From cradle to jail in America

BY DAVID A. LOVE
Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service
November 26, 2007

America is failing its most vulnerable children.

The United States does not provide a level playing field for all children and does not protect all young lives equally, says a recent report by the Children's Defense Fund.

Poor children and children of color, in particular, "already are in the pipeline to prison before taking a single step or uttering a word," the report states. Many youth in juvenile detention facilities have never been on the track to college or a successful life. "They were not derailed from the right track; they never got on it," the organization says.

Much of the problem is due to poverty, and children of color are more likely to be afflicted. One-quarter of Latino children and one-third of black children are poor. Black children are more than three times as likely as white children to be born into poverty, and are more than four times as likely to live in extreme poverty, according to the report.

For millions of poor children, failed by their families, the child welfare system and the juvenile justice system, a life of prison awaits them. Prison is the only universally guaranteed program for children in America, the study notes, as America increasingly criminalizes its youth, and spends nearly three times as much per prisoner as it does per student. This, in a country with 2.3 million prisoners, the world's largest inmate population, and more prisoners than China, a nation that has four times as many people as the United States.

And those who are incarcerated are disproportionately of color, products of a society that has neglected and marginalized them. Children of color are more likely to be placed in programs for mental retardation, placed in foster care, more likely to be suspended, left back a grade, and drop out of school. And youth of color, 39 percent of the juvenile population, are 60 percent of incarcerated juveniles, according to the report.

A black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison in his lifetime. A Latino boy has a one in six chance. Today, as a result of unfair drug laws and draconian sentencing, failing schools and a lack of opportunity, 580,000 black men -- many of them fathers -- are doing time in state and federal prisons, while only 40,000 graduate from college each year, an astonishing statistic.

All of this comes down to a lack of commitment by our society, misplaced priorities and squandered resources. The Children's Defense Fund makes a number of recommendations for dismantling the cradle-to-prison pipeline, including full funding of Head Start, making sure that children can read by the fourth grade, ensuring health insurance for all pregnant women, eradicating child poverty by 2015, eliminating hunger and providing jobs with a living wage.

The money is available. These and other recommendations are estimated to cost around $75 billion, with $55 billion to eradicate child poverty, the Children's Defense Fund says. Repealing the tax cuts for the top 1 percent richest people would provide $57 billion. And to put things in perspective, the war in Iraq has cost more than $450 billion through 2007, about $100 billion a year.

The price -- $500 billion -- that America must pay in lost productivity because of its 13 million impoverished children should give all of us sticker shock. America cannot afford the cost of allowing these children to suffer.

A nation is best judged by the manner in which it treats its children. America's treatment of children is shameful. Now is the time to clean up our act and give all kids an equal chance in life.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

"Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror," By David Cole & Jules Lobel

A Review By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
November 15, 2007

“Democracies die behind closed doors.”

–Judge Damon Keith, 2002, declaring unconstitutional, Attorney General Ashcroft’s policy of closing to the public all immigration proceedings involving persons of interest to the 9/11 investigation

“I don’t believe in Al Qaeda; I don’t believe in the boogie man, the Loch Ness monster. I don’t believe you, because you all said the same s*** about the Black Panther Party.”

-Mos Def

In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the superpower state of Oceania — a totalitarian regime marked by the constant surveillance of its people — is in a state of perpetual war with Eurasia and Eastasia. Big Brother, the leader of Oceania’s repressive regime, tells his citizens that the nation is better than its enemies, which at any given time may be Eurasia, or Eastasia, or both, and that it is winning the war against its rivals. Meanwhile, the people of Oceania really do not know for certain that Oceania is winning the war, or that the war actually exists, or even that Eurasia and Eastasia actually exist.

America’s so-called war on terror reminds me of this Orwellian concept of perpetual war. One can make the argument that both are used to manipulate the citizenry through secrecy and coercion, justify a waste of precious resources, and rationalize the purging of basic civil liberties.

A new book by Georgetown law professor, David Cole, and University of Pittsburgh law professor and Center for Constitutional Rights, vice president Jules Lobel, provides a critique of America’s post-9/11 war on terror. Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (The New Press, 326 pp.) suggests that this war has been an abysmal failure. The authors focus their attention on the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s antiterrorism efforts, the preventive paradigm.

Under the preventive paradigm, nations are attacked and suspects are kidnapped, tortured, detained and prosecuted, not based upon what they have done, but on what they could do in the future. Under this warped logic, the usual cost and benefit analysis is eschewed on the grounds that the stakes are too catastrophic. In other words, as its proponents would argue, we must do whatever is necessary in order to prevent deadly terrorist attacks and fight the people who commit them. Decisions to take action are the result of a warped calculation based on hunches, driven by suspicion and hysteria, and rife with abuse.

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of the preventive paradigm is its disdain for the rule of law. The legal process, both domestic and international, is viewed not merely as passé and an inconvenience, but a strategy for the weak and an anathema. Americans are subjected to illegal wiretaps. People are held indefinitely, based on questionable evidence, evidence obtained through torture, or no evidence at all. They are deemed terrorists because they have a certain political or religious affiliation, or belong to a certain racial or ethnic group, or because the president says so.

Supporters of the preventive paradigm cannot point to any successes as a justification for its coercive methods and the elimination of the rule of law. The vast majority of the detainees at Guantanamo (95 percent) are not members of the Taliban or al Qaeda, and draconian immigration reforms have not unearthed a single terrorist. And almost no terrorists have been brought to justice.

However, this misguided strategy has cost the lives of countless thousands in Iraq, thwarted legitimate antiterrorism efforts, and encouraged the spread of more terrorism. The international community distrusts the United States, and the Muslim world resents and hates America for its interventionism and aggression in the Mideast, and justifiably so. Meanwhile, as America embraces antidemocratic principles in the war on terror, it provides cover to other repressive regimes who wish to do the same.

The authors propose constructive solutions to undoing the harm created by preventive war, including the respect for the rule of law and international human rights legal principles within U.S. borders, the elimination of overseas military bases, the use of diplomacy rather than war and coercion, and international cooperation. Further, the authors call for the U.S. to embrace the International Criminal Court, which Bush has sought to undermine by not participating in it, and seeking to make American citizens immune from prosecution.

Professors Cole and Lobel perform a valuable service by deconstructing and demystifying one of the most deplorable chapters in American history, as it is occurring, and suggesting positive solutions. Less Safe, Less Free is required reading for critics of the war on terror and the Iraq War, lovers of civil liberties and human rights, and those who are concerned about the monster this country has become.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

American Puppet Power in Pakistan

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
COVER STORY

The raw power grab in Pakistan, in which General Pervez Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency, suspended the Supreme Court and the provincial courts, and silenced private-owned media, tells us far more about the United States than Pakistan.

To be sure, Musharraf is behaving like a caricature of a third world petty dictator, direct from central casting, with the rounding up of thousands of people and the beating of lawyers in the streets by police. He is using the war on terror as a pretext for the suspension of the rule of law and a war on civil society and progressives in that country. How unfortunate it is that so many leaders abuse their power and suppress their own citizens, particularly in the developing world, where already there is so much deprivation and despair. But from whom is the General taking his cues?

Pakistani citizens are paying the price for the misguided policies of Washington decision makers. The U.S. government stands idly by because it does not want to offend one of its primary allies in this war on terror, viewed by many as a war on civil liberties here at home and a war on international human rights law and the Muslim world. Besides, America, or rather, Bush & Co., the inventor of the preventive war doctrine, believes in cracking down, starting wars and stripping rights, based on what they think people might do in the future. War is perpetual, and constitutional guarantees stand in the way of this war, in their view. I will discuss this doctrine at greater length in an upcoming commentary, in which I will review the new book by David Cole and Jules Lobel, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror.

America cannot lecture Musharraf about democracy because the current occupants of the White House do not believe in democracy. And various U.S. administrations have stifled democracy movements abroad (and here at home), assassinated their leaders, and selected and installed their replacements. But that does not stand in their way when they want to decide who is a brutal dictator and who is not.

So, which governments are dictatorial? Cuba? Cuba is deemed a dictatorship because it is a small island nation with a leader who, for decades, has defied the behemoth 90 miles to the north. Is China a dictatorship in the eyes of America? No, because although it represses its people and sells lead toys for profit, China owns America’s debt and there is too much money at stake. Burma is owned and operated by a brutal, insular, and ignorant military junta that will summarily round up and kill thousands of pro-democracy protestors in order to maintain power. But we can’t make too much of a fuss about it, because oil companies such as Chevron (who once named an oil tanker after Condoleezza Rice) are doing business there and need to get paid.

And Iran, of course, is a terrorist state because Bush the Decider says so. The U.S. once eliminated a democratic government in Iran by staging a coup, overthrowing Prime Minister Mossadegh and installing a puppet regime under the Shah. Not surprisingly, it was all about the oil, as Mossadegh’s government voted to nationalize Iran’s petroleum industry. Backlash against the Shah’s autocratic rule led to the Iranian Revolution, and the rest is history. Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish the terrorists and the dictatorships from the democracies.

As Musharraf consolidates his power, unconstitutionally, in the name of fighting terrorism, so too, does his patron, Bush. The two men are cut from the same cloth. And neither can hold onto power forever.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

The Intelligent Racists Are the Most Dangerous Kind

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
November 1, 2007

When Nobel Prize laureate James Watson, the founder of DNA, announced that Black people are genetically inferior, I was angered, though not necessarily surprised.

And I believe that a substantial number of Americans agree with him.

Watson, upon his sudden retirement, has provided a public service by reminding us of the most pernicious and insidious forms of racism. The racism in high places, the type practiced by scholars and lawmakers, can be subtle, yet far more dangerous than the kind practiced by the lowly skinhead or neo-Nazi. And the actions and statements of the former tend to inform the misdeeds of the latter. In the end, the “expert” racist influences public policy and the promulgation of unjust laws, and encourages the proliferation of hate crimes. This always was the case.

Scientific racism began with French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) and his book, The Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, in which he established a theory of the superiority of the Aryan race, and asserted that race is the most important factor in human history. Social Darwinism, the adaptation of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and “survival of the fittest” into the social realm, was used to justify imperialism, segregation and the exclusion of immigrants from “undesirable” parts of the world. This mentality gave birth to the IQ test, the ancestor of today’s standardized testocracy. Sham pseudo-scientific studies by scientists in the U.S., Nazi Germany and elsewhere, complete with cranial and other physical measurements, were designed to prove the inferiority of people of color, Jews, and European ethic groups that were not yet considered White. Under the Third Reich, scientific racism led to the Nuremberg laws, Jim Crow-style policies which stripped Jews of their rights, their livelihood and their identity, and culminated in genocide.

Systems of oppression do not necessarily need a scientific basis for remaining in power and maintaining their legitimacy—sometimes a raw power grab will suffice— but it certainly helps. “If we can show that these people are inferior by birth,” the logic goes, “there is no use in helping them, as any attempts will prove futile.”

In more recent years, American conservative philanthropy supported studies such as the 1994 book, The Bell Curve, by Harvard professor Richard J. Hernstein and Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. The authors argued that differences in intelligence are better predictors of anti-social behavior, criminality, unwed pregnancy, and financial success than are socio-economic status or level of education. Not surprisingly, they found that Blacks had lower IQs than Whites or Asians, the people with the worst social behaviors have the lowest IQs, and concluded that affirmative action and social programs for the disadvantaged should be eliminated.

Now, the enemies of diversity have their sights on law students of color, who they believe cannot cut it and should be rejected from admission. For example, Richard Sander, a UCLA law professor, suggests that elite law firms do themselves a disservice by hiring unqualified lawyers of color who have lower grades. People who embrace Sander’s flawed study rely on deeply-ingrained assumptions about Black intellectual inferiority. For example, the regressive members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who subscribe to Sander’s point of view, are railing against so-called racial preferences and a gap between White and Black law student academic performance, and the American Bar Association’s commitment to diversity in law school admissions. Meanwhile, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) and Columbia University note that while African American and Mexican-American students have been applying to law school in constant numbers over the past 15 years—and these students are doing better than ever academically–their enrollment has been declining since 1992, even with larger class sizes.

America’s conservative movement, the opponents of civil rights, is a proxy for racism. Since the debut of the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Southern segregationist Democrats completed their exodus to the GOP—same people, different party. Just as Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964) in support of states’ rights (a wink and a nod to Southern racists), today’s GOP presidential candidates scurry to kiss the brass ring of Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University. Until very recently, BJU enforced a campus-wide ban on interracial dating. In the end, Mitt Romney, presidential contender and empty suit, won the endorsement of that “Christian” university’s bigoted leadership.

As the now-deceased Republican strategist Lee Atwater said in 1981, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger. By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

And today, the Republicans—with their bashing and deportation of Latino immigrants, hatred of Arabs and Muslims and assaults on affirmative action—are selling themselves as the party of White nationalism because that is their only remaining selling point. After all, they cannot boast about a sound economic and fiscal policy, or tout a successful foreign policy. This selling point, that people of color are inferior and undeserving and must be kept down, has been tested since the Civil War. Wealthy landowners convinced poor Whites to fight to preserve a system of Black enslavement, which made White labor superfluous, but at least kept them one step above colored folk.

The self-described “party of Lincoln” is living on borrowed time and the memory of a president who died nearly a century and a half ago. They are unsuccessfully fighting back the tide of color in this country, and like their Jim Crow predecessors, seek to suppress the voting rights of Black and Brown people. (After all, John Tanner, the chief of the Justice Department’s voting rights division, recently argued that while voter ID laws hurt the elderly, they aren't a problem for minorities because they die before old age.) While common sense would dictate that such a strategy is doomed to failure, no one ever said that racism is rational.

The bright spot is that we will likely see fewer Black gospel minstrel shows at future GOP conventions, such as the performance by Donnie McClurkin in 2004. While former representative J.C. Watts, an African American, bemoans the GOP’s stance towards diversity, oddly he didn’t seem to object when he served as waterboy for their atrocious policies in Congress.

And people in high places—eager to deflect attention from a failed war and a disastrous economy—have created a harsh racial climate in which people of color, scapegoated, are fair game. It is no accident that as the Right makes people of color the bogeyman and enacts harsh laws against them, people of color increasingly are the victims of hate crimes and frivolous, unwarranted, race-based prosecutions. Look at the case of Megan Williams, 20, a Black West Virginia woman who was kidnapped by White supremacists, tortured for a week, beaten and sexually assaulted, and forced to eat rat droppings. In light of Williams’ plight, and the rise in the hanging of nooses, racial attacks and intimidation of African Americans around the country, Black Lawyers For Justice organized a November 3 National March Against Hate Crimes in Charleston, West Virginia. The group demands Congressional hearings on hate crimes.

Meanwhile, as prosecutors refuse to act against hate crimes, they are eager to make a football player public enemy number over dog fighting (Michael Vick), or send Black boys to prison for 10 years for consensual sex (Genarlow Wilson in Georgia), or 20 years for a schoolyard brawl with a noose-hanging White classmate (the Jena Six in Louisiana). We have a serious race problem here.

During the civil rights movement, the influential Whites Citizens’ Council, the “white-collar Klan,” kept their hands clean while their lowly Klan brethren hung nooses, burned crosses and lynched so-called agitators. Today, scientists, law professors and policymakers create the climate that allows a new wave of hate crimes to occur. We must resist the scientific racists, and replace their politicians with righteous people who believe in equality and justice for all humanity.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love