“Give folks a chance to get through the door. Give them a chance so they can make their case,” Those words were uttered by President Obama two weeks ago at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. He was announcing new programs that will help people like me — people who have criminal records — re-assimilate into society. The president also issued a mandate to the Office of Personnel Management to ban the box on applications for federal employment.
President Obama wants felons to be allowed to work in federal jobs and live in public housing. But we are not allowed in his home.
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In June, when JustLeadership USA‘s founder, Glenn Martin, appeared at the Eisenhower Executive Office building for a previously scheduled meeting, he was given a “Needs Escort” pass and told by the Secret Service that he couldn’t enter the building. Eventually, Martin was allowed to attend the meetings, but he described the experience as “prison-like” in an open letter to the president.
Last month, the national policy director for the Restaurant Opportunity Center, Kennard Ray, was similarly denied access to the White House Summit on Worker Voice because of his criminal record.
But both Ray and Martin were invited to the White House because of their achievements and public service. Martin started his own nonprofit organization. Ray helped raise the minimum wage for servers in Maine. Neither Martin nor Ray could be described as dangerous. Discrimination at the Obama White House against people who are “justice involved” is not new.
In 2010, a woman who had been convicted of prescription drug fraud attended a White House event that highlighted the need to extend jobless benefits. When then-Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the woman’s presence at the event, he told reporters: “…it’s safe to say had we known [about her criminal history] she wouldn’t have been here.”
Talk about helping people reenter society is just that: Talk. Very few people actively welcome returning citizens despite what they say about reentry.
When Apple faced criticism earlier this year for firing construction workers after discovering their criminal records, the company reversed its policy quickly, claiming to “believe in opportunity for everyone” and denying “a blanket ban on hiring people with felony convictions.” But Apple still has not banned the box on its own applications, and, to date, no one can confirm that any of the fired workers have been rehired.
President Obama often gets a pass because he is trying to give more than a nudge to justice reform in his last year in office. As the first sitting president to visit a prison and the first one to break with the executive tradition of “tough on crime,” Obama is a friend to people with felony convictions; he just doesn’t want to hang out with us.
People who have been discriminated against at the White House say nothing because they fear losing the dialogue on justice reform, even if it’s a dialogue that’s not always backed up with action.
But the talk we hear has not been enough to break the equation between past record and present danger, and that is the most essential barrier to raze in the campaign to allow people with criminal records to re-enter society. At this point, only President Obama can rupture that erroneous equivalence between conviction and perceived risk, and he is naive to think that his ban on felons visiting the White House doesn’t affect how others view people with criminal records. And how people like me think of ourselves.
We need to conduct background checks on visitors to our commander-in-chief’s home. But it is wrong to exclude people because they have committed crimes in the past. After all, the White House may be the most fortified building in the world. I doubt any visitor could do much damage while they’re inside the White House, so excluding people with criminal records is not a safety measure; it’s symbolism.
It’s not harmless symbolism either. The marriage of race and record in this country is a strong one. If 13 percent of African American men in the United States are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction, then an even higher percentage of black men would never be allowed inside the White House, the home of our first black president.
As justice reform builds momentum, I remain suspicious of symbolic manipulation, using words and phrases like “second chances,” “open doors” and “new life” to trace hope in people’s minds while maintaining barriers that prevent real inclusion and acceptance. Discourse may be opening, but doors are not.
Rhetoric without action is meaningless. After all of his talk about welcoming people with criminal convictions, President Obama needs to walk to the walk … straight to his front door and open it for people with criminal convictions.
Chandra Bozelko served more than six years in Connecticut’s only women’s prison, York Correctional Institution, a maximum-security facility. She was released in March 2014. She is the author of Up the River Anthology and blogs at prison-diaries.com. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
