TA-NEHISI COATES: The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration

[kpete]

The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration
Politicians are suddenly eager to disown failed policies on American prisons, but they have failed to reckon with the history. Reconsidering Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on “The Negro Family,” 50 years later.



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The United States now accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s inhabitants—and about 25 percent of its incarcerated inhabitants.
TA-NEHISI COATES OCTOBER 2015 ISSUE

snippet:

From the mid-1970s to the mid-’80s, America’s incarceration rate doubled, from about 150 people per 100,000 to about 300 per 100,000. From the mid-’80s to the mid-’90s, it doubled again. By 2007, it had reached a historic high of 767 people per 100,000, before registering a modest decline to 707 people per 100,000 in 2012. In absolute terms, America’s prison and jail population from 1970 until today has increased sevenfold, from some 300,000 people to 2.2 million. The United States now accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s inhabitants—and about 25 percent of its incarcerated inhabitants. In 2000, one in 10 black males between the ages of 20 and 40 was incarcerated—10 times the rate of their white peers. In 2010, a third of all black male high-school dropouts between the ages of 20 and 39 were imprisoned, compared with only 13 percent of their white peers.

NEW COATES OPUS:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/

[Skittles]

1. meanwhile

the people who started senseless wars and crashed the economy have never been held accountable

seriously fucked up

[riderinthestorm]

2. Ta-nehesi Coates' NPR interview this afternoon was brilliant

This guy really has his finger on the issues that matter.

BIG K&R!!

[davekriss]

3. Between the World and Me

Listened to most of an audio version of this on a recent road trip. Incredible, very enlightening. I highly recommend!

[AngryAmish]

4. Anyone ever read "The Better Angels of Our Nature" by Steve Pinker?

The upshot is from neolithic to current mankind, we have become less violent. There is believed to be a nonviolent genetic and social pressure in settled and civilized places, and the longer folks are under such selection pressure, the more docile folks gets.