Black History Month Mini-series: Spotlight on Angela Davis

I first heard of Angela Davis many years ago when I began studying Criminology. She is now 76 years old and has campaigned tirelessly for social justice in the US since the 1960s. She has an inspirational gift for expressing herself in a passionate yet measured way that I find extremely powerful.

She has highlighted the shocking disproportion of BAME prisoners to the percentage of white prisoners and once referred to the US prison system as an ‘out of control incarceration industry’. The passion that she expressed then and now have always remained with me.

It is estimated that the American criminal justice system holds around 2.3 million people (2019). It is estimated that overall black people are incarcerated at a rate of 1,408 per 100,000 while white people are incarcerated at a rate of 275 per 100,000. Therefore black people are estimated to be incarcerated at a rate that is 5.1 times that of white people.

In her book, Are Prisons Obsolete? (published in 2005), she stated that BAEM people have a far greater chance of going to prison than of getting a decent education, and that many young black Americans chose a military career to avoid what they had come to see as an almost inevitable incarceration.

This of course feeds directly into the current Black Lives Matter movement and all of the issues of inherent racism and social injustice.

In a recent Channel 4 interview she managed to give some hope to the current situation by saying, ‘This moment (in history) holds possibilities for change we have never before experienced.’  The power of such a statement in the midst of a frightening and desperate situation is that it gives hope for a better future:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3TU3QaarQE

by Guest Author Anna Kent

About Organisational Development Team

The OD team come from a range of backgrounds including Organisational Development; Learning & Development; Organisational Psychology; Human Resource Management; and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion. There are a wide range of interests across the team. Some examples are: Leadership, followership, personal development, team development, coaching, mentoring, equality, diversity, culture, staff engagement, wellbeing, personality, strengths, staff experience, employment law, and evidence-based practice.

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