MSNBC Guest: America’s White Supremacy Culture Explains High Black Incarceration

Shaka King: America's "Institutional Racism and White Supremacy" (RealClearPolitics)

Shaka King, director of the film "Newlyweeds," joins MSNBC's "Hardball."

KING: The high incarceration rates are really just another example and symptom of institutional racism and white supremacy. The reason you're seeing so many young black men in jail now is the confluence of racist criminal justice system, racist law enforcement, racist education system, racist health care system, and these things are racist and classist, and the two are intertwined. So, I feel like the reason that you're seeing those high incarceration rates besides the draconian drug laws are just a confluence of, the confluence of white supremacy really.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Do you think that police officers do stop-and-frisk or any other kind of exercise in order to capture young men on drug charges?

KING: I think that they do it, the police do stop-and-frisk I think to get them in the system and to really to infect our minds and to make us believe that that's where we belong and that this is the way we should be treated. You know, the last time I was approached by the cops, they asked me two questions. They asked me, "Where are the drugs?" Not, "Do you have any drugs on you?" "Where are the drugs?" And they asked me, "When was the last time you were arrested?" And the only time I've ever seen a jail cell was when I was kidnapped by the cops when I was in 11th grade. So, you know, I got very offended obviously, and, to me, quite frankly, and not to use, I hope I'm not using inappropriate language on your show, but to me, actions like those are far worse than calling me a n-----, honestly. And watching the Trayvon Martin trial, it just was a greater example of that. Folks talked about how that was, you know, race might not have been a factor, but, to me, we're living under 8th degree black belt racism, you know what I mean? Whereas Jim Crow was like yellow belt racism, you know? It's racism where you kick me, and I take 20 steps away and then I die.