Panelists explore race, criminal justice connection
Civil rights activists called Tuesday night for criminal justice reform and a repeal of Delaware's death penalty, saying the current systems devalue and oppress black individuals.
The town hall conversation at the Tabernacle Full Gospel Baptist Church in Wilmington explored the intersection of race and the criminal justice system – all the way from arrest and pretrial detention to death row.
Tamika Mallory, a national activist and keynote speaker at the town hall, drew praise from the crowd as she said she has been traumatized by recent examples of police use of deadly force against African Americans, including the choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York; the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and the death of Freddie Gray in a police van in Baltimore.
These highly publicized incidents have led to the Black Lives Matter movement and nationwide protests.
"What we are saying is that we want to matter in the same way as you," she said. "We want you to go to jail just like we go to jail."
Six in 10 Delaware inmates are black
Mallory continued, saying, "This is supposed to be America – the land of the free – and we don’t feel free as black and brown people in this country.”
Some on a four-person panel that followed Mallory agreed.
University of Delaware associate professor Yasser Payne, who released the People's Report in 2013 after researching violence in Wilmington, said law enforcement is a mechanism to maintain power and oppression.
"Police and prison systems are required to maintain it," he said. "They police by design."
The result is that 62 percent of the black males in Wilmington are either incarcerated or on probation/parole, according to Charles Madden, executive director of the Hope Commission.
"When you have communities where six out of 10 men are absent, there are issues that you will see in these communities," he said.
As of December 2014, there were 5,667 people incarcerated in Delaware. About 56 percent were black, even though only 22 percent of the state's population is black, according to data from the Department of Correction.
Death row is no different: nine of the 15 people now being held are black.
Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo E. Strine Jr. has called the disproportionate number of African Americans in the state's prisons alarming and is overseeing public hearings on the topic for the Access to Justice Commission's Committee on Fairness in the Criminal Justice System.
Strine said Tuesday night these conversations can be difficult to have but are important. He added, though, that more people who disagree need to talk to each other without using divisive rhetoric.
Others on the panel said it is hard to talk about race and the criminal justice system without using precise terms, such as white supremacy, racism and oppression.
Shefon Taylor, a social justice advocate, said white supremacy and racism touch every aspect of life, ranging from housing and education to job opportunities and the prison system.
“I use that word because that is what it is," she said. "I know that that makes some of us uncomfortable... but it is OK to sit in the discomfort.”
Tuesday's town hall was hosted by the Complexities of Color Coalition, Delaware's NAACP, the Delaware Repeal Project and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at 302-324-2777, jmreyes@delawareonline.com or Twitter @JessicaMasulli.