How vs Why
I am a firm believer that the answers to systemic problems in America exist far beyond the whys. Asking why generally pacifies the questions we find too difficult to honestly answer. I have come up with a simple yet viable solution to move us past the whys. Here goes: if we evaluate issues, even with the innocent sincerity of a child, we might be able to address the most serious situations that are plaguing our nation. That’s it. Done. I told you it was simple. Take a moment to reflect on your own childhood to fully understand where I am going with this.
I remember being a child, full of wonder, innocence, and questions. My parents frequently pointed out how inquisitive I was; they would say, “you always want to know something.” I remember thinking, “well is that bad?” After all, humans do have the innate instinct to acquire knowledge, especially when things directly affect us, right? Over the years I learned that there was a science to asking questions. When I wanted to know the reasons behind doing things I asked why. This little adverb usually came into play when questioning my parents’ motives for keeping me from doing things I wanted to do, like sledding from the roof of our home during a winter blizzard (I still don’t see the error in wanting to do that). However, when I wanted to understand the theories, histories and science behind things, like where babies came from, I would ask how. The how is where the real answers are. They get us the skeletons of the issues. When asking the hows of our country it is impossible to ignore the racial disparities. How did our prison system come to hold more African Americans than our colleges or universities? How is it that African Americans are the country’s largest consumers but are scarce at the helm of Fortune 500 companies? How is there a large discrepancy in the quality of health-care for African Americans compared to other races? All roads in these hows lead back to the institution of slavery. If we were to replace those questions with whys we would be revolving around a conversation that has been keeping our country in blind orbit for years.
Remnants: a look at the way the past still affects us is a blog that seeks to regularly address the hows that plague many of our country’s structures. This blog is dedicated to taking a gander at the criminal justice system and its treatment of African Americans, which in some literature has been likened to modern-day lynching.
Lynching is a term and act that is thought to be derived from either Willie Lynch, a British slave owner in the West Indies or Charles Lynch, a colonel in the Revolutionary War. Both of these men disregarded the legal system and upheld their own forms of law. Charles is most known for unauthorized mob killings of individuals he defined as “criminals”.
Although lynching is very rarely seen overtly, it has been viewed as covertly acted out in our justice system. David Jacobs, a sociologist at Ohio State University, is a part of a group of researchers who found that death sentencing, especially for African Americans, is more common in states that have a high history of lynching. Could this be a coincidence? Jacobs and his comrades have equated today’s capital punishment with yesterday’s lynching; to put this theory in a mathematical equation would read:
capital punishment ::today’s lynching as cruel :: unusual punishment.
Statistics show that the common denominator in each of side of this analogy is the disparity of African Americans. Jacobs’ research even found that as the African American population grows in one state, so does the number of African Americans killed by capital punishment. Jacobs and his team of researchers found commonalities in capital punishment, possibly answering one of America’s hows: how is it that African Americans populate prisons disproportionately to the African American population of the U.S.? What are your views on these findings? Tell us what you think by participating in the blog poll below.
Useful resources on the topic:
The Sentencing Project
Human Rights Watch
Sociological Images
Poll
