Opinion
The Rise of the “African American Police State”
One out of three African American males will be arrested and go through the American injustice system at some point in their lives, primarily for nonviolent drug charges, despite studies revealing that white youth use drugs at higher rates than their black counterparts.
For decades, the African American crime rate has been falling but black imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Aside from the War on Drugs, the rise in prison population may have another less publicized cause: gradual privatization of the prison industry, with its profits-over-justice motives. If the beds are not filled, states are required to pay the prison companies for the empty space, which means taxpayers are largely left to deal with the bill that might come from lower crime and imprisonment rates.
Private prisons were designed by the rich and for the rich. The for-profit prison system depends on imprisoning blacks for its survival. Much in the same way the United States was designed.
After all, more black men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850 before the Civil War began.
The history of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo has many parallels to what U.S. law enforcement in the black community has become.
The infamous “stop and frisk” policies that allow the New York Police Department (NYPD) to stop you based on suspicion are Nazi-like. Latinos and blacks make up 84 percent of all those stopped, although they make up respectively 29 and 23 percent of New York City’s population. Furthermore, statistics show that NYPD officers are far more likely to use physical force against blacks and latinos during these unconstitutional and unwarranted stops.
The Gestapo operated without any judicial review by state imposed law, putting them above the law.
The FBI’s counterintelligence programs (COINTELPRO) of the 1950’s, 60s, and 70s formed one of the most infamous domestic initiatives in U.S. history, targeting black organizations and individuals whom the FBI saw as threatening the racist, capitalist status quo.
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, government projects aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and brutalizing black communities.
After COINTELPRO director William C. Sullivan concluded in a 1963 memo that Martin Luther King, Jr. was “the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation,” he wrote: “it may be unrealistic to limit our actions against King to legalistic proofs that would stand up in court or before Congressional Committees.”
The FBI waged an intense war against Martin Luther King Jr. The African American police state’s law enforcement agents bugged his hotel rooms, tried to provoke IRS investigations against him, and harassed magazines that published articles about him. In 1999, a civil trial concluded that United States law enforcement agents were responsible for Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination.
The perpetuation of the African American police state is a modern day crime against humanity. The ongoing protests and uprisings in black communities are a direct and just response to centuries of worsening incarceration, modern day lynchings and systematic second class citizenship. Far from being a “post-racial” nation, American race relations are at a new low. Simmering discontent in black communities will continue to rise towards a dangerous boiling point unless and until the African American police state is exposed and completely dismantled.
Garikai Chengu is a Zimbabwean postgraduate scholar at the Harvard University’s W.E.B Du Bois institute for African and African American Studies. He is also the founder and president of Chairman of Chengu Gold Mining Pvt. Ltd. one of Zimbabwe’s fastest growing indigenous private gold companies. He is also currently involved in initiatives designed to directly benefit the citizens of his country – Zimbabwe.
A version of this article was originally published in the Global Research blog.
