#like what percentage of Louisiana’s population do you think is incarcerated?!

[tanadrin]

Saw someone claim in a comments section that something like 25% of Louisiana’s GDP comes from prison labor. Which would be insane if it was true. They must be running the most technologically advanced prisons in the country. They’re using prison labor to build microchips or some shit while everybody else is still using it to make license plates.

[socialjustus-blog1]

‘Subtle Racism’ of the Midwest: The Most Potent & Effective Kind

By: T.J. Nichols  |  Original Source: http://socialjust-us.com/

I’ve said it for a while now…Institutional racism in America’s Midwestern region, in my opinion, is far more potent and oppressive than in any other geographical region in this country. The Midwest is home to the most racially segregated cities in the country and boasts some of the worst economic statistics in America for black folks. Hell…ultimately, it’s the working-class whites in the Midwestern “flyover” states that got the racist, xenophobic Trump get elected in 2017.

The Common Assumption

When most people think of the history of racism in America, most of those thoughts are of events that took place in America’s southern states. Slavery was a staple of southern states and the Confederacy and Jim Crow reigned supreme in the Deep South. Many of the leaders and most progressive events from the Civil Rights Movements were born right there in the South. This gives an impression that the level of racism in the Deep South is more extreme than it is in other regions. Beware; this is a false and dangerous assumption.

Subtle Midwestern Racism vs. Overt Southern Racism…Why Does It Even Matter?

This all stemmed from a conversation I had with my little sister, whose a fellow Sociological-thinker. She had just attended the Trump Inaugural Protests and the massive Women’s March in DC, and the question arose as to which kind of racism was worst: Subtle racism of the Midwest that got Trump elected, or the more overt racism of the Deep South that gave us Jim Crow & Slavery? Before I go on, let me answer the question, “Why does it even matter? Why spend time comparing racism across different regions?”

Most young black men in America, unlike many other ethnic groups, are forced to confront race and racism at almost every turn of the day. While you’re at work, at the gym, watching TV and generally living life you have to deal with your ethnic group being stereotyped and marginalized more so than other groups. At some point, it’s hard not to be analyzing race & racism all the time.

Growing up in the Midwest, I’ve interacted with many Euro-Americans (white people) who showed clear racist and prejudice tendencies and beliefs, but were adamant that they could in no way ever be considered racist or prejudiced. They never called me a ni*ger or nigga directly, or burned down any churches, but would make claims like, “Dude, I’m not racist, but stereotypes about black people exist for a reason. They actually do dance better & are way more athletic,” or “I’m not racist bro. Black people just have a higher incarceration rate because they love that rap stuff and wana commit a bunch of crimes to be cool.”

It seems like in the Midwest, there’s this widespread, subtle idea of, “It’s ok to have stereotypical beliefs and unfound biases, just as long as I never do anything overtly racist.” This ultimately justifies a lot of actually racist and insensitive behavior and, in my opinion, plays a major role in the high level of poverty, unemployment, incarceration, and overall misery for many black folks living in the Midwest.

The Difference

I call this type of racism found in America’s Rust-Belt, “Subtle Racism”, and based on my experiences and observations, it’s far more powerful than the more overt racism that we’re used to seeing in the movies and documentaries. Overt racism (EX: businesses refusing to serve specific ethnic groups, direct physical or verbal attacks on ethnic groups, church-burnings, etc) happens far less frequently, and is much easier to address and correct when it shows it’s ugly head. Just label it a hate crime or illegal discrimination, punish or embarrass the perpetrator, and thus set an example that this type of overtly racist behavior is socially unacceptable  The fact that the behavior was clearly and overtly racist can’t be denied, so it’s addressable, hence correctable.

On the other hand, Subtle Racism (micro-aggressions, stereotyping, racially insensitive behavior, biased hiring practices at companies) is much more common, much more difficult to address and call out, thus far more impactful with longer-lasting effects.

Experience

This is the story of racism in the Midwest; subtle and extremely effective in achieving long-term oppression. Growing up in Milwaukee, WI, I’ve spent a good amount of time in the Midwest. My father is a southern man from Winfield, LA, so I’ve also spent a lot of time in the Deep South, visiting family on a regular basis. As a kid, I remember being nervous when our family would pack up and drive 17 hours to Louisiana to visit family. Isn’t the south where all the lynchings happened in the movies and textbooks? Isn’t that where MLK and other Civil Rights leaders were murdered? Isn’t that where the KKK and Jim Crow reigned supreme? Are we even safe traveling down there?

I remember arriving, and to my surprise encountering some of the kindest people I had ever encountered, white or black. See I was from the big, bad City…I wasn’t used to driving through a small town on dirt roads where people stood outside their homes and kindly waved at every car driving by, just being polite. I wasn’t used to seeing my aunties have conversations and friendships with co-workers and friends who were white. I saw that in the South.

I’m not at all downplaying or undermining racism in the south; I know it’s very prevalent just like it is everywhere in America. Where I’m from (north side of Milwaukee, WI, statistically the most racially segregated city in America) white people tend to live amongst white people, blacks live amongst blacks, and there isn’t much in-between. If you were white, it was rare that you had a black neighbor, and vice-versa. If you were black driving through a mostly-white suburb, friendly waves from strangers would be the absolutelast thing you’d expect (intimidating stares & eventual police sirens following your car were far more common).

Time after time, as I grew into adulthood I’d visit my family in Southern states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia and return home to Milwaukee wondering, where was all that crazy racism that I expected? When eating at a restaurant, walking into a business, dealing with police, and just generally moving around, I had experienced far more stereotyping and witnessed far more residential segregation take place in my midwestern hometown than in the south. How could this be?

When I started reading the works of Malcolm X as a teenager, I started to gain a thirst for his keen ability for Sociological observation. I admired how he’d analyze something in his environment, like drug-dealing or residential segregation, then connect that observation with historical facts and statistics to make a Sociological point. I eventually started to do the same with my surroundings.

After years of doing research on Social Justice matters, racial disparities, and attaining a BA degree in Sociology, I’ve come to the conclusion that the acceptance of covert and Subtle Racism in the Midwest is very dangerous, with it being so hard to identify and stop. Again, don’t think I’m downplaying the experiences or the historical experiences of African-Americans in the South at all! I’m only asserting that the Midwest is home to a very sneaky type of racism…the kind that we don’t even realize exists until it becomes too late to address and correct.

Statistics…

A recent study done by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) examined cities across the country that had a black population over 5%, and came up with a list of the 10 worst cities in America for African-Americans (EPI Report-10 Worst Cities For African Americans). Literally every city on this list is in a Midwestern state (with my hometown of Milwaukee, WI sitting gloriously at the top, as the #1 worst city in America for black folks).

That same organization did a similar study on the 10 worst states in the country for African-Americans (EPI Report-10 Worst States For African Americans) and saw a similar pattern. Half of the states with the worst conditions for African Americans are Midwestern states, and when you look at the top 5, 3 of those are also Midwestern states (with my home-state of Wisconsin shining at the top again, as the #1 worst state in America for black folks).

To come up with these lists, the EPI took into account factors like the percentage of the black population, disparities in incarceration rates, educational achievement, median household incomes for African American families, and the black unemployment rate. I find this astounding.

In a separate case, Professor Monica Stephens, from Humboldt State University, published a study that focused on the prevalence of hate speech on social media, breaking the occurrences down by geographical regions. One of the patterns she noticed was a much more prevalent use of the N-word & hate speech, “in smaller towns, particularly in the Midwest, sort of the Rust Belt area, more so than it is in the South.” In the article, possible explanations are offered:

“It doesn’t surprise me that you’d have a lot of racist tweets out of Illinois or Indiana. Being a native Midwesterner, there are certain regions and hot spots within these individual states that have a reputation for people being very vocal about minorities. And in the case of Illinois and Indiana, and even my home state of Missouri, you have a significant African-American population, not enough where we’re the majority in any type of capacity, but just enough where people feel the need that they can be very expressive in how they want to complain about it.”

That Time When Midwestern Subtle Racism Was So Powerful, It Decided Our President

Think what you want, but it’s safe to say that President Trump is a racist. Here’s a dictionary definition of the term, “racism.”

Racism: the belief that all members of a race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

Trump exhibited this when he doubted the competence of a federal judge, claiming the judge was unable to do his job without bias because he was of Mexican heritage. He exhibited this when he said that black people in America are “living in hell,” generalizing and stereotyping millions of African-Americans.

It’s also safe to say that it was the white working-class voters of the Midwest who played the biggest role in getting Donald Trump elected. While Trump’s behavior during his political career has been clearly racist, many white Midwestern voters were able to subtly ignore the racism and vote for him under the guise of a desire for job creation. This is exactly what I see when I look at the economic oppression that exists in most black communities of the “flyover” Midwestern states. While numbers show that there are clear racial disparities in incarceration, household incomes, educational outcomes, poverty and unemployment rates for black people in the Midwest, many white Midwesterners are able to subtly ignore these racial disparities and brush them off.

Claiming “I’m not racist! I just think _____ about black people,” isn’t an overt act of racism; it’s very subtle. Thinking “I’m not racist! I didn’t pull over that car full of black kids because I dislike black people. Black kids in inner-cities just tend to commit more crimes” isn’t overt racism; it’s very subtle. Believing, “Im not racist, the reason I don’t hire many blacks because they usually just don’t have the qualifications” isn’t overt racism, it’s very subtle. In each example, the perpetrator was able to ignore their racism, which actually allowed them to exhibit more racist behavior that could be exercised subtly, covertly, and without being called out on it.

Thinking, “I’m not racist. I don’t agree with the racist or sexist stuff Trump says; I’m just voting for Trump because he’ll bring back jobs” isn’t overt racism; but I do think it is subtle. I’m not crazy enough to believe that all Trump-voter are racists. I do believe that being able to conveniently ignore the fears & concerns that many Muslims, Mexicans, and African-Americans shared during the time of his campaign speaks volumes to your views toward those groups.

What I call Subtle Racism…this failure to acknowledge obvious bias and racism that results in more subtle, micro-aggressive acts…helped lead to an epidemic of white-flight in the Midwest, which birthed America’s most heavily segregated cities. It resulted in companies leaving the inner-city to go to the suburbs under the guise of ‘saving money’, all while being able to deny the fact that they were taking opportunities from black workers. Most recently, it resulted in a racist being elected into the most powerful office in the American government.

Statistics and experience prove that Subtle Racism in the Midwest is alive, well, and potent, whether we acknowledge it or not…

[frankkjonestx]

Why African-Americans may be especially vulnerable to COVID-19

COVID-19 was called the great equalizer. Nobody was immune; anybody could succumb. But the virus’ spread across the United States is exposing racial fault lines, with early data showing that African-Americans are more likely to die from the disease than white Americans.

The data are still piecemeal, with only some states and counties breaking down COVID-19 cases and outcomes by race. But even without nationwide data, the numbers are stark. Where race data are known — for only 3,300 of 13,000 COVID-19 deaths — African-Americans account for 42 percent of the deaths, the Associated Press reported April 9. Those data also suggest the disparity could be highest in the South. For instance, in both Louisiana and Mississippi, African-Americans account for over 65 percent of known COVID-19 deaths.

Other regions are seeing disparities as well. For instance, in Illinois, where the bulk of infections are in the Chicago area, 28 percent of the 16,422 confirmed cases as of April 9 were African-Americans, but African-Americans accounted for nearly 43 percent of the state’s 528 deaths. 

Other data find similar trends. A study published online April 8 in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report looked at hospitalizations for COVID-19 across 14 states from March 1 to 30. Race data, which were available for 580 of 1,482 patients, revealed that African-Americans accounted for 33 percent of the hospitalizations, but only 18 percent of the total population surveyed.

Here are three reasons why African-Americans may be especially vulnerable to the new coronavirus.

1. African-Americans are more likely to be exposed to COVID-19.

SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is highly contagious, even before symptoms appear (SN: 3/13/20). So to curb the virus’ spread and limit person-to-person transmission, states have been issuing stay-at-home orders. But many individuals are considered part of the critical workforce by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and must continue to work. That includes caregivers, cashiers, sanitation workers, farm workers and public transit employees, jobs often filled by African-Americans.

For instance, almost 30 percent of employed African-Americans work in the education and health services industry and 10 percent in retail, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. African-Americans are less likely than employed people in general to work in professional and business services — the sorts of jobs more amenable to telecommuting. 

Driving solo to those jobs isn’t always an option. Among urban residents, about 34 percent of African-Americans use public transit regularly compared with 14 percent of white people, according to a 2016 report from the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Continued use of public transit during the pandemic may bring African-Americans into greater contact with infected people.

Additionally, a disproportionately high percentage of African-Americans may live in places that could increase their risk of exposure. Census data from January 2020 show that only 44 percent of African-Americans own their own home compared with almost 74 percent of white people. Consider a family living in a crowded inner-city apartment, says epidemiologist Martina Anto-Ocrah of the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. “Can you possibly take an elevator alone? No.”  

African-Americans’ risk of higher exposure to COVID-19 has historical roots — including legal segregation in schools and housing, discrimination in the labor market and redlining, the practice of denying home loans to those living in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Those forces have contributed to a persistent racial wealth gap, with African-Americans continuing to struggle to move into neighborhoods with the sorts of socioeconomic opportunities that allow white families to better avoid exposure to COVID-19.  

“All the ingredients are in place for there to be a sharp racial and class inequality to this [pandemic],” says Robert Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard University. 

2. African-Americans have a higher incidence of underlying health conditions.

Among those at highest risk of getting severely ill with COVID-19 are patients with other serious health problems, such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease (SN: 3/20/20). Over 40 percent of African-Americans have high blood pressure, among the highest rates in the world, according to the American Heart Association. By comparison, about a third of white Americans have high blood pressure. Similarly, African-Americans tend to have higher rates of diabetes.

Part of that heightened risk has to do with African-Americans’ disproportionate exposure to air pollution. Such pollution has been linked to chronic health problems, including asthma, obesity and cardiovascular disease (SN: 9/19/17). In an April 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sampson and fellow Harvard sociologist Robert Manduca showed that poor African-American neighborhoods have higher levels of lead, air pollution and violence than poor white neighborhoods (SN: 4/12/19).

See all our coverage of the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak

Researchers are still sorting out how neighborhood stressors contribute to poor health. But even if the causes aren’t always clear, research suggests that helping people move to better neighborhoods can improve health. For instance, a 2017 study in JAMA Internal Medicine showed that for African-American adults, moving out of racially segregated neighborhoods was linked to a drop in blood pressure (SN: 5/15/17).

3. African-Americans have less access to medical care and often distrust caregivers.  

Inequities in access to health care, including inadequate health insurance, discrimination fears and distance from clinics and hospitals, make it harder for many African-Americans to access the sort of preventive care that keeps chronic diseases in check.

According to a December 2019 report from The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in New York City and Washington, D.C., African-Americans are still more likely to be uninsured than white Americans. And African-Americans who are insured spend a greater fraction of their income on premiums and out-of-pocket costs, about 20 percent, than the average American, who spends about 11 percent.

Census data show that about 20 percent of African-Americans live in poverty compared with 10 percent of white Americans. As a result, African-Americans have been disproportionately hurt by some states’ decisions not to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. Expanded Medicaid has been linked to a reduced likelihood of deaths from cardiovascular disease (SN: 6/7/19) and a reduction in the racial health gap between white and black babies (SN: 4/23/19).

Lack of preventive care means that African-Americans are more likely than other racial groups in the United States to be hospitalized or rehospitalized for asthma, diabetes, heart failure and postsurgery complications, researchers reported in 2016 in the Annual Review of Public Health.

African-Americans can also face hidden biases to care. For instance, an algorithm used to determine which patients should receive access to certain health care programs inadvertently prioritized white patients over African-American patients (SN: 10/24/19), researchers reported in October 2019 in Science. That disparity arose because the algorithm used health care spending as a proxy for need, but African-Americans often spend less on health care because they are less likely to go to a doctor. In part that may be because African-Americans have a long-standing distrust of the medical establishment due to events such as the Tuskegee experiment (SN: 3/1/75), in which hundreds of African-American men with syphilis were denied treatment for decades.

“These long-standing structural forms of discrimination that African-Americans have faced in the [United States] are manifesting in what we’re seeing with COVID right now,” says epidemiologist Kiarri Kershaw of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Even so, more can be done to identify communities that might be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 and improve their odds of coping with the pandemic, Sampson says. For example, “look at a map of incarceration, lead risk and violence in Chicago [and] you’ll basically see a map of COVID deaths,” he says. Those kinds of proxies could provide a road map to identifying at-risk communities and targeting resources to them, such as greater access to COVID-19 testing, distribution of masks and mobile clinics to provide care.

from Tips By Frank https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-why-african-americans-vulnerable-covid-19-health-race

[worldbestlawyers]

New Post has been published on World Best Lawyers

New Post has been published on http://www.worldbestlawyers.com/a-surprising-comparison-between-prison-and-slavery/

A Surprising Comparison Between Prison and Slavery

The fairly new term, “mass incarceration,” means that the U.S. has 2.3 million prisoners, more than any country in the world. A greater percentage of the U.S. population is in prison than in any other nation. The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. The entire U.S. correctional population, including those on probation, on parole and awaiting trial, is 7.3 million Americans.

These eye-popping numbers came about for many reasons: mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes legislation, illegal drugs, gangs, immorality in all its modern forms, the war on drugs, the decline of marriage and families, high rates of recidivism, incarceration of the mentally ill, the decline of capital punishment, problems with the criminal justice system and all the forces pushing tough crime policies. Difficult economic times focus attention on the increasing costs of keeping all these people – 93% of them men – behind bars. Each prisoner costs about $25,000 per year, and the average prisoner does little to offset the cost of confinement. The social costs may be even higher. Breadwinners are lost, families destroyed, more kids grow up without fathers or mothers, welfare costs increase, the entire sex ratio is thrown out of balance and prisoners face grim prospects when released.

The hyper-incarceration statistics for African-American males are much worse. We incarcerate one in nine African-Americans between the ages of 20 and 34. In 2003, it was calculated that “At current levels of incarceration newborn black males in this country have a greater than a 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes, while Hispanic males have a 1 in 6 chance, and white males have a 1 in 23 chance of serving time.” By 2007, just four years later, the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that African-American males have a 32% chance of going to prison or jail – becoming slaves – in their lifetimes. Young black male high school dropouts are almost 50 times more likely to wind up behind bars than the average American and 60% of that demographic cohort eventually goes to prison.

African-American males have always been incarcerated in significantly higher percentages than their portion of the general population, except in the Old South, where slaves were virtually never incarcerated. The state slavery in our modern penitentiary system, which now cages over one million African-Americans, and more than a million whites and Latinos, did not exist in the antebellum South. A prosecutor in the Old South, whose district covered at least half a dozen counties, in eight years of public service, only indicted 12 African-Americans out of 2,000 indictments. Disparate treatment of enslaved African-Americans in the legal system existed in the Old South. Back then, blacks received much less punishment from the formal legal system than did whites, the opposite of the way it is now. Slaves were too valuable as workers to incarcerate. The North incarcerated 30 times more African-Americans on a percentage basis than did the South in 1850. In 1850, almost all of the incarcerated African-Americans, North or South, were classified as “free colored.” Antebellum prisons in Mississippi and Georgia recorded zero African-American inmates at different times. By 1890, there were still only 8,417 prison inmates of all races in the entire South, and the federal prison system did not yet exist.

The most severe injustices of slavery were limitations on education and opportunity for advancement. The principal injustices of antebellum slavery can be avoided as we adopt some old-fashioned punishments and re-establish the importance of hard work under the constitutional guarantees all now invoke. Continuous employment is an unappreciated feature of slavery, and it was generally good for the hard worker. Many ex-slaves looked down on the generations raised in freedom because the younger generations never learned to work as hard as their slave ancestors. Many slaves had good personal relationships with their owners. The hard truth is that it’s better to be exploited and appreciated than ignored, disparaged and excluded.

The number of African-Americans incarcerated right now is numerically equal to one-half of the entire antebellum male slave population in 1860. African-American males in 2008, with infinitely greater educational opportunities, were 337 times more likely to be in prison than African-Americans in the antebellum South. African-Americans in the modern U.S. correctional population, including those on probation and parole, exceed the total number of American slaves in 1850! The factors of low employment, poor discipline and the destruction of the modern family best explain these terrible statistics. As a percentage of population, the South still incarcerates far fewer African-Americans than the North compared to the number of whites incarcerated in those states. Those who contend racial disparities in incarceration are a legacy of slavery have some explaining to do. Comparing rates of incarceration for whites to rates of incarceration for blacks yields a surprise: the greatest incarceration disparities today in favor of whites and against blacks are in the North, in the very same states that took the strongest stances against slavery. Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Wisconsin had the greatest racial disparities as of 2005, all over 10-to-1, while the Deep South states of Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas all had racial disparities of less than 5-to-1. Almost without exception, the states of the old Union incarcerate significantly greater percentages of African-Americans compared to the percentage of whites incarcerated – about twice as many – than the states of the old Confederacy.

The modern American prisoner is 20 times more likely to commit suicide than the antebellum slave. A surprising comparison using thorough research proves that modern mass incarceration is an unrealized social and financial disaster of mammoth proportions – while antebellum slavery for most U.S. slaves was not as inhumane as many believe. I contrast the modern American prison system with antebellum slavery, with narratives from hundreds of ex-slaves, using their own words. In the Old South, outlaws were generally white people, while slaves were considered safe and never incarcerated – race and crime are not truly related. I propose racially neutral reforms to reduce and improve incarceration through discipline and hard work, substantially helping taxpayers, victims of crime, our “new age slaves” in prison and the American economy. “Prison & Slavery – A Surprising Comparison” contains the only practical market-oriented, faith-based solutions to what the NAACP’s president now regards as the greatest major crisis in our democracy, mass incarceration. Forget stereotypes. The facts will surprise you.

Well over half of released prisoners wind up behind bars again, often within three years of their release date. It’s a revolving door. In 1910, Emma Goldman wrote: “Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an emaciated, deformed, will-less, shipwrecked crew of humanity, with the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as the only possibility of existence.” With regard to recidivism, nothing has changed in 100 years.

Modern prisons or “penitentiaries” have not been around as long as many believe, less than 200 years. Modern prisons developed after the U.S. Constitution was written. The original purpose was to rehabilitate offenders, but rehabilitation has been spectacularly ineffective. Prison usually makes offenders worse. The only thing it really does is keep them from preventing crimes while they are behind bars. Federal statutes prevent prison industries and prison labor from competing in the marketplace, which is why most prisoners are idle most of the time.

The mark of Cain today is the “felon” label, a stigma that effectively disqualifies ex-cons of public assistance, subsidized housing, food stamps and most jobs. Today, because African-Americans constitute a huge percentage of the correctional population, the felon stigma is called the New Jim Crow, after a book by that name written by Michelle Alexander. Angela Y. Davis, the famous radical, has called modern mass incarceration “New Age Slavery.” Most critics of the current system of mass incarceration come from the left half of the political spectrum, those who side with the less fortunate members of society. Unfortunately, the liberal critics of the system do not have many practical solutions to the problem. Booker T. Washington knew better than W.E.B. Du Bois about some things. Big government has been in charge of state slavery all along, has clearly failed in its experiment and offers little hope by itself.

Our delusion of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, originating as a humanitarian movement, was the idea that people would get better with time if placed in cages or cells. This misconception brought about yet another form of slavery, which is now more prevalent in the United States than in any other country. We have not reached the final chapter of American slavery. We abolished slavery, we thought, and then developed a new form of slavery. Antebellum chattel slavery is gone, but new age American slavery, mass incarceration, is much worse. We are not accustomed to thinking of prisoners as “slaves,” but in all the basic ways, they are state slaves. Although not strictly chattel, prisoners owe absolute obedience, have no physical freedom and little status, enjoy few rights and remain subjugated or abused for many years, in prison and after their release. The United States has gone from an agrarian, paternalistic, personal form of private enterprise slavery to the socialized, impersonal, institutional, mass state slavery through incarceration inside hard surfaces, directed from Washington, D.C. and 50 state capitals. The twisted world of modern mass incarceration, state slavery, is New Age Slavery. Unfortunately, our American prison population is now the largest group of full-ride welfare recipients in the world.

The problem must be approached from market-oriented, racially neutral, biblical, constitutional and pro-American ways. I studied antebellum slavery and determined it was not as horrific for the average slave as our modern media portrays it. This is confirmed on a Library of Congress website where about 2,300 Slave Narratives gathered from 1936 to 1938 are posted. For each horror story of antebellum slavery, there is an ex-slave who remembered the Old South fondly, usually because they had good owners. Modern research proves that slavery was economically efficient, productive and profitable for the slaveholders. Many plantations were self-sufficient in food, clothing and shelter. The slaves commonly had good healthcare, adequate food, clothing and shelter, no financial worries, were in superb physical condition, did not use alcohol or drugs to excess, did not kill each other nearly as much as they do today, worshiped fervently, had fun holidays that Frederick Douglas recognized kept slave discontent down, were never incarcerated, displayed Christian virtues and had many children. Slaves consumed 88% of their own economic production. Slave children were more likely to grow up in a two-parent family than modern American kids.

We can derive some solutions to modern problems from the study of antebellum times if we take the racism and injustice out of our New Age slavery. Obviously, reforms will proceed on a non-discriminatory basis. In a nutshell, we need (1) repeal of three federal statutes inhibiting prison labor and industries, together with (2) an exemption for prison industries from most employment-related laws, to allow laissez-faire negotiation between private employers and prisoners (not convict leasing); and to significantly reduce the number of people in prison: (3) an old-fashioned home monitoring device, a metallic collar, with or without modern electronic enhancements, and (4) corporal punishment (strongly recommended in the Bible and by a dozen ex-slaves I quote, together with George Washington as a general, not as a slaveholder, Thomas Jefferson as a legislator, not as a slaveholder, Cesare Beccaria, etc.). These reforms will allow prison labor to work in a safer, spiritual, more positive environment, in businesses run by religious groups, industry or anyone willing to invest in prison labor and industries.

Corporal punishment has worked everywhere they’ve ever tried it and was a feature of every slave society and most free societies in history. Liberty is preserved with corporal punishment and metallic collars (or modern monitoring devices). After punishment, offenders are not removed from their families, marriages, jobs, schools, churches and communities. Except to incapacitate criminals while in prison, long years of incarceration have failed everywhere to punish, deter or rehabilitate criminals. The supply-side attack method of fighting the war on drugs has failed completely; it is time to attack the demand side with corporal punishment, just as they successfully do in some nations we now regard as backward.

Hard work is nearly the opposite of crime. We need to provide useful work for American prisoners, teaching them how to discipline themselves and prepare for their release, keeping them out of trouble, and breaking the power of prison & street gangs. This can only be accomplished if prison industries are self-supporting and free of most government economic regulation. The public will not pay for other types of rehabilitation and tends to believe “nothing works.” The current economic crisis can be overcome better if we put our human resources to work.

Change is coming. California faces a massive crisis in their prison system, as federal judges, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, order the release of from 30,000 to 46,000 prisoners California cannot afford to support with medical services. In other states, correctional budgets have increased steadily for years in relation to educational funding. Societies eventually do what makes economic sense with their prisoners. American prisons and penal policies clearly and without question need and will have fundamental reform.