‘STILL NOT FREE’
coverage in 2010, compared with
37.7 percent of blacks.
Changes in the criminal justice
and penal systems — especially
the rise of mandatory sentencing
and the privatization of prisons
— have created an archipelago of
incarceration that has trapped a
vastly disproportionate number
of black men behind bars. African
Americans are 14 percent of the
U.S. population, but constitute
nearly 1 million of the 2.3 million
prison inmates today, according to
a recent NAACP study. “If current
trends continue,” the study says,
“one in three black males born
today can expect to spend time in
prison during his lifetime.”
Education is a more hopeful tale, at least at first glance.
In 1975, 40 percent of AfricanAmerican high school graduates
enrolled in college; by 2008,
that percentage had risen to 56
percent, according to the College Board. But overall, only 16
percent of blacks have at least
a bachelor’s degree, a rate half
that of whites. After decades of
diligent effort and the advent of
more generous scholarships, the
Ivy League is 7 percent black, still
only half the percentage of the
overall population.
HUFFINGTON
07.28.13
“Diversity can be
a diversion.”
— REV. JESSE JACKSON
Violence remains rampant.
Blacks were victims in nearly half
of all homicides, according to the
Bureau of Justice Statistics. Serious violent crime against black
youths was more than twice that
against white youths.
Violent crime remains a mostly
segregated phenomenon in America, a tragic function of proximity,
not race per se. According to the
Bureau of Justice Statistics, black
perpetrators are responsible for
more than nine of ten homicides
of blacks; for nonfatal violent
crimes, the percentage four out
of five. “It is something we talk
about all the time in the community,” said Cummings. “I have had
mothers tell me they don’t want
to bring children into the world
because it is just too dangerous a
place for them.”
So how far have we really come?
In 1963, Dr. King declared on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
that African Americans were “still
not free.”
Five years later, in his posthumously published book, Where
Do We Go From Here: Chaos or