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University of Oregon Library
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PORTLAND OBSERNER
Volume XVII, Number 37
July 22, 1987
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WILPF's Vigils
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Honor Ben Linder
The Portland Branch of Women's International League
for Peace and Freedom resumes its weekly vigils honoring the
life of Benjamin Linder and opposing Contra aid beginning
Thursday, August 20, at twelve noon, Pioneer Courthouse
Square. Vigils will continue until Congress votes on Contra
aid, likely in October.
Benjamin Ernest Linder, the 27-year-old engineer from
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Portland, was killed April 28, 1987 while working to bring elec­
trical power to a small village in Nicaragua. He is the first
American worker to be killed by the Contras, who shot him at
point-blank range.
For more information about the vigils, call the WILPF of­
fice, 224-5190 with a message or 246-6324, asking for Mary
Bolton.
A t a celebration of the eighth anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revo­
lu tio n tha t removed the Somoza Regime, David Linder updates the
tw o -h u n d re d -fifty-p lu s people of the e ffo rts being made in reaching
a goal of $200,000 fo r the Ben Linder M em orial Fund. Linder's son.
Ben Linder, was murdered by U.S.-backed Contra in Nicaragua ear
tier this year. The fund has already raised $80,000 The celebration
was held Saturday at Lewis and Clark College.
Photo by Richard J. B row n
Chris Emery, Co-Chair o f Neighbors A gainst P ro stitu tio n , along
w ith others fro m P iedm ont N eighborhood let w o u ld be custom ers
o f p ro stitu te s kn o w they are not w anted in their neighborhood.
Emery and 80 o f her neighbors banded tog e the r to im prove the "liv­
a bility of the n eighborhood" and divided the task o f p icke tin g on
Union Ave. on unscheduled days.
Photo by Richard J. B row n
The Crime of
Black
Imprisonment
by Steven Whitman
Dostoevsky once wrote that if you want to know about a society, you
should look into its prisons. When we look into prisons in the United
States, we see the reflection of a profoundly unjust society.
Imprisonment rates are measured as the number of inmates per 100,000
people in the population. In 1925, when the United States began keeping
these statistics, the imprisonment rate was 79 (per 100,000). This rate
stayed more or less constant until 1972, when it started to rise dramatically.
By mid-1986, more than a half-million people were in state and federal pri­
sons. This number corresponds to an imprisonment rate of 219—about
twice as high as it had ever been before 1972.
But this overall imprisonment rate obscures an important difference. In
1983 (the last year for which racial data are available), the imprisonment
rate was 713 for black people compared to 114 for white people. This
means that a black person is six times more likely to go to prison than a
white person. In Illinois, he is 10 times more likely to go to prison.
It is also instructive to contrast international imprisonment rates. Using
the latest available comparative data (from 1980), we find that white people
in the U.S. go to prison at a rate similar to that for most Western Euro­
peans. Incredibly, though, blacks in the United States go to prison more
often than blacks in South Africa. In fact, the United States black impri­
sonment rate is the highest in the world.
This reality is devastating for blacks. A 1979 government survey revealed
that about one out of every five black men would go to prison in his life­
time. The imprisonment rates have spiraled since then, and the proportion
is now closer to one out of every four. The total number of black men in the
United States who have been in prison is about 3 million, roughly the popu­
lation of Chicago.
People who have studied the reasons for these spiraling imprisonment
rates have made startling observations. William Nagel, a well-known crimi­
nologist, analyzed many factors in each state to determine which were
related to rapidly increasing imprisonment rates. He found no relationship
between the crime rate (or violent crime rate) and the proportion of black
people in a state. However, Nagel discovered a very strong relationship
between the imprisonment rate and the proportion of black people. In
other words, people go to prison in increasing numbers because they are
black, not because of a rise in the crime rate. Two British criminologists,
Steven Box and Chris Hale, found similar results and concluded that people
are sent to prison during times of economic stability, not because of an
increase in crime but because they are perceived as a threat by those who
hold power in society.
It is no coincidence that the rise in black imprisonment accompanies the
rise of the Kian and the Nazis, attacks on black people in Howard Beach,
Queens; in Forsyth Couthy, Ga.; and in Marquette Park, Uptown and other
areas of Chicago. It is not surprising that these events coincide with the
term of a President who is endorsed by the Kian, who has undermined civil
rights advances and decimated social programs. It is no coincidence that
all of this occurs while the proportions of black doctors, lawyers and pro­
fessors remain tiny; while the black infant mortality rate, which already in
some communities is at levels associated with the Third World, remains
twice the white rate; while the black maternal mortality rate is three times
the white rate; and while black poverty intensifies.
logy generated not by reality but by hysteria. Imprisoning more black peo­
ple will not stop the decay of our social system. In fact, the opposite is
true. Until whites confront racism, and stop using blacks as the scapegoats
for our failing social system, the situation will only get worse. As Nagel
writes, "The causes of crime in this country are deeply rooted in its culture
and its economic social injustices. The massive use of incarceration has
not contributed and will not contribute significantly to the abatement of
crime or to the correction of flaws in the social fabric.”
If prisons are indeed a window to society, what does this look at the pri­
son system tell us? Most important, we are confronted with the undeniable
reality that this society, built on a foundation of slavery and racism, is stay­
ing its course. The system of white supremacy has not been diminished but
is in fact intensifying. Being human means refusing to accept such a sys­
tem and thus blacks can be counted on to continue to resist and try to pur
sue freedom.
This presents white people with a choice: We can join forces with those
in Howard Beach, Forsyth County and Marquette Park; or we can buiy our
heads in the sand, pretend that none of this is happening and announce
that we aren't prejudiced; or we fight for a just society. We have to make
this choice. But in making it, we must understand that the fight for equality
and freedom for black people is actually the fight for the humanity of all
people. The only real question is whether we will pursue a humane society
or a racist one.
Minority Teachers Decline, Minority Enrollment
The number of Black and other minority teachers is declining at the same
time the nation’s public schools are bracing for an unprecedented influx of
minority students students by the year 2000, the National Education
Association said today.
A new NEA study that profiles America's public school teachers notes
that the percentage of Black teachers has declined from 7.8 percent in 1981
to 6.9 percent in 1986.
The total number of black men in the United States who
have been in prison is about 3 million, roughly the popu­
By the end of the century, NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell notes,
minorities will likely make up more than 30 percent of all public school
students and only 5 percent of all tea ch e rs-if present trends continue.
"This trend toward fewer and fewer minority teachers threatens to deny
minority students the positive role models they need to succeed in school,
lation of Chicago.
explains Futrell.
None of this could happen without the implicit, and far too often compli­
cit, agreement of white people. We are caught up in a law and order ideo-
The new NEA study, "Status of the American Public School Teacher,
1985 86," notes that other minority teacher —Chicano-Hispano, Asian-
Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native-comprised only 3.4
percent of the teaching force in 1986
Increases
The NEA study also discloses that the percentage of minority teachers
has been declining since 1971 while the percentage of white teachers has
edged upward.
Cuts in federal financial aid are one key reason fewer minority men and
women are entering teaching. Aid cutbacks have reduced the number of
minority students going on to college and shrunk the pool of potential
minority teachers.
Since the mid '70s, minorities have accounted for smaller and smaller
proportions of the nation's total college enrollment, according to the U.S.
Department of Education.
In 1976, more than one in three Black high school graduates (33.5 per
cent) went on to college. By 1983, only 27 percent became collegians. The
percentage of Hispanic high school graduates enrolling in college dropped
from 35.8 percent to 31 percent over the same period.
Public schools, meanwhile, are educating higher proportions of minority
students. A 1986 study by the Educational Testing Service for the Carnegie
Task Force on Teaching noted that minority students made up the majority
of the enrollment in 23 of the nation's 25 largest districts in 1985