During the summer of 2020, after murderous police lynched George Floyd in the light of day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, there was a mass uprising of American citizens against what they had previously refused to acknowledge; blatant police murder of African-Americans.
In the white house as president was Donald Trump, an ignorant and vile racist in the vein of Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and a long line of racists to occupy the office of president.
Trump, angry that Black people dared to demand equal rights under the laws, warned that “vicious Dogs” would be unleashed on protestors who dared to protest against police violence and murder.
(13 Amendment to the constitution Sections 1 & 2.) Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
After the 13th amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery as it was, slavery by other means rapidly came into effect because of the clause,” except as a punishment for a crime, which was a deliberate inclusion that created another form of slavery albeit by another name.
As a result of that wiggle room, African Americans would be tormented through peonage practices, Jim Crow, and other forms of institutionalized Government oppression for over 80 years culminating in the civil disobedience movements that characterized the 1960s.
Though significant, the Civil Rights gains of the 1960s did not change many of the structural built-ins that remain a part of the American legal orthodoxy.
African people are convinced that they are free citizens of the United States. Still, the 13th amendment, which supposedly ended slavery, is the amendment that memorialized slavery of another kind, in the words “except as a punishment for a crime, “speaking of slavery.
https://mikebeckles.com/the-degenerative-ignorance-of-racism/
By definition, the very words” except as a punishment for a crime, literally incentivize the mass criminalization and incarceration of Black people, forcing them back into servitude, only by a different name.
This is not a practice that came to an end; it is 2022, and police are arguably the greatest danger to black people in the United States.
Pew Research noted that Blacks have long outnumbered whites in U.S. prisons, an understatement if ever there was one. But a significant decline in the number of black prisoners has steadily narrowed the gap over the past decade, according to new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
At the end of 2017, federal and state prisons in the United States held about 475,900 inmates who were black and 436,500 who were white – a difference of 39,400, according to BJS. Ten years earlier, there were 592,900 black and 499,800 white prisoners – a difference of 93,100. (This analysis counts only inmates sentenced to more than a year.) The decline in the black-white gap between 2007 and 2017 was driven by a 20% decrease in the number of black inmates, which outpaced a 13% decrease in the number of white inmates.
Notably, the number of incarcerated Blacks sentenced to a year or less in prison was not included in the data. Add the number of Blacks incarcerated for petty offenses, stealing a slice of piazza, marijuana possession or sale, inability to pay a traffic fine, inability or unwillingness to pay child support, and offenses of that nature and the data change exponentially.
Efforts by Democrats in some states to end cash bail and have non-violent offenders who commit minor offenses be given non-custodial sentences have also played a part over the same decade in lowering the number of Blacks locked up in American prisons.
The Republican party, which is now a full-fledged Fascist white supremacist party, is vehemently opposed to these fair and humane gestures by the Democrats. So too, are police and their unions that benefit from the mass incarceration of black people.
In a shockingly illuminating article in 2021, the Marshal Project detailed the mind-blowing statistics behind police in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, use of dangerous canines on non-violent Black people with alarming frequency, including children as young as 12 years old.
https://mikebeckles.com/cop-charged-by-the-feds-for-stomping-on-a-handcuffed-black-mans-face/
A spokesperson for the department told reporters, “Every single person that we caught was in the process of committing a felony, they were possibly armed, and they were resisting arrest,” said Capt. Wayne Martin, a longtime K‑9 officer and now commander of the Uniform Patrol Bureau. “If any of those things are absent, we don’t use the dogs.”
It goes without saying that advocates have evidence that this cop-splaining are total and utter lies; we know they lie routinely. The irony, many departments do arrest a larger number of armed and violent felons without using dogs to inflict cop punishment on them. Even more significant in America is that the police paid by the public to protect and serve do not see themselves as subject to the dictates of their bosses, the citizens.
Police have become powerful overlords that lawmakers are terrified of offending, and this is the definition of a police state. For Black Americans, this is a continuation of the way things were during slavery, sure, some things have changed, but essentially, the more things change in America, the more they remain the same.
https://mikebeckles.com/360374 – 2/
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.