American black gulag: Sophistry or racism?

By John Phillips

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Gwynn Dyer's opinion article in The Jakarta Post on April 6, about the "American Gulag" raised some extremely important issues concerning American society. Unfortunately, it is also one of the best examples of sophistry I have ever read.

This article should be required reading in all classes covering logical reasoning skills as an example of what not to do.

The main problem with American jails is not racism, it is that putting people in jail will not cure the illnesses infecting American society. Jailing people will not cure a decline of community, the failure of social constraints, and the denial of responsibility.

Dyer asked some urgent questions and then did not answer them. He opted instead to tell us what African-Americans believe, as if he could speak for them, and then represents these beliefs as truth.

The big question he dismisses is one the world wants answered (or believes it knows the answer to): "Are modern Americans more criminal than other people?"

Dyer's answer is "One doubts it?"

He might be right, but we will never know because there is no evidence offered to support his argument.

He certainly defies the conventional wisdom and the perceptions of the majority of people in the world. This does not make him wrong, but he owes the reader an opportunity to decide by giving us evidence and letting us judge for ourselves.

Most people in the world believe otherwise. They see the level of mindless violence in America as escalating beyond anything any society has witnessed outside of class warfare or revolution.

They see freed criminals immediately commit another crime, and they wonder. They see a justice system that allows rich individuals to buy their way out of jail with clever lawyers and outrageous jury manipulation, and they wonder. They see tourists in Miami and Los Angeles preyed upon, robbed and murdered, and they wonder. They see mass murderers, gang rapists, drug lords, child abusers and freeway bandits, and they wonder. They see these same criminals serve a few years in jail and return to society even more violent, and they wonder. They wonder: Is American society more violent?

They don't know. Neither do I, but Dyer's argument obscures this fact in an poorly constructed argument that resorts to calls of oppression and racism, thus making reasonable discussion of these issues an act of political suicide in the U.S.

"Are black Americans more criminal than other people?", his next unanswered question, is even worse.

He points to the "ugly fact that half the U.S. prison population is now black" and states that this is the result of rampant racism. He is partially right, it is an ugly fact and it ought to be examined in detail, but not by automatically labeling this as evidence of racism or as the result of poverty -- his other demon.

He again offers no evidence to support his claim that it is "a crime to be poor" in the U.S. and that "latent American racism really does drive the machine" of jailing African-Americans. Who exactly is to blame for these people being in jail? Their victims and American society? Let's not forget that most victims of these crimes are poor African-Americans, and the entire society suffers more than the criminals do.

His label of the American gulag is an offensive misuse of the word. Gulag was applied to the Soviet political prison system that threw people into labor camps largely for the crime of pursuing human rights and freedom of speech.

It is offensive because these people suffered a great deal for their beliefs and persistence in seeking a more just society. They didn't go to prison because they killed someone, or robbed and beat, or raped and mutilated. Dyer ignores why American prisoners are in jail.

Instead, he offers up a very simplistic explanation of why the prison population has tripled since 1980. He sums it up with the word "poverty".

Then, he insults all African-Americans by blaming the loss of manufacturing jobs as the reason some African-Americans are in jail. He even ignorantly compares American prisons to the English system of transporting criminals to Australia.

He fails to disclose that most of the latter were just poor people or minor offenders. He then he states that this was a less brutal system.

Was it really a more just system, or is this an another example of sophistry?

We should ask the Australians if they mind taking a few more model prisoners so they can build a new life. Failing that, there is a big, empty Soviet gulag available for rent.

The writer is an education consultant based in Yogyakarta.