The parallels between the end of the 20th Century and the end of the 19th Century are striking. Following the Civil War, Black people led a Reconstruction in which they asserted their rights to full citizenship. The Bush Part II years promise no less. The privatization of public space, amenities and entitlements is segregating Black people from these rights and quality of life conditions. Racial profiling by police and private security is used to target Black mall shoppers, drivers, and pedestrians who may venture into public spaces where they are not wanted.
Black families experience isolation and the loss of civil and social rights in other forms.
Fifty percent of Black children in the U.S. live in poverty. The public foster care system too is removing itself from the care of its wards, one- half of whom are Black. Increasingly, private agencies are monitoring these children, and their well-being is subject not only to the profit margins of private enterprise but also corruption. As more Black people are pushed from welfare rolls and Black people find it increasingly difficult to find living wage employment, they are disproportionately finding themselves incarcerated in a private, for- profit prison industrial complex. Corporations contract with local, state, and federal governments to build and operate facilities and to provide food, clothing, and other services to an institutionalized population whose increasing numbers only serve to fuel private profits.