A Simple Question

Brown at 60: The doll test NAACP LDF

Sometimes just a simple question can open our eyes and rearrange our thinking.

Sometimes that question can come from an unexpected source.

For me that happened in the fellowship hall of a West Philadelphia church.

I was sitting on the threadbare carpet, watching my not-quite-two daughter rock a plastic baby doll in an area sectioned off as a makeshift nursery.

A little boy beside me was watching too, with a thoughtful look on his face.

“Does your daughter have black dolls at home?”

Black dolls? This was 1983. Had I ever seen a black doll? Did anybody make them?

David was five. Maybe six. A quiet little boy. I’m not sure I’d ever heard him speak to any adult except his parents.

He looked at me earnestly and asked the question again, then looked past my wispy-blond daughter to his own little sister, Katherine, a tiny, dark-skinned girl with tight little braids framing her face. She was holding a plastic baby doll just like my daughter’s. Both dolls were pasty white.

I followed David’s gaze from the little white girl with the white plastic doll to the little black girl with the white plastic doll to the basket of dolls, all white, beyond them.

David was waiting.

“She doesn’t,” I finally said. “Does Katherine?”

He nodded yes.

I knew Katherine’s mother. If there were black dolls to be had her children would have them.

“I guess we should have some here,” I said.  

He nodded yes.

“I’ll talk to your mom about it.”

That was over three decades ago.

We still have some of the dolls we bought  for our daughters in the years after that conversation: a healthy mix of shapes, colors and hair styles. Just days ago, after a family gathering, I walked past the little doll corner we have in our basement playroom and saw a cheerful assembly of friends dressed and gathered in what appeared to be a party.

But David’s question wasn’t really about dolls.

It was more about belonging, imagination, seeing oneself as an accepted, even treasured member of the world we live in.

From 1939 through the 1950s, Dr. Mamie and Kenneth Clark used dolls to test children’s perceptions about race. Children of different ages and colors were asked questions designed to measure attitudes about what skin color has to do with being “pretty,” “ugly,” “good” or “bad”.

Their troubling conclusions were part of the evidence offered in the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954:  

To separate [African-American children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

It’s been a long time since segregation was a legal educational policy.  It’s still around in other forms: housing patterns, hiring practices. We still have unwritten codes about who does and doesn’t belong.

I’ve been wrestling lately with the intersection between criminal justice, racial bias and political representation.

I’ve posted about these topics before: the steep imbalancein incarceration rates, the  high number of people held in jail because they can’t afford bail,  the misguided policies that pour money into prisons rather than educate the children who otherwise land there.  

This week my focus has been the Census Bureau’s decision to continue counting incarcerated persons as residents of prison districts, rather than their home communities. Despite a recent federal court decision declaring the practice unconstitutional, despite Pennsylvania state law describing place of residence as last known address, despite testimony from experts, the Bureau recently announced that the practice will continue.

In essence, prison gerrymandering, as it's sometimes called, dilutes the voice of urban and minority communities, amplifies the votes of rural communities where the prisons are based, distorts democracy.

Pennsylvania is among states most strongly impacted, because of high disparities in incarceration rates for people of color and because so many of our prisons are in rural, predominately white districts. 

I sit and dig through data, pour through websites, study the correlation between maps of party leadership, maps of skewed demographics, maps of underfunded schools.

We wrestle with principalities and powers, systems and structures, embedded injustice so entrenched, so complex, so subtle, so strong, it’s easy to lose hope.

Is change possible?

I had hoped the Census Bureau, after recent legal challenges, would decide to count prisoners in their home communities.

They didn’t.

It’s still possible if there’s enough public outcry.

But the comment period ends August 1 and the news cycles are busy jumping on stories about Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton and tragedies near and far. 

Prison gerrymandering looks like just a tiny ripple at the edge of a very active pond.

Yet small things shape larger.

Sentencing guidelines, decisions on where and when to build prisons, funding for public defenders, training for policing, investment in public education: all are shaped by elected officials.  

Whose interests will they represent?

I’m working this week on encouraging individuals and organizations to offer public comment. Links, talking points and reasons are available here.

I’m working as well on strengthening the work of FairDistricts PA, still promoting our petition, still asking for donations to help spread the word about gerrymandered districts. 

I’m leading a conference call this week with stakeholders who wonder: is it worth the investment?

Meeting with minority advocates who know this all matters, but wonder if there will ever be enough comfortable white Pennsylvanians willing to help shift the balance of power.

Joining a small group of motivated activists who scheduled a meeting with a key state senator.

Around it all, I’ll be praying: for families I know impacted by our inequitable system of injustice, for politicians considering the risk of supporting change, for potential allies weighing their own tangle of priorities. For grace, wisdom, persistence, resources, hope.

We are all part of this unfolding story.

We can speak out for change or endorse the status quo.

We can find new ways to be a neighbor, new ways to embrace others, new ways to encourage, befriend, affirm.

Or we can shrug and say it’s not our problem, not our kids, not our future on the line.

I look at the photo of PA legislators. 

Mostly white. 

Mostly male. 

Mostly fine with the way things are.

I wonder: do their children have black dolls at home?

Do yours?

Remember those in prison

“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” (Hebrews 13:3)

Data Source: Source: Roy Walmsley, International Centre for Prison Studies,
“World Prison Population List (8th edition),” January 2009.

I’ve been working through topics that shape US party platforms, praying, as I start each week, about the topic that comes next. This week: Prisons. Prison privatization. Mandated sentencing. Prison labor.

I once helped empty an apartment left vacant by an aging hoarder. Each room was worse than the one before, each stack confronting me more troubling than the last. Roaches darted from every pile; holes in the ceiling dripped black tar. I had agreed without knowing the extent of the damage, and found myself dreading each next step on the way.

I’m beginning to feel a bit like that as I follow rabbit trails of numbers, dig through stacks of statistics. Part of me would rather not know: not know the extent of our culture’s obsession with guns, not see the staggering cost of our dependence on weapons.

And I would rather not remember, think about, acknowledge anything to do with prison.

For fourteen years my husband worked for a prison ministry and we knew, up close and personal, men and women who had done time. We had ex-offenders for dinner. I organized delivery of Christmas gifts to children whose parents were incarcerated. I listened to my husband’s stories of visits to prisons across the country, around the globe, and stood in worship with men whose first experience of worship and God’s grace took place behind bars.

I know from my own conversations, from my own friendships, that there is much that is broken in our correctional system. I know men who with a halfway attentive lawyer would have been released on probation, yet did significant time because the public defender systems of many states offer no incentive for genuine legal aid.

I know there is little effort made to give inmates tools to face reentry, little support given to those who leave prison with no safety net of family or friends.

And I’ve seen, first hand, the damage to families when a loved one is sent away, too far to visit, with no sense of justice done.

Remember those in prison.

As if you were together with them in prison.

As if you were the one ripped from your family, your life, and locked away until . . .

from Pew Center on the States Infographic

As I’ve inventoried the sad stories I've seen and know, I’ve also done some digging, and find myself grieving, and wondering, and praying. The reality is far worse than I knew.

Some simple facts:

The United States is the uncontested leader in incarceration. As of 2009, our incarceration rate (743 per 100,000) was almost eight times the average of Western European countries (96 per 100,000), more than five times the worldwide average of 146 per 100,000.

One in 104 American adults is behind bars. One in 33 is under correctional control (on bail, on parole, in prison or jail).

One in four of the world’s inmates is doing time in an American prison.

16% (350,000) of incarcerated adults are mentally ill. The percentage in juvenile custody is even higher.

3/4 of drug offenders in state prisons are non-violent offenders or in prison solely for drug offenses.

85 percent of all juveniles who appear in juvenile court are functionally illiterate. More than 6 in 10 of all prison inmates would have difficulty writing a letter, or filling out a job application.

Young black men without a high school diploma are now more likely to be incarcerated than employed. 

More than 2.7 million children now have an incarcerated parent. That’s one child in every 28.

I find these statistics alarming. Take the time to read them slowly. One in 28 children: that's an average of one child in every classroom. Multiply the misery. Then multiply the expense.

Yes, our move to lock up drug offenders, the mentally ill, illegal aliens, hard to manage juveniles is more and more expensive. Many states (like my own state of Pennsylvania) now spend significantly more on prisons than on higher education.

Even more alarming than the avalanche of jarring statistics and troubling graphs is the impetus spurring this explosion of expense and human misery.

Who benefits from locking so many people behind bars?

What motivates all the tough on crime rhetoric? The “three strikes/you’re out” slogans? The immoral mantra of “lock them up and throw away the key”?

There are books written on this, but here’s the piece that alarms me: a move to privatize prisons has introduced a financial incentive to increased incarceration.

Simple logic would suggest we’re all better off if prison populations are kept as low as possible.

But once corporations begin building prisons and looking at those prisons as an avenue to profit, that simple logic is swept away as the new prison-industrial complex presses politicians to sell prisons, to authorize private prisons, to guarantee prison populations that maximize profit.

Data Source: Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.
(Graph: Prison Policy Initiative, 2010)

It’s hard to tease out cause and effect in a subject as complicated as crime and punishment, but any chart depicting prison populations as percentage of population show a relatively stable rate through the mid seventies. While Nixon’s “War on Drugs” led to a slight rise in the tide of incarcerations, the real change came in the mid eighties. In 1984, a number of Tennessee investors with close ties to the state legislature formed Corrections Corporation of America, (CCA), as a way to use venture capital, rather than public money, to build a new prison and lease the beds to the state. Since then, privatized prisons have been a tremendous growth industry, allowing correctional departments to add prison beds with lower up-front costs.

As of today, nearly ten percent of inmates are housed in private prisons run by a private industry that exercises significant influence over all aspect of our justice system.

According to a  recent Justice Policy Institute report:

For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and building relationships, networks, and associations. Over the years, these political strategies have allowed private prison companies to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration and thus greater profit margins for their company. 

The report offers detailed evidence of the cozy relationship between lawmakers, congressional staffers, prison industries, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, a self-described “nonpartisan individual membership organization of state legislators.”  A more recent Nation article   offers details about the influence of corporately-funded ALEC in ensuring growth in the prison industry:

ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in twenty-five states. . . . ALEC has also worked to pass state laws to create private for-profit prisons, a boon to two of its major corporate sponsors: Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections), the largest private prison firms in the country. . . ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees. ALEC has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country’s massive prison population.

"We pause here to note CCA stock is up 340%
in the last 10 years; the S&P 500 is up less than 20%."

Even more troubling than the thought that private profit is behind our nation’s expansive prison population is the suggestion that prison labor has become a new form of slavery, providing even further profits for the prison industry and replacing good jobs here in the US, even outsourced jobs in other countries, with work done for just pennies an hour. The Nation article describes the legal maneuvering that made this possible; a Global Research report offers specifics:

At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. . . Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions."  . . .

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

As the Global Research report notes:

Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States. . . For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

As I read report after report, I find myself staring out over my green backyard, enjoying the silence of my quiet study, wondering what it would be like to be locked away, to be working for pennies, to have no privacy, no freedom, no hope.

And I repent: of my own ignorance. My disinterest. My failure to remember those in prison. My naive trust that those elected to serve the common good are in fact doing that, rather than bending to pressure from industries where profit is the highest, sometimes the only, goal.

What do I take from this?

• As I’ve said on every topic I’ve examined, industry money controls the conversation, shapes legislation, and drowns out the legitimate concerns of citizens.
• Politicians who pass legislation ensuring expanded prison populations, or who promote fear as a tool to ensure votes, do a disservice to the truth, their constituents, and our already tight budgets. 
• Christians who advocate a “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality need to rethink the meaning of grace, forgiveness, restoration, and what it looks like to love our neighbors as ourselves.
• As a free person, able to read, able to vote, I have a moral obligation to be alert, knowledgeable, and articulate about unjust incarceration policies, and I am without excuse if I don’t remember, pray for, and look for ways to serve those who find themselves in prison.

“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” (Hebrews 13:3)

Overcrowding in a California state prions; Wikipedia

This is part of an continuing series about faith and politics: What's Your Platform?

More than ever, I welcome your thoughts about which issues to consider, as well as your insight, comments, and questions.  Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments.