Mass Black Incarceration and Predominately White Institutions

The Henry Project

Hearing about the percentage of black men incarcerated is tiring. Whether it’s the school to prison pipeline or the percentage of black men who should expect to see the inside of a jail cell, these numbers aren’t conducive to creating positive images within the minds of some black kids.

While seeing the myriad of stories about black men in prison does irk my nerves, my curiosity still forces me to read them.

According to a report via the Hamilton Project and reported by Vox.com, black men who dropped out of high school in 1975 had a 70 percent chance of going to prison. As stated by Ezra Klein, the author of a Vox article about the amount of black men incarcerated, white men of the same age had just a 17 percent shot at making it to prison.

Delving a little deeper into the project’s data, by the time they reach the age of 14, black kids who have fathers who did not graduate from high school will likely see their dads behind bars.

That figure alone is disturbing as the prison crisis has gotten so bad in this nation that it’s beyond epidemic proportions.

What do we do with those numbers when we compare this to the debate of HBCU’s vs. PWI’s, or Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Predominately White Institutions?

The discussion surrounding the validity of a HBCU versus that of an institution like Harvard or Princeton is absurd on the surface, but it speaks to the incessant need that some blacks feel about receiving validation from anything predominately white.

So, is there any type of internal dissention involved with believing that HBCU’s are inferior to PWI’s while thinking that the ascension of the number of black men heading to prison is wrong?

After all, the laws that are responsible for sending these men and women to prison were created by the ilk that some of us love to worship. Taking a step to the left, those on the Supreme Court who voted to invalidate section four of the Voting Rights Act attended PWI’s. In fact, all roamed the halls of an Ivy League school.

Does that mean that all individuals who attend PWI’s have a legal prejudice? No, but it does speak to a superior mindset.

This country has sent an alarming amount of black men and women to prison for decades and it still has yet to draw enough nationwide ire.

I’m not sure if we are able to reconcile both as one is truly an endemic problem and the other deals with the prevalence of an inferior attitude.

I just wonder if those who believe in the sheer notion that HBCU’s are substandard compared to PWI’s, see the correlation with the mentality surrounding sending droves of black men to prison.

-JH