A Great Awakening
(The New Jim Crow)
A sermon preached by the Rev. Lee Bluemel
At The North Parish of North Andover, MA, Unitarian Universalist
January 18, 2015
“To be honest is to confront the truth. However unpleasant and inconvenient the truth
may be, I believe we must expose and face it.”—Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Even when you know what is going to happen,
even when you’re watching a movie and not the nightly news,
it is hard to watch police take billy clubs and whips to unarmed people.
In the movie Selma, we see actual footage from 1965
as well as theatric re-enactment of what it was like for people to be clubbed, whipped by
police riding them down on horseback on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
The violence is why they were there of coursethe civil rights leaders of 50 years ago.
Going to Selma was a strategic choice, because the violence was predictable,
because they could bet on it, because the sheriff was a racist loose cannon.
They were trying to wake up the rest of the country
to the plight of blacks in Alabama, to just how bad it was.
So the leaders drew straws to decide who would lead the march,
and walked head on into the violence, not knowing if they would survive.
Well, here we are approaching the 50th anniversary of Selma.
Thank God, thank the Goddess, thank goodness that we’re not back there…
that we’ve left behind that tragic chapter in our history
with its entrenched system of racial segregation, legal discrimination
and voter suppression based on race.
It is so clear how such a system tried to squash the dignity
and the lives of black people;
so clear how thoroughly racism and hate twisted and broke
the dignity and wholeness of white people;
so clear how much the violence cost individuals, families, communities.
It is so clear to us today how such a system crippled our country,
squandered its human resources, killed off some of its best leaders,
terrorized and dehumanized a huge portion of its population.
It is so clear how fear and hate and racism assaulted the holy,
the spark of the divine, the creative love that can move within and among persons.
It is so clear how wrong yet tenacious was the treatment of black Americans
as is they were lesser human beings, as dispensable, as criminals.
Thank God and thank goodness that it’s history—
that we’ve utterly left behind that tragic chapter
of racialized legal discrimination and disenfranchisement.
Right? I mean, haven’t we left it behind… yet?
Well, it turns out that people have different opinions on this question.
Clearly, the people engaging in protests, voicing outrage and rioting
since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,
believe that police brutality is still aimed disproportionately at black Americans.
Some have started a movement called Black Lives Matter.
And some would say that police brutality is just one small piece
of an overall criminal justice system that consistently targets people of color, especially
black American men.
But not all Americans- and perhaps not everyone here- agrees with them.
Before and after the shooting of Michael Brown, the Public Religion Research
Institute was conducting a survey, the American Values Survey.
And what this survey showed was that there is a large gap in the opinions of non-white and
“white” Americans—
a gap that actually got wider in the days following Michael Brown’s death.
At that time, last August, only 16% of non-whites but 48% of whites
felt that the criminal-justice system DOES treat black and other minorities fairly.
In other words, the vast majority of people of color in our nation- 84%believe that something is terribly wrong,
but only the slightest majority of white Americans- 52%- agree with them.
The rest of us white Americans are thinking, at best,
what the heck is wrong with these people, and what’s all the fuss about?
So let’s take a look this morning at what is really going on in our country,
in the year 2015.
To do so, I invite us to turn to a book called The New Jim Crow, written by Michelle
Alexander, a lawyer and professor at Ohio State University.
This book was chosen as a “common read” for Unitarian Universalists
across the nation in 2013, but I’ve just come around to reading it this past week- two years
late. What an eye-opener it is.
It turns out that our country has the highest rate of incarceration
in the whole world.
The United States- the home of the free and the land of the brave!
Let me say that again-- no other country imprisons as many of its own people,
not even South Africa at the height of Apartheid.
Forty-five years ago, five years after Selma, this was not the case.
In 1970, our prisons held a total of about 300,000 people.
That’s a lot of people- about half of the population of the city of Boston.
But it’s nothing compared to today.
Over the last forty-five years, that prison population has more than quintupled,
to over 2 million peoplethe equivalent of three times the entire population of the city of Boston.
Our prison population is unmatched around the world!
So what’s wrong with our country, compared to- say,
South Africa during Apartheid?
Why have crime rates have skyrocketed so high?
The truth is that they haven’t skyrocketed, they’ve fluctuated.
The growth of prisons has not been driven by crime and crime rates.
Michelle Alexander argues convincingly that the growth of prisons
has clearly been driven by a single war- the War on Drugs.
The War on Drugs was begun under the Reagan administration in 1985,
but has been pursued by Democrats and Republicans alike since then.
Two-thirds of the increase in the federal prison population
and half of the increase in the state prison population are due to drug convictions.
There are more people in jail today for drug offenses
than were incarcerated for all reasons 35 years ago, in 1980.
The War on Drugs has been great for the prison business.
And no wonder.
The fact is, a lot of Americans use drugs illegally.
Human beings like to feel ecstasy, they like to reduce pain, they like to relax.
Drugs seem to be an easy way to these feelings.
Most of us violate drug laws at some point in our lives- I know I did.
(I’ll take confessions after the service!)
A lot of Americans try recreational drugs.
And of course, many drugs are addicting.
How many of you know someone affected by drug use or drug addiction?
More and more stories come painfully to light as heroin does its damage;
even at places like Andover High School and this community.
Studies show that using and selling drugs is an equal- opportunity activity.
Equal numbers of white and non-white Americans are drug usersin fact, some studies show that whites are more likely than blacks to use.
Drugs can be found everywhere- in the streets of Lawrence,
the halls of elite private and public high schools,
college campuses and frat houses, and suburban homes.
Drug use and addiction is a huge public health crisis in our valley
and our country.
But in our current criminal justice system and the War on Drugs,
drug use- big or small-- is treated like an issue of violent crime.
And the money has followed this basic assumption.
Federal funding for the War on Drugs- for the FBI and Department of Defensewent from 33 million to over a billion during this War.
At the same time, drug abuse and rehabilitation program funding
was slashed by 500%.
Sadly, if predictably, the War on Drugs hasn’t workedto reduce drug use OR violent crime.
It has been shown that violent crime does not correlate with drugs or race,
but with joblessness.
The War on Drugs has helped to create joblessness by creating millions of felons
who find it hard to get work.
It has filled up our prisons with people of color.
You see, this War on Drugs is a lopsided, racialized war.
Because even though drug use and selling is an equal-opportunity activity,
those who are arrested are overwhelmingly people of color.
In some states 80 to 90% of those sent to prison for drugs are African Americans.
One reason for this is that there is no risk of political backlash
for drug bust tactics and militarized law enforcement in impoverished urban areas.
In these urban areas, racial profiling is common practice
and police can stop, interrogate and search anyone they want.
They are rewarded in cash- through federal grant programsfor rounding up as many people as possible.
Once arrested, defendants are often pressured to plead guilty
whether they are or not.
The fear of being found guilty- risking a jury and possibly a mandatory
five to fifteen years in prison- mean that many cases- 90%- go to plea bargain,
even when the defendant is not guilty.
Those who are found guilty face harsh sentencing lawsmandatory sentences so harsh that federal judges have resigned
rather than participate in the system.
Drug offenders in our country spend more time in jail, prison, on probation or parole than
anywhere else in the world.
Sentencing also differs greatly depending on the drug in question.
Let’s look at alcohol. Drunk drivers- who kill people on a regular basistypically get one to two days jail time and a misdemeanor on their record
for their first offense.
But when it comes to drugs like cocaine- or certain forms of cocainethe risks get a lot higher.
For years there was something called the 1 to 100 rulenow the 1 to 18 rule, thanks to President Obama.
The 1 to 100 rule said that if a person is found with 5 grams of cracka cheaper form of cocaine more often found in inner citiesyou’ll get a mandatory five years in prison for your first offense.
But if you are found with powder cocainea more expensive, white middle class and upper class drugit would take 100 times that to get the same sentence.
In other words, you’d have to have 500 grams- or a pound- of cocaine
to end up with that 5 year sentence.
So the kind of drug makes a difference,
and who has the drug makes a difference.
As one example, Alexander notes that in one year, 2010, the NY Police Department made
50,300 marijuana arrests alone, mostly of young men of color.
One report noted these arrests were “training opportunities” for rookie police
and were used to get information on all these youth into the criminal database.
Once in the system, these young men are labeled “felons.”
Once they are released, as felons they can be legally discriminated against
for the rest of their lives.
Felons can be legally denied employment, housing, education and public benefits and are
not allowed to vote.
They are required to pay court costs and can have up to 100% of wages garnished.
They become what Alexander calls a growing undercastewith permanent status as second class citizens by law.
The horrifying stories in Alexander’s book- which I encourage you to readmake me think about the number of North Parish youth
who have gotten in trouble with the law for drug use over the years.
I can think of at least eight off the top of my head— all of them white.
If all those youth were arrested and given mandatory sentences,
I would have spent a lot of time visiting prisons,
and their lives would have been permanently changed.
But instead, thank goodness, they were given second chances,
put in diversion programs, assigned community service
and ended up setting up for the People’s Pantry.
The lives of many young people of color have been ruined
for offenses no greater than theirs.
Criminal justice in our nation is not color-blind.
Alexander notes that 1/3 of all African American males
are caught up in criminal justice system. Think about that.
This congregation has about 330 individual membersif we were magically transformed into a congregation of solely African-American men- 110
of us would be caught up in the system.
Can you imagine how that impacts a community?
Thanks to the racially biased War on Drugs,
in large urban areas, half of working age African-American men have criminal records.
In some urban centers, that number goes up to 80%.
As Alexander points out,
there are more African American adults in prison, on probation or parole
than were enslaved 165 years ago, in 1850, a decade before the Civil War.
As of 2004, more black men were denied the right to vote
than 134 years ago, in 1870, the year the 15th amendment was ratified.
Let me say that again, more simply:
there are more African Americans in the correctional system
and denied the right to vote today than there were in the mid-1800s.
If Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would hardly call this progress.
So what is to be done about this state of affairs?
The Corrections Corporation of America has one idea.
In 2011 this business sent letters to 48 states,
offering to privatize public prisons and save the states lots of money.
There was only one hitch: the state would have to sign a 20 year contract
and guarantee 90% occupancy rates or higher.
That’s one option: to keep the status quo, and keep filling up the prisons.
Another option would be to go in the reverse direction
and start emptying the prisons. This won’t be easybut neither was taking on voter suppression in the 1960’s.
As Alexander points out, to return to incarceration rates of the 1970’s,
four out of five prisoners would need to be set free.
A million employees- many of them in rural areas with no other choice than prison workwould need to find new jobs.
Publicly traded prison companies would go bankrupt.
Alexander notes, the sheer scale of the system and how deeply
it is engrained in our nation’s social, political and economic structure,
means that nothing less than a great awakening—
a major social movement will change it.
Nothing less than a civil rights movement of people of all colors
grounded in a sense of moral urgency will be strong enough
to successfully demand the end of mass incarceration
and legal discrimination for those released from prison.
It’s beginning to happen.
Once you tune in to this issue, even by just joining a FaceBook grouplike Black Lives Matter or End Mass Incarcerationyou can see that there are people- and many Unitarian Universalistsorganizing to confront mass incarceration and police brutality all over the country.
Even white America is starting to wake up, and we can join them.
In the meantime, there are smaller steps that any of us can take.
We can read the book, watch Alexander’s TED talk,
join in local events this week at El Taller and Qniversity,
start conversations with book groups, colleagues, parents, friends.
We can tune in to the 50th anniversary events in Selma this March.
and read The Selma Awakening by UU minister the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed.
We can shift the conversation to some facts about the New Jim Crow
when the topic of the protestors who blocked Route 93 comes up.
We can begin the process of awakening ourselves—
examining our own assumptions, stereotypes and fears,
examining the facts, the record of injustice.
We can reflect on the questions: do I believe criminals have worth and dignity?
Do I believe they deserve voting rights after they’ve served their time?
Do I see young black and brown men, labeled “felons”,
but no more guilty of misbehavior than some of our own childrendo I see them as my brother?
In answering these questions, may we wake up our own sense of injustice and
moral courage, like the people in Selma did 50 years ago.
Let us meditate for a moment, and pray… in the words of the Rev. Bill Sinkford:
Spirit of Life and Love, dear God of all nations:
There is so much work to do.
We have only begun to imagine justice and mercy.
Help us hold fast to our vision of what can be.
May we see the hope in our history,
and find the courage and the voice to work for that constant rebirth of freedom and justice.
That is our dream, and we are the keepers of this dream. Amen.
Reading: from the 1966 Ware Lecture: Don't Sleep Through the Revolution, by Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. at the Unitarian Universalist Association General
Assembly in Hollywood, Florida; May 18, 1966
I'm sure that each of you has read that arresting little story from the pen of
Washington Irving entitled Rip Van Winkle .
One thing that we usually remember about the story of Rip Van Winkle is that he slept
twenty years.
But there is another point in that story which is almost always completely overlooked: it is
the sign on the inn of the little town on the Hudson from which Rip went up into the
mountains for his long sleep.
When he went up, the sign had a picture of King George III of England.
When he came down, the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the
United States.
When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington he was amazed, he
was completely lost. He knew not who he was.
This incident reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van
Winkle is not merely that he slept twenty years,
but that he slept through a revolution.
While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountains a revolution was taking place in the
world, that would alter the face of human history.
Yet Rip knew nothing about it; he was asleep.
One of the great misfortunes of history is that all too many individuals and
institutions find themselves in a great period of change and yet fail to achieve the new
attitudes and outlooks that the new situation demands.
There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.
And there can be no gainsaying of the fact that a social revolution is taking place in our
world today.
We see it in other nations in the demise of colonialism.
We see it in our own nation, in the struggle against racial segregation and discrimination,
and as we notice this struggle we are aware of the fact that a social revolution is taking
place in our midst.
Victor Hugo once said that there is nothing more powerful in all the world than an idea
whose time has come.
The idea whose time has come today is the idea of freedom and human dignity, and so
allover the world we see something of freedom explosion, and this reveals to us that we are
in the midst of revolutionary times.
An older order is passing away and a new order is coming into being.
The great question is, what do we do when we find ourselves in such a period?
Certainly the church has a great responsibility because when the church is true to its
nature, it stands as a moral guardian of the community and of society.
It has always been the role of the church to broaden horizons, to challenge the status quo,
and to question and break mores if necessary.
I'm sure that we all agree that the church has a major role to play in this period of social
change.