By Lucius Gantt
All my heroes have been to jail. Martin, Malcolm, Marcus and Jesus and many more truthtellers all spent time in the “Big House”!
Today, my friends, family members and neighbors fear they might be the next person of color that will be falsely charged, taken into custody, wrongfully prosecuted and thrown in prison!
Americans of African descent are especially concerned about maneuvering through the United States criminal justice system.
Black citizens are about 15% of the citizenry but they make up a much greater percentage of the nation’s incarcerated inmates.
I know some people don’t want me to write like this but speaking in judicial terms, Black people are where the people in power want Black people to be!
President Donald Trump has pardoned a Black prisoner, or former prisoner, or two and his administration came up with a half-baked prison reform bill.
But at the same time, the Trump administration has jailed asylum seekers and their babies in cold, dark and damp cages just because they were not from Europe, like his latest baby mama.
Most Gantt Report readers are upset about the President’s judicial policies and proposals but there is an even more devilish politician in Washington, U.S. Senate President Mitch McConnell.
The wicked Senate Pharaoh has vowed to end needed unemployment benefits and Covid 19 stimulus checks to America’s poorest residents while giving millions of your tax dollars to billionaires that don’t even need government help.
But the most diabolical thing Mitch McConnell is doing filling U.S. Federal Court vacancies with the most racist, the most corrupt and the most evil judicial nominees he can find!
Black Lives Matter, the Dream Defenders and the other groups you idolize should be outraged at how McConnell, with Trump’s approval and endorsement, is determined to fill U.S. Courts with as many white segregationists, white nationalists and closet ku klux klansmen as they can find!
The denies, delays and unjust arrests of Black and other people of color is not an accident or a coincidence, they are by design.
No racists are guilty of crimes unless there is video or audio evidence that proves otherwise.
The Trump/McConnell “Legion of Doom” tag team are intent on destroying what was considered the American way of life.
They want you in jail, want you in prison and want Black and Hispanic immigrants in cages.
At the same time they want leniency for their friends that were indicted for financial crimes, lying to government officials, violating campaign and election laws and Trump and McConnell allow dictators and despots to kill journalists, bomb innocent civilians, manipulate stock and commodity prices and they can use your tax dollars to spend as they wish for personal and political purposes!
Many people reading this column feel great about being “Americans” but people of color are not treated like Americans. Also, people in other countries, in some cases, hate “ugly Americans”.
People of color don’t have the rights as other Americans, they don’t have the security, the access to capital and we don’t have the “equal rights and justice” that other American residents have.
In the Bible, Pharaoh’s army drowned in the red sea. Trump and God willing, in November Trump and McConnell will drown in a blue sea of votes cast against them!
There is no fair judicial system in the United States. A racist judge will never be fair to litigants of color.
What we have in your local, district and federal courthouses are merely Ebony Robes and Ivory Justice. (read “Black Robes, White Justice” by Bruce Wright)
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.