ACLU charges state discriminates against blacks
Claims educators, law enforcement employ paradigms of treating people unequally
In a wide-ranging series of charges, the American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday said the state's policies and practices discriminate against black Rhode Islanders from childhood to adulthood.
The 17-page report, “The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Black and White,” says that blacks are disproportionately suspended from school, stopped and searched by police, arrested and incarcerated.
The problem is “a persistent and far-reaching" one that contributes to a “school-to-prison pipeline” and “a systematic pattern of pushing students, especially minorities, out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system."
The report follows similar charges by civil rights groups and protesters across the nation and in books like Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."
The local ACLU chapter is urging state and municipal leaders to examine state policies, practices and procedures that lead to discrimination. It supports legislation to end racial profiling and limit the use of out-of-school suspensions.
“This report demonstrates what many have known for a long time to be true: life in Rhode Island is different, depending on your skin color,” said ACLU policy associate Hillary Davis. “It is our hope that this report will no longer allow these experiences to be discounted and ignored, and that Rhode Island’s leaders will come together to address the problem of racial disparities in Rhode Island before a larger crisis occurs.”
According to the report, black students receive disparate punishments as early as elementary school. Those punishments push more black youth into the juvenile justice system “where they face harsher punishment” than their white counterparts, it said.
"As adults, black Rhode Islanders are disproportionately stopped and searched by police, exacerbating disparities in arrest rates even when black and white individuals commit infractions at roughly the same rate," the ACLU said.
"The end result of these racial disparities is a prison population that is disproportionately black. This racial disparity leaves the black community to bear the brunt of the socioeconomic consequences that follow incarceration, including lack of employment and denial of housing, perpetuating the cycle of unequal treatment."
"Despite the efforts of some officials to address the problem, the state lacks a comprehensive response to discriminatory practices. Worse, even as these disparities persist in the background, too many people still refuse to acknowledge their presence and the damaging effects that flow from them,” the report says.
on twitter: @WmPDavis