Jim Crow by other means
by digby
I’ve often wondered why we are so complacent about our enormous prison population and reluctantly concluded some time ago that it was likely influenced by the fact that the face of the American prisoner in many people’s mind is black, and therefore this is just our modern way of accomplishing the goals of Jim Crow now that we can’t do it through apartheid. Obviously, that’s a pretty broad conclusion and I have nothing other than my intuition telling me this but it makes some sense to me.
Today’s New York Times article about the “missing black men” doesn’t make that conclusion and in some respects refutes it by pointing out that there is no regional consistency among those jurisdictions in which there are so many fewer black men than black women. So maybe my intuition is off. Still, it is a striking piece about a very weird phenomenon that cannot be explained away by sheer coincidence:
The roughly “L-shaped” relationship [see chart at link] suggests two distinct observations. First, in counties where African-Americans make up less than around 5 or 6 percent of the population, prime-age black men may outnumber their female counterparts, and in some areas, they do so to a striking degree. And second, in those counties with substantial African-American populations, prime-age black men are systematically outnumbered by black women, again, to a striking degree.
This pattern holds within every major region of the country, and not just in the South, the Mid-Atlantic and the Midwest.
None of this answers the question as to why some areas — like Ferguson, Mo. — have larger numbers of missing black men relative to the nation as a whole. This is a purely descriptive analysis, trying to show where demographic imbalances are most acute. Correlation should not be interpreted as causation, and this applies particularly in this case, given that areas with more missing black men are strikingly different in many dimensions. They not only have larger black populations, but also different criminal justice systems, different social and economic conditions and a very different history of race relations.
In the course of the analysis, we also looked at another potential correlation: Are the places in which the black population is heavily female also places in which the nonblack population is also heavily female? To put it another way, is gender driving these patterns as much as race?
For sure, there are mining-dependent areas in Alaska, Wyoming and North Dakota that attract more men of all races. But these are the exception, and overall, there is little correlation between the gender breakdown of an area’s black population and the gender breakdown of its nonblack population.
All of which suggests that race is the driving factor. In the parts of the country with large African-American populations, thousands upon thousands of men are missing, with many of them deceased or in prison.
It’s always something isn’t it?
And of course it’s race.
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