June 19, 2019
Page 13
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Prison Census Counts Enhance White Power
The fight against
unjust prison
gerrymandering
o sCar h. b layton
Almost every high
school student in Amer-
ica knows about the
compromise reached
during the drafting of
the U.S. Constitution
resulting in enslaved
people being counted as three-
fifths of a person during the na-
tional census held every 10 years.
Even while white Southerners
denied enslaved people in those
states the rights guaranteed to
citizens, they still demanded that
the enslaved people’s bodies be
counted in the census. The South-
erners made this demand because
the size of a state’s population
determined how many representa-
tives those states would be granted
in Congress. The more representa-
tives a state had, the greater the
state’s power in the federal gov-
ernment.
The Northern states, seeing
this ploy for what it was, resisted
Southerners’ demand but, eventu-
ally, a compromise was reached
where each enslaved body would
be counted only as three-fifths of
a person.
This is just another example of
how white supremacists benefited
from the use of black bodies while
by
not providing one drop of benefit
to the souls inhabiting those bod-
ies. It also helps us to understand
how black bodies currently are be-
ing used to enhance white suprem-
acy in America.
Today,
significant
numbers of prisons –
where brown and black
inmates from urban
areas are incarcerated
– are located in rural,
predominantly
white
census tracts. And for
years, these brown and black bod-
ies have been used to inflate the
census figures in order to enhance
the political power of those rural
white areas.
The practice of counting pris-
oners in the census tracts where
they are incarcerated decreases
the political power of the home
communities of those prisoners
and transfers that power to an
alien community with diametri-
cally opposed interests. This is
what happens when an individual
is removed from his urban home
in a liberal Democratic district
and incarcerated in a district that
voted for a white supremacist
like Donald Trump. The body of
that inmate, who by incarceration
is ineligible to vote, has now in-
creased the population count in
the conservative district while the
count of his liberal home district
has been reduced.
The body of the inmate of col-
or, like the body of his or her en-
slaved ancestor, has been stolen
in order to enhance the political
power of his or her oppressor.
There are approximately 2.3
million Americans in prisons and
jails today. It also has been report-
ed that between 1970 and 2000,
more than 1,100 prisons were built
in the United States, with roughly
70 percent of those prisons be-
ing located in rural communities,
mostly in conservative Southern
states such as Florida, Georgia,
Oklahoma and Texas.
Data collected by the Vera Insti-
tute of Justice shows that largely
rural counties that voted for Don-
ald Trump had a 53 percent higher
jail admissions rate than those that
voted for Hillary Clinton in the
2016 presidential election.
The national NAACP has re-
ported that while African Amer-
icans and Hispanics make up
approximately 32 percent of the
U.S. population, they made up 56
percent of all incarcerated people
in 2015.
A slide rule is not necessary
to figure out that when you have
large numbers of people victim-
ized by the mass incarceration
policies of this country, and a sig-
nificant number of those inmates
are used to further empower white
supremacists in rural areas, there
is little incentive for conservative
politicians to correct this injustice
that has been dubbed “prison ger-
rymandering.”
In addition to stealing bodies
to gain political power, these ru-
ral areas receive increased feder-
al funding based on their inflated
population figures. This takes
money from inner cities where
many of the inmates had lived
and redeposits those funds into
the rural, predominantly white ar-
eas where the prisons are located.
This is a win-win for white su-
premacy and a significant handi-
cap for urban areas victimized by
a lack of services, over-policing
and courts that hand down harsh
sentences.
The practice of prison gerry-
mandering is slowly attracting
attention. Six states – Delaware,
Maryland, Nevada, California,
New York and Washington – have
outlawed prison gerrymandering
and others have started taking
steps to reduce or eliminate it.
The year 2020 is coming. It
is not only an election year, but a
year when the next census will be
taken. Battles will be fought over
racial gerrymandering and voter
suppression. Ending prison ger-
rymandering is a battle that also
must be fought. If prison gerry-
mandering is taking place in your
state, organize and act.
The year 2020 is coming and
we must fight against all attempts
to foster white supremacy, includ-
ing prison gerrymandering.
Oscar H. Blayton is a former
Marine Corps combat pilot and
human rights activist who practic-
es law in Virginia.
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