Wanted: another executive order on mass incarceration

WANTED: Another Presidential Executive Order on Mass Incarceration

Just as President Lincoln issued an executive order ending slavery, so President Obama should issue another executive order ending the racial profiling surrounding the War on Drugs.

In a December 1967 speech, Martin Luther King said that his dream for America had turned into a nightmare. If King were alive today, he would agree that the War on Drugs (begun in 1982) is a nightmare for black families and communities. This War against Black and Latino males is a national crisis which must be stopped immediately. Therefore, President Obama should issue an executive order suspending the War on Drugs until the massive racial profiling involved is ended. Before funds are restored to the criminal justice system, each police department with more than 20 officers would have to submit a plan showing how racial profiling has been stopped.

Case in point: In 2008, Iowa had a 2 and 24 problem. Two percent of Iowa's population was black, but 24 percent of Iowa's prison population was black. Even if?? Iowa's black population were twice as criminal as the white population, the percentage would only be 4 percent. For me, it is obvious that massive racial profiling is involved; Iowa should be required to prove it has stopped racial profiling.

For over 30 years, unjust racial profiling has been part of the War on Drugs which is really a War on Black and Latino males. This is a social crisis, an injustice implemented by the criminal justice system, approved by Congress and a President, and legitimated by Supreme Court decisions. This is an emergency which must stop by executive action. For documentation, read The New Jim Crow (2010) by Michelle Alexander; also her New York Times op-ed (November 26, 2014) entitled "Telling My Son About Ferguson."

At the same time, or prior to the presidential executive order, each denomination headquarters should also issue an executive order to all pastors: preach the following four sermons:

1. Biblical teaching on oppression with a focus on the New Testament.
2. Biblical teaching on justice with a focus on the New Testament.
3. How the Holy Spirit can empower the church to incarnate the kingdom of God as justice among the oppressed poor.
4. A plan showing how each local church will be involved in ending racial profiling tied to mass incarceration.

Justifying Oppression and Blaming the Victim

Evil white oppressors are masters at diverting blame from themselves and putting it on the supposedly defective and dysfunctional oppressed. The black oppressed are described as lazy, inferior, sub-human and rebellious. Southern preachers ignored the extensive biblical teaching on oppression and justice and the call for Christians to release the oppressed. Instead they argued that slavery was good and necessary, even God's will, based on a few New Testament proof texts that appeared to justify slavery.

The Scriptures make it crystal clear that oppressing people who are created in the image of God is an evil akin to idolatry. Yet white American theologians and preachers have been largely silent on the topic of oppression thereby leaving the door wide open for oppression to continue. Even abolitionists only went halfway---freedom--- and did not push equally hard for economic justice for freed slaves. Result: freed blacks were soon re-enslaved by segregation and sharecropping.

The American church has often tolerated or even participated in oppression---from slavery to segregation to mass incarceration. The silence by the white church and white culture means that the false propaganda from oppressors that blames the inferior oppressed goes largely unchallenged. Again and again, even from Christians, the comments I have heard fall into a 'blame the oppressed' for rioting in Ferguson category. Seldom is a 'blame the white oppressor' viewpoint expressed. Just as slavery was justified by white southern preachers, so today most white Americans justify mass incarceration, appealing to the stereotype of the 'criminalblackman'.