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By Root 366 0

to advocacy on behalf of those labeled criminals reflects a certain political reality. Many would argue that expending scarce resources on criminal justice reform is a strategic mistake. After all, criminals are the one social group in America that nearly everyone—across political, racial, and class boundaries—feels free to hate. Why champion the cause of the despised when there are so many sympathetic stories about racial injustice one could tell? Why draw public attention to the “worst” of the black community, those labeled criminals? Shouldn’t we direct scarce resources to battles that are more easily won, such as affirmative action? Shouldn’t we focus the public’s attention on the so-called root causes of mass incarceration, such as educational inequity?

We can continue along this road—it is a road well travelled—but we must admit the strategy has not made much of a difference. African Americans, as a group, are no better off than they were in 1968 in many respects.9 In fact, to some extent, they are worse off. When the incarcerated population is counted in unemployment and poverty rates, the best of times for the rest of America have been among the worst of times for African Americans, particularly black men. As sociologist Bruce Western has shown, the notion that the 1990s—the Clinton years—were good times for African Americans, and that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” is pure fiction. As unemployment rates sank to historically low levels in the late 1990s for the general population, jobless rates among noncollege black men in their twenties rose to their highest levels ever, propelled by skyrocketing incarceration rates.10

One reason so many people have a false impression of the economic well-being of African Americans, as a group, is that poverty and unemployment statistics do not include people who are behind bars. Prisoners are literally erased from the nation’s economic picture, leading standard estimates to underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24 percentage points for less-educated black men.11 Young African American men were the only group to experience a steep increase in joblessness between 1980 and 2000, a development directly traceable to the increase in the penal population. During the much heralded economic boom of the 1990s, the true jobless rate among noncollege black men was a staggering 42 percent (65 percent among black male dropouts).12

Despite these inconvenient truths, though, we can press on. We can continue to ignore those labeled criminals in our litigation and media advocacy and focus public attention on more attractive plaintiffs—like innocent doctors and lawyers stopped and searched on freeways, innocent black and brown schoolchildren attending abysmal schools, or innocent middle- and upper-middle-class black children who will be denied access to Harvard, Michigan, and Yale if affirmative action disappears. We can continue on this well-worn path. But if we do so, we should labor under no illusions that we will end mass incarceration or shake the foundations of the current racial order. We may improve some school districts, prolong affirmative action for another decade or two, or force some police departments to condemn racial profiling, but we will not put a dent in the prevailing caste system. We must face the realities of the new caste system and embrace those who are most oppressed by it if we hope to end the new Jim Crow.

That said, no effort is made here to describe, in any detail, what should or should not be done in the months and years ahead to challenge the new caste system. Such an undertaking is beyond the scope of this book. The aim of this chapter is simply to reflect on whether traditional approaches to racial justice advocacy are adequate to the task at hand. What follows is not a plan, but several questions and claims offered for serious consideration by those committed to racial justice and interested in dismantling mass incarceration. They are offered as conversation starters—food for thought, debate, and—I hope—collective action. Each is a challenge to