Is justice attainable for Black people?

20th July 2020   ·   0 Comments

The Pledge of Allegiance ends with the line, “…with liberty and justice for all,” but that is not now nor has it ever been true when it comes to Black people.

In reality, the term criminal justice is not only an oxymoron, but it is tantamount to empty rhetoric for Black people, who know that there has never been real criminal justice for us.

As the demand for criminal justice reform intensifies in the wake of worldwide protests for police reform, we are still witnessing two systems of criminal justice: unjust justice for wealthy, well-connected whites and unjust injustice for people of color, particularly Blacks, who are treated to heaping helpings of jail time for the smallest infractions, while whites receive get out of jail free cards.

The police killings of George Floyd, Eric Garner and other Black men and women began with allegations of a minor offense, such as passing a counterfeit $20 bill or selling individual, untaxed cigarettes.

Alexandra Natapoff, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine, says an over-emphasis on low-level crimes like traffic violations and loitering disproportionately affect African Americans. “This is the beginning of how we sweep people of color, and African Americans in particular, into our criminal system,” she says, through over-policing Black neighborhoods, racial profiling, and practices like stop-and-frisk.

Case in point: While Trump was commuting convicted felon Roger Stone’s jail sentence, a Black teenager, “Grace” was sent to juvenile detention for not doing her online homework.

Grace was sent to juvenile jail because she allegedly violated her probation but the 15-year-old wasn’t sent there for fighting her mother or stealing a fellow school mate’s cell phone from his locker, which got her placed on probation initially, but the judge sent her to jail for not doing online homework, according to a ProPublica article.

“She was incarcerated in May for violating her probation by not completing her online coursework when her school in Beverly Hills in Metro Detroit switched to remote learning…. Grace is Black in a community where the overwhelming majority of residents are white. In the past five years, 42 percent of cases referred to Oakland County court have involved Black youths even though only about 15 percent of the county’s youth are Black,” ProPublica reports.

What this sounds like is racial profiling by Judge Mary Allen Brennan. What else could explain the incarceration of a young Black teen at a time when the criminal justice system was being advised by health officials to release youth from confinement due to the high levels of coronavirus in Detroit?

Trump’s DOJ authorized the release from jail of Paul Manafort, another convicted felon who was in the loop in the Russian scheme to get Trump elected, because they feared Manafort would contract the coronavirus.

If what is being reported is true, that African Americans are disproportionately affected by the coronavirus and that the virus is rampant in prisons and jails, why would Brennan send a child into a congregate setting without considering the risk to her health?

If racial bias wasn’t behind the decision of Brennan and the probation officer, what else can explain why that judge chose to lock up a teen with ADHD; who was already in mental health counseling? What else can explain why her probation officer felt the need to recommend that Grace be sent to a juvenile detention center for not doing online homework?

Grace told her probation caseworker, Rachel Giroux, that she was feeling anxious and overwhelmed by the remote learning system.

Although Giroux acknowledged that an adjustment period was necessary for Grace to get into the learning system, five days into the probationary period, Giroux recommended incarceration. Giroux didn’t check with Grace’s teacher, who said that she had a specific lesson plan to accommodate Grace.

“She hasn’t fulfilled the expectation with regard to school performance,” Brennan said. Grace was then “led out of the room in handcuffs and was ordered [to be] held at Children’s Village in Oakland County,” ProPublica notes.

Does anyone doubt that a white teen in the same situation would be handled differently?

The dual criminal justice approach was on full display recently when Trump signed an executive order approving a 10-year sentence for anyone who defaced or took down a Confederate statue.

Clearly, criminals like Stone and Manafort and treasonous traitors like those in the Confederate States of America who warred against the United States of America to keep Black people enslaved deserve exoneration, while he supports immunity for killer cops who kill unarmed Black people for selling loose cigarettes, CDs, allegedly passing a $20 counterfeit bill, or possessing a registered firearm.

Now Trump’s minions in the Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, are cooking up more white privilege in the next “stimulus bill” which includes blanket immunity from liability for hospitals, businesses and schools that operate during this coronavirus pandemic. All in the name of helping Trump get reelected.

In short, the Grand Old Party of Republicans wants to give those who operate hospitals, businesses and schools get-out-of-jail-free cards if their actions result in the deaths of essential workers, students and their families from coronavirus infections. Many of those workers, students, and their families are people of color, so now the racists in leadership positions are, once again, codifying racial profiling and absolving those who would cause them harm, just as they did with stop and frisk.

Trump’s push to restart the economy includes flinging open bars, salons, sporting events, school doors and everything in between. But who has been suffering since the economy has been shut? And who will bear the brunt of the abnormal reopening of the economy that is a figment of Trump’s egomania? Black, Indigenous and people of color, who are the most at risk, will be the first to die and the first to be fired or laid off.

Black people have been the currency of this country since they were brought here, enslaved, and made to work for free for 254 years. In 2020, we are still this country’s currency, whether it’s the Black bodies caught up in the profiteering prison industrial complex, in public schools, in essential front-line jobs, or the Black bodies that are in medical facilities dying of the coronavirus.

And people who are willfully blind or ignorant wonder why protesters are chanting “No Justice, No Peace,” and “Black Lives Matter.”

Obviously, reports that Black and brown people are dying disproportionately from the coronavirus have given Trump supporters a false sense of security and emboldened Trump to pressure governors to reopen state economies, while the coronavirus spreads like wildfire and tens of thousands continue to get infected and tens of thousands of Americans have died from the virus. Trump downplays the death stats daily.

However, white Americans need not take comfort in his racist diatribes as a reason to reelect Trump because the truth is that Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath and he doesn’t care who dies, even whites (they’re dying from coronavirus, too), if reopening the economy will help him get reelected.

We knew from the get-go that Trump’s campaign talking points are all about racism and fear of the “other.” So, if Black people are ever to receive equal justice, we must go to the polls in record numbers in November, and oust Trump, flip the Senate blue, hold on to the House and hold elected officials locally, statewide, and nationally accountable for delivering real justice to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. It’s no small feat but in the words of President Barack Obama, “Yes We Can.”

This article originally published in the July 20, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.