Public institutions signal that black lives are disposable

Evidence

Inept public institutions in many black communities reinforce the belief that certain populations, certain black people, are disposable—that black lives don’t matter. Here we find constellations of public dysfunction dotting the landscape: poor health care delivery (even with Obamacare), neighborhoods without supermarkets or other access to fresh foods, few job opportunities, and payday loan centers that prey on people who need money. As if that isn’t enough, public schools repeatedly fail, and black children suffer disproportionately because of it. We see high dropout rates. And local municipalities ruthlessly close budget deficits on the backs of schools servicing these communities. In 2013, Chicago closed nearly 50 schools primarily in poor black and brown neighborhoods. From 2003 to 2013, Detroit closed 150 schools. All the while the police do what society demands: they arrest and lock up black people in these communities at alarming rates. Today they lock up more black people than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 62

Categorization

• XREF: The school-closure and incarceration data echo Michelle Alexander’s mass-incarceration claims in The New Jim Crow; the South Africa comparison is a familiar touchstone from that literature. — connects to: Institutions staffed by precarious workers signal care while assuming disposability — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2474
• SHARE: The Chicago 50 / Detroit 150 school closures paired against the South Africa-incarceration line is exactly the kind of stat a friend writing on school privatization would want.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 62