Commentary: The Election of Barack Obama: The Debt Has Not Been Paid

Abstract

Many people have commented that with election of Barack Obama as 44th President of United States, this is a wonderful time to be a historian or other scholar of American experience. In person of President Obama we have coming together of multiple meanings and conceptualizations of designation While his father was from Kenya, Barack Obama understands that he and his family are Americans culturally; but unlike for many of us, Obama's African connection is as real and apparent as American. The election of President Obama in many ways is realization of social and political trends that began with launching of modern Civil Rights Movement in 1950s and Black Power Movement of 1960s and 1970s. But in many ways this is the best of and worst of times for U.S. Americans. On 29 February 2008, while Barack Obama was successfully winning Democratic presidential primaries, New York Times published an article on report from Pew Center for States stating that in 2007 U.S. prison population rose to 1.6 million, that more than 1 in 100 adults are in and that the U.S. inmate population is highest in world. For those who would like to argue that with election of President Obama, Americans have entered a new post-racial era, we need to call their attention to reports of The Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and other groups that have documented disparities in rates at which Americans and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, despite roughly equal rates of illegal drug use. The Sentencing Project reports that while Americans represent about 13 percent of monthly drug users, they represent 35 percent of arrests, 55 percent of convictions, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison for drug possession. American men in 15 states were imprisoned on drug charges at rates ranging from 20 to 57 higher than those of white men. As a result, one out of every 15 black men is in prison, and for those between ages of 20 and 24, rate is one in nine. And increasingly, black women are also targeted by prison-industrial complex so that one out of every 18 black women born in 2006 can expect to go to prison in her lifetime, while for white women expected rate is one in every 108; and whereas one out of 355 white women between ages of 35 and 38 was behind bars in 2007, rate for black women was one in 100. This high incarceration rate means that on any given day, one out of every 14 black children has at least one parent in prison. The drug laws that were put into effect, and harsh sentencing rules, are not merely result of politicians wanting to demonstrate that they are tough on crime, but are also a reflection of way U.S. political system currently operates. Thus wealthy lobbyists for private prison industry not only participated in writing of these new drug laws and contributed heavily to both Democratic and Republican politicians' campaigns, they also lobby to make sure that there are no changes in these laws that would stem flow of prisoners into these private prisons. Therefore, if Americans organized to change drug sentencing laws, and thus decrease numbers of black children and adults being incarcerated by thousands for victimless crimes, we would have to compete against resources and influence of private prison industry for support among politicians. In other words, we could move beyond moral indignation and outraged rhetoric to mass marches and public protests, but we would still have to raise filthy lucre to pad pockets of politicians and their political campaigns to effect any type of meaningful legislative changes. Moreover, with economic meltdown, gross disparities in circumstances for Americans compared to white Americans further undermine arguments about onset of a post-racial era in United States. …