Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

by Emmanuel Acho

grandfather clauses.

grandfather clauses

Since most black people had been enslaved prior to 1867, they were denied the right to vote based on the clauses.

For the purpose of “healing the union” after the Civil War, they basically let the South have their way and thereby squandered all the promise of Reconstruction.

Such as in Kansas, where a Republican secretary of state, Kris Kobach, championed a law that required proof of citizenship to vote on the pretense that noncitizens were voting illegally.

Other states, including Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, have enacted voter ID laws using claims of voter ID fraud.

Other strategies of voter suppression, a.k.a. the Fix, are state legislatures increasing or decreasing the number of polling stations in a given district, changing the times or days the stations are open, and even planting faulty machines in certain polling stations to slow them down.

This is done by removing people from the voting registry who haven’t voted for a certain number of years or haven’t received a voting card mailed to their address.

And then there’s gerrymandering.

“packing,”

“cracking,”

preventing people who’ve been convicted of a crime from voting.

Their plan backfired, instead inspiring a huge turnout that helped to unseat the conservative majority.

WOULD IT SURPRISE you that another part of the Fix involves our courts and, in particular, our juries?

“We have a system of justice that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and innocent.” I would add to his adjective of poor the adjective of black.

peremptory strikes.

A lose-lose situation, whichever way you look at it. That, brothers and sisters, is the nature of the Fix.

Let’s Get Uncomfortable

Crystal Mason

Instead of a jury, Mason’s fate was solely in the hands of District Judge Ruben Gonzalez (yes, name drops for the DA and judge), who decided that Mason should do five years’ time for overlooking some fine print.

Talk It, Walk It

(aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression)

Volunteer

They kill or maim on impulse, without any intelligible motive.… The buzz of impulsive violence, the vacant stares and smiles, and the remorseless eyes … they quite literally have no concept of the future.… They place zero value on the lives of their victims, whom they reflexively dehumanize … capable of committing the most heinous acts of physical violence for the most trivial reasons … for as long as their youthful energies hold out, they will do what comes “naturally”: murder, rape, rob, assault, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, and get high. —CRIMINOLOGIST JOHN DILULIO, COINING THE TERM SUPERPREDATOR IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER, 1995

gang member,

John Dilulio

superpredator.

“naturally”

Hillary Clinton,

“from crime, gangs, and drugs”:

1994 crime bill,

Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

“three st...

Let’s Rewind

Five Points Gang,

The Crips were formed in the late 1960s by guys named Raymond Washington and Tookie Williams and originally styled after the Black Panther Party—

Bloods was formed in Compton by high schoolers Sylvester Scott and Benson Owens.

Yet all black communities suffer the consequences of gang stereotypes.

black-on-black crime

Alvin F. Poussaint published a book titled Why Blacks Kill Blacks

That’s not the case.

The most important bit of context: that the majority of violent crimes against white people are perpetrated by white people.

white-on-white crime.

Poverty, not race, is a more accurate predictor of who commits crimes.

To the extent that black-on-black crime exists, it’s the product of, among other systemic factors I’ve discussed, segregated housing, conce...

The best tough-on-crime bill is a tough—the toughest—on-poverty bill.

neither violent policing nor mass incarceration is the answer.

An Unjust Burden: The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System:

The above spells it out in hard data. And this isn’t something out of the blue but from the predictable outcomes of years of racist policies.

thug.