One in Nine: Behind a Racially Discriminatory Sentencing Policy

by Lisa Swanson

During the last week in February, the Pew Center on the States released a report entitled One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. “For the first time,” the report stated, “More than one in every 100 adults is now confined in an American jail or prison.”

Demographic analysis of the prison populations revealed enormous racial disparities: while the incarceration rate for white adult men was one in 106, and one in 36 for Hispanic adult men, the incarceration rate for black men was found to be one in fifteen. Among black males ages 20 to 34, the incarceration rate jumps to one in every nine. Incarceration rates for women were similarly slanted, with black women ages 35 to 39 three and a half times more likely to be in jail than white women of the same age.

Seeing these numbers, a reader might be led to conclude that black males commit more crimes than Hispanic and white males. Or, a more thoughtful reader may believe that such high incarceration rates are primarily the result of poverty. After all, according to the most recent US Census, blacks have the highest poverty rate at 24%. Both of these responses neglect a very important piece of the puzzle.

The truth is that the United States criminal justice system often discriminates against black people at multiple levels. Take, for example, the infamous disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine sentencing, which has been responsible for disproportionately punishing people of color for over twenty years.

In the mid-1980s, crack began to appear in American cities. A new form of cocaine manufactured from powder, crack was sold in hard rocks which could be heated and smoked. Crack cocaine was more generally affordable than powder cocaine, and spread rapidly through urban areas.

As crack gained popularity, so did rumors that crack cocaine was stronger and more dangerous than powder cocaine. Crack was believed to be instantly addictive, incite violent behavior, and cause women to give birth to “crack babies”—infants who suffered from premature delivery, smaller heads, low birth weights, decreased motor abilities, and behavioral difficulties. Two decades later, these myths have been debunked. But at the time, many Americans were anxious about crack’s perceived ultra-harmful effects on society.

In June of 1986, University of Maryland college basketball player Len Bias died from a cocaine overdose within a day of being recruited by the Boston Celtics. Bias’s tragic death sparked a public drug panic, and Congress reacted by passing the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Included in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act were mandatory minimum sentences for possession of crack and powder cocaine. Possession of five grams of crack or possession of 500 grams of powder carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. Possession of 50 grams of crack or possession of 5000 grams of powder carried a ten year mandatory minimum.

These mandatory minimums set up a 100 to 1 disparity between the two drugs, although the amounts packed nearly the same number of doses gram for gram and had identical biological effects. There was a major difference, however, in the manufacture and distribution of crack and powder cocaine: powder tended to be more costly, more suburban, and more popular among white drug users, while crack tended to be more affordable, concentrated in urban areas, and more popular among black drug users. These differences were compounded as police efforts to combat drug use were often focused on low-income urban areas and communities of color. In addition, racial profiling contributed to the likelihood that drug users of color would be discovered more frequently than white drug users.

The differing social and economic implications of cocaine’s variant forms have been devastating to the black community. According to the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, African-Americans make up only 15% of the country’s drug users—but they make up 37% of those arrested for drug violations, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense. When data from before and after 1986 is compared, it’s clear that mandatory minimums are responsible for a shift in prison demographics. The Drug Policy Alliance has stated that in 1986, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 11 percent higher than for whites. By 1990, the average federal drug sentence for African Americans was 49 percent higher.

Racialized sentencing disparities have long been present in the United States criminal justice system. In 1984, Congress created the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency of the Judicial Branch which was intended to eliminate racial disparities. The job of the US Sentencing Commission was to set “sentencing guidelines,” the official ranges of appropriate correction time for crimes. In theory, these guidelines would prevent judges from handing out arbitrary sentences. But since Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act a mere two years later, Congress’s mandatory minimums have trumped any guidelines set by the US Sentencing Commission.

The Sentencing Commission has repeatedly advocated for the reduction or elimination of the crack vs. powder sentencing disparity. In 2004, the Sentencing Commission stated that revising the mandatory minimum for possession of crack would do more to reduce the racial sentencing gap “than any other single policy change.” And in 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission lowered the average sentence for crack cocaine offenders by fifteen months.

Despite recent action, only Congress can change the mandatory minimums. Currently, the House is deliberating among four bills that address the disparity, and three similar bills have been submitted in the Senate. Drug War Chronicle has reported that Bill Piper, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, is optimistic about the chances of a revised sentencing policy. But whether or not Congress will be able to reach a consensus during this session remains to be seen.

In the meantime, should you happen upon a statistic about the disproportionate number of young black men in jail, remind yourself and those around you of the real reason for the high percentage of incarcerated black men and women—systemically racist policies at work in our criminal justice system.

Interview: Steve Kleinedler, Supervising Editor of the American Heritage® Dictionary

by Clayton Perry

Words are the most powerful force on earth. Words impact the human experience and ignite the human spirit—evoking our inner passions and exciting our audio-visual senses. They inspire, inform and incite action. And when used wisely, at the right time and in the right place, the entire world changes.

In spite of the obvious power of words, the field of lexicography is quite small, and few individuals take the time to study such powerful weapons. One rising star in this field, however, is Steve Kleinedler, who has dedicated his life to linguistics, the study of the nature, structure, and variation of language. In fact, he has offered his body as a living sacrifice to his work: a phonetic vowel chart has been tattooed on his back.

As the supervising editor of the American Heritage® Dictionary, Steve Kleinedler assisted the development of the best-selling 100 Words series. Upon review of 100 Words to Make You Sound Great, Steve Kleinedler managed to squeeze some time out of his busy schedule and settle down for an interview with Clayton Perry— reflecting on life, lexicography and, of course, the power words.

Clayton Perry: How did the 100 Words series begin?

Steve Kleinedler: In 2002, to help publicize our fourth edition of the American Heritage®College Dictionary, we came up with a poster of a hundred words we thought high school graduates should know. It proved to be really popular. So we thought, what if we put these words into a book format? So we listed the words and their definitions and etymologies in 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know. It was very successful, and laid the foundation for the best-selling 100 Words series. 100 Words to Make You Sound Great, is the seventh of the series. Collectively, these books have sold over 500,000 copies, which is really something else. It speaks that people really like this. A hundred items is easy to for people to digest.

Clayton Perry: Yes, indeed. I found it very easy to approach 100 Words. Dictionaries can be such daunting things—and quite heavy too!

Steve Kleinedler: Since most people use dictionaries online these days, we’re losing the art of thumbing through dictionaries and getting lost in them, reading about other words that fall on the page of the word that you’re looking up. What the 100 Words books do is browse the dictionary for you. They give you a bite-size sample and you get to learn interesting things about words that you might not have known before.

Clayton Perry: So, out of this latest book, 100 Words to Make You Sound Great, what is your favorite word?

Steve Kleinedler: It’s hard to pick one. It’s kind of like asking a carpenter what his favorite nail is. I like what we do with the word juggernaut, which is itself an interesting word. In 100 Words to Make You Sound Great, we give quotations from well-known speakers. With this word, in addition to quotations, we have a really interesting note explaining how the word juggernaut entered English through Hindi via Sanskrit, where it ultimately came from. So there’s a lot of information about juggernaut, which means an overwhelming or unstoppable force. It’s kind of cool.

Clayton Perry: 100 Words to Make You Sound Great was my first introduction to the 100 Words series and I really like the layout. My favorite word out of the book was modus operandi. It was highlighted in a speech given Benazir Bhutto at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. It was exciting to see the word come alive instead of sitting idle on the page. Words are such powerful things. In fact, Rudyard Kipling once said that words are the most powerful drug used by mankind. What insight did Kipling have that escapes the casual word user?

Steve Kleinedler: More than anything else in our society, the power of communication is what allows people not only to convey how they feel, but to manipulate the world around them. Words are more powerful than a drug in that a drug’s effect is fleeting, temporary, and limited to the person who ingests it, whereas your words affect everyone around you, or anyone who can read or hear what you’re saying. I think that’s a very potent quote.

Clayton Perry: Speaking of the power of words, and looking at the current political landscape: Barack Obama has emerged as a man who is driven in part by his oratory. How do you think his use of words equates to his political strength?

Steve Kleinedler: There’s no doubt that he is a very powerful, dynamic speaker. In fact, we used a quotation from one of his speeches in 100 Words to Make You Sound Great. This book was compiled last summer, when he was one of perhaps fifteen or sixteen candidates running at the time. We have other politicians in this book from across the political spectrum, from Reagan and Eisenhower to Bella Azbug and Barack Obama. One of the reasons we chose one of Obama’s speeches is because even then, he was known for his oratory, much like Reagan was known for his skills as a communicator. I think the ability to coherently convey your message and, at the same time, to get people excited about what you’re saying and motivated to act on it is a very strong gift. It’s one that’s very powerful in politics and one that Obama knows how to use very well. I think the fact that he’s a powerful speaker can only help him.

Clayton Perry: In the land of lexicons, what process must a word undergo before it can be granted space in a dictionary? You hear people joke about Beyonce, and “bootylicious,” and words like that entering the dictionary, but what’s going on behind the scenes?

Steve Kleinedler: I will point out that we did not enter “bootylicious” in the American Heritage® Dictionary. However, there are a couple things going on and it depends on the type of word. There are some ideas or concepts that—well, take the elements in the periodic table, for example. All it takes is for the committee of the board that decides what the names of the elements are to say, “We’ve decided that element 111 is roentgenium,” and there you go. The people who are in charge of it said that this is what it is, and that’s all there is to say about it. It is what it is. Likewise, when they decided Pluto was not a planet anymore but a dwarf planet: You’ve got the body that decides this kind of thing saying, “Okay, we’ve created this category called dwarf planets.” It doesn’t matter how wide-ranging it is, it’s the fact that the people in charge of the IAU, the International Astronomical Union, said it was the case. Well, there you go. Other words—by far, most words—are handled differently. Take slang, for instance. The American Heritage® Dictionary We would want to see how wide-ranging it is. Is it limited to New York or L.A. or Washington, or is it widespread? Is it used within only one sphere? Is it just used in the music world? Is it just used in the financial world or whatever? Or has it leaped across boundaries, is it being used more generally by people outside the area where] the slang term first developed? So with slang, we want to see how widespread it is, whether it’s being used in a variety of sources. There are many slang dictionaries and slang web sites are out there; they’re great and that’s what their focus is. I’m not putting down slang. I’m not a slang lexicographer; it’s not something that I am personally skilled at. For words that aren’t slang but describe, say, new innovations in computer technology—blog is a good example. You’ve seen how widespread it is, who is using it, and where. You want to look at a variety of sources and at some point, you just say, “Okay, it’s time for this word to go in,” because it’s either widespread enough or well-known enough or used enough. isn’t a slang dictionary. So, what happens when a slang term, for example, is considered to be entered into the dictionary?

Clayton Perry: And how often do you go through this process of updating?

Steve Kleinedler: Well, we’re constantly going through this process. Even when we’re not putting out a new edition, we’re continually adding new information into the database from which the next printings and the next editions will come. The new editions come out every ten to twelve years and at that time, we’ll have added thousands of words. In between—when it’s not a new edition coming out but a new printing—we may add several dozen or hundreds of words. So we’re constantly adding new material.

Clayton Perry: How broad do you think the field is for lexicographers? How many people would you say are currently working in this field, at least with you?

Steve Kleinedler: Well, there’s the lexicography done by the publishing companies and then there are the academics—you’ve got people in universities researching this from a theoretical standpoint, or from other standpoints. The Dictionary Society of North America has, I think, a couple hundred members. How many people are actively working in a publishing company creating print dictionaries at this point? Probably less than 50.

Clayton Perry: Wow. I didn’t know the figure was going to be that low.

Steve Kleinedler: Oh yeah. And, of course, there are lexicographers working in England. If you look at the Oxford English Dictionary, you’ve got several dozen more there. But in the United States, there are probably about 50 of us working in print. And there are probably that many, maybe double that, in a university setting.

Clayton Perry: So it’s probably safe to say that you know a lot of your colleagues.

Steve Kleinedler: I probably know most of my colleagues. Yeah, we get together once every two years for a meeting. I’m on the executive board of the Dictionary Society of North America. I—we’re—you know—a squirrelly bunch.

Clayton Perry: [laughs] All right. How is it that words effectively represent the world? I guess that’s more of a philosophical question, because it’s interesting how, if you look at a word on paper, it’s just a word. But when you actually say it, it forms an experience. There’s emotion attached to it.

Steve Kleinedler: You’re right, that’s philosophical. That touches on linguistics and socio-linguistics and a whole variety of related social sciences. You know, words are powerful. Words have meaning, certainly from my standpoint and what I studied in school. My background is in context. I think, whenever you’re looking at any of this, you have to look at the context in which words are stated. Then, in the field of discourse analysis, you’re looking at how what you’re saying or writing is perceived by others. The question that you asked—one could write, and people have written, dissertations about it. That’s a huge, wide-ranging question.

Clayton Perry: What do you see in the future for yourself, and also for the 100 Words series?

Steve Kleinedler: The future is interesting. The past ten years has been an interesting period in lexicography as more people move online. Here at the American Heritage® Dictionary, we license our content to a lot of online providers, including Dictionary.com and others. I don’t want to focus on just that, but there’s a bunch of online providers. Often, if you’re doing an online search, what you see is ours or the competitor’s. We’re not the only ones doing this, but it’s not like our work or our output is restricted to print. What’s going to be interesting is seeing what the increasing availability of content online means to the print dictionary.

As far as my job is concerned, it stays the same. I’m creating content and revising definitions; I’m drafting definitions. How that material is disseminated to the world may be changing, but the basic work is still what I’ve been doing for the past ten or eleven years.

As far as the 100 Words series goes, there will definitely be more. Like I said, they are very popular, they’re fun to talk about, and I do a lot of radio interviews about them.

Clayton Perry: Well, the future certainly looks bright! I can’t wait for the next title in the 100 Words series.

Select Titles from the “100 Words” Series

▪ 100 Words Almost Everyone Confuses and Misuses (ISBN: 978-0-618-49333-3)

▪ 100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know (ISBN: 978-0-618-55146-0)

▪ 100 Words to Make You Sound Smart (ISBN: 978-0-618-71488-9)

▪ 100 Words to Make You Sound Great (ISBN: 978-0-618-88310-3)

For more information on the 100 Words series, please visit Houghton Mifflin’s website: http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com