Black Men In Prison Didn’t Fight The Plea

This weekend I was in my car, yelling at the radio. Not because I've lost my mind, but because two host, which I cannot identify (because I don't know who they were) were discussing the statistics regarding the number of black men in prison and/or in the "injustice" system. Now I'm generally not one to pound on my chest lamenting the racial inequities in our society, but this time, I was screaming to the radio that this is all about one thing – PLEA BARGAIN. Yes, there are many African Americans making poor choices. My guess is that many of the incarcerated are there for drug related charges and the difference between being INCARCERATED on drug related charges and not is the quality of lawyer you have and whether or not that lawyer has incentive to plead your case out, or whether they are paid by the hour to defend you. Overworked public defenders will plea, private attorneys, with the support of a family (often, a two parent family granted), who is willing AND able to sacrifice, provide moral support by coming to court. When you have a single mother, working 10 or more hours every day with two or more jobs and two or three other kids to care for, providing the emotional support to a trial that even the lawyer (who is pressuring you to plea) doesn't support just isn't an option.

When OJ was acquitted, my primary emotion was shock. Over the years, I periodically revisited that shock until I watched the vast majority of the Phil Spector trial. As ridiculous as the defense "theory" of what happened sounded, I cannot deny that I had a good amount of reasonable doubt in hearing WORLD RENOUND experts testify to alternate theories of what actually happened. It opened my eyes to how ones knowledge of how to "play" the system (based on having "created" it) is the difference between the nearly 33% of black men who can expect to spend time in prison and the 6% of whites. As for Hispanics, I argue that they are a group that because of their religious foundation (something that the black community USED to have) are not yet making the poor choices that both blacks and whites are making, respective to their own communities. One thing I know FOR CERTAIN white teens are NOT doing less drugs, white teenage girls are NOT having less unprotected sex although they are having less babies because in that community, a stigma is still attached (as possibly it should be) to illegitimate children.

The bottom line is that the difference in blacks and whites in their imprisonment rates are not related to the actions, they are related to REACTIONS.