand such services to make them accessible to a broader
range of offenders. Additionally, greater resources could be devoted to
indigent defense services, a proposal to which Attorney General Janet Reno has
frequently called attention.
Since 1980, the “war on drugs” has been the most
significant factor contributing to the rise of prison and jail populations.
Drug policies have also had a disproportionate impact on African Americans and
have exacerbated the racial disparities that already existed within the
criminal justice system.* This has come about in two ways: first, drug offenses
overall have increased as a proportion of the criminal justice population and,
second, the proportion of African Americans among drug offenders has been
increasing (James F. Nelson, Disparities in
Processing Felony Arrests in New York State, 1990-92, Albany, N.Y.: Division of Criminal Justice Services, 1995).
From 1980 to 1995, drug arrests nationally nearly
tripled from 581,000 to 1,476,000, thus bringing nearly a million additional
drug cases to the court system each year. Over the course of this period, drug cases came to be treated much more
harshly. Primarily as a result of mandatory sentencing policies adopted by all
fifty states and the federal government, convicted drug offenders are now far more likely to be sentenced to
prison than in the past. Justice Department data reveal that the chances of a
drug arrestee being sentenced to prison rose by 447% between 1980 and 1992.
Taken from:
The Crisis of the
Young African American Male and the Criminal
Justice System
Marc Mauer, Assistant Director
The Sentencing
Project
Prepared for U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights
April 15-16, 1999
Washington, D.C.
_____________________________________
The Hebrew midwives did not follow Pharaoh’s
orders. They knew this wasn’t about the
survival of one gender over the other.
They did not allow their enemy’s agendas like “war between the sexes”
and “feminists verses male chauvinists” to define their struggle and neither must
Black African American, Brown and White Latino American, and yes-Asian American
people.
The Hebrew midwives demonstrated that they were as
capable as the King of Egypt when it came to being crafty and shrewd in order
to insure their people’s survival. The
Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson often says, “No one will save us, for us, but
us.” What the National Urban League and
Minister Louis Farrakhan are doing and proposing is just one step in one right
direction need to be taken. But
meanwhile the attempt to kill, to incarcerate, to disenfranchise, to
mis-educate, to eliminate black boys and also brown boys continues. Notwithstanding all the test tubes, invitro
fertilization techniques, it takes the whole village, not one sex, one type,
one class or one cultural competency, to make a community prosperous, strong
and thriving.
Stop the killing of our
children!!
