Earl Smith, PhD
(2020)
Black youth are currently confined in the criminal punishment system 3X white youth[1]
Blacks get longer sentences than whites[2]
Blacks are confined in solitary confinement more often than whites[3]
Blacks (men) comprise a larger percentage of those exonerated than they are represented in the prison population[4]
Black women sterilized more often than white women[5]
Black people in the United States have a disproportionately higher death rate from tobacco-related illnesses than other racial and ethnic groups[6]
Black mothers’ infant mortality is the highest of all groups in US; a baby born to a Black mother in Mississippi is more likely to die before its first birthday than a baby born in any other western hemisphere country except the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Bolivia and Haiti.[7]
Blacks are more likely to experience “stop & frisk”[8]
Blacks are more likely held for not being able to pay bail (or fines)[9]
Black officers disproportionately convicted for murder[10]
Black undercover officers are more likely to be killed by white officers than the reverse[11]
Blacks are paid less than whites for same jobs[12]
Blacks in places like Ferguson and Chicago (Chicago Fines, Fees & Access Collaborative), are targeted by the city’s ticketing and debt collection practices that disproportionately affected low-income and black neighborhoods[13]
Disproportionately, more than any other race/ethnic group, Blacks are harmed by the war on drugs[14]
Disproportionately, Blacks don’t have equitable access to the burgeoning cannabis industry[15]
Disproportionately, more than any other race/ethnic group, Blacks don’t have equal access to the housing market[16]
Blacks disproportionately experience absolute exclusion from ‘high-tech’ jobs in Silicon Valley[17]
Blacks disproportionately experience ‘civil death’ after convictions & incarcerations;[18] (Sonia Sotomayor wrote that anyone who is arrested “will now join the 65 million Americans with an arrest record and experience the ‘civil death’ of discrimination by employers, landlords, and whoever else conducts a background check.” 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2070 (2016), Sotomayor, J., dissenting).
Blacks disproportionately offered less pain medicine than whites by medical doctors[19]
Blacks are disproportionately more likely than whites and other race/ethnic groups to be assigned e-carceration digital monitors like ankle and risk bracelets.[20]
Disproportionately, Black women continue to be incarcerated at twice the rate of white women.[21]
[1] Burns Institute, https://www.burnsinstitute.org/tag/racial-and-ethnic-disparities/
[2] Equal Justice Initiative, https://eji.org/news/sentencing-commission-finds-black-men-receive-longer-sentences
[3] Knowable Magazine, https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2018/hidden-damage-solitary-confinement
[4] Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith, 2018, Policing the Black Body
[5] http://www.msnbc.com/all/eugenic-sterilization-victims-belated-justice ; Prof. Johanna Schoen, 2005, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare. University of North Carolina Press.
[6] CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities/african-americans/index.htm
[7] “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/magazine/black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html
[8] “There’s overwhelming evidence that the criminal-justice system is racist. Here’s the proof.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/09/18/theres-overwhelming-evidence-that-the-criminal-justice-system-is-racist-heres-the-proof/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3138b68afb3c ; https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the-sotomayor-and-kagan-dissents-in-utah-v-strieff.html
[9] “Detaining the Poor: How money bail perpetuates an endless cycle of poverty and jail time” https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/incomejails.html
[10] “A Black Officer, a White Woman, a Rare Murder Conviction. Is It ‘Hypocrisy,’ or Justice?” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/us/mohamed-noor-guilty.html
[11] “Black St. Louis Officer Shot By White Cop After Identifying Himself Sues The City..
Milton Green said he believes he “wouldn’t have gotten shot” if he was white. https://newsone.com/3854497/black-cop-sues-st-louis-police-shooting/; “Officer Who Fatally Shot Black Security Guard Outside a Bar Is Identified”
[12] “African Americans are paid less than whites at every education level” https://www.epi.org/publication/african-americans-are-paid-less-than-whites-at-every-education-level/
[13] “Why the Missouri city—despite hosting a multinational corporation—relied on municipal fees and fines to extract revenue from its poorest residents” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/fergusons-fortune-500-company/390492/
[14] “Race and the War on Drugs” https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/ACF4F34.pdf
[15] “Black People Face Big Barriers Entering the Legal Weed Industry” https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yw4pkw/weed-industry-equity-black-business
[16] The ‘heartbreaking’ decrease in black homeownership Racism and rollbacks in government policies are taking their toll.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2019/02/28/feature/the-heartbreaking-decrease-in-black-homeownership/?utm_term=.7ae73f1d197b
[17] “Black and Hispanic underrepresentation in tech: It’s time to change the equation” https://www.brookings.edu/research/black-and-hispanic-underrepresentation-in-tech-its-time-to-change-the-equation/
[18]https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the-sotomayor-and-kagan-dissents-in-utah-v-strieff.html
[19] “The Never-Ending Mistreatment of Black Patients”
[20] “Americans wearing ankle monitors, but all indications suggest that mass supervision, like mass incarceration, disproportionately affects black people. In Cook County, Ill., for instance, black people make up 24 percent of the population, and 67 percent of those on monitors. The sociologist Simone Browne has connected contemporary surveillance technologies like GPS monitors to America’s long history of controlling where black people live, move and work. In her 2015 book, “Dark Matters,” she traces the ways in which “surveillance is nothing new to black folks,” from the branding of enslaved people and the shackling of convict laborers to Jim Crow segregation and the home visits of welfare agencies. These historical inequities, Browne notes, influence where and on whom new tools like ankle monitors are imposed.” Simone Browne, 2015, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
[21] Andrea J. Ritchie “A Warrant to Search Your Vagina.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/opinion/sunday/black-women-police-brutality.html?smid=tw-share