Debacle of Tulia defendants an ongoing outrage
By JIM SHIELDS
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 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. He can be e-mailed at jimshields64@gmail.comt.
