By Dr. Alex Mikulich, JSRI Research Fellow

By Dr. Alex Mikulich, Research Fellow

Since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968, the income gap between blacks and whites has narrowed by just three cents on the dollar. In 2005, the median per-capita income for blacks stood at $16,629 and $28,946 for whites. In Mississippi, whites’ average personal earnings are more than $10,000 more than African Americans’. ¹ Many scholars note that at this rate of progress, income equality will not be achieved for 537 years.

Reviewed by Dr. Alex Mikulich, Research Fellow

Moral theologian Bryan Massingale’s Racial Justice and the Catholic Church fills a long-standing void in moral theology that has largely failed to contend with racism. Deeply compassionate and prophetic, Massingale delivers an incisive analysis in a lively and widely accessible prose.

By Dr. Alex Mikulich, Research Fellow

As the U.S. is the global leader in incarceration, so Mississippi is a national leader. Mississippi has the second highest rate of incarceration in the nation, second only to Louisiana. Mississippi incarcerates its citizens at a rate of 735 per 100,000 population. The Sentencing Project reports that since 1988, the number of persons imprisoned in Mississippi has increased by 208 percent, from 7,384 to 22,754. The national growth rate during the same period is 133 percent. [1]

Reviewed by Dr. Alex Mikulich, Research Fellow

A 2010 Silver medalist at the Independent Publisher Book Awards, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander frighteningly demonstrates that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”

The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and no other county incarcerates as many of its racial minorities. The U.S. incarcerates a higher percentage of Blacks than South Africa did during the height of apartheid.

By Dr. Alex Mikulich, Research Fellow

Roman Catholic social teaching on usury is clear: “those whose usurious and avaricious dealings lead to the hunger and death of their brethren in the human family indirectly commit homicide, which is imputable to them.” Usury, the church continues, “is still tragically widespread,” and is “a scourge that is a reality in our time that has a stranglehold on many peoples’ lives.” [1]

How does payday lending lead to a “stranglehold on many peoples’ lives”?

By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.

Gulf States Need to Shift Public Policy and Funding from Incarceration to Alternatives

By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.

The Gulf South states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Alabama, and Florida rank 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 respectively for the rate of adult incarceration among all fifty states. The growth in the incarceration rate among Gulf South states between 1982 and 2007 is also high: Louisiana (272%), Mississippi (256%), Texas (203%), Alabama (176%), and Florida (127%).

African Americans have been arrested at disproportionately higher rates than whites since 1980, reports Human Rights Watch. The higher rates of arrest do not reflect higher rates of black drug offenses. In fact, most people who use drugs are white.

 by Fr. Fred Kammer, S.J.

Consideration of racism is grounded in fundamental scriptural beliefs: equal dignity of all people, created in God’s image; and Christ’s redemption of all.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church spells this out: