Last week Colin Powell and the Bush administration correctly reamed the eccentric communist holdover Fidel Castro for jailing 78 Cuban dissidents for as many as 28 years. Thank heaven arbitrary imprisonment couldn’t happen in one of the world’s most progressive democracies, the U.S.

Or could it?

Well, yes, but only for immigrant Muslims. That snafu aside, genuine U.S. citizens can sleep snug in their beds without fear of police barging in Castro-style and jailing them for crimes they didn’t commit. That is, unless they are poor and black. Just ask the 13 Americans still jailed in Tulia, Texas for four Kafka-esque years.

The story is disturbingly un-American:

Mid-July 1999: White residents in this jerkwater panhandle town of 5,000 read a banner headline in the now defunct Tulia Sentinel delivering the good news: “Tulia’s Streets Cleared of Garbage.”

In spite of what the headline suggests, there was not a case of improved sanitation in this town with an average annual income of $9,000. Instead, the police had just arrested the town’s 46 “known” drug dealers–all but six were black.

Our hero, Officer Tom Coleman, who conducted the “undercover investigation” all by himself, was awarded the state’s “Lawman of the Year” award. Lee Hockstader of the Washington Post describes his efforts succinctly:

“Coleman worked alone, wore no wire, collected no video evidence, kept scant written records and produced little corroborating evidence at trials. He had little experience in undercover work and, in an interview broadcast on a Texas television station, acknowledged using racist terms in casual conversation. The convictions in the Tulia cases were based largely on his testimony.”

Bob Herbert of the New York Times, one of the few columnists in the mainstream press to crusade on the issue, contends that Coleman did in fact record evidence by “scrawling important investigative information on his arms and legs.”

Blacks and poor whites in Tulia, subjected to kangaroo courts and the testimony of Coleman, were given draconian sentences of up to 99 years. As a result, some of the suspects began making false confessions in exchange for leniency.

Three years after the final false conviction, the victims of Tulia find themselves staring at a near criminal response from Texas and Washington. Then Texas Attorney General John Cornyn at first refused to launch an investigation until late last year.

So, with 13 still lingering in prison, who’s left to enforce civil rights in America? Well, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the federal Justice Department was looking into it, but so far no findings have been made public and no action has been taken.

If these citizens put away on the obvious perjury of a crooked small town cop had been rich and white instead of poor and black, the issue would have been settled a long time ago, but in Tulia the cogs of justice move slow. Because of the sheer outrageousness of this case, it’s likely that justice will be served sooner or later–even without the attention of the so-called liberal media.

In fact, the Lawman of the Year was recently charged with perjury, but the lesson learned in this cozy Texas hellhole should never be forgotten.

Racism–and indifference to it–in America is alive and well, and it pervades every level of American society, from Tulia to the White House. Ari Fleischer was recently asked at a press conference what the Bush administration had done for African-Americans (come to think of it, where was Governor Bush when Coleman accepted the “Lawman of the Year” award?). He replied that the President “looks forward to going to Africa,” and would double funding for historically black universities.

In other words, nothing. But Bush, like other Republicans and Democrats, has hardly been mum on the issue. Bush found Bob Jones University– the university with the most notorious record of racism in recent history–a convenient place to speak at. Not to mention fellow Bob Jones faithful John Ashcroft, now supposedly looking in to Tulia, who has a notorious reputation for failing to enforce civil rights legislation while attorney general in Missouri. Throw in the race records of dozens of other high-ranking politicians in modern politics, from Robert Byrd to Trent Lott to his replacement Bill Frist, then add a dash of Republican campaign tactics to woo racist voters in the South. Now add gross inequalities in wealth between whites, blacks and minorities, and what does this combination give us? A huge problem and swath of oblivious officials who are not likely to offer any solutions–from the White House on down.By the way, if you’re wondering how voters rewarded Cornyn’s abysmal response to the human rights debacle in Tulia: He’s now in the U.S. Senate.

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