The rise of mass incarceration has been driven by the same mechanism that drove slavery — the creation of capital through racism. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, and non-White people are incarcerated at rates much higher than White people for all crimes, especially non-violent and petty crimes. This all only took approximately 400 years to create in this country. Dismantling this reality is not only going to take a long time but will also require numerous acts of resistance. Public education likes to declare that the Civil Rights movement was a victory. In fact, 50 years after the Civil Rights Act, Black men are nearly right where they started economically, but with a very high incarceration rate. A person does not just end up in prison as an exchange for an alleged crime. Our incarceration rates start with police forces. Cops (Constables on Patrol), originated in the U.S.A. as brigades of (White) people who surveilled both public and private property and searched for “runaway slaves.” Slaves were considered property of a slave owner, and if they fled for freedom they were “runaway property.” Eventually, there was too much work for these private slave brigades so every level of government in this country began to fund these patrols. These patrols became police departments. The police were not established as a response to public safety. The police were not established to help people in bad relationships, or to solve problems between groups of people. The police were created as a response in order to protect property that was already stolen through the process of slavery, and keep it safe for self-declared slave owners. When a country is founded by slave owners and founded to declare their capital independent of Great Britain — when a country is built on slavery and colonialism — what else would be the plight of this country’s public institutions? fvckthemedia/issue41/on-ferguson
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:25:23 +0000