While watching the morning news one day, I was struck by words I’d never heard: “One day there will be a President Rodriquez. There will be a President Chen.” Those words were spoken by our current president, Barack Obama.
Just two hours later, I heard words I hope to never hear again: “Now let’s have a moment of silence for those affected by violence and discrimination.” Those words were spoken by my 8-year-old grandson during a Black history Month program at school.
The paradox of these two statements – one spoken by the leader of the free world, the other by a third-grade child – reflects the crossroads where we find ourselves today.
While we approach a milestone where the “minority” of U.S. citizens will, in yet another paradox, become the majority, many within that minority find themselves increasingly facing violence and discrimination. While many lived to see the day we never thought possible, the election of an African-American president, we still witness discrimination and heightened violence that at times rivals that of the beatings, bombings and lynchings of the previous century.
As many matriculate through colleges and universities, many leave strapped with unparalleled debt and no promise of work. We’ve become a society of educated debtors unable to ply their trade or pay their bills. We watch silently as gentrification dilutes the few votes we cast and those in office fail to protect our rights. We’ve witnessed the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and efforts to eliminate the “birthright citizenship” guaranteed in our Constitution.
Over the last 30 years we’ve seen school buildings closed and prison cells built. We’ve seen our mentally ill turned out into the streets and then funneled into the prisons. We’ve seen dropout rates in inner-city schools reach more than 50 percent, creating a pipeline to a billion dollar industry. And while knowing those who drop out are more likely to commit crimes, our answer is to spend billions on mass incarceration, rather than billions on mass education.
Rather than seek solutions that keep families whole, educated and employed, St. Louis addresses its ranking as the most violent city in the country by planning to staff 160 more police. We will never police our way to safety. We will never incarcerate ourselves to less violence and crime. That comes only through fairness and opportunity.
As long as our solution to crime is to bash and banish the most neglected and abused, we will witness nothing more than a shift of crime from our neighbors next door to those we simply imprison. Crime doesn’t decrease, it just moves to a different locale.
We may one day elect a President Rodriquez, but until we end the discrimination that targets the minorities who feed a billion-dollar prison business, we will continue to experience the violence spoken of in a grade school gym.
Christi Griffin is founder of The Ethics Project, a non-profit organization addressing the impact of crime, injustice and incarcerations, and author of “Incarcerations in Black and White: The Subjugation of Black America.”
