davidleong.info

“is race an issue in america?” michael emerson asked thousands of white evangelicals across the country this simple question in his important book divided by faith. the overwhelming response from white christian america was “no.” many acknowledged that people still have individual prejudices, but really- there’s no systemic problem of discrimination, inequality, or anything like that. or so they claim. here we have the classic white privilege of america shining through in all its ignorance.

let’s talk about prison- something most nice middle class folks know little to nothing about. now i’m no criminal justice lawyer, but i did find the following statistics pretty staggering (sourced from HRW and the US dept of “justice”- how ironic). the US has the highest incarceration rate of any country on the planet, period. we have only 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. with over 7 million people on probation, in jail or prison, we’ve got more people on lockdown than the entire population of Rwanda. and in that population, the racial disparity is beyond blatant. while african-americans represent only 12% of the US population, 44% of all prisoners in the US are black. this is not justice.

why is this, you may be wondering? it’s not too complicated: african-americans are simply arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for drug offenses at far higher rates than any other group. although african-americans represent about 12% of all drug users (which makes sense because they are 12% of the population- duh), blacks constitute 63% of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons. In over 15 states, if a black man and a white man are arrested on drug charges, the black man is up to 57 times more likely to go to prison than the white man. sound shocking? these are just the hard numbers and facts. and i hope they upset you.

this is why many have said it’s not a stretch to say that the war on drugs is actually a war on black men. is race an issue in america? you decide. it may not seem “patriotic” to expose this ugly side of america on memorial day weekend, but what is patriotism if not a desire for more authenticity and integrity in this so-called “land of the free”?