THIS WAY FOR BLACK EMPOWERMENT

BY LENORA FULANI (WILL ADDRESS TRP CONGRESS FRIDAY APRIL 7)

SYNDICATED IN OVER 100 BLACK NEWSPAPERS IN THE USA

MARCH 15

Last week New York State Governor George Pataki signed a death penalty bill, restoring capital punishment after nearly 20 years. This was Governor Pataki's big campaign promise - to make New York tougher on crime by making the most heinous murderers punishable by death.

It is certainly true that more and more people- white and Black- have come to believe that the death penalty could be an effective measure in combating crime. Even though the statistics prove that the death penalty is in no way a deterrent, it has become more popular as a "solution"." Why? In my view, it is because most people feel powerless in the face of rising crime and violence and the death penalty seems like something to do that might make a difference. It isn't. But the politicians have deftly capitalized on the public's fear and anger at being so impotent. Many believe support for the death penalty was a key to Pataki's victory over Mario Cuomo in New York. And on a national level, the Democrat-sponsored Clinton Crime Bill, which passed last year with Republican support, identified 60 new crimes for which Americans could be executed. Both parties use the death penalty issues as a political football, but have no real solutions for stopping crime and violence or for changing the conditions which produc

e them.

While I am completely sympathetic to the lack of trust in liberal solutions (prison rehabilitation has been one of the most monumental social policy failures of this century), I do not believe that capital punishment is the answer. I have always opposed the death penalty and still do. Study after study proves conclusively that capital punishment does not act as deterrent to murder or any other violent crime. But the death penalty does have a huge impact on the Black community. Thanks to the racist nature of the American judicial system, no white person has ever been executed for killing a Black person. Moreover, a disproportionately high number of those on Death Row are men of color. In many ways the African American community was condemned to death long ago. Endemic poverty, unemployment, poor education, drugs and the day-to-day abuse and violence of racism are built into American society.

Ironically, the rise of violent crime and the increased popularity of the death penalty share a similar cause: powerlessness. Unable to make a life for themselves due to economic, social and/or psychological instability, and powerless to change these conditions, some turn to violent crimes. Unable to get the government to set the country on a developmental path, and dn powerless to change to government, more and more Americans support non-solutions like the death penalty.

The serious question in dealing with the pervasive problem of violent crime is how to get the country on a developmental path - economically, socially, psychologically and culturally. The popularity of the death penalty, and the willingness of politicians of both parties to put forth as a genuine solution in spite of the fact that it isn't, is just one more indicator that under the present political arrangements, there is no such path to development. you and I and other ordinary Americans are going to have to create it. And we're going to have to restructure the political arrangement in order to do so.