"New Jim Crow" by Rev. Dr. Warren Clark

Guest column: What is the new Jim Crow?
Posted: February 13, 2016 - 4:56pm

By WARREN CLARK
(First Coast News reporter Jessica Clark's dad)
St. Augustine

I am grateful the St. Augustine City Commission declared February Criminal Justice and Prison Reform Awareness Month. The origins of that declaration began two years ago when Compassionate St. Augustine studied the book “A New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. It was eye-opening! Most of us were surprised to learn that more people are in prison and on parole in the U.S. than anywhere in the world. The costs in money and lost human potential are huge.

In front of our courthouses the statue of Lady Justice wears a blindfold. Why? Justice is to be blind to wealth, race or status. Everyone is to be treated equally. Reading the book, we began to see how blind each of us was to seeing how differently people of color are treated in our criminal justice system. Not surprisingly it’s called “color blindness.”

If you’ve never heard of the phrase “driving while black,” it means you are more likely to be stopped by the police because you have black skin. There’s also “walking while black,” “running while black,” even “standing while black.”

■ True or false? Poor blacks are more likely to commit drug crimes than middle class whites? False. Yet poor blacks are more likely to be stopped, arrested and convicted. That’s called racial profiling.

■ True or false? Middle class whites are more likely to get longer sentences for the same crime than poor blacks. False. Statistics show a crime that sends a young black person to jail for 10 years often sends a white youth to community service. That’s called biased sentencing policies. Turn it around and the color blindness vanishes. Can you imagine the mass incarceration of young white men? Could we enforce drug laws against white men and give lower sentences to black men for the same offense?

Before reading the book, we had not thought about what happens when people are released from prisons. It’s difficult to get a job, impossible to obtain licenses for many trades and to vote like other U.S. citizens. Because people of color are more likely than whites to be stopped, convicted and receive longer sentences than whites, the long-term punishment after prison has become a new form of the old Jim Crow.

During Black History Month we look back at struggles for freedom and civil rights. We note how far we’ve come and how much more is yet to be done.

This year Compassionate St. Augustine hopes to use our city’s proclamation to inspire awareness and action on today’s civil rights movement to reform our criminal justice and prison system. When it comes to justice, everyone needs to be treated equally. That is compassion in action.

Clark is with the Compassionate St. Augustine initiative.

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