Promoting People of Color in the Progressive Blogosphere

Promoting People of Color in the
Progressive Blogosphere
Netroots Nation 2011

Nancy A. Heitzeg,
Professor of Sociology and Critical Studies of
Race/Ethnicity, St. Catherine University
Criminal InJustice Kos at Daily Kos

Criminal InJustice Kos: Putting
the PIC on the Progressive
Agenda
“…while there is a lower class, I am in it, and
while there is a criminal element I am of it, and
while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
Eugene V. Debs

Criminal InJustice Kos

Criminal InJustice Kos is a weekly series
devoted to exploring the myths of "crime",
"criminals", and criminal justice and the
intersection of race/ethnicity/class/
gender/sexuality/age/disability in
policing and punishment.
Criminal Injustice Kos is committed to
furthering action towards reducing
inequity in the US criminal justice system.
Look for Criminal InJustice Kos every
Wednesday at 6 pm CST

Kay Whitlock, aka RadioGirl, CIK co-editor

The U.S. has the highest
incarceration rate in the
world. (PEW 2008)
For every 100,000 in the
population, there are 751
people in Federal or state
prisons or in jail (PEW 2008)
Another 5 million are under
some other correctional
supervision
>3300 await execution on
35 state and federal death
rows (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2007)
USA INMATES
1970, 200,000
1980, 500,000
1990, 1.1 million
2000, 2 million
2005, 2.3 million
2009, 2.4 million

WORLD INCARCERATION RATES

Mass imprisonment
is not in response to
violent crime.
The increase is
attributed to the War
on Drugs, mandatory
minimum and three
strikes sentencing
and harsh juvenile
justice policies

While African Americans and
Latino/as each comprise 13%
of the U. S. population, they
are over-presented at all
phases of the criminal justice
systems –despite no
statistical differences in
participation in crime.
More than 50% of all
prisoners are African
American, less than 30% are
white and 20% are Latino.
(Bureau of Justice Statistics 2007)

1 in 31 adults is under
correctional supervision
1 in every 100 adults is in
prison as are ---
1 in every 100 black women
1 in every 36 Latino adults
1 in every 15 black men
1 in 9 black men ages 20 to 34
(Pew 2008)

Criminal InJustice Kos Diary Themes
The Personal is Political
The Prison Industrial
Complex, Privatization,
and Profiteering from
Mass Incarceration
The School to Prison
Pipeline and the
Criminalization of
Youth
Death Penalty Action
and Abolition

Corruption of Democracy
Police Abuse and
Misconduct
The Law and the Courts
Brutal Conditions of
Incarceration
Collateral Consequences
Alternations to
Incarceration/ New
Visions/Transformative
Justice
Abolition!

The Post-Racial Myth, “White”,
Male Spaces, and “Color-Blind”
Racism

This noise is about race. It is about
"othering" a President who is seen as a
symbol of white dispossession: dispossession
of white hegemony, white entitlement, white
expectation, and white power, unquestioned
and unchallenged from the darker skinned
other. This is what animates the every move of the
angry masses, individual exceptions
notwithstanding.
Unless the left begins pushing back, and
insisting that yes, the old days are gone,
white hegemony is dead, and deserved its
demise, and that we will all be better off for
it, the chorus of white backlash will only
grow louder. So too will it grow more
effective at dividing and conquering the
working people who would benefit–all of
them–from a new direction.
Tim Wise

Demographics: Daily Kos Demographics:
Still White. Over 50. Well Off. Male.

Climate: Dream Deferred:
Racism of the “Color-blind” Kind.

Racism, as both white supremacist ideology and institutionalized
arrangement, remains merely transformed with its' systemic foundations
intact. Segregation in housing and education persists at levels beyond that
noted in 1954 in Brown, racial wealth gaps grow, and racial disparities in
criminal justice proliferate at a pace that has led to the label "The New Jim
Crow“……
This denial of The Dream is doubly bitter, for not only does systemic racism
persist indeed with ever widening racial gaps, but King's own words have
been subverted to construct the denial. "They will not be judged by the color
of their skin but by the content of their character," is not yet reality but
instead now the rallying cry for those who would deny the persistence of
racism in any and all of its' manifestations. These words have been
expropriated to legitimate the newest racist paradigm - "color-blindness".
Color-blind racism" explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome
of nonracial dynamics and allows whites to equate racism with prejudice,
ignoring the institutionalized and systemic racial structures that sustain and
reproduce white racial privilege.

Resisting White Supremacy in the Blogosphere
Recognize racism as systemic
and structured – as bigger than
mere prejudice and bigotry.
See the intersections but do not
reduce race to class.
Recognize that racist impact
does occur in lieu of racist
intent.
Listen…Read more – Type less..
Resist not only the easy obvious
active, overt racism but the
coded covert racism as well.

Resist the rhetoric of “color-blind” racism. Learn the
code words and the dog whistles..

Become Race Traitors..
Whiteness is not a culture….. Whiteness has nothing to do with
culture and everything to do with social position. It is nothing but a
reflection of privilege, and exists for no reason other than to defend it.
The white race is a club. Certain people are enrolled in it at birth, without
their consent, and brought up according to its rules. For the most part
they go through life accepting the privileges of membership, without
reflecting on the costs. Others, usually new arrivals in the country, pass
through a probationary period before “earning” membership; they are
necessarily more conscious of their racial standing.
The white club does not require that all members be strong advocates of
white supremacy, merely that they defer to the prejudices of others. It is
based on one huge assumption: that all those who look white are,
whatever their reservations, fundamentally loyal to it.
Race Traitor Journal of the New Abolitionism

SELECTED REFERENCES

Davis, A. “Racialized punishment and prison abolition” in J. James,
editor. (1998). The Angela Y. Davis Reader. (pp. 96-110). NY:
Blackwell.
DeNavas-Walt, C., .Proctor, B.D., and Smith, J. (2007), Income,
Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States:
(2006), U.S. Census Bureau. Current Population Reports, P60-233.
Washington, DC.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Dorfman, L. and V. Schiraldi. (2001) Off Balance: Youth, Race and
Crime in the News http://
buldingblocksforyouth.org/media/media.htlm
Entman, R.M. and A. Rojecki. (2000). The black image white mind:
media and race in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] and U.S. Department of
Justice (2006). Crime in the United States 2006 Retreived December
20, 2007 from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/index.html
Justice Policy Institute. (2008) Disparity by Design. Washington
DC.

Mauer, M. and M. Chesney-Lind, editors.(2002). Invisible
punishment: the collateral consequences of mass imprisonment.
NY: The New Press
PEW Center on the Stares. (2008). One in 100: Behind Bars in
America 2008. Washington Dc.
NAACP. (2005) Interrupting the School to Prison Pipe-line.
Washington DC.
Skiba, Russell. (2001) Zero Tolerance, Zero Evidence: An Analysis
of School Disciplinary Practice. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
Education Policy Center, Indiana University
Southern Poverty Law Center (2008). School to Prison Pipeline
Project http://www.splcenter.org/legal/schoolhouse.jsp
Walker, S., C. Spohn, and M. DeLone. (2007). The color of justice:
race, ethnicity and crime in America. 4 th Edition. Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth.
Witt, Howard “School Discipline Tougher on African Americans”.
Chicago Tribune. (September 5 2007)