March 11, 2019
Late last week, the dramatic injustice of our “justice” system was once again made evident by the extraordinarily light sentence meted out to Paul Manafort by Judge T.S. Ellis of the Eastern District of Virginia. Diverging wildly from the sentencing guidelines, which recommend 19-24 years, Ellis sentenced Manafort to a mere 47 months, citing his “otherwise blameless life” as a rationale, (Source: “The ‘Otherwise Blameless’ Life of Paul Manafort,” by Franklin Foer, TheAtlantic.com, 3/7/19). As Franklin Foer and others have detailed, far from leading a blameless life, Manafort made a career lobbying for brutal authoritarians, bilking both his erstwhile business partners and banks and lying about all of it to save his sorry hide. In addition, Manafort displayed none of the contrition that is normally a precondition for a lenient sentence.
None of that mattered, as Judge Ellis seemed eager to help Manafort evade responsibility. Compare that with the sentence that Judge Ellis handed down to African American Congressman William Jefferson in 2009. Jefferson, who was convicted of bribery and arrested with $90,000 in cash in his freezer, was sentenced to 13 years in prison, (Source: “Paul Manafort’s Sentencing Produced One Last Awful Thing,” by Charles P. Pierce, Esquire.com, 3/8/19). Manafort’s light sentence is merely the latest in a long line of travesties proving that there are two sets of rules in this country depending on your race.
Compare the 16 count indictment returned against Jussie Smollett for allegedly falsely reporting a racist and homophobic attack with the fate of Carolyn Bryant Donham. While what Smollett is alleged to have done is indefensible, at worst, he wasted resources and diverted attention. Carolyn Bryant told lies that led directly to the gruesome murder of 14 year old Emmett Till, yet is enjoying a quiet Mississippi retirement, apparently unmolested by pangs of conscience (Source: “Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False,” by Richard Perez-Pena, The New York Times, 1/27/17).
In every sphere of American life, Black people are subjected to harsher penalties, stricter scrutiny and afforded far less latitude to make any missteps, large or small. We know all too well that there is no safety net for us if we stumble. Maintaining that balance is exhausting. Our everyday activities are repeatedly tracked and criminalized, from studying, to barbecuing to sitting at home in our own apartment, often with deadly consequences.
We don’t have the full rights of citizenship, thanks to a significant minority in this country determined to prevent Black people from achieving political power. Each time we have managed to attain some, an intransigent group of racists have emerged to strip us of that power. After the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, white supremacists waged a reign of terror that lasted one hundred years to prevent us from exercising our Constitutional rights. Once the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, those same forces erected numerous barriers designed to have the same impact. Let’s face it, the difference between murdering those who sought to register Black voters and imprisoning a Black woman for five years for mistakenly voting while on probation is merely a matter of degree. We haven’t ever had a true democracy in this country and Manafort’s sentence doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. The question for all of us: how hard are willing to work to establish one now?