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“Hard Time” for Black America

 The old cliché, “If you do the crime, you must do the time,” is a popular adage that falls into an anonymous category, but there’s no guessing when it comes to the author that offered and profound rebuttal for that insidious adage, insofar as John Donne, in essence, dispelled that thoughtless dictum, with the insightful axiom, “No man is an Island…” that can be lifted from the XVII act of his Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. Nevertheless, Black America has unwittingly allowed itself to become virtually locked down and locked out of mainstream America.
For sure, when it comes to crime and punishment, most disenfranchised made in America Africans can recite the topic chapter and verse, insofar as exhaustive studies have been done-- by such groups as International Debate Education Association (IDEA), that reports: “An accumulation of neglected historical evidence suggests that distrust and fear are probably the most important reasons why growing numbers of Black females do not marry, and also why their children flee to the street. Without acknowledging this crucial dimension of the child-care problem, both the liberals blaming male joblessness and the conservatives damning the welfare system miss the point. A value system that evolved in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, born of a legacy of grave injustice, now accounts for the social and sexual chaos that reigns in America's inner cities.

“It also foreshadows what could be the most serious social crisis of the next century. Of the 2 million Americans in jail, 90 percent are high school dropouts, 92 are functionally illiterate, with a 76 percent recidivist rate. The financial costs of maintaining such a system are staggering. Operating prisons this year will cost about $40 billion. Our states now spend more on prisons than on universities. We are increasingly becoming a nation of first-class jails and second-class schools. The United States is spending an average of $5,500 per year to educate a youth, and almost $20,000 to lock up a youth.” Nevertheless, incarcerating young, Black males is just the tip of an enormous iceberg that seldom, if ever, is mentioned when discussing the overall “get tough on crime” and/or “zero tolerance policing” equation that’s exacerbated by racial profiling.
“In hindsight, I realized I once bought into most of the propaganda that young, Black males are there own worse enemy and is doing it to themselves, especially after my father was robbed and killed by hoodlums, but it’s a whole lot more to Black on Black violent crime-- in minority neighborhoods-- than meets the eye,” says Marcus Davis, a Houston entrepreneur who found himself in a position to speak as an victim of violent crime, as well as the kind of zero tolerance policing that translates to “racial profiling.” Around 10 a. m. on July 25, 2003 Marcus’ beloved, 60-year-old father, Jerry Raymond Davis, was found dead in his home, in the 1100 block of Wicklowe, when his brother went to check on their father, who had failed to show up for choir practice the following night before.

The elder Davis was a long time assistant principal and music teacher in North Forest ISD, therefore it wouldn’t have taken much for his outraged neighbors to become a lynch mob, with Marcus—who inherited his culinary skills from his father-- would definitely have been leading. “When something happens like that, we tend to develop an us (good people) against them (criminals) mentality and, unfortunately our society plays on that unhappy circumstance to keep us divided,” explained Marcus, who operates the popular Breakfast Klub, in Houston’s fashionable Midtown, that was called, an “African American community center and power hangout; part short-order breakfast temple; part postgraduate-style coffeehouse,” in the Houston Chronicle’s Alison Cook’s March 18, 2004 Dining Guide.

“But, it was almost providential for me to be forced to see the double-standard criminal justice system from an entirely unexpected perspective,” Marcus said, after being falsely arrested and treated like a common criminal, before being released without a hint of an apology. “I realize now, that when you arrest a young, Black person erroneously, every effort must be made to make sure he or she is guilty of a crime. Marcus, who realized his money and status in the community put him in a different class than many of our unemployed, hopeless young people who are routinely rounded up and jailed on a daily basis, although they’ve committed no other crime than being born Black. As God would have it, Marcus now sees each young person as being part of a family that, indeed, is indirectly arrested, when he or she is arrested.” Marcus’s attorney, Reginald McKamie, agreed: “You can’t imagine how it feels to be dehumanized the way you are when you’re arrested. Even for a traffic violation. It does something inside. It’s very damaging to the human spirit. We must realize that when our kids do ‘hard time’ their families do it right along with them. Especially if the family is already struggling to make ends meet. The younger children, parents, and even extended family members ultimately suffer when our young people are snatched out of our neighborhoods and unjustly given “hard time,” simply because he or she was (as Attorney Ron ’Dark horse’ Mock says), ‘Proven guilty of being broke.” So what? Haven’t made in America Africans been intellectualizing that lament forever?

Especially those of us who’re on the outside, looking into the jails and prisons where over 2 million of our people are (not only doing hard time, but inflicting hard times upon their families), as we speak. We even joke that there’s Justice and, then there’s Just-us.” But that joke, has not only gotten old to Davis and McKamie, who intend to do something more than just talk about it, because injustice to them is no joking matter. As a result McKamie recently released the following communiqué: “I am Reginald McKamie, the Democratic Candidate for Harris County District Attorney. I just want to let you know why it is important to vote McKamie on November 2, 2004.” Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space left to allow McKamie to tell you all of the reasons that you should.

Nevertheless, please believe he has a whole lot to tell you (after concluding that most of the injustices and downright violation of minority citizen’s Constitutional Rights-- that has historically denied African Americans due process—starts with the succession of merciless, double-standard, ruthless and even, sometimes racist, District Attorneys that have been elected in Harris County), about why you should join the revolution against a corrupt and oppressive criminal justice system, by supporting him. This is much, much bigger than Reginald McKamie running for D.A. And if you want to make it even bigger, please call (713) 263-9253, or visit his Web Page www.McKammie.com.