With or without US President Barack Obama — the first black man in history to assume the top US job — triumphantly entering the White House and presiding over the Oval Office, since the very inception of the US, race sadly is as animating a political situation as ever. The plight of millions of young African American males, in particular, is a hot potato. “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” noted Martin Luther King Jr. This statement, perhaps, more than any of his many wise sayings has intrigued me. “Sincere ignorance” and “conscientious stupidity” can lead countries and entire continents astray. Last Wednesday, celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where the legendary civil rights leader delivered his resounding address in 1963, brought back painful memories of slavery and racial segregation, lynching and social injustice. However, there was also an ominous air that not everything has changed for the better for everyone. Indeed, for many African Americans, life is as miserable as it had been in the 1960s. President Obama presided over the celebrations in person. It was a most emotional affair. Obama is entering a most precarious stage of his presidency. In an article addressing the status of contemporary African Americans, Michelle Alexander said: “The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though scarcely anyone seems to notice. All eyes are fixed on people like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey who have defied the odds and achieved great power, wealth and fame.” Be that as it may, the main themes of last Saturday's 50-year commemoration of the March on Washington included: Supreme Court dilution of the Voting Rights Act, the private prison industrial complex, “stop and frisk” police practices against over five million black and Latino men — in New York State alone — aged 14 to 30, and massive black unemployment. Indeed, the US still has bad schools 50 years after the infamous Brown-versus-Board of Education case. The plaintiffs in the 1954 Brown-versus-Board of Education case, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead unabashedly perpetuated inferior accommodation, services and treatment for black Americans. Racial segregation in education, nevertheless, varied widely, from the 17 states that required racial segregation to the 16 that prohibited it. Generally, the states of the “deep south” tended to be racist and racially segregated, whereas those of the industrial north eschewed segregation, but less so racism. In contemporary America, the murder in cold blood of teenager Trayvon Martin, the age of my own son Karim, moved me personally as it was a grim reminder that the cruel legacies of centuries of slavery and institutionalised and systemic racism, live on in America. Racism, combined with unemployment, underemployment and the low educational skills and achievements of the bulk of young African American men, has severe social ramifications. Attacks of all shades on the black male in America have a long and sordid history. The gender gap in educational levels and employment with relative power given to African American women is a deliberate policy intended to emasculate the African American male, socially and psychologically. President Obama conceded that he could easily have been Trayvon Martin. It was a most moving admission from a president of the US. And, yes, let us face it. Had Obama not had a white, unconventional, academic and non-racist mother, he would never have become president of the United States. See The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, for a very incisive and updated framing of the black issue of today: mass incarceration of black men. Alexander aims to mobilise the civil rights community to move the incarceration issue to the forefront of its agenda, and to provide factual information, data, arguments and a point of reference for those interested in pursuing the issue. Her broader goal is revamping the prevailing mentality on human rights and equal opportunities. Alexander's seminal work aims to prevent a future cyclical recurrence of what she sees as “racial control under changing disguises”. Alexander explains that it took her years to become fully aware and convinced of the phenomena she describes, despite her professional civil rights background. She expects similar reluctance and disbelief on the part of many of her readers. She believes that the problems besetting African American communities are not merely passive — a collateral side effect of poverty, limited educational opportunity or other factors — but are active, a consequence of purposeful government policies. Alexander has concluded that mass incarceration policies, which were swiftly developed and implemented, are a “comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialised control” that functions in a manner strikingly similar to the Jim Crow laws that first established segregation. The proportion of African American men with a criminal record in some form approaches 80 per cent in some major US cities, and they become marginalised, part of what Alexander calls “a growing and permanent under-caste”. Alexander maintains that this under-caste is hidden from view, invisible within a maze of rationalisations, with mass incarceration its most serious manifestation. Alexander borrows from the term “racial caste”, as commonly used in scientific literature, to create “under-caste”, denoting a “stigmatised racial group locked into inferior position by law and custom”. By mass incarceration she refers to the entire web of laws, rules, policies and customs that make up the criminal justice system and that serve as a gateway to permanent marginalisation of the under-caste. Once released from prison, new members of this under-caste face a “hidden underworld of legalised discrimination and permanent social exclusion”. According to Alexander, crime and punishment are poorly correlated, and the present US criminal justice system has effectively become a system of social control unparalleled in world history, with its targets largely defined by race. Alexander maintains that many young black men, once they are labelled “felons”, become trapped in a vicious cycle of violence. Can anyone say that she has it wrong?
