Interview: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Drug laws are officially colorblind, so it’s easy for folks to say the laws are race neutral. It can’t be the laws, we think. But during Jim Crow, some of the laws were race neutral on their face. Yet, literacy tests and poll taxes were enforced in a racially discriminatory manner. Similarly, drug laws are enforced in a racially discriminatory manner. The severity of the desperate treatment between white drug offenders and black drug offenders can’t be denied. The drug war was declared with Black folks in mind. White drug offenders are collateral damage as a result of the War on Drugs.

But sometimes and too often, some of us are our worst enemies – never able to read the posted signs here and there or able to recall them in the darkness of reality.

I spoke with Professor Alexander a week or so after Harvard Professor Henry L. Gates” article appeared in the New York Times, April 23, 2010, on the Op-ed page. I asked Alexander what she thought of Professor Gates” article titled, “Ending the Slavery Blame-Game,” in which Gates offers this bit of a newsflash: Africans did it! Africans sold Africans to Europeans and Euro-Americans

Finally, despite the delusional in high places, it seems George is still alive, still going on. Professor Alexander spoke about her recent visit to a prison in Washington State.