“Now, an awful truth emerges, out of the
sweet mouths of the youth: “We Can’t
Breathe!” they shout. Why not? Because,
in the richest country on earth, poverty
pitches pennies on the street corner,
hoping, against hope, to hit. Because a
simple education is beyond the ability of
the neo-liberal state to provide. Because
today’s school is tomorrow’s prison, and
a place where hatred and humiliation
lives, not knowledge; under the ridiculous
rubric of No Child Left Behind.
Because, for too many children, childhood is but an illusion, as it was
for Tamir Rice, a 12-year old boy, doing what boys have been doing for
over a century: playing with a toy gun, becomes a death sentence.
Because every hand and every face is turned against them, as futures
are as bleak as lunar landscapes. “We Can’t Breathe!” they howl. But
we can’t hear them. The neo-liberal state is too busy, choking them to
death.”
– Mumia Abu Jamal, Black political prisoner held in U.S. prison since
1982, Prison Radio Broadcast, December, 2014
That racism exists in the U.S. Against black and Latinos, and in Canada
against Indigenous people, should not be a shock to anyone. The names
of Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, just some
of the many victims of racist police brutality, have now been repeated
hundreds of times over in major media. Images of Charlotte, South
Carolina where a racist murdered nine black people in cold blood inside
of a historic black church, have appeared on the TV screen of nearly
every household. Even with all of this, the violence and brutality that
has been shown is only a fraction of that which exists in the United
States, where someone is killed by police every eight hours, the majority
of which are black or brown people.
This violence and brutality are symptoms of the disease of racism, and
the disease of racism cannot be discussed without also discussing another
disease which gives it horrible strength – poverty. Racism and poverty
constitute two diseases that are growing and coming to the surface in the United States
in the face
of decaying
capitalism.
Capitalist
Crisis &
Growing
poverty in the
U.S.
One way that
poverty in the
U.S. can be
examined is
by looking at the effects of the financial crisis that came to a head in
2008, known now as the “Great Recession.” By the time the recession,
which ran officially from 2007-2009, was over 1.2 million people in the
United States had lost their homes and 8.7 million jobs had been lost.
Nearly seven years later the U.S. economy is no longer considered to
be in a recession – at least technically - but its damaging effects on the
working and poor population have not been erased. According to an
article from CNBC by Daniel Alpert a managing partner at Westwood
Capital, “Median household real incomes have not recovered and jobs
created have been at lower wages than previously existing jobs. The pace
of job growth has slowed significantly this year, with the percentage of
the employable population actually working near a 35 year low.”
Looking beyond what can be considered the effects of the Great
Recession, there are other significant markers of an economy that does
not serve poor and working people. The wealth gap in the U.S. has been
increasing significantly since as far back as 1978. According to the U.S.
Census Bureau, the average top CEOs now make over 300 times what
typical workers earn. Real wages have stagnated, with the Pew Research
Center reporting that, after adjusting for inflation, the average wage
today buys you no more than it did in 1979, and less than it did in 1973.
To match the average hourly wage in 1973, a person would have to be
making $22.41/hour.
Simply put, according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2014 more than 45
million people, or 14.5% of the U.S. population live below the poverty
line (an income of less than $24, 817 for a family of four with two
children under 18).
Poverty in Black and Latino Communities
When the U.S. poverty rate is broken down into poverty in Black
and Latino communities, the situation becomes even direr and the
relationship between poverty and racism clearer.
“We don’t have ‘equal rights, we have the rhetoric of equal rights used
by the elites and the state to camouflage the real situation of Black
Americans —
one of dire,
unremitting
hell. Equal
rights would
not produce
the glaringly
unequal
outcomes that
lead to mass
incarceration,
poverty and
death.”
- Mumia
Abu Jamal,
March 2015,
interview for Sputnik News
As compared to
the general poverty
rate of 14.5%, the
black poverty rate is
27.2% and the Latino
poverty rate 23.5%.
The poverty rate of
households headed by
black women is even
more staggering, at
42.5%. (all statistics
from 2014, U.S.
Census Bureau)
This poverty
divide based on
race was increased
with the Great
Recession, which
disproportionately
targeted Black and
Latino communities.
For example, in 2009,
the Pew Research
Center found that
the average wealth
of a white household
was 20 times higher
than a black household. The foreclosure crisis also hit black families
the hardest, for one, because their wealth was more concentrated in
their homes (and less in the stock market or retirement plans), and
secondly because the sub-prime mortgages and high-interest loans
were specifically targeted towards the Black community.
How poverty affects every aspect of life
The destruction of poverty on human life and development runs
through all indicators for quality of life in the U.S. With the increased
rate of poverty in the Black and Latino community, there is a
subsequent consequence on health, education and employment. Both
racism in society and institutional racism promoted by the state and
U.S. government feed off of this lowered quality of life, keeping Black
and Latino people in a cycle of poverty and maintaining the pool of
cheap and desperate labour that the capitalist system needs to exist.
A few statistics can give us an overview of the situation for Black
people in the U.S.:
-
Life expectancy - The life expectancy of black men is 71
years, compared to 76 years for white men. (2009)
-
Infant mortality – For black mothers, the infant mortality
rate is 12.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, for white mothers this
rate is 5.3/1,000 live births. (2009, Urban Institute)
-
Education - Across the U.S. the high school graduation rate
for black people is 69%, for Latinos, 73% and for white people, 86%.
(2011-2012, National Center for Education Statistics)
-
Unemployment:
As of February, 2015, the
official employment rate for
black people was 10.4%, for
Latinos, 6.6% and for white
people 4.0% (Bureau of Labor
Statistics)
-
A black college
graduate has the same chances
of getting a job as a white
person who dropped out of high school or has a prison record. (2014,
Young Invincibles)
Symptoms of Racism and Poverty: Prisons
& Police Brutality
The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration
of any country in the world. Although the
U.S. has only 5% of the world population,
they have 25% of the world’s prisoners, with
2.3 million people behind bars. Nearly one-
half of people locked up, 1 million people, are
black, meaning that black people are put in
prison at a rate 6 times that of white people.
Combined, black people and Latinos made
up 58% of the prison population in 2008,
although they only represent about 25% of
the U.S. population. These are staggering
numbers considering the lasting effects that
imprisonment has in communities, from the
break-up of family structures and support
systems, to the difficulty of getting jobs after
release, to problems of drug addiction and
crime that are propagated through the U.S.
prison system.
Recent reports have shown how deep the
racism in the U.S. “justice” system goes, with
black people receiving longer prison sentences
then white people, with similar criminal
histories, that committed the same crimes.
Not to mention, the countless examples
of black people imprisoned in the U.S. by
all-white juries and openly racist judges.
Within this, there are also countless tragic
cases of people who have their lives taken
away from them because of the brutal and
inhuman prison system. Kalief Browder, who
committed suicide in June of 2015 was one
of these people. He was sent to Rikers Island
in New York when he was 16 years old. He
never received a trail throughout three years
of imprisonment, including almost two years
of solitary confinement.
The brutality, killing and targeting of black
people and Latinos is an everyday occurrence.
So common, in fact, that the phrase “Driving
while black” which has existed for many years
and used to describe the targeting of Black
drivers by police officers, has expanded to
“Walking while black.” Take for example,
New York City’s “Stop and Frisk” policy which
allows NYC
police officers to
stop anyone they
deem suspicious.
The New York
Civil Liberties
Union reported
that, in 2014,
police stopped
people 46,235
times under this
policy. 38,051 of
these people were
totally innocent.
Of all of the
people stopped,
55% were black,
29% were Latino
and 12% were white.
Racism and Poverty are Rooted in History
Since the police murder of 18 year-old
Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in
August of 2014, there has been an increase
in the number of police killings in the U.S.
that are making international media. This has
been due in part to the struggle of the Black
community and their allies who have not been
able to take the blatant racism and murder
by police officers silently anymore, pushing
their call for justice to the forefront of public
discussion.
This has sparked an important discussion
about racism in the U.S., a discussion that
must take into account the legacy of slavery
and the long history of the suppression of
black and brown people in the U.S. if it is
going to work towards the elimination of
racism in the U.S. For many, images of the
police brutality against black and brown youth
at a swimming pool party in Texas invoked
other images of racism. Nearly 51 years earlier,
on June 18, 1964 the owner of a white-only
hotel in St. Augustine, Florida poured acid
into a swimming pool where Black people and
their allies had organized a swimming protest
against segregation. This is only one example
of the many that could be used to show the
ways that racism and poverty in the Black
community has persisted in the years since the
Civil Rights movement, and has continued in
the time of the U.S.’s first Black President.
But, it is also important to recognize that
gains for black people in U.S. society have
been won and understand the character of
those gains. Since the end of slavery in the
U.S. in 1865, and because of the struggle of
black people and the support of others who
marched alongside them, the lives of black
people in the U.S. have improved in many
ways, especially in certain sectors of society.
But, the one thing that persists is the level
of poverty, brutality, violence and racism
experienced by overwhelmingly majority of
black people.
During the time of slavery in the U.S., racism
was used to justify the use of slaves, which
represented the cheapest form of labor in the
U.S. economy. For the ruling elite of the U.S.
during slavery, it was only possible to keep a
population enslaved if it was considered to
be different and lesser, in fact, more animal
then human, by the majority of the white
population. Today it is no different, racism is
the means by which the majority of an entire
population, the Black population, is once
again impoverished and enslaved.
For the capitalist class in the U.S., racism is
merely a method they can employ to keep a
pool of cheap labour that is poor, terrorized
and divided. Without racism and the poverty
that it both feeds off of and perpetuates, the
capitalist system bent on ever increasing
profits would not work.
In one of his final speeches before he was
assassinated, Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. said something that is as
relevant today as it was nearly 50 years ago
“There are forty million poor people here, and
one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are
there forty million poor people in America?’
And when you begin to ask that question,
you are raising a question about the economic
system, about a broader distribution of wealth.
When you ask that question, you begin to
question the capitalistic economy. And I’m
simply saying that more and more, we’ve got
to begin to ask questions about the whole
society...And you see, my friends, when you
deal with this you begin to ask the question,
‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the
question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin
to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have
to pay water bills in a world that’s two-thirds
water?’ These are words that must be said.”
Whether in the U.S. or Canada, it is time that
we ask ourselves that same question, and work
to eradicate the diseases of racism and poverty
once and for all.
For more about Mumia
www.freemumia.com
Back to Article Listing
