Joe, thanks for meeting with us today.

As you know, when we think about incarceration and prosecution in this country,

people of color are disproportionately represented in our system and we want to

take some time today to think about why that is to examine the history of that.

One place we might begin is with

some conversation that happened after

the election of Barack Obama, you may remember this.

After Barack Obama's election,

there was some conversation about the fact that we were now in a post racial America.

To those who work in and around criminal justice,

that seemed at the time,

like a bit of a stretch to say the least.

I wonder though given our current situation with the election of Donald Trump,

what you might say about the notion of a post racial America?

Well, I would call that a myth,

to be quite honest about it.

When it was first articulated in the media,

I found it almost amusing because I've spent my life going

into prisons throughout the south working with people on death row.

It's very clear that this is an intentional system set up meaning,

"the criminal justice system" to gather up people of color,

herd them in to prisons in death row under sometimes the most flimsiest of circumstances.

And to think that the election of one black person as president of

the United States is somehow

anything other than black exceptionalism, because that's what it was.

He's a remarkable man,

a man of many talents.

It's a remarkable event that he was elected,

but to take that individual act and extend it to some kind of societal wide viewpoint,

is a tremendous error because you want to know what America is really about,

you look at the election of Donald Trump.

Here's a guy who was elected overwhelmingly by white people,

representing a Republican Party which is the party of white people,

by white people and for white people.

Am not saying that in any kind of partisan terms,

that's just an objective fact.

If you look at who's in the Republican party,

who votes Republican, it's virtually an all white party.

So he comes in representing this,

which was there all along even when Obama was elected president.

And so, I think it's important to realize when you've got the Trump regime in

place and it is a regime and in my book Slouching Toward tyranny,

I talk about what a regime is and what it is,

is its when one party controls all three branches of government: the executive,

the judiciary and the congressional branch.

So, the Republicans are in control of all that now.

And when that happens,

and it's all white people remember,

bad things happen to people of color.

The last time we had a regime was under George Bush,

when the Republicans controlled all three parts of government for six year period.

And you look at the laws that were passed,

just as you look at what Trump is talking about now,

and you get what is clearly a white majoritarian viewpoint.

And really Alexis de Tocqueville talked about this for the first time when we could

identify someone articulating what was happening politically in our country,

when he wrote in democracy in America when he came here and visited in 1931,

he wrote about a country that had

"a tyranny of the majority" So let's unpack that a minute.

What Tocqueville meant by the tyranny majority,

and he elucidates this in two chapters in the first volume of democracy in America,

is that you have a people who are white,

like you and me, running the government for themselves.

And you've got two groups of color

then you have the American Indian and you have black people.

And you have the tyranny of the white majority over and

against the Indians and the blacks.

And how was it manifested?

Rumor on 1832 and Tocqueville was right on this.

It's astonishing that he had the insight to see this 1832, what's going on?

When he noticed that the Cherokee are getting rounded up

by R-Tennesse and Andrew Jackson who would now become president the United States,

and were being sent on the trail of tears under

the Indian Removal Act which Congress passed,

Jackson signed, that was a classic definition of genocide.

However you want to look at genocide,

and I encourage you go to the Webster's Dictionary,

the Indian removal act fits it because what we did was take a whole group of people,

and it wasn't just the Cherokee, it was the creeks,

it was all the Eastern Indians and moved

them west and if they didn't move, they were killed.

And why would why did this happen?

This is because gold was discovered in North Georgia by whites, on Cherokee land.

And so, that began the push to get this land so the whites could get the gold.

Now, it was Indian land,

there was no doubt about that, the trees were clear.

But all of that was like rubbish,

because the whites wanted the gold and they would go to any lengths to get it.

So that resulted in 4000 of the Cherokee being moved to Oklahoma,

4000 dying in the move to Oklahoma.

The whole tribe except for a section that was able to

stay in the Western North Carolina in the mountains,

being transported out there.

It was a horrific horrific genocidal experience.

So Tocqueville saw what was going on

for the Indians and he also saw what was going on for the blacks.

And as he pointed out,

as bad as slavery was,

his experiences in the north of the United States did not offer

much promise for the slaves once they got beyond bondage because it

was very clear that white people in the north had really a separate society

for black people that they weren't really integrating them into their society.

And he talked about how that was really the customs.

So, it's not only the laws that are in place but the customs in there, in the place.

And Tocqueville talks a lot about the customs in the United States.

Now, the real irony is that you'll see groups like the Federalist Society,

which is a fairly conservative group you know, always praising Tocqueville.

Well, you never hear them talk about what I'm talking about with you right now,

because they don't want to look at what Tocqueville actually talked about and how

the democratic process in America really

worked and that it was a tyranny of the majority.

And he was brilliant in elucidating this and democracy in America.

So, if a Frenchman can come over here and see this is going on in 1832,

why on earth is we Americans can't see what's going on here in 2017?

I'm talking about white Americans,

black Americans know what's going on for the most part.

Well, the reason we can't see it is because we have blinders on.

We've been brainwashed with this notion that we're

the greatest democracy in the world and that

we're also the world champion of human rights.

And well, that's the great lie.

Simply not true.

People want to say, "oh yeah we'll look at our constitution,

look at our Declaration of Independence."

Let's look at them. Let's take a minute and look at them.

The Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson,

primarily two other people helped him but primarily Thomas Jefferson wrote that.

His original draft call for the abolition of slavery.

What happened to that? You read your declaration of independence now,

do you see that anywhere in there?

No you don't. Because those white folks especially as fellow southerners,

said no no no we're going to put that in there

not the kind of Congress, we'll not do that.

So then you get the constitution.

Constitution. This is supposed to be a document for black people?

Please give me a break.

How are black people defined in the Constitution?

They're worth three fifths of a person.

It's right there in writing.

That's what they're worth,

three fifths of a person.

So, this notion that somehow we're a democracy and a champion in human rights,

you look at our founding documents those two in particular,

and you find that's nothing but an absurdity.

It's an untruth. And it's only when we can really

look at our history and that's why I wrote 'slouching toward tyranny',

to take a look at our history that's independent of

the myths we've given been given like post-racial society,

or we're the champion of human rights for the world,

or we're some great democracy.

You come into the prisons and jails of

our country which I've been doing for the last 40 years,

and you see what an absurd premise that is because you meet

and talk to human beings who are there under the flimsiest of excuses,

or who are there as a result of a system that is tilted

toward being administrated in a racially discriminated way.

And the great example of this,

and if you want to read one case about

racial discrimination in the death penalty in modern American law,

read McCleskey V. Kemp, which was a Georgia case at the U.S. Supreme

Court released in April of 1987.

I knew Warren McCleskey,

he was a friend of mine on Georgia's death row,

great human being and I say that seriously,

he and Billy Moore his buddy on death row,

were serious Christians, we would always pray together when I visited him.

They collected funds from churches in the area and set up a little commissary,

if you will because when you come to death row, you don't have anything.

It's not like the state is giving you money for a salary or anything,

or providing you with essentials like toothpaste or anything, it doesn't happen.

You have to pay for these things.

So Warren and Billy set up this little commissary and they would hand the money

out that they got from the churches to help the guys

buy soap and toothpaste and all the things they need to get down.

So, here's this wonderful human being I've gotten to know.

In his case, which is being handled by Jack Boger.

And Jack and I are both from North Carolina,

we're natives of North Carolina.

He, at that point was at the NAACP Defense Fund and I was

traipsing around working and trying to

stop the death penalty in various southern prisons.

So we got to know Warren really well, know each other well.

And he had a hunch and we both

felt this way when we looked around and saw what we're seeing on the ground,

that even though the U.S. Supreme Court had passed these laws in

1976 saying, "well you know,

we think this is constitutional now,

we struck it down in 1972 under Furman

versus Georgia because we thought it was random and arbitrary.

But now, these southern states in

the three states laws they Up-Hill are Florida Georgia and Texas,

have set up these disguided discretion laws and we think it's constitutional now."

Well, I'm here to tell you Jack Boger now are going through

southern prisons and there wasn't a whit of difference between what was

going on in prisons in courthouses in the south in 1972 and what was going on in 1976.

It's a racist system,

no matter what they wanted to say in the marble halls of the U.S. Supreme Court.

So Jack commissioned a fellow named David Baldus,

from the University of Iowa,

who undertook a study of every murder committed in Georgia.

Now think about that for a minute,

every murder under this law that was passed and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

And he did multiple regression analysis.

It was the most sophisticated study ever done in the history of

the United States and it came out and showed uncontrovertedly,

that the administration of the Georgia death penalty law,

no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court thought about it no one's face was racist,

how was it racist?

On the basis of race of victim in particular.

Now let's talk about that for a minute.

That means, white life is greater than black life.

So, if you are I are killed by somebody,

chances are somebody is going to be

prosecuted for the death penalty, because we're white.

You kill a black person, not so much.

Very rare you'll find anybody on death row for killing a black person.

Especially if it's a white person killing a black person,

just to give you a historical reference on this;

from the first execution in United States in 1608 of the guy by the name George Kindle,

from him all the way up to 1976 when these new laws are uphill about the Supreme Court.

And am going to ask you questions,

so get ready. This is your test.

There are roughly 18500 executions,

from 1608 through 76, roughly 18500.

So how many of those executions Graham,

were of white people for killing a black person.

72.

That's a pretty good guess. But it's not quite right.

It's actually 30, and we're going to subtract ten from that.

It's only really going to be 20. Now, think a minute.

How can I subtract 10 from the 30?

Think about our history. Well, you're Canadian,

I won't hold this against you but we're subtracting the 10 because

they were slave owners who killed their slaves and under the laws of the time,

they weren't executed out of concern for black life,

they were executed for destroying property.

So you really can't count those tens,

or really we had 20 people executed out of 18500,

who were executed for killing white people there were only 20 really.

So that let you know what's going on historically.

Out of 18500 from 1608 to 1976.

So did things get better after 76?

No no.

Boger and I are going into all these prisons and jails,

were seeing a lot of people black and white who are there under

the death penalty and almost all of them are there for killing a white person.

Not all of them but there are a few there for killing a black person.

But the Baldus study put Jack in our anecdotal stories into a objective,

verifiable study by looking at every murder in the history of Georgia.

And, bottom line showed this,

if you are a black person who kills a white person,

you're anywhere from 11 to 22 times more likely to get the death penalty.

And if you're a white person or black person who kills a white person,

all they control for all these variables.

Bottom line, 4.3 is

the statistical difference between somebody who kills a black person and a white person,

you may think 4.3. that's not much.

Well here, here's how much is.

The correlation that demonstrate smoking and

lung cancer is much

smaller than the 4.3 demonstrates racism in the administration of the death penalty.

4.3 is two and a half times greater statistically than

the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. Now think about that for a minute.

When this knowledge that

the tobacco companies were not somehow some kind of benign business,

but were dealing in death with their products,

we had the surgeon general C. Everett Koop and start a whole educational campaign,

we had a revolution in America on our smoking habits and our health habits.

And smoking dropped dramatically.

With that level of proof is two and a half times less than the Baldus study.

Where is our reaction to the Baldus study that

demonstrates race in the application of the death penalty?

Where is the outrage?

Where's the education?

It's not there,

it's up to people like Joe Angle,

Jack Boger and a few other people who were

trying to stop the death penalty to talk about this.

The government never bought into this.

Never. Barack Obama, I don't care. Please, spare me.

We're looking at a systematic history of oppression against

black people that's currently going on is manifested really clearly statistically,

in the Baldus study.

And that's been replicated in 18 other jurisdictions, same result.

It's not just Georgia,

my native state North Carolina did the same kind of study and guess what?

Got discrimination on basis of race of victim.

So, it's not like this is even a controversy, it's a reality.

And for us to be talking and pretending that there's some kind of post racial Nirvana,

we wandered in with Barack Obama is just really ludicrous.

Joe Ingle: “Racism and Punishment in the U.S.”

Justice, Mercy and Mass Incarceration

Meet the Instructors