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See the vision for the IRT's production of Fences.

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Denzel Washington and Viola Davis on Fences

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Denzel Washington and Viola Davis on Fences

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The two actors performed the play on Broadway as well as in the film directed by Mr. Washington.

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Denzel Washington "Keep Swinging" Fences Interview w/ Viola Davis

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Racial issues are often uncomfortable to discuss and rife with stress and controversy. Many ideas have been advanced to address this sore spot in the American psyche. Currently, the most pervasive approach is known as colorblindness. Colorblindness is the racial ideology that posits the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity.

At its face value, colorblindness seems like a good thing-really taking MLK seriously on his call to judge people on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It focuses on commonalities between people, such as their shared humanity.

However, colorblindness alone is not sufficient to heal racial wounds on a national or personal level. It is only a half-measure that in the end operates as a form of racism.

Problems with the colorblind approach

Racism? Strong words, yes, but let's look the issue straight in its partially unseeing eye. In a colorblind society, white people, who are unlikely to experience disadvantages due to race, can effectively ignore racism in American life, justify the current social order, and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society (Fryberg, 2010). Most minorities, however, who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, experience colorblind ideologies quite differently. Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives.

Let's break it down into simple terms: Colorblind = "People of color-we don't see you (at least not that bad 'colored' part)." As a person of color, I like who I am, and I don't want any aspect of that to be unseen or invisible. The need for colorblindness implies there is something shameful about the way God made me and the culture I was born into that we shouldn't talk about. Thus, colorblindness has helped make race into a taboo topic that polite people cannot openly discuss. And if you can't talk about it, you can't understand it, much less fix the racial problems that plague our society.

Colorblindness is not the answer

Many Americans view colorblindness as helpful to people of color by asserting that race does not matter (Tarca, 2005). But in America, most underrepresented minorities will explain that race does matter, as it affects opportunities, perceptions, income, and so much more. When race-related problems arise, colorblindness tends to individualize conflicts and shortcomings, rather than examining the larger picture with cultural differences, stereotypes, and values placed into context. Instead of resulting from an enlightened (albeit well-meaning) position, colorblindness comes from a lack of awareness of racial privilege conferred by Whiteness (Tarca, 2005). White people can guiltlessly subscribe to colorblindness because they are usually unaware of how race affects people of color and American society as a whole.

Colorblindness in a psychotherapeutic relationship

How might colorblindness cause harm? Here's an example close to home for those of you who are psychologically-minded. In the not-so-distant past, in psychotherapy a client's racial and ethnic remarks were viewed as a defensive shift away from important issues, and the therapist tended to interpret this as resistance (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991). However, such an approach hinders the exploration of conflicts related to race, ethnicity, and culture. The therapist doesn't see the whole picture, and the client is left frustrated.

A colorblind approach effectively does the same thing. Blind means not being able to see things. I don't want to be blind. I want to see things clearly, even if they make me uncomfortable. As a therapist, I need to be able to hear and "see" everything my client is communicating on many different levels. I can't afford to be blind to anything. Would you want to see a surgeon who operated blindfolded? Of course not. Likewise, a therapist should not be blinded either, especially to something as critical as a person's culture or racial identity. By encouraging the exploration of racial and cultural concepts, the therapist can provide a more authentic opportunity to understand and resolve the client's problems (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991).

Nonetheless, I have encountered many fellow therapists who ascribe to a colorblind philosophy. They ignore race or pretend its personal, social, and historical effects don't exist. This approach ignores the incredibly salient experience of being stigmatized by society and represents an empathetic failure on the part of the therapist. Colorblindness does not foster equality or respect; it merely relieves the therapist of his or her obligation to address important racial differences and difficulties.

Multiculturalism is better than blindness

Research has shown that hearing colorblind messages predict negative outcomes among Whites, such as greater racial bias and negative affect; likewise colorblind messages cause stress in ethnic minorities, resulting in decreased cognitive performance (Holoien et al., 2011). Given how much is at stake, we can no longer afford to be blind. It's time for change and growth. It's time to see.

The alternative to colorblindness is multiculturalism, an ideology that acknowledges, highlights, and celebrates ethnoracial differences. It recognizes that each tradition has something valuable to offer. It is not afraid to see how others have suffered as a result of racial conflict or differences.

So, how do we become multicultural? The following suggestions would make a good start (McCabe, 2011):

1. Recognizing and valuing differences,

2. Teaching and learning about differences, and

3. Fostering personal friendships and organizational alliances.

Moving from colorblindness to multiculturalism is a process of change, and change is never easy, but we can't afford to stay the same.

For those of you who offered feedback about this article, I am sorry but the comment area had to be closed due to a number of hateful, threatening, and racist comments. There were too many responses for me to reply to each one individually, but I did draft a collective response that you can read here: Why People Cling to Racist Ideas.

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Racial issues are often uncomfortable to discuss and rife with stress and controversy. Many ideas have been advanced to address this sore spot in the American psyche. Currently, the most pervasive approach is known as colorblindness. Colorblindness is the racial ideology that posits the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity.

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How many times have you heard someone say that they "don't see color," "are color-blind," or "don't have a racist bone in their body?" Maybe you've even said this yourself. After all, the dominant language around racial issues today is typically one of color blindness, as it's often meant to convey distaste for racial practices and attitudes common in an earlier era.

Many sociologists, though, are extremely critical of color blindness as an ideology. They argue that as the mechanisms that reproduce racial inequality have become more covert and obscure than they were during the era of open, legal segregation, the language of explicit racism has given way to a discourse of color blindness. But they fear that the refusal to take public note of race actually allows people to ignore manifestations of persistent discrimination.

For the first half of the 20th century, it was perfectly legal to deny blacks (and other racial minorities) access to housing, jobs, voting, and other rights based explicitly on race. Civil-rights reforms rendered these practices illegal. Laws now bar practices that previously maintained racial inequality, such as redlining, segregation, or openly refusing to rent or sell real estate to black Americans. Yet discrimination still persists, operating through a combination of social, economic, and institutional practices.

Concurrently, it is no longer socially acceptable in many quarters to identify oneself as racist. Instead, many Americans purport not to see color. However, their color blindness comes at a cost. By claiming that they do not see race, they also can avert their eyes from the ways in which well-meaning people engage in practices that reproduce neighborhood and school segregation, rely on " soft skills" in ways that disadvantage racial minorities in the job market, and hoard opportunities in ways that reserve access to better jobs for white peers.

The Atlantic 's Conor Friedersdorf recently argued that the academic left errs in attacking color blindness. He suggested that encouraging whites to be color conscious and to think of themselves in racial terms would encourage the nativism embraced by some Donald Trump supporters-that a heightened awareness of whiteness would produce a sense of persecution, and encourage some to rally in defense of white rights. He contends that there is some merit to color blindness that has been ignored by what he describes as "the academic left," which spends too much time focused on nitpicking color blindness rather than drawing attention to "macroaggressions" such as "racially tinged hatred and conspiracy theories directed at the first black president" or the convenience of labeling Mexican immigrants rapists "despite the fact that first-generation immigrants commit fewer crimes than native born Americans."

As a presumptive member of the academic left that Friedersdorf critiques, I read the post with particular interest. I think that Friedersdorf makes some important points worth more detailed attention from both academics and those outside the academy who are familiar with the debates and concepts he references. For instance, academic debates can often become divorced from broader audiences. It is way too easy for academics in many fields to ground their conversations, disputes, and discussions among other like-minded scholars. He's right to note that, by and large, academics can do a much better job engaging with folks outside of our ivory towers.

However, there are some misrepresentations in Fridersdorf's piece as well. Based on a single statement from one book chapter in an edited volume, Friedersdorf makes the sweeping generalization that "the academic left casts all proponents of colorblindness as naïve." I've read books and articles by numerous sociologists who critique the color-blind ideology, and while they find problems with the ways this perspective allows individuals to ignore patterns of racial bias, I've never seen any studies that broadly categorize advocates of color blindness in this way. What's more important to sociologists are the consequences of how this ideology has implications for social inequality.

My colleague Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, for example, has written extensively about the idea of color blindness, charting the ways that it functions as an ideology that legitimizes specific practices that maintain racial inequalities-police brutality, housing discrimination, voter disenfranchisement, and others. His book Racism Without Racists is part of a broad set of sociological research that draws attention to the ways that colorblind ideology undergirds bigger, more problematic social issues.
There are more than a few members of the academic left who argue that color blindness is problematic precisely because it offers a way to avoid addressing social problems.
Yet, in addition to suggesting that the academic left casts all proponents of color blindness as naïve, Friedersdorf also contends that they waste time picking apart this concept rather than addressing "macroagressions" such as police brutality and growing expressions of virulent racist hatred. But Bonilla-Silva, among others, describes the ways that color blindness sustains these very macroaggressions that Friedersdorf thinks are ignored. In other words, Friedersdorf suggests the academic left wastes time dissecting the concept of color blindness, and would be better served focusing on more pressing, systemic processes of inequality. But a careful read of sociological literature in this area finds that there are more than a few members of the academic left who argue that color blindness is problematic precisely because it offers a way to avoid addressing these exact social problems. Other sociologists such as Jessie Daniels and David Cort focus explicitly on researching hate speech on the internet and the lower rates of crime among immigrants relative to native-born Americans, respectively-the very issues that Friedersdorf, by his own admission, charges are important and believes are overlooked by the academic left. Sociologists are actually very involved in highlighting these macroaggressions-and in underscoring the ways color-blind ideology allows them to go ignored.

Advocates of color blindness, like Friedersdorf, tend to claim that emphasizing whites' group identity as whites (rather than as individuals) is counterproductive. Rejecting color blindness and encouraging whites to see themselves as members of a distinct racial group, they argue, will produce nativism. They will cling to, rather than critique, the privileges that whiteness affords, which are jeopardized by a more multiracial society. Friedersdorf calls it naïve to believe that upon focusing on their status as members of a racial group and the privilege and power that affords them, "masses of white people will identify more strongly with their racial tribe and then sacrifice the interests of that tribe."

This is, in the abstract, a compelling point. The trouble is that the weight of the scholarly evidence directly contradicts this argument. Sociologists such as Karyn McKinney, Eileen O'Brien, Joe Feagin, Hernan Vera, and Matthew Hughey, who have studied the pathways and trajectories by which whites become involved in anti-racist activism, show that contrary to Friedersdorf's beliefs, moving away from color blindness can actually serve as a pathway toward anti-racism. In many of these studies, as whites came to understand themselves as members of a racial group that enjoyed unearned privileges and benefits, this compelled them to forge a different sense of white identity built on anti-racism rather than simply supporting the status quo. Moving away from the color-blind ideology that sociologists critique-the idea that it's admirable to profess not to see color, that it's problematic to see oneself as a member of a racial group-is, according to the research in this area, actually an important step to anti-racist activism.
In most social interactions, whites get to be seen as individuals. Racial minorities become aware from a young age that people will often judge them as members of their group.
There's a strong emphasis on individualism in American culture. Friedersdorf argues that "race is a pernicious concept that robs people of their individuality ... the academic left also underestimates how divisive it can be to put anything other than individualism at the center of identity." But ironically, this focus on individualism is itself a function of group position. Whites, by and large, enjoy the luxury of promoting the importance of the individual, because they benefit from living in a racially stratified society where whiteness is normalized. In most social interactions, whites get to be seen as individuals. Racial minorities, by contrast, become aware from a young age that people will often judge them as members of their group, and treat them in accordance with the (usually negative) stereotypes attached to that group.

Everyone wants to be treated as an individual and recognized for their personal traits and characteristics. But the color blindness that sociologists critique doesn't allow for this. Instead, it encourages those who endorse this perspective to ignore the ongoing processes that maintain racial stratification in schools, neighborhoods, health care, and other social institutions. Can color consciousness draw attention to these issues? The research demonstrates that it can lead to more understanding of our racially stratified society and can give rise to a willingness to work for change. So from that perspective, it doesn't seem worth abandoning just yet.

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white peers.the atlantic’s conor friedersdorf

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part of a broad set of sociological research

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If You Don't See Race, How Can You See Racial Inequality?

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How many times have you heard someone say that they "don't see color," "are color-blind," or "don't have a racist bone in their body?" Maybe you've even said this yourself. After all, the dominant language around racial issues today is typically one of color blindness, as it's often meant to convey distaste for racial practices and attitudes common in an earlier era.

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by Carol Daniel for The Moth Radio Hour

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The Moth | Stories | I Knew You Were Black

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A radio-host is at the center of a debate of identity.

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from The Moth Radio Hour

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The Moth | Radio Hour | Fathers and Children: Adventures, Joys, and Predicaments

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This hour is dedicated to Fathers - to having a father, to being one... And to celebrating the stories that Fatherhood provokes. Hosted by Jay Allison. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media.

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Chiemezie Anyaeji discusses the difficult and important father-son relationship.

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The Burden of Fatherhood. – Chiemezie Anyaeji – Medium

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The playwright and his work

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The Theater of August Wilson, Pulitzer winning playwright now showing Jersey Boys

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The Theater of August Wilson, Pulitzer winning playwright, your guide to August Wilson plays. Are you looking for the August Wilson Theatre, Broadway, New York currently showing the smash hit musical - Jersey Boys!

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Alfre Woodard performs Sojourner Truth's speech.

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Voices of a People's History of the United States

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Alfre Woodard reads "Ain't I a Woman?", a speech delivered by abolitionist Sojourner Truth at the Women's Convention in 1851. Part of a reading from Voices of a People's History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove,)February 1, 2007 at All Saints Church in Pasadena, CA.

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Sojourner Truth's Speech in 1851

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Amandla Stenberg Discusses Empathy and Code-Switching in THUG Interview

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Amandla Stenberg Discusses Empathy and Code-Switching in THUG Interview

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Trever Noah sits down with actress Amandla Stenberg about her portrayal of Starr Carter in The Hate U Give.

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Amandla Stenberg - Portraying Code-Switching in “The Hate U Give” | The Daily Show

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A discussion of the role of the yard/porch/stoop to the family and community.

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"Steps from the Sidewalk" Trailer. Documentary on Stoop Culture in NYC and Brooklyn

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Jackie Robinson and more...

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One of America's most iconic and inspiring stories-Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color line in 1947-is retold in the film 42, which opens nationally this weekend. Even if you're not a baseball fan, the film will tug at your heart and have you rooting for Robinson to overcome the racist obstacles put in his way. It is an uplifting tale of courage and determination that is hard to resist, even though you know the outcome before the movie begins.

But despite bravura performances by relatively unknown Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and superstar Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey (the Brooklyn Dodgers' general manager who recruited Robinson and orchestrated his transition from the Negro Leagues to the all-white Major Leagues), the film strikes out as history, because it ignores the true story of how baseball's apartheid system was dismantled.

Related Story

The film portrays baseball's integration as the tale of two trailblazers-Robinson, the combative athlete and Rickey, the shrewd strategist-battling baseball's, and society's, bigotry. But the truth is that it was a political victory brought about by a social protest movement. As an activist himself, Robinson would likely have been disappointed by a film that ignored the centrality of the broader civil rights struggle.

That story has been told in two outstanding books, Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment (1983) and Chris Lamb's Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball (2012). As they recount, Rickey's plan came after more than a decade of effort by black and left-wing journalists and activists to desegregate the national pastime. Beginning in the 1930s, the Negro press, civil rights groups, the Communist Party, progressive white activists, and radical politicians waged a sustained campaign to integrate baseball. It was part of a broader movement to eliminate discrimination in housing, jobs, and other sectors of society. It included protests against segregation within the military, mobilizing for a federal anti-lynching law, marches to open up defense jobs to blacks during World War II, and boycotts against stores that refused to hire African Americans under the banner "don't shop where you can't work." The movement accelerated after the war, when returning black veterans expected that America would open up opportunities for African Americans.

Robinson broke into baseball when America was a deeply segregated nation. In 1946, at least six African Americans were lynched in the South. Restrictive covenants were still legal, barring blacks (and Jews) from buying homes in many neighborhoods-not just in the South. Only a handful of blacks were enrolled in the nation's predominantly white colleges and universities. There were only two blacks in Congress. No big city had a black mayor.
Martin Luther King Jr. once told Dodgers star Don Newcombe, another former Negro Leaguer, "You'll never know what you and Jackie and Roy [Campanella] did to make it possible to do my job."
It is difficult today to summon the excitement that greeted Robinson's achievement. The dignity with which Robinson handled his encounters with racism-including verbal and physical abuse on the field and in hotels, restaurants, trains, and elsewhere-drew public attention to the issue, stirred the consciences of many white Americans, and gave black Americans a tremendous boost of pride and self-confidence. Martin Luther King Jr. once told Dodgers star Don Newcombe, another former Negro Leaguer, "You'll never know what you and Jackie and Roy [Campanella] did to make it possible to do my job."

Robinson, who spent his entire major league career (1947 to 1956) with the Dodgers, was voted Rookie of the Year in 1947 and Most Valuable Player in 1949, when he won the National League batting title with a .342 batting average. An outstanding base runner and base stealer, with a .311 lifetime batting average, he led the Dodgers to six pennants and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962.

42 is the fourth Hollywood film about Robinson. All of them suffer from what might be called movement myopia. We may prefer our heroes to be rugged individualists, but the reality doesn't conform to the myth embedded in Hollywood's version of the Robinson story.

In The Jackie Robinson Story, released in 1950, Robinson played himself and the fabulous Ruby Dee portrayed his wife Rachel. Produced at the height of the Cold War, five years before the Montgomery bus boycott, the film celebrated Robinson's feat as evidence that America was a land of opportunity where anyone could succeed if he had the talent and will. The movie opens with the narrator saying, "This is a story of a boy and his dream. But more than that, it's a story of an American boy and a dream that is truly American."

In 1990 TNT released a made-for-TV movie, The Court Martial of Jackie Robinson, starring Andre Braugher, which focused on Robinson's battles with racism as a soldier during World War II. In 1944, while assigned to a training camp at Fort Hood in segregated Texas, Robinson, a second lieutenant, refused to move to the back of an army bus when the white driver ordered him to do so, even though buses had been officially desegregated on military bases. He was court martialed for his insubordination, tried, acquitted, transferred to another military base, and honorably discharged four months later. By depicting Robinson as a rebellious figure who chafed at the blatant racism he faced, the film foreshadows the traits he would have to initially suppress once he reached the majors.

HBO's The Soul of the Game, released in 1996, focused on the hopes and then the frustrations of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, the two greatest players in the Negro Leagues, whom Branch Rickey passed up to integrate the majors in favor of Robinson, played by Blair Underwood. Rickey had long wanted to hire black players, both for moral reasons and because he believed it would increase ticket sales among the growing number of African Americans moving to the big cities. He knew that if the experiment failed, the cause of baseball integration would be set back for many years. Rickey's scouts identified Robinson-who was playing for the Negro League's Kansas City Monarchs after leaving the army-as a potential barrier-breaker. Rickey could have chosen other Negro League players with greater talent or more name recognition, but he wanted someone who could be, in today's terms, a role model. Robinson was young, articulate and well educated. His mother moved the family from Georgia to Pasadena, California in 1920 when Robinson was 14 months ago. Pasadena was deeply segregated, but Robinson lived among and formed friendships with whites growing up there and while attending Pasadena Junior College and UCLA. He was UCLA's first four-sport athlete (football, basketball, track, and baseball), twice led the Pacific Coast League in scoring in basketball, won the NCAA broad jump championship, and was a football All-American. Rickey knew that Robinson had a hot temper and strong political views, but he calculated that Robinson could handle the emotional pressure while helping the Dodgers on the field. Robinson promised Rickey that, for at least his rookie year, he would not respond to the inevitable verbal barbs and even physical abuse he would face on a daily basis.

In 1997, America celebrated Robinson with a proliferation of conferences, museum exhibits, plays, and books. Major League Baseball retired Robinson's number-42-for all teams. President Bill Clinton appeared with Rachel Robinson at Shea Stadium to venerate her late husband.

But the next Hollywood movie about Robinson didn't arrive until this year's 42, written and directed by Brian Helgeland (screenwriter of L.A. Confidential and Mystic River), under the auspices of Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures. The real story of baseball's integration has plenty of drama and could have easily been incorporated into the film.

Starting in the 1930s, reporters for African-American papers (especially Wendell Smith of the Pittsburgh Courier, Fay Young of the Chicago Defender, Joe Bostic of the People's Voice in New York, and Sam Lacy of the Baltimore Afro-American), and Lester Rodney, sports editor of the Communist paper, the Daily Worker, took the lead in pushing baseball's establishment to hire black players. They published open letters to owners, polled white managers and players (some of whom were threatened by the prospect of losing their jobs to blacks, but most of whom said that they had no objections to playing with African Americans), brought black players to unscheduled tryouts at spring training centers, and kept the issue before the public. Several white journalists for mainstream papers joined the chorus for baseball integration.

Progressive unions and civil rights groups picketed outside Yankee Stadium the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field in New York City, and Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field in Chicago. They gathered more than a million signatures on petitions, demanding that baseball tear down the color barrier erected by team owners and Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. In July 1940, the Trade Union Athletic Association held an "End Jim Crow in Baseball" demonstration at the New York World's Fair. The next year, liberal unions sent a delegation to meet with Landis to demand that major league baseball recruit black players. In December 1943, Paul Robeson, the prominent black actor, singer, and activist, addressed baseball's owners at their annual winter meeting in New York, urging them to integrate their teams. Under orders from Landis, they ignored Robeson and didn't ask him a single question.

National Endowment for the Humanities

In 1945, Isadore Muchnick, a progressive member of the Boston City Council, threatened to deny the Red Sox a permit to play on Sundays unless the team considered hiring black players. Working with several black sportswriters, Muchnick persuaded the reluctant Red Sox general manager, Eddie Collins, to give three Negro League players-Robinson, Sam Jethroe, and Marvin Williams-a tryout at Fenway Park in April of that year. The Sox had no intention of signing any of the players, nor did the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago White Sox, who orchestrated similar bogus auditions. But the public pressure and media publicity helped raise awareness and furthered the cause.

Other politicians were allies in the crusade. Running for re-election to the New York City Council in 1945, Ben Davis-an African-American former college football star, and a Communist-distributed a leaflet with the photos of two blacks, a dead soldier and a baseball player. "Good enough to die for his country," it said, "but not good enough for organized baseball." That year, the New York State legislature passed the Quinn-Ives Act, which banned discrimination in hiring, and soon formed a committee to investigate discriminatory hiring practices, including one that focused on baseball. In short order, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's established a Committee on Baseball to push the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers to sign black players. Left-wing Congressman Vito Marcantonio, who represented Harlem, called for an investigation of baseball's racist practices.

This protest movement set the stage for Robinson's entrance into the major leagues. In October 1945, Rickey announced that Robinson had signed a contract with the Dodgers. He sent Robinson to the Dodgers' minor-league team in Montreal for the 1946 season, then brought him up to the Brooklyn team on opening day, April 15, 1947.

The Robinson experiment succeeded-on the field and at the box office. Within a few years, the Dodgers had hired other black players-pitchers Don Newcombe and Joe Black, catcher Roy Campanella, infielder Jim Gilliam, and Cuban outfielder Sandy Amoros-who helped turn the 1950s Dodgers into one of the greatest teams in baseball history.

Viewers of 42 will see no evidence of the movement that made Robinson's-and the Dodgers'-success possible. For example, Andrew Holland plays Pittsburgh Courier reporter Wendell Smith, but he's depicted as Robinson's traveling companion and the ghost-writer for Robinson's newspaper column during his rookie season. The film ignores Smith's key role as an agitator and leader of the long crusade to integrate baseball before Robinson became a household name.

Robinson recognized that the dismantling of baseball's color line was a triumph of both a man and a movement. During and after his playing days, he joined the civil rights crusade, speaking out-in speeches, interviews, and his column-against racial injustice. In 1949, testifying before Congress, he said: "I'm not fooled because I've had a chance open to very few Negro Americans."

Robinson viewed his sports celebrity as a platform from which to challenge American racism. Many sportswriters and most other players-including some of his fellow black players, content simply to be playing in the majors-considered Robinson too angry and vocal about racism in baseball and society.
Robinson viewed his sports celebrity as a platform from which to challenge American racism. Many sportswriters and other players-including some of his fellow black players-considered Robinson too angry and vocal about racism.
When Robinson retired from baseball in 1956, no team offered him a position as a coach, manager, or executive. Instead, he became an executive with the Chock Full o' Nuts restaurant chain and an advocate for integrating corporate America. He lent his name and prestige to several business ventures, including a construction company and a black-owned bank in Harlem. He got involved in these business activities primarily to help address the shortage of affordable housing and the persistent redlining (lending discrimination against blacks) by white-owned banks. Both the construction company and the bank later fell on hard times and dimmed Robinson's confidence in black capitalism as a strategy for racial integration.

In 1960, Robinson supported Hubert Humphrey, the liberal Senator and civil rights stalwart from Minnesota, in his campaign for president. When John Kennedy won the Democratic nomination, however, Robinson shocked his liberal fans by endorsing Richard Nixon. Robinson believed that Nixon had a better track record than JFK on civil rights issues, but by the end of the campaign-especially after Nixon refused to make an appearance in Harlem-he regretted his choice.

During the 1960s, Robinson was a constant presence at civil rights rallies and picket lines, and chaired the NAACP's fundraising drive. Angered by the GOP's opposition to civil rights legislation, he supported Humphrey over Nixon in 1968. But he became increasingly frustrated by the pace of change.

"I cannot possibly believe," he wrote in his autobiography, I Never Had It Made, published shortly before he died of a heart attack at age 53 in 1972, "that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare."

In 1952, five years after Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, only six of major league baseball's 16 teams had a black player. It was not until 1959 that the last holdout, the Boston Red Sox, brought an African American onto its roster. The black players who followed Robinson shattered the stereotype-once widespread among many team owners, sportswriters, and white fans-that there weren't many African Americans "qualified" to play at the major league level. Between 1949 and 1960, black players won 8 out of 12 Rookie of the Year awards, and 9 out of 12 Most Valuable Player awards in the National League, which was much more integrated than the American League. Many former Negro League players, including Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Don Newcombe, and Ernie Banks, were perennial All-Stars.

But academic studies conducted from the 1960s through the 1990s uncovered persistent discrimination. For example, teams were likely to favor a weak-hitting white player over a weak-hitting black player to be a benchwarmer or a utility man. And even the best black players had fewer and less lucrative commercial endorsements than their white counterparts.

In the 16 years he lived after his retirement in 1956, Robinson pushed baseball to hire blacks as managers and executives and even refused an invitation to participate in the 1969 Old Timers game because he did not yet see "genuine interest in breaking the barriers that deny access to managerial and front office positions." No major league team had a black manager until Frank Robinson was hired by the Cleveland Indians in 1975. The majors' first black general manager-the Atlanta Braves' Bill Lucas-wasn't hired until 1977.

Last season, players of color represented 38.2 percent of majo- league rosters, according to a report by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida. Black athletes represented only 8.8 percent of major-league players-a dramatic decline from the peak of 27 percent in 1975, and less than half the 19 percent in 1995. One quarter of last season's African-Americans players were clustered on three teams-the Yankees, Angels, and Dodgers. Their shrinking proportion is due primarily to the growing number of Latino (27.3%) and Asian (1.9%) players, including many foreign-born athletes, now populating major league rosters.

But there are also sociological and economic reasons for the decline of black ballplayers. The semi-pro, sandlot, and industrial teams that once thrived in black communities, serving as feeders to the Negro Leagues and then the major leagues, have disappeared. Basketball and football have replaced baseball as the most popular sports in black communities, where funding for public school baseball teams and neighborhood playgrounds with baseball fields has declined. Major league teams more actively recruit young players from Latin America, who are typically cheaper to hire than black Americans, as Adrian Burgos, in Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (2007) and Rob Ruck, in Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the Black and Latin Game (2012) document.

Among today's 30 teams, there are only four managers of color-three blacks (the Reds' Dusty Baker, the Astros' Bo Porter, and the Rangers' Ron Washington) and one Latino (the Braves' Fredi Gonzalez). (Two of last season's Latino managers-the Indians' Manny Acta, and Ozzie Guillen of the Marlins-were fired). One Latino (Ruben Amaro Jr. of the Phillies) and one African American (Michael Hill of the Marlins) serve as general managers. (White Sox GM Ken Williams, an African American, was promoted to executive VP during the off-season.) Arturo Moreno, a Latino, has owned the Los Angeles Angels since 2003. Basketball great Earvin "Magic" Johnson, part of the new group that purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers last year, is the first African-American owner of a major league team.

Like baseball, American society-including our workplaces, Congress and other legislative bodies, friendships, and even families-is more integrated than it was in Robinson's day. But there is still an ongoing debate about the magnitude of racial progress, as measured by persistent residential segregation, a significantly higher poverty rate among blacks than whites, and widespread racism within our criminal justice and prison systems.

As Robinson understood, these inequities cannot be solved by individual effort alone. It also requires grassroots activism and protest to attain changes in government policy and business practices. 42, misses an opportunity to recap this important lesson. Robinson's legacy is to remind us of the unfinished agenda of the civil rights revolution and of the important role that movements play in moving the country closer to its ideals.

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The Real Story of Baseball's Integration That You Won't See in 42

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One of America's most iconic and inspiring stories-Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color line in 1947-is retold in the film 42, which opens nationally this weekend. Even if you're not a baseball fan, the film will tug at your heart and have you rooting for Robinson to overcome the racist obstacles put in his way.

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The Times discusses the change and evolution of the American family.

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The Changing American Family (Published 2013)

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Same-sex parents. Cohabiting couples. Voluntary kin. Children with parents in prison. Immigrant-Americans. What we thought of as the typical American family is being rapidly redefined. It is more diverse than it was even half a year ago.

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Ben Passmore's necessary contribution to the dialogue around race in the United States, Your Black Friend is a letter from your black friend to you about race, racism, friendship and alienation. The revised print edition of the Your Black Friend comic is in gorgeous full color on fancy matte paper stock.

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Interview with Harvard professor and author Randall Kennedy discusses various views on the n-word within the African-American community.

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How the n-word became the 'atomic bomb of racial slurs'

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Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the social rules of the "n-word."

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Ta-Nehisi Coates on words that don't belong to everyone | We Were Eight Years In Power Book Tour

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Take a closer look at the system.

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By Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner
March 24, 2020
Press release

Can it really be true that most people in jail are being held before trial? And how much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs? These questions are harder to answer than you might think, because our country's systems of confinement are so fragmented. The various government agencies involved in the justice system collect a lot of critical data, but it is not designed to help policymakers or the public understand what's going on. As public support for criminal justice reform continues to build, however, it's more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big picture.

This report offers some much needed clarity by piecing together this country's disparate systems of confinement. The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. This report provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.S., and dispels some modern myths to focus attention on the real drivers of mass incarceration, including exceedingly punitive responses to even the most minor offenses.

This big-picture view allows us to focus on the most important drivers of mass incarceration and identify important, but often ignored, systems of confinement. The detailed views bring these overlooked systems to light, from immigration detention to civil commitment and youth confinement. In particular, local jails often receive short shrift in larger discussions about criminal justice, but they play a critical role as " incarceration's front door " and have a far greater impact than the daily population suggests.

While this pie chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional system, the graphic does not capture the enormous churn in and out of our correctional facilities, nor the far larger universe of people whose lives are affected by the criminal justice system. Every year, over 600,000 people enter prison gates, but people go to jail 10.6 million times each year. Jail churn is particularly high because most people in jails have not been convicted. Some have just been arrested and will make bail within hours or days, while many others are too poor to make bail and remain behind bars until their trial. Only a small number (about 160,000 on any given day) have been convicted, and are generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a year. At least 1 in 4 people who go to jail will be arrested again within the same year - often those dealing with poverty, mental illness, and substance use disorders, whose problems only worsen with incarceration.

With a sense of the big picture, the next question is: why are so many people locked up? How many are incarcerated for drug offenses? Are the profit motives of private companies driving incarceration? Or is it really about public safety and keeping dangerous people off the streets? There are a plethora of modern myths about incarceration. Most have a kernel of truth, but these myths distract us from focusing on the most important drivers of incarceration.

Five myths about mass incarceration

The overcriminalization of drug use, the use of private prisons, and low-paid or unpaid prison labor are among the most contentious issues in criminal justice today because they inspire moral outrage. But they do not answer the question of why most people are incarcerated, or how we can dramatically - and safely - reduce our use of confinement. Likewise, emotional responses to sexual and violent offenses often derail important conversations about the social, economic, and moral costs of incarceration and lifelong punishment. Finally, simplistic solutions to reducing incarceration, such as moving people from jails and prisons to community supervision, ignore the fact that "alternatives" to incarceration often lead to incarceration anyway. Focusing on the policy changes that can end mass incarceration, and not just put a dent in it, requires the public to put these issues into perspective.

The first myth: Releasing "nonviolent drug offenders" would end mass incarceration

It's true that police, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for nothing more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost half a million people, and nonviolent drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police still make over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences. Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.

Nevertheless, 4 out of 5 people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug offense - either a more serious offense or an even less serious one. To end mass incarceration, we will have to change how our society and our justice system responds to crimes more serious than drug possession. We must also stop incarcerating people for behaviors that are even more benign.

The second myth: Private prisons are the corrupt heart of mass incarceration

In fact, less than 9% of all incarcerated people are held in private prisons; the vast majority are in publicly-owned prisons and jails. Some states have more people in private prisons than others, of course, and the industry has lobbied to maintain high levels of incarceration, but private prisons are essentially a parasite on the massive publicly-owned system - not the root of it.

Nevertheless, a range of private industries and even some public agencies continue to profit from mass incarceration. Many city and county jails rent space to other agencies, including state prison systems, the U.S. Marshals Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Private companies are frequently granted contracts to operate prison food and health services (often so bad they result in major lawsuits), and prison and jail telecom and commissary functions have spawned multi-billion dollar private industries. By privatizing services like phone calls, medical care and commissary, prisons and jails are unloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming their budgets at an unconscionable social cost.

The third myth: Prisons are "factories behind fences" that exist to provide companies with a huge slave labor force

Simply put, private companies using prison labor are not what stands in the way of ending mass incarceration, nor are they the source of most prison jobs. Only about 5,000 people in prison - less than 1% - are employed by private companies through the federal PIECP program, which requires them to pay at least minimum wage before deductions. (A larger portion work for state-owned "correctional industries," which pay much less, but this still only represents about 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)

But prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for food service, laundry and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2017 study found that on average, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $3.45 per day for the most common prison jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay nothing at all. Moreover, work in prison is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections. Forcing people to work for low or no pay and no benefits allows prisons to shift the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people - hiding the true cost of running prisons from most Americans.

The fourth myth: People in prison for violent or sexual crimes are too dangerous to be released

Particularly harmful is the myth that people who commit violent or sexual crimes are incapable of rehabilitation and thus warrant many decades or even a lifetime of punishment. As lawmakers and the public increasingly agree that past policies have led to unnecessary incarceration, it's time to consider policy changes that go beyond the low-hanging fruit of "non-non-nons" - people convicted of non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual offenses. If we are serious about ending mass incarceration, we will have to change our responses to more serious and violent crime.

Recidivism data do not support the belief that people who commit violent crimes ought to be locked away for decades for the sake of public safety. People convicted of violent and sexual offenses are actually among the least likely to be rearrested, and those convicted of rape or sexual assault have rearrest rates 20% lower than all other offense categories combined. More broadly, people convicted of any violent offense are less likely to be rearrested in the years after release than those convicted of property, drug, or public order offenses. One reason: age is one of the main predictors of violence. The risk for violence peaks in adolescence or early adulthood and then declines with age, yet we incarcerate people long after their risk has declined.

Despite this evidence, people convicted of violent offenses often face decades of incarceration, and those convicted of sexual offenses can be committed to indefinite confinement or stigmatized by sex offender registries long after completing their sentences. And while some of the justice system's response has more to do with retribution than public safety, more incarceration is not what most victims of crime want. National survey data show that most victims want violence prevention, social investment, and alternatives to incarceration that address the root causes of crime, not more investment in carceral systems that cause more harm.

The fifth myth: Expanding community supervision is the best way to reduce incarceration

Community supervision, which includes probation, parole, and pretrial supervision, is often seen as a "lenient" punishment, or as an ideal "alternative" to incarceration. But while remaining in the community is certainly preferable to being locked up, the conditions imposed on those under supervision are often so restrictive that they set people up to fail. The long supervision terms, numerous and burdensome requirements, and constant surveillance (especially with electronic monitoring) result in frequent "failures," often for minor infractions like breaking curfew or failing to pay unaffordable supervision fees.

In 2016, at least 168,000 people were incarcerated for such "technical violations" of probation or parole - that is, not for any new crime. Probation, in particular, leads to unnecessary incarceration; until it is reformed to support and reward success rather than detect mistakes, it is not a reliable "alternative."

The high costs of low-level offenses

Most justice-involved people in the U.S. are not accused of serious crimes; more often, they are charged with misdemeanors or non-criminal violations. Yet even low-level offenses, like technical violations of probation and parole, can lead to incarceration and other serious consequences. Rather than investing in community-driven safety initiatives, cities and counties are still pouring vast amounts of public resources into the processing and punishment of these minor offenses.

Probation & parole violations and "holds" lead to unnecessary incarceration

Often overlooked in discussions about mass incarceration are the various "holds" that keep people behind bars for administrative reasons. A common example is when people on probation or parole are jailed for violating their supervision, either for a new crime or a "technical violation." If a parole or probation officer suspects that someone has violated supervision conditions, they can file a "detainer" (or "hold"), rendering that person ineligible for release on bail. For people struggling to rebuild their lives after conviction or incarceration, returning to jail for a minor infraction can be profoundly destabilizing. The national data do not exist to say exactly how many people are in jail because of probation or parole violations or detainers, but initial evidence shows that these account for over one-third of some jail populations. This problem is not limited to local jails, either; in 2019, the Council of State Governments found that 1 in 4 people in state prisons are incarcerated as a result of supervision violations.

Misdemeanors: Minor offenses with major consequences

The " massive misdemeanor system" in the U.S. is another important but overlooked contributor to overcriminalization and mass incarceration. For behaviors as benign as jaywalking or sitting on a sidewalk, an estimated 13 million misdemeanor charges sweep droves of Americans into the criminal justice system each year (and that's excluding civil violations and speeding). These low-level offenses account for over 25% of the daily jail population nationally, and much more in some states and counties.

Misdemeanor charges may sound like small potatoes, but they carry serious financial, personal, and social costs, especially for defendants but also for broader society, which finances the processing of these court cases and all of the unnecessary incarceration that comes with them. And then there are the moral costs: People charged with misdemeanors are often not appointed counsel and are pressured to plead guilty and accept a probation sentence to avoid jail time. This means that innocent people routinely plead guilty, and are then burdened with the many collateral consequences that come with a criminal record, as well as the heightened risk of future incarceration for probation violations. A misdemeanor system that pressures innocent defendants to plead guilty seriously undermines American principles of justice.

"Low-level fugitives" live in fear of incarceration for missed court dates and unpaid fines

Defendants can end up in jail even if their offense is not punishable with jail time. Why? Because if a defendant fails to appear in court or to pay fines and fees, the judge can issue a "bench warrant" for their arrest, directing law enforcement to jail them in order to bring them to court. While there is currently no national estimate of the number of active bench warrants, their use is widespread and in some places, incredibly common. In Monroe County, N.Y., for example, over 3,000 people have an active bench warrant at any time, more than 3 times the number of people in the county jails.

But bench warrants are often unnecessary. Most people who miss court are not trying to avoid the law; more often, they forget, are confused by the court process, or have a schedule conflict. Once a bench warrant is issued, however, defendants frequently end up living as " low-level fugitives," quitting their jobs, becoming transient, and/or avoiding public life (even hospitals) to avoid having to go to jail.

Offense categories might not mean what you think

To understand the main drivers of incarceration, the public needs to see how many people are incarcerated for different offense types. But the reported offense data oversimplifies how people interact with the criminal justice system in two important ways: it reports only one offense category per person, and it reflects the outcome of the legal process, obscuring important details of actual events.

First, when a person is in prison for multiple offenses, only the most serious offense is reported. So, for example, there are people in prison for violent offenses who were also convicted of drug offenses, but they are included only in the "violent" category in the data. This makes it hard to grasp the complexity of criminal events, such as the role drugs may have played in violent or property offenses. We must also consider that almost all convictions are the result of plea bargains, where defendants plead guilty to a lesser offense, possibly in a different category, or one that they did not actually commit.

Secondly, many of these categories group together people convicted of a wide range of offenses. For violent offenses especially, these labels can distort perceptions of individual "violent offenders" and exaggerate the scale of dangerous violent crime. For example, "murder" is an extremely serious offense, but that category groups together the small number of serial killers with people who committed acts that are unlikely, for reasons of circumstance or advanced age, to ever happen again. It also includes offenses that the average person may not consider to be murder at all. In particular, the felony murder rule says that if someone dies during the commission of a felony, everyone involved can be as guilty of murder as the person who pulled the trigger. Acting as lookout during a break-in where someone was accidentally killed is indeed a serious offense, but many may be surprised that this can be considered murder in the U.S.

Lessons from the smaller "slices": Youth, immigration, and involuntary commitment

Looking more closely at incarceration by offense type also exposes some disturbing facts about the 52,000 youth in confinement in the United States: too many are there for a "most serious offense" that is not even a crime. For example, there are over 6,600 youth behind bars for technical violations of their probation, rather than for a new offense. An additional 1,700 youth are locked up for "status" offenses, which are "behaviors that are not law violations for adults, such as running away, truancy, and incorrigibility." Nearly 1 in 10 youth held for a criminal or delinquent offense is locked in an adult jail or prison, and most of the others are held in juvenile facilities that look and operate a lot like prisons and jails.

Turning to the people who are locked up criminally and civilly for immigration-related reasons, we find that 11,100 people are in federal prisons for criminal convictions of immigration offenses, and 13,600 more are held pretrial by the U.S. Marshals. The vast majority of people incarcerated for criminal immigration offenses are accused of illegal entry or illegal re-entry - in other words, for no more serious offense than crossing the border without permission.

Another 39,000 people are civilly detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) not for any crime, but simply for their undocumented immigrant status. ICE detainees are physically confined in federally-run or privately-run immigration detention facilities, or in local jails under contract with ICE. An additional 3,600 unaccompanied children are held in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), awaiting placement with parents, family members, or friends. While these children are not held for any criminal or delinquent offense, most are held in shelters or even juvenile placement facilities under detention-like conditions.

Adding to the universe of people who are confined because of justice system involvement, 22,000 people are involuntarily detained or committed to state psychiatric hospitals and civil commitment centers. Many of these people are not even convicted, and some are held indefinitely. 9,000 are being evaluated pre-trial or treated for incompetency to stand trial; 6,000 have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but mentally ill; another 6,000 are people convicted of sexual crimes who are involuntarily committed or detained after their prison sentences are complete. While these facilities aren't typically run by departments of correction, they are in reality much like prisons.

Beyond the "Whole Pie": Community supervision, poverty, and race and gender disparities

Once we have wrapped our minds around the "whole pie" of mass incarceration, we should zoom out and note that people who are incarcerated are only a fraction of those impacted by the criminal justice system. There are another 840,000 people on parole and a staggering 3.6 million people on probation. Many millions more have completed their sentences but are still living with a criminal record, a stigmatizing label that comes with collateral consequences such as barriers to employment and housing.

Beyond identifying how many people are impacted by the criminal justice system, we should also focus on who is most impacted and who is left behind by policy change. Poverty, for example, plays a central role in mass incarceration. People in prison and jail are disproportionately poor compared to the overall U.S. population. The criminal justice system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of money bail: The median felony bail bond amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of 8 months' income for the typical detained defendant. As a result, people with low incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention. Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration; it is also frequently the outcome, as a criminal record and time spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities.

It's no surprise that people of color - who face much greater rates of poverty - are dramatically overrepresented in the nation's prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of U.S residents. The same is true for women, whose incarceration rates have for decades risen faster than men's, and who are often behind bars because of financial obstacles such as an inability to pay bail. As policymakers continue to push for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, as has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in state prisons.

Equipped with the full picture of how many people are locked up in the United States, where, and why, our nation has a better foundation for the long overdue conversation about criminal justice reform. For example, the data makes it clear that ending the war on drugs will not alone end mass incarceration, though the federal government and some states have taken an important step by reducing the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. Looking at the "whole pie" also opens up other conversations about where we should focus our energies:

Are state officials and prosecutors willing to rethink not just long sentences for drug offenses, but the reflexive, simplistic policymaking that has served to increase incarceration for violent offenses as well?

Do policymakers and the public have the stamina to confront the second largest slice of the pie: the thousands of locally administered jails? Will state, county, and city governments be brave enough to end money bail without imposing unnecessary conditions in order to bring down pretrial detention rates? Will local leaders be brave enough to redirect public spending to smarter investments like community-based drug treatment and job training?

What is the role of the federal government in ending mass incarceration? The federal prison system is just a small slice of the total pie, but the federal government can certainly use its financial and ideological power to incentivize and illuminate better paths forward. At the same time, how can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges - who all control larger shares of the correctional pie - slow the flow of people into the criminal justice system?

Given that the companies with the greatest impact on incarcerated people are not private prison operators, but service providers that contract with public facilities, will states respond to public pressure to end contracts that squeeze money from people behind bars?

Can we implement reforms that both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. and the well-known racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system?

Now that we can see the big picture of how many people are locked up in the United States in the various types of facilities, we can see that something needs to change. Looking at the big picture requires us to ask if it really makes sense to lock up 2.3 million people on any given day, giving this nation the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Both policymakers and the public have the responsibility to carefully consider each individual slice in turn to ask whether legitimate social goals are served by putting each group behind bars, and whether any benefit really outweighs the social and fiscal costs.

Even narrow policy changes, like reforms to money bail, can meaningfully reduce our society's use of incarceration. At the same time, we should be wary of proposed reforms that seem promising but will have only minimal effect, because they simply transfer people from one slice of the correctional "pie" to another. Keeping the big picture in mind is critical if we hope to develop strategies that actually shrink the "whole pie."

People new to criminal justice issues might reasonably expect that a big picture analysis like this would be produced not by reform advocates, but by the criminal justice system itself. The unfortunate reality is that there isn't one centralized criminal justice system to do such an analysis. Instead, even thinking just about adult corrections, we have a federal system, 50 state systems, 3,000+ county systems and 25,000+ municipal systems, and so on. Each of these systems collects data for its own purposes that may or may not be compatible with data from other systems, and that might duplicate or omit people counted by other systems.

This isn't to discount the work of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which, despite limited resources, undertakes the Herculean task of organizing and standardizing the data on correctional facilities. And it's not to say that the FBI doesn't work hard to aggregate and standardize police arrest and crime report data. But the fact is that the local, state, and federal agencies that carry out the work of the criminal justice system - and are the sources of BJS and FBI data - weren't set up to answer many of the simple-sounding questions about the "system."

Similarly, there are systems involved in the confinement of justice-involved people that might not consider themselves part of the criminal justice system, but should be included in a holistic view of incarceration. Juvenile justice, civil detention and commitment, immigration detention, and commitment to psychiatric hospitals for criminal justice involvement are examples of this broader universe of confinement that is often ignored. The "whole pie" incorporates data from these systems to provide the most comprehensive view of incarceration possible.

To produce this report, we took the most recent data available for each part of these systems, and where necessary adjusted the data to ensure that each person was only counted once, only once, and in the right place.

Finally, readers who rely on this report year after year may notice that some of the data have not changed since the last version was published in 2019, including the number of people in jails in Indian country, on probation, and on parole. This is because, since 2017, government data releases have been delayed by many months - even years - compared to past publication schedules, and the data collected over two years ago have yet to be made public.

These delays are not limited to the regular data publications that this report relies on, but also special data collections that provide richly detailed, self-reported data about incarcerated people and their experiences in prison and jail, namely the Survey of Prison Inmates (conducted in 2016 for the first time since 2004) and the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails (last conducted in 2002 and now slated for 2021 - which would make a 2022 report about 15 years off-schedule).

While we eagerly await these future releases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, we anticipate that without significant investments in funding, staffing, and leadership, its data releases will continue at their current pace. For this reason, the next updates to our "Whole Pie" reports will likely also follow a slower schedule.

Not directly comparable with past pie reports

Before explaining the data sources, we want to explain two methodology changes that make this report not directly comparable with past reports. Unlike past years, in this report:

We included all youth in residential placement for justice system involvement that were "detained" (as opposed to "committed") in our pretrial detention detail slide. Until last year (2019), we included only youth who were detained because they were awaiting a hearing or adjudication. Our current methodology also includes youth whose status was "detained" while they were awaiting disposition or placement, because the court had not yet committed them to the facility where they were held.

We included children held in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in our immigration detention count in the main graphic, and in several detail slides. While these children are not held by ORR because of any criminal or delinquent charges, they are typically held in detention-like conditions; therefore, they fit into our holistic view of confinement in the U.S.

Data sources

This briefing uses the most recent data available on the number of people in various types of facilities and the most significant charge or conviction. This year, as discussed above, several planned government reports were not published on their anticipated schedule, delayed in part by the government shutdown of December 2018 and January 2019. We sought out alternative data sources where possible, but some data simply has yet to be updated. Furthermore, because not all types of data are collected each year, we sometimes had to calculate estimates; for example, we applied the percentage distribution of offense types from the previous year to the current year's total count data. For this reason, we chose to round most labels in the graphics to the nearest thousand, except where rounding to the nearest ten, nearest one hundred, or (in two cases in the jails detail slide) the nearest 500 was more informative in that context. This rounding process may also result in some parts not adding up precisely to the total.

Our data sources were:

State prisons: Vera Institute of Justice, People in Prison 2018 Table 2 provides the total yearend 2018 population. This report does not include offense data, however, so we applied the ratio of offense types calculated from the most recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report on this population, Prisoners in 2017 Table 13 (as of December 31, 2016) to the 2018 total state prison population.

Jails: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Jail Inmates in 2017 Table 1 and Table 3, reporting average daily population and convicted status for midyear 2017, and our analysis of the Survey of Inmates in Local Jails, 2002 for offense types. See below and Who is in jail? Deep dive for why we used our own analysis rather than the otherwise excellent Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis of the same dataset, Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.

Federal:

Bureau of Prisons: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Population Statistics, reporting data as of February 20, 2020 (total population of 174,923), and Prisoners in 2017 Table 15, reporting data as of September 30, 2017 (we applied the percentage distribution of offense types from that table to the 2020 convicted population).

U.S. Marshals Service provided a breakdown of its "Prisoner Operations" population as of October 2018 by facility type (state and local, private contracted, federal, and non-paid facilities) in a response to our public records request. The number held in local jails came from our analysis of the Annual Survey of Jails 2017 data set, which showed that 23,552 people were held for the Marshals Service. To estimate the number held in state facilities, we subtracted the 23,552 held in jails from the combined "state and local facilities" population reported in the FOIA response. Because the offense totals reported in the FOIA response do not add up to the reported population total, we created our own estimated offense breakdown, by applying the ratio of reported offense types (excluding the vague "other new offense" and "not reported" categories") to the total October 2018 population. It is worth noting that the U.S. Marshals detainees held in federal facilities and private contracted facilities were not included in several previous editions of this report, as they are not included in most of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' jails or prisons data sets.

Youth: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP), reporting total population and facility data for October 25, 2017. Our data on youth incarcerated in adult prisons comes from Prisoners in 2017 Table 11, reporting data for December 31, 2017, and youth in adult jails from Jail Inmates in 2017 Table 3, reporting data for the last weekday in June, 2017. The number of youth reported in Indian Country facilities comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Jails in Indian Country, 2016 Appendix Table 4, reporting data for June 30, 2016. For more information on the geography of the juvenile system, see the Youth First Initiative.

Immigration detention: The February 22, 2020 count of 39,000 in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention comes from ICE's Currently Detained Population spreadsheet. The count of 3,600 youth in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody comes from the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Program Fact Sheet, reporting the population as of January 30, 2020. Our estimates of how many ICE detainees are held in federal, private, and local facilities come from our analysis of a comprehensive ICE detention facility list from November 2017, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center. 7% were in federal Service Processing Centers, 66% in private contract facilities, and 27% in city and county operated jails.

Justice-related involuntary commitment:

State psychiatric hospitals (people committed to state psychiatric hospitals by courts after being found "not guilty by reason of insanity" (NGRI) or, in some states, "guilty but mentally ill" (GBMI) and others held for pre-trial evaluation or for treatment as "incompetent to stand trial" (IST)): These counts are from pages 92, 99, and 104 of the August 2017 NRI report, Forensic Patients in State Psychiatric Hospitals: 1999-2016, reporting data from 37 states for 2014. The categories NGRI and GBMI are combined in this data set, and for pre-trial, we chose to combine pre-trial evaluation and those receiving services to restore competency for trial, because in most cases, these indicate people who have not yet been convicted or sentenced. This is not a complete view of all justice-related involuntary commitments, but we believe these categories and these facilities capture the largest share.

Civil detention and commitment: (At least 20 states and the federal government operate facilities for the purposes of detaining people convicted of sexual crimes after their sentences are complete. These facilities and the confinement there are technically civil, but in reality are quite like prisons. People under civil commitment are held in custody continuously from the time they start serving their sentence at a correctional facility through their confinement in the civil facility.) The civil commitment counts come from an annual survey conducted by the Sex Offender Civil Commitment Programs Network shared by SOCCPN President Shan Jumper. Counts for most states are from the 2019 survey, but for states that did not participate in 2019, we included the most recent figures available: Nebraska, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania's counts are from 2018, the BOP's count is from 2017, and North Dakota's is from 2016. .

Territorial prisons (correctional facilities in the U.S. Territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and U.S. Commonwealths of Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico): Prisoners in 2017 Table 20, reporting data for December 31, 2017.

Indian Country (correctional facilities operated by tribal authorities or the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs): Jails in Indian Country, 2016 Table 1, reporting data for June 30, 2016.

Military: Prisoners in 2017 Tables 18 (for total population) and 19 (for offense types) reporting data as of December 31, 2017.

Probation and parole: Our counts of the number of people on probation and parole are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics report Correctional Populations in the United States, 2016 Table 1, Table 5 and Appendix Table 1, reporting data for December 31, 2016, and were adjusted to ensure that people with multiple statuses were counted only once in their most restrictive category. (At the time of publication, newer data collected in 2016 was expected but not yet available.) For readers interested in knowing the total number of people on parole and probation, ignoring any double-counting with other forms of correctional control, there are 874,800 people on parole and 3,673,100 people on probation.

Private facilities: Except for local jails (which we will explain in the "Adjustments to avoid double counting" section below) our identification of the number of people held in private facilities was straightforward:

Adjustments to avoid double counting

To avoid counting anyone twice, we performed the following adjustments:

To avoid anyone in immigration detention being counted twice, we removed the 27% (10,439) of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) detained population that is held under contract in local jails from the total jail population. We removed 34.1% of these ICE detainees from the jail convicted population and the balance from the unconvicted population. (We based these percentages of the population held for ICE on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002, as detailed in our report, Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.)

To avoid anyone in local jails on behalf of state or federal prison authorities from being counted twice, we removed the 80,917 people - cited in Table 17 of Prisoners in 2017 - confined in local jails on behalf of federal or state prison systems from the total jail population and from the numbers we calculated for those in local jails that are convicted. To avoid those being held by the U.S. Marshals Service from being counted twice, we removed 23,552 Marshals detainees from the jail total that we found through our own analysis of the 2017 Annual Survey of Jails dataset. We removed 75.9% of these people held in jails for the Marshals from the jail convicted population, and the balance from the jail unconvicted population. (Again, we based these percentages on our analysis of the Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002.)

Because we removed ICE detainees and people under the jurisdiction of federal and state authorities from the jail population, we had to recalculate the offense distribution reported in Profile of Jail Inmates, 2002 who were "convicted" or "not convicted" without the people who reported that they were being held on behalf of state authorities, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service, or U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Our definition of "convicted" was those who reported that they were "To serve a sentence in this jail," "To await sentencing for an offense," or "To await transfer to serve a sentence somewhere else." Our definition of not convicted was "To stand trial for an offense," "To await arraignment," or "To await a hearing for revocation of probation/parole or community release."

For our analysis of people held in private jails for local authorities, we needed to use a measure that avoided double counting people who were held in private jails for other agencies (described in "private facilities," above). This is a problem because of many private facilities that hold people for local jails also hold people for other agencies. (In fact, the majority of people confined in private jails are held for federal and state authorities.) We therefore used the Census of Jails 2013 (private facilities have "8" as the third digit of the FACID variable) and we removed the number of people held for the Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Bureau of Indian Affairs, other federal authorities, state prison systems, and those under tribal hold. After these adjustments, we determined that there were 6,048 people held by private facilities for local authorities.

Read the entire methodology
Acknowledgments

All Prison Policy Initiative reports are collaborative endeavors, but this report builds on the successful collaborations of the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, 2018, and 2019 versions. For this year's report, the authors are particularly indebted to Heidi Altman of the National Immigrant Justice Center for feedback and research pointers on immigration detention, Emily Widra and Roxanne Daniel for research support, Wanda Bertram and Alexi Jones for their helpful edits, and Shan Jumper for sharing updated civil detention and commitment data. Any errors or omissions, and final responsibility for all of the many value judgements required to produce a data visualization like this, however, are the sole responsibility of the authors.

We thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge for their support of our research into the use and misuse of jails in this country. We also thank Public Welfare Foundation and each of our individual donors who give us the resources and the flexibility to quickly turn our insights into new movement resources.

About the authors

Wendy Sawyer is the Research Director at the Prison Policy Initiative. She is the author of the Youth Confinement: The Whole Pie, The Gender Divide: Tracking women's state prison growth, and the 2016 report Punishing Poverty: The high cost of probation fees in Massachusetts. She recently co-authored Arrest, Release, Repeat: How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems with Alexi Jones. In addition to these reports, Wendy frequently contributes briefings on recent data releases, academic research, women's incarceration, pretrial detention, probation, and more.

Peter Wagner is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Prison Policy Initiative. He co-founded the Prison Policy Initiative in 2001 in order to spark a national discussion about the negative side effects of mass incarceration. He is a co-author of a landmark report on the dysfunction in the prison and jail phone market, Please Deposit All of Your Money. Some of his most recent work includes Following the Money of Mass Incarceration and putting each state's overuse of incarceration into the international context in States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018.

He is @PWPolicy on Twitter.

About the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. Alongside reports like this that help the public more fully engage in criminal justice reform, the organization leads the nation's fight to keep the prison system from exerting undue influence on the political process (a.k.a. prison gerrymandering) and plays a leading role in protecting the families of incarcerated people from the predatory prison and jail telephone industry and the video visitation industry.

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By Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner March 24, 2020 Press release Can it really be true that most people in jail are being held before trial? And how much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs? These questions are harder to answer than you might think, because our country's systems of confinement are so fragmented.

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Watch this video on the impact housing segregation has on communities of color.

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Housing segregation is in everything. But to understand the root of this issue, you have to look at the government-backed policies that created the housing disparities we see today.

Gene Demby explains how these policies came to be, and what effect they've had on schools, health, family wealth and policing.

For more on this story, check out this week's episode of the Code Switch podcast.

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VIDEO: Housing Segregation In Everything

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast Housing segregation is in everything. But to understand the root of this issue, you have to look at the government-backed policies that created the housing disparities we see today. Gene Demby explains how these policies came to be, and what effect they've had on schools, health, family wealth and policing.

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Michelle Alexander:  The Future of Race in America

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Michelle Alexander:  The Future of Race in America

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Watch this TED talk by author and civil rights lawyer, Michelle Alexander.

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The future of race in America: Michelle Alexander at TEDxColumbus

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Identity and Healing

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The body is unmade. It breaks. This is not a physical breaking. Not always. And it doesn't happen at once. But it is a splintering all the same - sometimes slow, sometimes quick. You might think of it as an invisible pain, but that would be imprecise, because no pain is truly invisible to the afflicted. A felt presence is a real thing. A tangible thing. A sometimes shameful thing.

Last year I carried a great deal of shame with me. In late May, just as the first tints of summer began to wink in New York City - a hum of warm breeze, the rebellious blare of car stereos down city blocks - I received a call from my doctor. He phoned to tell me that he thought it was possible I had lupus, an autoimmune disease, and suggested I come in for more tests. But because words have the power to simultaneously cut deep and impair the senses, I didn't really hear him when he said it at first. At work, surrounded by colleagues, I remember the room going silent. I remember feeling weak and afraid. The kind of fear I hadn't known existed until, suddenly, it was the only option available to me. I hurried out of the building, clamoring for air.

I should back up. At the beginning of 2016, a cluster of dark brown patches appeared on the right side of my forehead. Like a birthmark but not a birthmark. Panicked, late-night research on WebMD and medical forums wielded a medley of results. I opted for a specialist. In his preliminary diagnosis, the doctor reported: The findings are most suggestive of connective tissue disease and, specifically, cutaneous lupus erythematosus. (When I told my mother the news, being the devoutly religious and eternally optimistic black woman she is, she claimed: "No! That's an evil report." The devil, she believed, was at work).

The next week I had a biopsy done (for the uninitiated: a small plot of forehead skin was scraped off and sent to a lab). But it turned out my mother was right; the results came back negative. Still, as a final precaution, it was recommended I see a rheumatologist, who also concluded there were no signs of lupus. It could be hyperpigmentation, he said. Or nothing at all. "Skin does funny things," he told me before I left his office. I received the news with mixed emotions: my body was free of disease, so naturally I was elated, but I still carried a sense of profound embarrassment - the dark patches remained. They were, for me, marks of shame. I felt inadequate. I felt ugly. I felt broken. Most of all, I felt no sense of control over my body. So I sought to reclaim it in the small way I knew how. I hopped on an uptown train to Harlem, and headed for the barbershop.

Maybe you came in for a low fade. Or a flat top. Or shape up. Or a #6 (a skin fade with a part). Maybe you recently lost your job, or have a job interview in the coming days. Maybe grief has found its way into your life and the passing of a family member requires that you look your best for their home going. Maybe your arrival was unplanned, and you lucked upon the shop on your way somewhere else. Maybe the congregation of men outside, thundering with a kind of bountiful, brotherly glee, caught your ear. It does not matter now because you have arrived - a paradise found, a sanctuary unearthed.

I've never admitted this to anyone, but what I wanted that late spring day was to feel beautiful, more whole. Men enter the barbershop for untold reasons, and sometimes a haircut is the least of them. We aren't expected to be beautiful. It isn't a label typically ascribed to the physical markers of male identity. Despite measures of progress in the media, which conditions much of how people are perceived - I'm thinking of films like Moonlight and texts such as Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped and Danez Smith's [Insert] Boy - beauty, for all the dimension it possesses, is not how society, on the whole, understands manhood. For black men, this can be especially true.

So you begin to wonder if the world had seen Philando Castile or Terence Crutcher or Jordan Edwards as beautiful, perhaps they might be with us today. We are desperate to be rendered visible. We want to be acknowledged by others, assured and held tight. In the heritage of American horrors, black men and boys have paid a particular price for this desire to be seen - and all for what? To be granted some semblance of selfhood, of humanity. It is rarely spoken, but I think men enter the barbershop seeking a form of beauty, be it in their physical appearance or their inner self. Maybe it's clarity with regard to a personal issue, or the ease of fellowship the space provides. Maybe after a burdensome week, you are in need of release among your tribe. These are intimacies camouflaged in a simple request: Look at me.

For all the regressive politics about sexuality or gender it sometimes harbors, the black barbershop has remained a space of pride, community, and reflection across generations, much in the same way the black church has. Much of its power is culled from its communal ethos: for hours, men rhapsodize about sports or dating or music or The First Black President. In this way, the space is a lot like fire - it crackles and yaps and roars. It is a warmth desperately yearned for. An identity less afforded to the barbershop is how intimate and vulnerable of a place it can be. The hiss of clippers clicks on, and your head suddenly becomes a canvas - it is the barber as sculptor and as counselor. Maybe he cradles your head like so, fading your sides with a hushed confidence, or maybe he tilts your chin upward, lining your beard and going on about his kids and the importance of "being there" for people when they need you. If barbering is a kind of art, then the relationship the barber has to his artwork, the client, is defined by these moments of tenderness and a genuine, knowing trust.

"In a lot of ways, barbers are our therapists. The shop is where I learned what being a black man was about early on," my friend T recently told me. "Unlike every other convening or environment that I have been in, there were not many places that all men got together and could talk freely. I remember going into the barbershop one Saturday without an appointment and ended up being there for eight hours. I just sat and watched boys and men from different walks of life come in a get their hair cut in a personalized way, which made me realize that barbers are, in part, responsible for how we develop and reinforce our identity."

Damon Young, writing on Very Smart Brothas, once phrased it another way: "It is not uncommon to enter the shop with a terrible, Fraggle Rock shape up and a serious bout of depression and leave with a cut that bumps you up from a 'hard five' to a 'decent seven,' a smile, a new outlook on life, actual life insurance, and bootlegged copies of Straight Outta Compton and Booty Talk 72."

I was looking to be trans-formed last May. In a way, I needed to be put back together. A haircut, for me, has become a restorative experience. At its best, it transforms - mind, body, soul. Maybe when I walked in, my barber Deron knew something was up. I'm sure he'd seen a familiar despondency in others before. And wasn't that just it? Me wanting to be seen and him seeing me? A haircut isn't a cure-all - for much of the year the dark patches were the root of private embarrassment; a self-imposed psychological mindfuck - but a clean fade and a shape up can be a lifeline, a saving grace.

The shop pulsed with a warm energy that evening. A chorus of men who spoke to each other with furious excitement were consumed by ESPN and talk of playoff basketball. Like each time before, Deron began in the same manner: he draped a thin red cape over my body and asked, "What we doing?" I told him "the usual." He clicked on his clippers and I closed my eyes. And then I thought to myself: The body breaks. But it can be remade.

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The power and politics of the black barbershop

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The body is unmade. It breaks. This is not a physical breaking. Not always. And it doesn't happen at once. But it is a splintering all the same - sometimes slow, sometimes quick. You might think of it as an invisible pain, but that would be imprecise, because no pain is truly invisible to the afflicted.