In this year of symbolic optimism, when a black man is a leading contender in the presidential race—as well as being a leading recipient of contributions from Wall Street, big insurance, and military contractors—the need to describe life as it is actually lived by millions of African Americans has never been greater.

Although our black presidential candidate would have us believe that African Americans are, as he has said many times, "90 percent of the way" to freedom, justice, and true equality, the facts seem to say otherwise. As recently as 1964, a majority of all U.S. prisoners were white men. But since 1988—the year Vice President George H.W. Bush rode to the White House stoking white fears with an ad campaign featuring convicted black killer and rapist Willie Horton—the black one- eighth of America's population furnished the majority of new admissions to its prisons and jails.