Nearby Oakland counted another homicide victim on Tuesday night, bringing the total to 102 this year. While Oakland does have nearly four times the population of Berkeley, it has experienced 25 times as many killings this year.
Even in Richmond, where the population size is almost the same as Berkeley's, the current 2006 homicide rate is seven times that of Berkeley's.
Earlier this week, Richmond experienced a surge of violence, reporting four homicides in the course of two days to bring the year's total to 28 killings.
The disparity between the cities cannot be clearly attributed to any one factor.
According to 2000 state census data, Berkeley's demographics reflect a better-educated community-though its poverty rates are quite close to those in Oakland and Richmond.
More than 60 percent of Berkeley's population that is at least 25 years old has earned at least a bachelor's degree, whereas Oakland has half that percentage. In Richmond, 22.4 percent of people 25 or older have similar education levels.
Several city officials, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, cite poverty as a strong factor in violent crimes.
Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan said poverty contributes to violence in the city, especially when coupled with a lack of community cohesion that drives young people to join gangs.
"Youths in Richmond have exposure to violence in the streets," he said. "They are socialized by seeing that gunfire."
But poverty does not fully explain the situation. In Richmond, 16 percent of the population lives in poverty, compared to 20 percent in Berkeley, according to census data from 2000.
While Berkeley has fewer homicides than surrounding cities, the rate has not always been as low.
Berkeley has averaged six homicides a year over the past decade, but in the 1980s, the average hovered around 15 to 20 killings per year, said Berkeley police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss.
"Crack showed itself in the early '80s ... (and) Berkeley was not immune, being close to San Francisco and Oakland," Kusmiss said.
The emergence of crack cocaine brought a surge in drug-related killings until the creation of the Special Enforcement Unit, a task force that started putting pressure on drug sales and dealers in the early 1980s, Kusmiss said.
Though Berkeley has a number of currently active gangs, the drug task force has been effective in reducing drug related homicides, Kusmiss said.
"It's fair to say many of the homicides that happen in Richmond and Oakland are narcotics or drug related," she said.
Oakland homicide Sgt. James Rullamas said that the numbers, while high this year, are lower than those in the early 1990s. In 1995, for example, Oakland police recorded 153 killings, with even more in 1992.
Most of the victims and suspects in Oakland homicides are young black males from poorer living situations, said Oakland police Officer Roland Holmgren.
Data from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that in 2004 blacks were seven times more likely to commit homicide than whites.
Blacks make up around 35 percent of the population in Oakland and in Richmond, compared to around 13 percent of the population in Berkeley, while the percentage of Hispanics in Oakland and Richmond is about double that in Berkeley.
Nestled between cities whose current homicide rates dwarf Berkeley's, the city had spent several months without a killing prior to last week's death of a man in a Southside sorority house.
Community activist Laura Menard said this is the first summer she has lived in South Berkeley where there has not been a shooting in the neighborhood, a threat she said she has become used to living with.
"In Alameda County there are a hell of a lot of people in the drug and violence business," Menard said. "We (in Berkeley) have a small corner of the same activity, but enforcement is working right now."
Despite the high homicide rate in surrounding cities, homicides do not speak to the safety of a community, Kusmiss said. Crimes like robberies that tend to include suspects preying on strangers are better indicators of community safety than homicides, which are usually committed by people the victim knows.
"(But) one murder is too many," she said.
Study: Blacks more likely than whites to be jailed for drug offenses
August 22, 2006 - Black people are 28 times more likely than whites to be locked up for drug offenses in Illinois -- the biggest gap in the nation -- according to a study published Tuesday.
With more than half of those jailed for drug crimes in Illinois being black, "the racial disparity ... is just staggering," according to the Roosevelt University study.Unless policy changes favoring treatment over punishment are brought in, the growing prison population will increasingly be made up of small-time drug users, the study warns. Only California jails more drug offenders than Illinois, it added.
Report co-author Kathleen Kane-Willis, of the university's Institute for Metropolitan Affairs, stopped short of blaming racism on the part of individual law enforcement officers and prosecutors but said, "The state's policies have racist outcomes."
Authorities' focus on easier-to-police open-air drug markets in black neighborhoods rather than harder-to-catch dealers operating in private homes in white neighborhoods partly accounted for the difference in incarceration rates, she said.
"The national survey on drugs and health shows drug use is as high among whites as it is among African-Americans," Kane-Willis said.
"It's time to look again at our policies and, I hope, treat the issue as a public health problem, which should be dealt with by treatment and education, not jail, which just isn't working."
That call was echoed by Terry Kriss of the South Suburban Council on Alcohol and Substance Abuse, based in Hazel Crest.
"There could always be more funds for treatment there just aren't enough services to help people, especially when they get out of prison," Kriss said.
"Most of the people we help have been through the system many times, and they need more resources and more support."
Roosevelt's study, titled "Intersecting Voices: Impacts of Illinois Drug Policies," shows there are six blacks jailed for drug offenses for every one white offender in Illinois, even though blacks account for only 15 percent of the state's population.
The true disparity may be even larger because Hispanics -- also thought to be at increased risk of conviction -- are grouped with whites in official statistics.
Ohio, the only state whose figures come close to Illinois', has a slightly higher rate of incarceration for blacks, but the disparity with white Ohioans is smaller.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's spokeswoman Cara Smith said Madigan was studying the report and was "very concerned about any claims of racial disparity in Illinois' criminal justice system."
Sun-Times News Group Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2006
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http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/1200/122k05.htm
Racism, Prisons, and the Future of Black America
Manning Marable is Professor of History and Political Science, and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University. This essay appeared August 2000 in his column "Along the Color Line," available on the Internet at <www.manningmarable.net>
Black leadership throughout this country should place this issue at the forefront of their agendas. And we also need to understand how and why American society reached this point of constructing a vast prison industrial complex, in order to find strategies to dismantle it.
For a variety of reasons, rates of violent crime, including murder, rape, and robbery, increased dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s. Much of this increase occurred in urban areas. By the late 1970s, nearly one half of all Americans were afraid to walk within a mile of their homes at night, and 90% responded in surveys that the US criminal justice system was not dealing harshly enough with criminals. Politicians like Richard M. Nixon, George Wallace, and Ronald Reagan began to campaign successfully on the theme of "Law and Order." The death penalty, which was briefly outlawed by the Supreme Court, was reinstated. Local, state, and federal expenditures for law enforcement rose sharply.
Behind much of anti-crime rhetoric was a not-too-subtle racial dimension, the projection of crude stereotypes about the link between criminality and black people. Rarely did these politicians observe that minority and poor people, not the white middle class, were statistically much more likely to experience violent crimes of all kinds. The argument was made that law enforcement officers should be given much greater latitude in suppressing crime, that sentences should be lengthened and made mandatory, and that prisons should be designed not for the purpose of rehabilitation, but for punishment.
Consequently, there was a rapid expansion in the personnel of the criminal justice system, as well as the construction of new prisons. What occurred in New York State, for example, was typical of what happened nationally. From 1817 to 1981, New York had opened 33 state prisons. From 1982 to 1999, another 38 state prisons were constructed. The state's prison population at the time of the Attica prison revolt in September 1971 was about 12,500. By 1999, there were over 71,000 prisoners in New York State correctional facilities.
In 1974, the number of Americans incarcerated in all state prisons stood at 187,500. By 1991, the number had reached 711,700. Nearly two-thirds of all state prisoners in 1991 had less than a high school education. One third of all prisoners were unemployed at the time of their arrests. Incarceration rates by the end of the 1980s had soared to unprecedented rates, especially for black Americans. As of December 1989, the total US prison population, including federal institutions, exceeded one million for the first time in history, an incarceration rate of the general population of one out of every 250 citizens.
For African Americans, the rate was over 700 per 100,000, or about seven times more than for whites. About one half of all prisoners were black. Twenty-three percent of all black males in their twenties were either in jail or prison, on parole, probation, or awaiting trial. The rate of incarceration of black Americans in 1989 had even surpassed that experienced by blacks who still lived under the apartheid regime of South Africa.
By the early 1990s, rates for all types of violent crime began to plummet. But the laws which sent offenders to prison were made even more severe. Children were increasingly viewed in courts as adults, and subjected to harsher penalties. Laws like California's "three strikes and you're out" eliminated the possibility of parole for repeat offenders. The vast majority of these new prisoners were non-violent offenders, and many of these were convicted of drug offenses that carried long prison terms. In New York, a state in which African Americans and Latinos comprise 25% of the total population, by 1999 they represented 83% of all state prisoners, and 94% of all individuals convicted on drug offenses.
The pattern of racial bias in these statistics is confirmed by the research of the US Commission on Civil Rights, which found that while African Americans today constitute only 14% of all drug users nationally, they are 35% of all drug arrests, 55% of all drug convictions, and 75% of all prison admissions for drug offenses. Currently, the racial proportions of those under some type of correctional supervision, including parole and probation, are one-in-fifteen for young white males, one-in-ten for young Latino males, and one-in-three for young African-American males. Statistically today, more than eight out of every ten African-American males will be arrested at some point in their lifetime.
Guard tower © Michael Jackson-Hardy, from Behind the Razor Wire, New York University Press |
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All meals are served to prisoners through a thin slot cut into the steel door. The toilet unit, sink and shower are all located in the cell. Prisoners are permitted one hour "exercise time" each day in a small concrete balcony, surrounded by heavy security wire, directly connected with their SHU cells. Educational and rehabilitation programs for SHU prisoners are prohibited.
As of 1998, New York State had confined 5700 state prisoners in SHUs, about 8% of its total inmate population. Currently under construction in Upstate New York is a new 750 cell maximum security SHU facility, which will cost state taxpayers $180 million. Although Amnesty International and human rights groups in the US have widely condemned SHUs, claiming that such forms of imprisonment constitute the definition of torture under international law, other states have followed New York's example. As of 1998, California had constructed 2942 SHU beds, followed by Mississippi (1756), Arizona (1728), Virginia (1267), Texas (1229), Louisiana (1048) and Florida (1000). Solitary confinement, which historically had been defined even by corrections officials as an extreme disciplinary measure, is becoming increasingly the norm.
The introduction of SHUs reflects a general mood in the country that the growing penal population is essentially beyond redemption. If convicted felons cease to be viewed as human beings, why should they be treated with any humanity? This question should be elevated and discussed in every African-American and Latino neighborhood, community center, religious institution, and union hall across this country. Because the overwhelming human casualties of this racist leviathan are our own children, parents, sisters, and brothers. Those whom this brutal system defines as being "beyond redemption" are ourselves.
Costs of the system
What are the economic costs for American society of the vast expansion of our prison-industrial complex? According to criminal justice researcher David Barlow at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, between 1980 and 2000, the combined expenditures of federal, state, and local governments on police have increased about 400%. Corrections expenditures for building new prisons, upgrading existing facilities, hiring more guards, and related costs, increased approximately one thousand percent. Although it currently costs about $70,000 to construct a typical prison cell, and about $25,000 annually to supervise and maintain each prisoner, the US is currently building hundreds of new prison beds per week.
The driving ideological and cultural force that rationalized and justifies mass incarceration is the white American public's stereotypical perceptions about race and crime. As Andrew Hacker perceptively noted in 1995, "Quite clearly, 'black crime' does not make people think about tax evasion or embezzling from brokerage firms. Rather, the offenses generally associated with blacks are those ...involving violence." A number of researchers have found that racial stereotypes of African Americans--as "violent," "aggressive," "hostile" and "short-tempered"--greatly influence whites' judgments about crime. Generally, most whites are inclined to give black and Latino defendants more severe judgments of guilt and lengthier prison sentences than whites who commit identical crimes. Racial bias has been well established especially in capital cases, where killers of white victims are much more likely to receive the death penalty than those who murder African Americans.
Sentencing disparity
The greatest victims of these racialized processes of unequal justice, of course, are African-American and Latino young people. In April 2000, utilizing national and state data compiled by the FBI, the Justice Department and six leading foundations issued a comprehensive study that documented vast racial disparities at every level of the juvenile justice process. African Americans under age 18 comprise 15% of their national age group, yet they currently represent 26% of all those who are arrested.
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Prison yard © Michael Jackson-Hardy, from Behind the Razor Wire, New York University Press |
African-American youth are taken there. Blacks comprise 44% of those detained in juvenile jails, 46% of all those tried in adult criminal courts, as well as 58% of all juveniles who are warehoused in adult prison. In practical terms, this means that for young African Americans who are arrested and charged with a crime, that they are more than six times more likely to be assigned to prison that white youth offenders.
For those young people who have never been to prison before, African Americans are nine times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prisons. For youths charged with drug offenses, blacks are 48 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison. White youths charged with violent offenses are incarcerated on average for 193 days after trial; by contrast, African-American youths are held 254 days, and Latino youths are incarcerated 305 days.
What seems clear is that a new leviathan of racial inequality has been constructed across our country. It lacks the brutal simplicity of the old Jim Crow system, with its omnipresent "white" and "colored" signs. Yet it is in many respects potentially far more devastating, because it presents itself to the world as a system that is truly color-blind. The black freedom struggle of the 1960s was successful largely because it convinced a majority of white middle class Americans that Jim Crow was economically inefficient, and that politically it could not be sustained or justified.
The movement utilized the power of creative disruption, making it impossible for the old system of white prejudice and power to function in the same old ways it had for decades. For Americans who still believe in racial equality and social justice, we cannot stand silent while millions of our fellow citizens are being destroyed all around us. The racialized prison industrial complex is the great moral and political challenge of our time.
For several years, I have lectured in New York's famous Sing Sing prison, as part of a master's degree program sponsored by the New York Theological Seminary. During my last visit several months ago, I noticed that correctional officials had erected a large yellow sign over the door at the public entrance to the prison. The sign reads: "Through these doors pass some of the finest corrections professionals in the world." I asked Reverend Bill Webber, the director of the prison's educational program, and several prisoners what they thought about the sign. Bill answered bluntly, "demonic." One of the M.A. students, a 35-year-old Latino named Tony, agreed with Bill's assessment, but added, "let us face the demon head on." There are now over two million Americans who are incarcerated. It is time to face the demon head on.
BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress <www.blackradicalcongress.org>_________________________
A Struggle for One Is a Struggle for All Minorities
In the wake of a long history of suffering and discrimination, the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996 essentially eliminated any possibility for progress or reparations for Asian Americans. Opponents of affirmative action ("The Curse of the Model Minority," Sept. 5) have grossly distorted the effects of Proposition 209 on Asian Americans.
At UC Berkeley, the homogeneous term of "Asian Americans" is destructively misleading at first glance. On a campus that proudly touts its "diverse" student body, we should scrutinize the notion of a massive Asian American block.
The Asian American category comprised 41.2 percent of the Fall 2005 admissions, and opponents of affirmative action have misconstrued such numbers to argue that policies like Proposition 209 are supposedly beneficial to Asian Americans.
It is not accurate to place a vague and arbitrary label on an entire continent's worth of diverse ethnic groups. The overgeneralization of Asian Americans being nearly half of the campus population blankets the unique issues and struggles of multiple Asian ethnic groups, leaving them unaddressed and unresolved.
After Proposition 209 was implemented, eliminating race and gender as factors in admissions, the freshmen representation of Latinos at UC Berkeley dropped 49 percent in 1998, while African Americans decreased by 43 percent. The misleading increase of Asian Americans on campus marginalizes the underrepresented subgroups hidden under the pan-Asian category.
However, all Asian Americans walk the same perilous line when it comes to combating issues of equality, justice, and representation. Asian Americans will forever be trapped in the destructive cycle of misrepresentation and alienation if we do not fight in solidarity with other people of color to repeal Proposition 209.
Without solidarity from African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, women and other marginalized communities, Asian Americans cannot wholly achieve justice and equality that is fundamentally essential in a democratic society.
Affirmative action does not allow "unqualified" individuals to be admitted to universities, as that is a federal offense. Additionally, it does not create quotas based on race, rather it would allow for race to be considered as one of many factors in selecting an applicant.
In the decision of the 2003 US Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the consideration of race in university admissions, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that "effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our nation is essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized."
Policies that promote equal access to higher education will allow UC Berkeley to better reflect the diversity of California as the California Higher Education Master Plan states. Students benefit from exposure and dialogue with those who offer varying perspectives and backgrounds and, as a result, become prepared to live and work toward change in a world that is anything but homogenous.
With race-conscious policies, the struggle is not just that of Asian Americans, but of every racial and ethnic group. Asian Americans and all oppressed and marginalized people must work together to ensure collective success.
In addition, minority groups cannot be ignored when finding a solution to rectify past wrongs. In order to address the complex issue of race, we need to employ race as part of the solution. If solidarity among people of color is not prioritized, then we forget our past, overlook our struggles and contribute to our own oppression.
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http://cbs5.com/education/local_story_255214434.html
Declining Black Student Population At UC Campuses
Sue Kwon
Reporting
(CBS 5) BERKELEY Classes have started at some University of California campuses, and they are looking a lot different from those of years past. There has been a sharp decline in African American students, and at least one advocacy group is blaming the change on Proposition 209, the constitutional amendment approved by California voters in 1996 which bars discrimination or preferential treatment based on race or ethnicity.
"The numbers are staggering for African Americans. It's just over 3 percent of the group admitted at UC Berkeley, and it's less than that -- 2 percent -- at UCLA and UC San Diego," said Kimberly Thomas Rapp with the Equal Justice Society. "We are talking about elite public institutions here in California, and this is happening at a time when the number of African Americans eligible is increasing, and we've seen an increase in African American applicants to the UC system."
Shawna Samuels was admitted to UC Berkeley with a 4.7 grade point average and long list of activities.
"I did several extracurricular activities like basketball, track and field, and student organizations," she said.
But Samuels got rejected from UCLA. She said African American friends who attended schools that didn't offer advanced placement courses also had high grade point averages but did not get into UCs.
That's why the Equal Justice Society says the admissions process needs to be changed. It needs to take into account that school districts that are in black neighborhoods often don't offer the same resources that would give black students a boost, the group said.
Ward Connerly, the architect of Proposition 209 and the founder of the Civil Rights Institute based out of Sacramento said Samuels is an example of how blacks do not need race-based admissions.
Her ethnicity was not taken into account by the admissions department, and she is proof for Connerly that Proposition 209 is working for everyone, including blacks.
"They need to get off rap music and stop doing things that stop them from being competitive," Connerly said.
Connerly, a former UC regent, spearheaded a vote by UC board of regents to eliminate race-based admissions in 1995. Then, a year later, he pushed forward Proposition 209, which reinforced the ban on affirmative action. The controversial measure ignited protest by civil rights leaders and minority groups.
Ten years later, Connerly says, "By and large, it has been an excellent move by the people of California. There have been very few adverse consequences."
But if you look at the numbers as reported by the Bunche Center Research Report, they reflect a sharp decline in African American students admitted to the most prestigious UC campuses.
At Berkeley, acceptance letters went out to 562 blacks in the last class where ethnicity could be considered. A decade later, only 298 were admitted -- a mere 3 percent of all freshmen accepted.
At Los Angeles, 488 African Americans were admitted in the year before Proposition 209 took effect, diving this fall to below half that number -- 210, which is only 2 percent of the group admitted.
"Of those who are accepted, less than half actually enroll," said Rapp. "They would rather go somewhere they can be amongst a diverse student population and have access to a diversity of views, backgrounds and input. They are going to Ivy League universities and other prestigious colleges."
This fall, only 140 will enroll at UC Berkeley and 96 at UCLA.
UCLA just announced it will take into account a student's activities and personal challenges to help boost back enrollment. UC Berkeley already takes the same approach to applicants and is taking more steps to increase numbers.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau is an outspoken critic of Proposition 209.
"This is a tremendous waste of talent," he said.
Birgeneau is now looking for a top level administrator -- a vice chancellor -- to promote diversity that he considers necessary for all students learning how to relate to different cultures.
"If we have a homogenous environment, our students won't acquire that skill, and California won't be competitive in the international stage," Birgeneau said.
Connerly's response to that is Berkeley is already diverse.
"Birgeneau ought to be fired," Connerly said. "He is betraying Prop 209 and betraying the will of the people and short-selling black kids and everyone else by saying we need all this diversity. There is the fact we have a large number of African Americans who are just not academically competitive, and they will have to get themselves prepared.
Connerly says he is now working on getting voters in Michigan to pass a similar anti-affirmative action measure.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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The first article is about Homicide Rates in Berkeley, but what bothers me is that it first states that homicide figures are a result of poverty (which makes sense), but then the writer jumps from a conclusion of poverty to one of race. She points out Data from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that in 2004 blacks were seven times more likely to commit homicide than whites. First of all, I think that statistics are never as reliable as you think they are. Secondly, I don't think that's fair to make it a racial issue when I believe the cause is more likely to be because of poverty. Why not instead of asking the question - "why do black commit more crimes?" you ask "why is the rate of poverty for blacks so much higher than whites"? If you are going to make it about race at all. Or perhaps you could ask why blacks are criminalized at a higher rate than whites even though drug use is equal. I just saw a documentary (called "Making the Grade") featuring one teenage boy of color saying "I visited San Quentin (local jail) and it seems that education is the only escape. Education or jail" (paraphrasing). The other articles are about the higher criminalization rates of black students.
In this context, the Prop 209 debate becomes all the more salient. Perhaps it was because I just watched "Making the Grade" but it's quite interesting to read these articles. One was given to my attention because it was co-written by a friend of mine. And the other was forwarded to me. Indeed, I possibly have too many thoughts in my head (and slighty off topic- I'm also kind of sick) to discuss this matter fully. But I wonder, if the University is doing all it can to make admissions fair- then why would black students be declining? I think it is unfair to say that black students are somehow less qualified than other candidates based on negative stereotypes of black teens.
And why is race a factor in one kind of situation (mainly negative), but not a factor in another (more positive). There are more black people in jail (mostly male) than there are in If you seek out blacks for crimes, would it not also be fair to seek them out for education? If you were going to negate race in education- it might also be fair to negate them from "special consideration" for penalization. That would only be "equal".
1 comment:
Christian Parenti has this great book on the prison system called Lockdown America and you should definitely read it.
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