"African Americans Pushed for Punitive Criminal Justice ,Too. " from today's NY Times

[Smarmie Doofus]

Interesting and thorough analysis. Historical context applied where it ordinarily is not. Might not go over well with some here; but if the shoe doesn't fit..... you know what not to do.

From today's NY Times, OP-ED:

>>>THE number of black males killed by police officers continues to rise: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Ezell Ford, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice. But many more still die at the hands of black neighbors instead of the police. Yet today we rarely ask politicians to speak their names or recognize their dignity and worth.

That’s because some consider talk of black-on-black violence a distraction. This is a natural outgrowth of the view that the over-policing of urban neighborhoods and the scourge of mass incarceration are all the result of a white-supremacist social order, the “New Jim Crow,” born of white backlash against the civil rights movement. But this is too convenient a narrative. It erases the crucial role that African-Americans themselves played in the development of the current criminal justice system.

Today’s disastrously punitive criminal justice system is actually rooted in the postwar social and economic demise of urban black communities. It is, in part, the unintended consequence of African-Americans’ own hard-fought battle against the crime and violence inside their own communities. To ignore that history is to disregard the agency of black people and minimize their grievances, and to risk making the same mistake again.

The draconian Rockefeller drug laws, for example, the model for much of our current drug policies, were promoted and supported by an African-American leadership trying to save black lives. During the 1960s, concentrated poverty began to foster a host of social problems like drug addiction and crime that degraded the social and civic health of black neighborhoods. After the Harlem riots of 1964 (which erupted following the shooting of a 15-year-old black male by a white cop), polls showed that many African-Americans in New York City still considered crime a top problem facing blacks in the city, while few worried about civil rights and police brutality.

By the late ’60s, drug users were mugging residents and burglarizing homes, stores and churches. Loitering alcoholics, addicts and out-of-work young black males frightened the elderly and scared children. Not surprisingly, working-class and middle-class African-Americans organized and fought back. In 1968, Roy Wilkins, the leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said, “It is too early to raise a victory cry, but a reaction is setting in that could make the demand for order far louder than the emotional call to race — right or wrong.”>>>>>>> The rest at:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/opinion/the-real-roots-of-70s-drug-laws.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

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In 1969, the Manhattan branch of the N.A.A.C.P. issued an anti-crime report that railed against the “reign of criminal terror” in Harlem. It warned that the “decent people of Harlem” had become the prey of “marauding hoodlums” and proposed that criminals, including muggers

[tishaLA]

1. I'm not sure who regards discussions of black on black crime...

As a distraction, despite what Mr Fortner writes. In fact, politicians, activists, and everyday peoplei n the black community have talked about it for decades. But there is a distinction here: we can be concerned about both black on black crime AND hyperpolicing. In fact, I think this mistaken notion that black folks don't care about black on black crime despite the fact that the victims are friends, neighbors, and family, just contemptible.

Let me recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates's excellent article "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration." It offers a historically supple, nuanced view of the prison problem...from a progressive POV.