There is another good news story, a sociological miracle if you will, mostly recently documented by John Perkins and Wayne Gordon in their two books, Leadership Revolution: Developing the Vision and Practice of Freedom and Justice (2012); also Making Neighborhoods Whole: A Handbook for Christian Community Development (2013). Beginning in Mississippi in the 1960s, CCD has blossomed and spread across the country (CCDA) into hundreds of poor communities---rebuilding them with love and commitment. John Perkins has told his story and the larger CCD story in 14 books that he has authored, co-authored or edited.
Since my retirement in 1994, for about 20 years I volunteered at the Perkins Center in West Jackson where VOCM has been doing community development since the 1970s, working with youth, rehabbing houses, etc. An important and sustained effort, but an objective analysis would have to admit that West Jackson has deteriorated faster than VOCM could rebuild it. Why?
Now we transition to the bad news, to the worst of times, as we examine the exploding racial wealth gap and the exploding mass incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males. These powerful negative cross-currents in American society exist as the same time as the three good news stories we have previously mentioned.
In the 1990s, a few scholars documented these counter-trends; Jerome Miller (Search and Destroy) first called attention to the racial profiling behind mass incarceration and the damage being done in the Black community; Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro documented the racial wealth gap (Black Wealth/White Wealth); Kevin Phillips gave us the inside story on the growing gap between rich and poor during the Reagan revolution in his book The Politics of Rich and Poor. The racial wealth gap story has been updated by Thomas Shapiro (2004) in his book The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. See the Brandeis University for Assets and Social Policy for the latest information on the racial wealth gap. The tragic mass incarceration story has been updated by numerous scholars; I will call attention to two of the most recent books, both reflecting excellent scholarship and writing clarity; I call them both masterpieces. First, The New Jim Crow by the Black lawyer, Michelle Alexander (2010). Second, Punishment and Inequality in America by white sociologist, Bruce Western (2006).
To summarize The New Jim Crow, I created the following fact sheet:
* The U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population; obviously something is terribly wrong, gross overuse of the prison system; the church and the public health department should be handling most drug problems, not the prison system.
* The Current War on Drugs began in 1982 so it has been going on tied with racial profiling for 31 years.
* Once you are labeled a felon, the old [Jim Crow] forms of discrimination---employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of right to vote, denial of food stamps . . . are suddenly legal.
* 31 million persons have been arrested for drug offenses since 1982; four out five arrests were for drug possession.
* Marijuana possession accounted for 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.
* Black, Whites and Hispanics traffic in illegal drugs equally; about 6 percent of each ethnic population use illegal drugs.
* By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans were behind bars, on probation or on parole.
* The nationwide incarceration ratio between Blacks and Whites is roughly 25-1. In some states such as Iowa and Minnesota, it is around 50-1. In Iowa, around 2% of the population is Afro Americans; 24% of the prison population is Afro American.
* In major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and thus are subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives.
* These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society. If there is a permanent undercaste, is there also a permanent oppressor class? If so, who is it?
* If law enforcement as aggressively targeted young white males for drug offenses as they do Blacks and Latinos, the prison population would explode five-fold almost overnight.
* "A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch." What should the Christian church be doing about it? God, through Amos 5:24 (The Message), declared "I want justice---oceans of it."
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