Pubdate: Wed, 18 Jun 2003
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2003 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Jim Shields
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/tulia.htm (Tulia, Texas)

DEBACLE OF TULIA DEFENDANTS AN ONGOING OUTRAGE

More black men are in jail in this country than are in college. More than 
one-third of black men between the ages of 18 and 35 are involved in the 
criminal justice system.

The gross miscarriage of justice in Tulia is a small example of how this 
evil can occur. In that case, a rogue cop/informant helped put 46 residents 
of Tulia (39 of whom were black -- 16 percent of the town's black 
population) in jail following a drug sting in the summer of 1999. Even 
though a state district judge said that the one and only informant was 
guilty of blatant perjury, 13 people remained in jail until Monday because 
the system is stacked against them. Twelve of the 13 people were released 
on Monday (the 13th defendant was technically freed on bail, but remains in 
custody on a drug charge), but their convictions have yet to be overturned.

Compare this outrage with the treatment the Enron thugs are receiving. In 
Tulia, innocent people were convicted, yet remained in jail for years. The 
criminals at Enron shattered the financial lives of thousands of people, 
yet they keep most of their stolen money and the system is so stacked in 
their favor that it will be years before any of them goes to prison.

Imagine how much jail time would have been served by the black people of 
Tulia if they had been fortunate enough to have been defended by the 
lawyers who defend the Enron crowd. Now imagine how many Enron thieves 
would be making license plates if they had the lawyers the state appointed 
to represent the Tulia defendants.

It is to our great shame that what happened in Tulia happens every day 
somewhere in our country.

How can this be? Why is there little or no outrage over such obscene 
statistics? What is wrong with us as a people?

Would we accept a school system that flunked more people than it graduated? 
Would we go to a hospital where more people died than were cured?

I have only questions. I can think of no logical or rational reason why 
more black men are in prison than are in college. I am deeply troubled that 
I live in a society where such an insult to a group of people can occur and 
hardly anyone raises a voice of concern.

The only possible explanation is that we have institutionalized racism 
beyond the wildest dreams of any white supremacist, and that is not logical 
and rational. It is twisted and evil. How did this happen?

Don't we know what we are doing to ourselves? Can we not see the terrible 
devastation we are inflicting on society, families and individuals?

Who is to blame for this horrendous state of affairs? Can we trace it back 
to when Ann Richards and George W. Bush were running for governor of Texas 
in 1994 and both bragged that they would build prisons faster than the 
other one? Can we blame federal lawmakers, who criminalized crack cocaine, 
preferred by blacks, to a greater extent than they criminalized straight 
cocaine preferred by whites?

In his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain captured the depravity of 
Southern slave-holding values when he described Huck's inner turmoil over 
whether to turn in runaway slave Jim or help him escape. Huck's conscience 
was derived from the society in which he lived, and his conscience told him 
he would be a low-down scalawag if he didn't turn Jim over to the 
authorities. Slavery was evil, but society said it was good. Mark Twain 
resolved this conflict when Huck saw a higher authority than society and 
said that even though he would go to hell, that would be better than 
turning in his friend. Twain's genius was in pointing out the obvious 
through the eyes of a boy.

The bumper sticker morality of today provides cover for the evil of putting 
more black men in prison than in college. "If you do the crime you're gonna 
do the time." This evil of institutionalized racism has society so 
bamboozled that we accept it as good old law and order. Like the society 
that defined Huck's conscience, today's society allows us to brutalize an 
entire segment of our population with not even a whimper of protest.

I realize that making an analogy with slavery might be considered by some 
to be an overstatement of the issue. In my mind, however, the numbers 
justify the comparison. More black men are in prison than in college and a 
third of young black men are involved in the criminal justice system. 
Substitute "white" for "black" in the previous sentence and imagine the outcry.

There is something terribly wrong with our system of justice. People of 
good will have to change it just as the media, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund 
and the American Civil Liberties Union righted the wrong in Tulia.

Shields is a Houston-based writer.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom