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Black Males in College Not Jail

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Black Males in the education system have continually been a topic of interest and study. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, reports such as From Classrooms to Cell Blocks: A National Perspective by Tara-Jen Ambrosio and Vincent Schiraldi, show that there were more Black males in prison than in college. The media and the world of academia have birthed the notion that the commonplace for Black males is jail. However, progress has been made in the last 14 years.

Recently, scholars have sought more research and found that now there are more Black males in higher education than in prison. According to Diverse Issues in Higher Education, “The number of Black men in college is more than 1.4 million versus the 824,340 who were incarcerated.”

Many scholars of academia have put time into the research and retention of Black males to help them as they go through educational institutions. At UCLA, the Black Male Institute (BMI) conducts research, addresses the concerns of Black males in higher education, and creates a comfortable environment where they can both seen and heard. Donte Miller, third year Sociology major and BMI student, expressed what BMI means to him, “Home, a place to vent, laugh, and put in work all in one. BMI is a microcosm of being back at home, and we are just one big family.”

Blacklimated

“Blacklimated” class held by the Black Male Institute at UCLA

There are 1.4 million Black males who are in college. Researchers have found that, “The raw numbers show that enrollment of Black males [in college] increased from 693,044 in 2001 to 1,445,194 in 2011.” As time progresses, the Black male student population continues to increase.

Implementing new changes has worked as there continues to be more Black males attending college every year, outnumbering the amount in jail. The state of Black males in education is not as detrimental as the media would lead people to believe. Instead, African American men are educating themselves and obtaining their degrees.

When asked what can be done to retain even more Black males in higher education Donte Miller says, “Outreach! There aren’t enough Black males going out or being sought out by people in higher education encouraging them to apply or letting them know they are capable. There also needs to be more culturally relevant education in which students are taught similar to what goes on in their lives as something they can relate to.”  In order to encourage the path to higher education, it is intrinsic to outreach to Black males.

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Mass Incarceration: Slavery By Another Name

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The Afrikan Student Union at UCLA currently exists to promote, protect and serve the social, educational, and political interests of people of Afrikan descent. On Tuesday, February 4th, ASU Administrative Staff introduced a resolution to UCLA’s Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC) urging it, the UCLA Foundation, and the UC Regents to divest from corporations that have investments in the two major private prison companies, CCA and GEO Group.

As Black intellectuals and activists, it is important to recognize the context in which we are functioning. The UC has the largest endowment in the world. If we know, through public information on the UC Regents, that the UC is investing in corporations such as Wells Fargo, Vanguard Group, Blackrock Fund Advisors, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Invesco Finance LTD, and JP Morgan Chase, which contribute to the privatization of prisons and in turn, the enslavement of black, brown and other oppressed communities, it is our collective responsibility to challenge this reality.

Louisiana is the prison capital of the world, meaning it incarcerates more prisoners than any other state in America and any other country. The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is one of the largest and most notorious maximum security prisons in the country, which works as an agricultural complex that utilizes cheap prisoner labor (wages range between four cents and 20 cents per hour) for traditional agriculture production and light industry. The penitentiary occupies 18,000 acres of land that was once a 19th century plantation–the Angola Plantation–named after the area in Africa that supplied most of the plantation’s slave labor. Thus, how can anyone say that the current imprisonment of our people is not eerily and disturbingly similar to the chattel slavery our ancestors endured?

More Black men are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850. Moreover, Black women are the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice population and the criminal justice system. The question, we should be asking ourselves is: are Black people inherently criminal? For the aforementioned statistics to be justified that is what society would intend for us to believe.

However, as former Chair of the Black Panther Party, Elaine Brown asserts, it is important to be “ruthless in your analysis.” CCA and GEO have massive political lobbying power, which has set the stage for black and brown prisoners to become free laborers while incarcerated. In the 1990s, CCA and GEO Group successfully lobbied for mandatory minimums, three-strikes and drug laws, which have contributed to the incarceration of millions of black, brown, and other, oppressed communities. In fact, CCA and GEO worked with Congress to effectively lobby for the 1995 Prison Industry Act, which was promoted by ALEC, and turned prisoners into laborers. Moreover, one would realize through research that most black and brown prisoners are imprisoned due to non-violent drug offenses.

As Angela Davis, former UCLA Professor of Philosophy said, “Prisons do not disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.”

We are facing an endemic problem in this country, and that is the perpetual marginalization and criminalization of Black people. And, instead of addressing the root causes of these problems, the United States is allowing for generations of Black Americans to remain broken and disillusioned. Fortunately, the UCLA Undergraduate Student Association Council (USAC) voted unanimously in support of the resolution; however, work still needs to and will be done to achieve our goal, which is liberation of all Afrikan people.

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Marc Lamont Hill: “We Create an Entire Industry on the Prison”

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The Afrikan Black Coalition (ABC) is a coalition designed to unify Black students across the UC system in order to discuss and resolve issues concerning academic policy, campus climate, and matriculation from the University. By bringing together the Afrikan/Black Student Unions from UC and CSU colleges, ABC presents the opportunity for unity in spite of geographical boundaries. This year’s conference was held at UC Santa Cruz last Friday evening to Monday afternoon.

The campus was abundant of conscious Black students who were there to implement or learn how to implement changes in society. The theme of the conference focused on the idea of “Reimagining Black Activism” and generating a new age of activism led by the youth.

Keynote speakers Marc Lamont Hill (political activist), Bobby Seale (Co-founder of the Black Panther Party), Ambassador Shabazz (Malcolm X’s eldest daughter), and Angela Davis (former Black Panther Party member) provided insight on their experience in the Movement and shared words of wisdom to the listening Black audience.

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Marc Lamont Hill speaks to students/ photo credit: JR

In his call to action, Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN analyst and political activist, touched vastly on the importance and understandings of the prison industrial complex and the private prison industry.

“We create an entire industry on the prison”, Hill said. For example, he continued, “A town with a population of 20,000, Six, seven, or eight thousand [locals] work in the prison, and you add the 8,000 prisoners who weren’t from that town [who were] sent to the middle of nowhere… those 10,000 people now make the town’s residency rate 30,000. They [prisoners] count as residents of the town even though they can’t vote. So now you got 30,000 people in the town, the town gets more money, [and] more political representation… the whole town exists because of the prison.”

He expressed the expansion of criminality as an economic incentive for the private prison industry. Through systematic inequalities and injustices, capitalism is reinforced through public incarceration and private funding. With statistics showing the majority of these prison populations as African-American males, there comes a time where we must question the system at hand.

In his address, he affirmed that we as a community cannot talk about educational justice without prison justice, and therefore we must challenge ourselves to step up and do the work. He left the audience with words of instruction and encouraged the Black community to “Ask different questions [and to] engage in the practice of deep listening to understand the perspectives of one another.”

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In Detail: USAC’s Resolution to “Divest from Corporations Supporting the Private Prison Industry” Passes

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On Tuesday, February 4, the Afrikan Student Union at UCLA brought forth a resolution to the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s (USAC) weekly meeting.  The goal of the resolution is to “divest undergraduate students association and UC Los Angeles’ from corporations profiting from the Prison Industrial Complex.” For those who are not familiar with the resolution and its implications, it sets out to address and to act as part of the solution towards many of the issues that Black and other minority students face both on and off campus, in relation to the “Private Prison Industry.” According to the resolution, corporations that have ties to the use of inmate labor include, Wells Fargo, Vanguard Group, Blackrock Fund Advisors, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Invesco Finance LTD, JP Morgan Chase, and Procter & Gamble.

The meeting began with a public comment from Kateisha Menefield, Vice-Chair of the Afrikan Student Union, who introduced the resolution that demands UCLA to take “Responsibility not just as Bruins, but as simple human beings.”

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Students listen as public comments are shared./ Amber Tidmore- NOMMO Staff

Following Menefield’s lead, other students presented their own comments.  Devin Murphy, President of the Black Pre-Law Association said, “The [Private Prison Industry] is utilizing human beings in prisons to make more money,” and with a push from our government for more funding, “our tax dollars and student fees are going into this funding.” Murphy furthered expressed personal experience as a Black male on campus, “There is a surplus of African American men in prison, why is it not a surplus of African American men on this campus? That is an issue. When we talk about the idea of campus climate and feeling included, how do I feel included when more of me are in prison than on this campus, am I suppose to be here? That’s the question I ask myself.”

Black Bruins were not the only students present to support this issue, as other ethnic groups voiced their concerns:

“I do not want people to fall into the trap that Black History is [only] Rosa Parks and Harriett Tubman… because the Jim Crow Laws still lives on in [the form of] mass incarceration, and we have to recognize that history repeats and is disguised in different forms… [We] should use this legacy of Black History month to educate ourselves and to make an actual change” – UCLA student of Palestine

 Before the council members were to vote on the resolution, Kamilah Moore, Chair of the Afrikan Student Union, and Maryssa Hall, External Vice President of USAC, presented some alarming statistics to the council members and to the public:

“More Black men are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850, and… Black women are the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice population and the criminal justice system.”

The Black inmate percentage is almost half of the incarcerated population, totaling nearly 40 percent, which correlates with the school-to-prison pipeline phenomenon. The resolution further states that in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the years 2012-2013,  “Latino students were more than twice as likely as White students to be ticketed, [and] Black students were almost six times as likely as a White student to be ticketed.”

Males make up 70 percent of these statistics.

Despite the issues and statistics presented, the resolution and public comments were marked with criticism. The use of what is considered to be “divisive language,” was the least of the students worries who contributed to the public comment portion of the meeting. However, after Moore’s and Hall’s presentation, there were small grammatical errors being critiqued by some of the council members. While in an article published that same day before the meeting took place, Natalie Delgadillo of the Daily Bruin also focused on critiquing the rhetoric of a presentation from the resolution, and how public opinion could weaken the goal of passing it.

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Students listen as public comments are shared. /Amber Tidmore- NOMMO Staff

Delgadillo said, “Sometimes the oldest, most overused clichés ring the truest.  A resolution set to be presented at the student government meeting tonight has an old grammar school adage looping in my head:  ‘It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it’.  She concluded that in deciding whether or not to pass a resolution, “Councilmembers must always consider [if] a resolution is the best way to address an issue they find worthwhile – and if that answer is yes, its authors must work to make sure the resolution’s purpose isn’t marred by pointlessly divisive or extreme language.”

Criticism seemed to deviate from the issue being presented, and only ten council members approved the resolution while the rest neither abstained nor denied it. Despite criticism, many of the council members expressed support, and for some, the personal experiences of the students resonated.

In spite of this, the personal experiences of students are still viewed by some as “pointlessly divisive or extreme language.”  It is clear that there is still work to be done, not only for the Black community, but also for all students on and off campus.

See the link below for an updated version of the resolution, and a list of the endorsers of the resolutions:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RfkEEfbq8FqXpPm8Og1O7Sb4wZ6XoqNEp0AupW5SAN8/edit?pli=1

List of endorsers of the Resolution:

Student/Campus Organizations:

  • Harambee Council at UCLA
  • USAC Office of the President
  • USAC External Vice President’s Office
  • USAC Cultural Affairs Commissioner
  • USAC General Representative 3
  • Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Project
  • Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation

Individuals in support:

  • Avinoam Boral Internal Vice president of the Jewish Student Union
  • Liz Friedman Women in the Physical Sciences President
  • Devin Murphy President of the Black Pre-Law Association
  • Janay Williams member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc

Community Organizations:

  • Alliance for Equal Opportunity in Education and Community Coalition of South Los Angeles
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USAC Votes for a resolution to “Divest from Corporations Supporting the Private Prison Industry”

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Last night, the Afrikan Student Union at UCLA addressed the Undergraduate Student Association Council with “A Resolution to Divest Undergraduate Students Association Council and UC Los Angeles Finances from Corporations Profiting from the Industrial Complex.”

Students and USAC Council members wait as the "A Resolution" presentation is soon to begin./Amber Tidmore- Nommo Staff

Students and USAC Council members wait as the “A Resolution” presentation is soon to begin./Amber Tidmore- Nommo Staff

The endorsers of the resolution include:

 Student/Campus Organizations: Harambee Council at UCLA, USAC Office of the President, USAC External Vice President’s Office, USAC Cultural Affairs Commissioner, USAC General Representative 3, Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Project, Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation.

Individuals in Support: Avinoam Boral Internal Vice president of the Jewish Student Union, Liz Friedman Women in the Physical Sciences President, Devin Murphy President of the Black Pre-Law Association, and Janay Williams member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Community Organizations: Alliance for Equal Opportunity in Education and Community Coalition of South Los Angeles.

The endorsers were not the only individuals in attendance, but also many students of color and non-students of color who came to express their opinion, and to show support for the resolution and the Afrikan Student Union (ASU).

USAC meeting opens the floor for public comment./ Amber Tidmore-Nommo Staff

USAC meeting opens the floor for public comment./ Amber Tidmore-Nommo Staff

Kateisha Menefield, Vice-Chair of ASU made the first public comment introducing the resolution to the meeting, followed by other public comments, then a presentation given by both Kamilah Moore, Chair of ASU and Maryssa Hall, External Vice President of USAC; and lastly, council members asked questions.  Ten of the council members voted in approval of the resolution and the rest of the members neither abstained nor denied it.  In favor of USAC, the resolution passed, which to many, is significant step to ignite further divestment from the prison industrial complex.

The link to the resolution can be found at the end of the article.  Yet, to read more about what the resolution stands for, what it sets out to change, and the personal comments and experiences of both students and USAC council members during the meeting, check back with NOMMO Magazine this Friday.

http://usac.ucla.edu/documents/resolutions/USACPrivatePrisonDivestmentResolution.pdf

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Navigate the Pipeline

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schooltoprison4

The “School-to-Prison Pipeline” is a concept that highlights the systematic forces that push disadvantaged students out of school and into the juvenile and criminal justice system. There are certain policies, such as “zero tolerance”, in affect that place large punishments on small offenses; thus, leading to the mass incarceration of the youth.

Yesterday evening in Covel Commons, Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Program (IYTP) and other CPOSA social justice projects held a workshop entitled “Navigating the School-to-Prison-Pipeline,” to highlight and emphasize the impact of mass incarceration on minority communities. Michael Oshiro, an IYTP director and event coordinator, said, “[Our] primary goal is to bring awareness to a critical issue that not many students know about. I hope this event inspires students to get involved because we have been stagnant, and now it is time for action.”

The main focus of the workshop was a “make shift pipeline” where participants were able to “choose their path”; however, no matter what path was chosen, the participant was still caught up in the system. At every stop point, the participant was given three options on how to respond to the situation. Every response was different, but the educational path was still deferred.

The scenarios were framed as such:

Your mother tells you to take your cell phone to school so that she can call you from the hospital where your sister has been admitted after a severe asthma attack. Your phone rings as you are walking down the hall. A teacher approaches you and confiscates the phone reminding you that having a cellphone is against school rules. The next day you receive a letter telling you that, because of your school’s zero tolerance policy, you have been suspended for ten days for a cell phone violation. You…

  1. Explain to your principal that you needed your cell phone so that your mom could call you.
  2. Accept the suspension spend your ten days at home trying to keep up with your schoolwork.
  3. Accept the suspension spend your ten days hanging out with friends in your neighborhood who have dropped out of school.

Nonetheless, scenarios like these are familiar to many students. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “Students who have been suspended are three times more likely to drop out by the 10th grade than students who has never been suspended.” With the increasing number of suspension rates for students of color, two to three times more than other students, the prison population expands with Black and Brown inmates.

So the question is, if there are numerous policies and practices in place that contribute to the “school-to-prison” pipeline, how can we preserve education in the public school system and avoid incarceration of the disadvantaged youth?

 

Compiled by: Jessica Rayside/ E.I.C

Contributed details by: Jameelah Howard/ Nommo Staff

 

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California’s Inmate Population: Minorities as the Majority

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IYTP

It is Thursday evening and a van pulls up to Camp Fred Miller Juvenile Detention Facility.  The van is filled with UCLA students.  They belong to the Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Project (IYTP) and have come to participate in a weekly session of tutoring and mentoring juvenile students.

As they enter the site they pass a wall which has photos and poems celebrating the graduation of former detainees who successfully managed to turn being at the facility into a positive experience, using their time productively to further their education.

The UCLA students are there to help give the young people a second chance at education by providing GED and CAHSEE tutoring.  As role models for their students, they also help inspire them to consider possible further education and career opportunities available to them when they leave.

One thing that is noticeable about the students at Camp Fred Miller is that they are all Afrikan American or Latino – the majority Afrikan American.

Last year Afrikan Americans represented just 6.6% of California’s population, yet Afrikan American males made up 25.4% of California’s inmate population.

In direct contrast to the overwhelming number of Afrikan Americans in California’s incarcerated population, Afrikan American males are grossly underrepresented among UCLA’s student population.

Third-year Afrikan American studies student Sy Stokes recently highlighted this lack of diversity in a spoken word video in which he criticizes the fact that black males comprise just 3.3% of UCLA’s male student population, and only 1.9% of incoming male freshmen.

It is no coincidence that Afrikan Americans are overrepresented in the inmate population but underrepresented in the student population.  The mismatching figures can be attributed to what is known as the school-to-prison pipeline, whereby disadvantaged minority students are pushed out of the school system and into the criminal justice system.

Many factors contribute to this harmful transition.  Unreasonable “zero tolerance” methods of discipline in high schools are just some elements of the school-to-prison pipeline that have been proven to disproportionately injure minority students.

In 2011, a report released by the National Education Policy Center found that since “zero tolerance” policies were introduced, the number of suspensions for minor offenses, such as cell phone and dress code violations, have risen considerably – especially suspensions of Afrikan American students.  The report stated that in the Los Angeles Unified district over 1/3 of students suspended from middle schools were Afrikan American.

California’s Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, mixed Afrikan American and Chinese American, has spoken out against the overuse of suspension as punishment for relatively harmless offenses since these suspensions discourage students from staying in education and wanting to learn.  “Out-of-school suspension for nonviolent offenses can set the stage for the type of chronic truancy that leads to students dropping out of school and becoming victims of crime,” said Harris.  She added that, “We need to hold kids accountable and to help them learn from their mistakes, but also to keep them in school and on course to graduate.”

Not only does the incarceration of young Afrikan American students disrupt, and often ruin, their education, but also, it negatively affects the education of other students due to the high cost of keeping someone imprisoned.  California currently spends more money on prisons than on education, spending a staggering $47,102 per inmate compared to just $8,482 per student.

In the “Black Bruins” video, Sy Stokes references the University of California Student Association’s IGNITE (Invest in Graduations, not Incarcerations, Transforming Education) program, which is designed to help reverse the school-to-prison pipeline.  One way that IGNITE aims to achieve this is by urging the UC Office of the President to allocate $10 million to student run recruitment and retention centers which will help traditionally disadvantaged students, including those formerly incarcerated.

UCLA alumna and UC Irvine student Regent Cinthia Flores, who has supported the IGNITE campaign, says, “If we’re not providing the opportunity for students to pursue higher education and continue to funnel them into the criminal justice system, we will continue to overfund our prison system and, in turn, underfund and deprioritize education.”

The students who already dedicate some of their time each week to the Incarcerated Youth Tutorial Project (IYTP) are providing a crucial service, helping to counter the school-to-prison pipeline.  In January a final decision should be made by the UC Board of Regents to determine whether or not more funding will available for projects like this.

 

Author: Greta Tugwell

Nommo Staff

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