Or so said Manning Marable, professor of history at Columbia University. He was speaking yesterday at Fayetteville State University about crime and the disproportionately high rate of incarceration among blacks. Here’s a gem:
?The prison industrial complex is responsible for condemning tens of millions of our fellow citizens to disenfranchised living,? Marable said to an audience of about 100, including some police officers. ?It further alienates them from society and from public life.?
One source of the problem is the end of many affirmative action programs at colleges and universities. Dozens shut down summer camps and fellowships for minority students after a Supreme Court ruling in 2003, Marable said. Black enrollment dropped at many colleges in the following years.
