I am skeptical whenever it is suggested that we have entered a period of “post”-anything, as if at that very moment the nature of reality had changed so fundamentally and universally it deserved a new method of categorization. I was especially skeptical of this in the days following the election, as political pundits and commentators declared Barack Obama’s election signaled a transfer into a new “post-racial” period of our nation’s history. What warranted such optimism? As we erroneously patted ourselves on the back for successfully crafting a “post-racial” society, the greatest remnant of institutionalized racial disparity left in American society remained far away from the conversation in a place few would guess — our system of justice.

If you are a black citizen in the United States, the chance that you will be incarcerated is seven times greater than if you were white. If you are a young black man, that means there is a 32 percent chance that at some point in your life you will spend time in prison, which means you have about the same chance of spending time in prison as one of your white counterparts has at getting a four-year degree.

The intuitive response to these nationally based statistics would seem to be that this must be almost solely a result of racial discrimination occurring in the South. That response would be wrong. In Wisconsin, even though African-Americans compose 6 percent of the overall population, they represent 45 percent of the population in adult Department of Correction Facilities. The amount of racial disparity in our state consistently ranks among the worst in the union. In fact, what statistics have shown is that rates of racial disparity in state systems of incarceration in northern states almost universally eclipse those of southern states in which the history of racial discrimination is rooted.

However, disparity does not necessarily equal discrimination. Certainly, racism does not run rampant amongst the actors in our state and nation’s criminal justice systems. In fact, you would likely be hard-pressed to find an admitted racist in Wisconsin’s system. Some amount of disparity in incarceration is surely a reflection of differences in rates of crimes committed, created and reinforced by greater social and economic factors. But, what studies have shown, is that this does not account for nearly as much of the disparity as one might think. In fact, black-to-white disparity is essentially the same among groups with similar demographic properties, such as level of education, income etc. As University of Wisconsin professor of sociology Pamela Oliver, a leading scholar in the field, put it, “Is it just differences in crime, or is it discrimination? The answer, in all cases, is both.”

So, what causes such disparity and discrimination? What scholars such as professor Oliver have found is that, though there are disparities across the entire range of crimes (about 10 to 1), the overall situation is more a result of the huge disparity in drug offenses (70 to 1), especially pertaining to lesser drug offenses committed by young people. The kicker here is that public health data consistently shows the rates of illegal drug use are actually lower among blacks ages 18-25 than whites of the same age group, including marijuana and crack cocaine.

So, effectively what we have are young black men being incarcerated at overtly discriminatory rates largely for petty drug offenses which originated in the outdated “War on Drugs.”

Place this in the context of a projected state deficit of $5.4 billion by 2011. If there has been one dependable source of growing state spending in the last 30 years it has been in the area of incarceration. Perhaps rather than deciding the next generation’s education needs to be sacrificed in the name of fiscal responsibility or that health care isn’t really that important after all, a re-examination of whether we should lock that petty drug offender up, allow him or her to learn how to become a drug dealer, and then put them back in prison 10 years down the road is called for.

Instead, rather than paying for this person’s legal fees and prison stays, let’s direct them to community programs and alternative sources outside of prison right off the bat. In doing so, not only would strides be made in reducing the state deficit, but more importantly, it would be a significant, though not sufficient, step to reducing the embarrassing and undeniable racial disparity within our system of criminal justice. And just maybe, a bold move in the direction of that “post-racial” society it seems almost all of us desire.

Alec Slocum ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in philosophy and legal studies.