By Dayvon Love
The system of White supremacy is central to the culture of the political and policy making arena. Our collective subordination and oppression is normalized and deemed inevitable. The lack of access to Black collective wealth accumulation, the White domination of the human and social service sector, the devastation of the criminal justice system against our community, and many other challenges faced by our community are often muted or– at best– taken as background noise to issues that receive a majority of public attention and discourse.
In this upcoming Maryland General Assembly there are a few issues that should be of particular interest to Black people in Maryland. These issues need to be lifted beyond background noise and be brought to our collective attention.
Second Look Act
One of the impacts of the racism embedded in the criminal justice system is that Black people serve longer prison sentences for the same crimes committed by White people. In fact, according to a U.S. Sentencing Commission report in 2017, Black men receive sentences that are 20 percent longer than their White counterparts. This is compounded by the fact that Black people are five times more likely to be incarcerated than their White counterparts. This means that there are hundreds of Black people languishing behind bars who, in many cases, are victims of zealous prosecutors and a racist criminal justice system.
The Second Look Act, which was sponsored last year by Delegate Cheryl Pasteur, would allow for someone who has already spent 25 years in jail to have their sentence reviewed by a judge to determine whether their sentence can be reduced. Unfortunately this is going to be a heavy lift because the rhetoric that is often associated with this legislation is that “criminals are being let out of jail.”
Many of us have loved ones who have come in contact with the penal system. We know that there are some people who got into an altercation and, in self defense, killed someone but was prosecuted and convicted of murder by prosecutors and juries that can only see a murderer intent on causing harm– not a Black person acting in self defense. This perspective is driven by the societal belief that Black people are inherently criminal and violent. These are the kinds of cases that a judge should be able to review in order to get more of our people out of prison and with their families.
Ending the Automatic Charging of Youth as Adults
Sinclair Broadcasting has unleashed an aggressive propaganda campaign in Maryland to criminalize Black youth. They are borrowing heavily from societal beliefs that Black youth are more prone to violent crime and are culturally deficient. This has resulted in the resurgence of more punitive policies that bring more youth in contact with the criminal justice system and a shrinking of the capacity to prioritize alternatives to incarceration when appropriate.
Maryland incarcerates a higher percentage of its children in the adult prison system than any other state in the country besides Alabama. Black youth are two and a half times more likely to be incarcerated than their White counterparts, even though they make up only 31 percent of the population. Currently, when a young person is charged with a crime there are approximately 30 charges that automatically put them in the adult system, bypassing the juvenile justice system. In the adult system, youth are exposed to harsher and more traumatizing experiences. More than 60 percent of youth charged as adults are ultimately waived back down into the juvenile system, by the time they have been waived down they have already endured months of dehumanization by being placed in the adult system.
Currently, 81 percent of the youth charged as adults in Maryland are Black children. Youth who are charged with a crime should begin in the juvenile justice system and in order to be placed in the adult system, must have a hearing in front of a judge where they decide that it is necessary for the youth to be waived up.
Protecting legacy Black homeowners from the tax sale process
One of the local impacts of predatory capitalism is the use of the tax sale process to seize property from poor and working class homeowners. The tax sale process allows for people’s homes to be seized and sold to private companies from people who have not paid their property taxes. This is most detrimental to older Black homeowners on fixed incomes who cannot afford to pay the property taxes. There was an effort last session to allow for homeowners who have an outstanding water bill to have their homes put on the tax sale list. This would expand the potential for the loss of Black homeownership in a society where White families on average have 16 times the wealth of an average Black family. We have to stop any effort to allow outstanding water bills to be used to subject homeowners properties to tax sales.
Budget/reparations
Maryland is one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country in the world. Wealth, and access to public resources are highly concentrated in the hands of wealthy people and they are mostly White folks. Maryland is 1 of 42 states that tax the top 1 percent of income earners less than any other income group. And 92 percent of high wealth individuals in Maryland are White.
Taxation policies that require wealthier people to pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes to support important investments like public education and a reparations policy should be passed in Maryland. Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle has been advocating a reparations policy that would be funded by taxation of wealthy folks in Maryland which would include taxing capital gains, and a millionaires tax. Unfortunately, when there is conversation about investing public dollars in Black communities in any form it is often an underlying frame that these are “handouts.”
The truth is that public investments in mass incarceration, discriminatory housing policies, non profit profiteering on Black suffering etc. are all public investments in Black oppression that requires intentional investment to counter the damage caused by these policies. With the looming budget crisis there is a tendency by Democrats in Maryland to be conservative on these kinds of policies. Maryland needs to push through the blue dog Democratic Party logic that discourages economic redistribution to working class Black people.
The post Op-Ed: What to focus on in the 2025 Maryland General Assembly appeared first on AFRO American Newspapers.
