The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow, written by Michelle
Alexander introduces mass incarceration as current day’s slavery or Jim Crow.
Alexander chronicles the evolution of racism in the United States from slavery
to Jim Crow laws to present day mass incarceration numbers. Jim Crow is a term apparently derived
from a minstrel show character—was regarded as the “final settlement”, the
“return to sanity” and “the permanent system.” The death of Jim Crow is traced
back to Brown vs. Board of Education
As a middle-class, white male this book was difficult to
read. Alexander extensively cites ways in which a somewhat invisible process
has taken root in our country with grave significance; we are locking up
predominant parts of our society in the name of crime. But is that really the
reason people are being locked up?
For this
blog post, I systematically took notes from the introduction to the end of the
book, chapter by chapter. Throughout the book, Alexander examines various
pieces of legislation and court cases that shaped the landscape of our prison
system today. These particular court battles were interesting in view of their
short and long-term consequences.
MLK: “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Legislation
Bestowed full citizenship to
African Americans. The first time Congress legislated upon civil rights.
Penalizes first-time possession of
marijuana with a sentence of two to five years in prison with a fine of up to
$20,000.
Enacted by President Johnson,
formally dismantled the Jim Crow system of discrimination in public
accommodations, employment, voting, education and federally financed
activities. It fulfilled the promise of the 14th amendment.
Prohibits federally funded
programs or activities from discriminating on the basis of race, and the regulations
employ a “disparate impact” test for discrimination—meaning that plaintiffs
could prevail in claims of race discrimination without proving discriminatory
intent.
Enacted by President Johnson. Rendered
illegal numerous discriminatory barriers of political participation for African
Americans. The unprovoked attack by
state troopers on peaceful marchers in Selma, Alabama persuaded the President
and congress to overcome Southern legislators resistance to effective voting
right legislation.
Differentiated marijuana from
other narcotics and lowered federal penalties. This act classified and outlawed
certain drugs.
Military
Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act: 1981
Established by Reagan, which
encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to
military bases, intelligence, research, weaponry, and other equipment for drug
interdiction. Local law enforcement agencies were granted the authority to
keep, for their own use, the vast majority of cash and assets that they seize
during the drug war. In 1988 and 1992 the Byrne-funded drug task forces seized
over $1 billion in assets. Obama drastically increased funding for the Byrne
grant program despite its abysmal track record. The Economic Recovery Act of
2009 included more than $2 billion in new Byrne funding and additional $600
million to increase state and local law enforcement across the country.
Enacted mandatory minimum
sentences (5 years of simple possession of cocaine base) for the distribution
of cocaine, including far more severe punishment for the distribution of crack.
The
Anti-Drug Abuse Act: 1988
Called for strict lease
enforcement and eviction of public housing tenants who engage in criminal
activity. Making it harder to find public housing after a drug conviction.
Authorized public housing agencies
to exclude automatically drug offenders and other felons. It allowed agencies
to bar applicants believed to be
using illegal drugs or abusing alcohol—whether or not they had been convicted
of a crime.
Court Cases
The Supreme Court ended the use of
the all-white primary election and in 1946 the court rules that state laws
requiring segregation laws on interstate buses were unconstitutional.
When a police officer observes
unusual conduct by someone the officer reasonably believes to be dangerous and
engaged in criminal activity, the officer, “ is entitled for the protection of
himself and others in the area” to conduct a limited search to “discover
weapons that might be used against the officer.” This is known as the “stop and
frisk” rule.
The Supreme Court ruled that the
prosecutor does not need an explanation that is persuasive or plausible to
strike down a juror. Laughably, prosecutors were allowed to excuse potential
jurors based on their hairstyle. Peremptory strikes—give prosecutors and the
defense the right to strike “peremptory” jurors they don’t like, that is people
they believe will not respond favorably to the evidence or witnesses they
intend to present at trial.
Amendments affecting New Jim Crow
The 4th
Amendment
“The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable search and
seizures.” However, the Supreme Court has given protections to police against
unreasonable searches and seizures going against the 4th
amendment
The 8th
Amendment
Prohibits excessive bail,
excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.
The 13th
Amendment
Abolished Slavery, however slavery remained
appropriate as punishment for a crime through the landmark Virginia Supreme
Court decision, Ruffin v. Commonwealth:
“He has, as a consequence of his crime, not only forfeited his liberty, but all
his personal rights except those which the law in its humanity accords to him.
He is for the time being a slave of the state.”
The 14th
Amendment
Prohibited states from denying
citizens due process and equal protection of the laws.
The 15th
Amendment
The right to vote should no be denied due to
race
Intro:
·
The United States imprisons a larger percentage
of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. This
statistic is particularly troubling for me, seeing first hand the aftereffects
of apartheid during my year-long sojourn with Grassroot Soccer in Port
Elizabeth, South Africa.
·
Alexander views the term mass incarceration, not only to the criminal justice system but
also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies and customs that control those
labeled criminals both in and out of prison.
·
“Drug Abuse is a health problem, not a crime.”
This common refrain throughout the book is an interesting take on drugs. Should
we treat drug users as criminals or as individuals in need of a public-health
intervention? As the opiate crisis spirals out of control in states such as
West Virginia and Ohio and enters our stream of consciousness with new health
care legislation taking place, this view of drug abuse continues to take center
stage.
Chapter 1. The Rebirth of Caste
·
Slavery was born through the view of American
Indians before black slaves from Africa. “…Eliminating savages is less of a
moral problem than eliminating human beings, and therefore American Indians can
be understood as a lesser race—uncivilized savages—thus providing a
justification for the extermination of the native peoples.”
Federalism
Federalism is the division of
power between the states and the federal government. The method for determining
proportional representation in Congress and identifying the winner of a
presidential election (the electoral college) were specifically developed with
the interest of slaveholders in mind. As most of us know, the Electoral College
steered our presidential election of 2016 in a particular direction.
·
Without the labor of former slaves, the region’s
economy would surely collapse, and without the institution of slavery, there
was no longer a formal mechanism for maintaining racial hierarchy and
preventing amalgamation with a group of people considered intrinsically
inferior and vile.
Reconstruction
Era: 1863-1877
This
era was a brief but extraordinary period of black advancement.
·
Miscegenation Laws (allowing mixed races to
marry) were declared unconstitutional during the reconstruction ear and the
rate of interracial marriages climbed.
·
“Law and order” was first mobilized in the early
1950’s. In the 1960s, crime rose for a period of ten years. The reasons for the
crime wave are complex, but can be explained in large part by the rise of the
“baby boom” generation—the spike in the number of young men in the 15-24 age
group.
·
The Great Depression effectuated a sea change in
American race relations and party alignment
The New Deal
Signed by Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, was designed to alleviate the suffering of poor people in the midst
of the depression, and blacks, the poorest of the poor, benefited
disproportionately. The New Deal was a massive public works and investment
program designed to lift the nation out of a severe depression.
·
The Southern Strategy—a republican part
electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the
south by appealing to racism against African Americans. Presidential candidates
Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that
successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative
voters in the South to the Republican Party that has traditionally supported
the Democratic Party.
·
Daniel Patrick Moynihan—infamous report on the
black family, which attributed black poverty to a black “subculture” and the
“tangle of pathology”.
·
The conservative revolution that took root
within the Republican Party in the 1960s did not reach its full development
until the election of 1980.
War on Drugs:
1982
President
Reagan officially announced the “War on Drugs.” Just as the drug was kicking off,
inner-city communities were suffering from economic collapse. The blue-collar
factory jobs that had been plentiful in urban areas in the 1950s and 1960s had
suddenly disappeared. Globalization allowed manufacturing jobs to leave the US
to other countries.
Crack
is pharmacologically almost identical to powder cocaine, but is has been
converted into a form that can be vaporized and inhaled for a faster, more
intense (though shorter) high using less of the drug, making it possible to
sell small doses at more affordable prices.
Response
to drug use: Portugal, for example, responded to persistent problems of drug
addiction and abuse by decriminalizing the possession of all drugs and
redirecting the money that would have been spent putting drug users in cages
into drug treatment and prevention. Ten years later, Portugal reported that
rates of drug abuse and addiction had plummeted, and drug-related crime was on
the decline as well.
1986-Newsweek
called crack, “the issue of the year.” The house passed legislation that
allocated $2 billion to the antidrug crusade and allowed the death penalty for
drug-related crimes.
Operation
Principle was launched by the DEA in 1984 as part of the Reagan
administration’s rollout of the War on Drugs. The main part of this program was
pretext stops and consent searches on a large scale for drug interdiction.
·
Ku Klux Klan: declared interference with voting
a federal offense and the violent infringement of civil rights a crime.
Clinton
Presidency
·
Clinton developed the “Three strikes and your
out” program. He also signed the AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children)
and TANF (Temporary assistance to Needy Families). TANF imposed a five-year
lifetime limit on welfare assistance, as well as permanent, lifetime ban on
eligibility for welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug
offense—including possession of marijuana. During Clinton’s presidency, the
house slashed $17 billion for public housing and boosted $19 billion for
corrections. 90% of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states
were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was
explained in race-neutral terms.
Chapter 2. The Lockdown
·
Pretext stops: stopping someone for a minor
offense to conduct a larger search.
·
The resistance for law enforcement to engage in
the war on drugs was solved with a simple solution: cash. Huge cash grants were made to those law
enforcement agencies that were willing to make drug-law enforcement a top
priority.
·
1997: The Pentagon handed over more than 1.2
million pieces of military equipment to local police departments.
·
SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) originated in
the 1960s and gradually became more common in the 1970s. Today, there most
common use is to serve narcotics warrants.
·
Approximately 80% of criminal defendants are
indigent and thus unable to hire a lawyer.
·
Referring a defendant to treatment, rather than
sending him or her to prison, may well be the most prudent choice—saving
government resources and potentially saving the defendant from a lifetime of
addiction. A lengthy prison term may increase the odds that re-entry will be
extremely difficult, leading to relapse and re-imprisonment. Mandatory drug
sentencing laws strip judges of their traditional role of considering all relevant
circumstances in an effort to do justice in the individual case.
·
Re-Entry Difficulties for those convicted of a
drug crime: Barred from public housing by law, discriminated against by private
landlords, ineligible for food stamps, forced to “check the box” indicating a
felony conviction on employment applications for nearly every job and denied
licenses for a wide range of professions.
Chapter 3. The Color of Justice
·
2000: The National Institute of Drug Abuse
reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black
students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use
heroin at seven times the rate of black students. The notion that most illegal
drug use and sales happen in the ghetto is pure fiction
·
Today, violent crime rates are at historically
low levels, yet incarceration rates continue to climb.
·
Nearly 7.3 million people currently under
correctional control, only 1.6 million are in prison.
·
One study suggests that the standard crime news
“script” is so prevalent and so thoroughly racialized that viewers imagine a
black perpetrator even when none exists. In that study, 60% of viewers saw a
story with no image falsely recalled seeing one, and 70% of those viewers
believed the perpetrator to be African American.
·
Baldus Study: Found that defendants charged with
killing white victims received the death penalty 11x more often than defendants
charged with killing black victims.
·
Whether a kid is perceived as a dangerous
drug-dealing thug or instead is viewed as a good kid who is merely
experimenting with drugs and selling to a few of his friends has to do with the
ways in which information about illegal drug activity is processed and
interpreted, in a social climate in which drug-dealing is racially defined.
·
Until 1860, no black person ever sat on a jury
in the United States
Chapter 4. The Cruel Hand
·
If an individual pleads guilty to a felony, he
will be deemed “unfit” for jury service and automatically excluded from juries
from the rest of his life. He would also be told that he could be denied the
right to vote. In a country that preaches the virtues of democracy, one could
reasonably assume that being stripped of his basic political rights would be
treated by judges and court personnel as a serious matter. He may be ineligible
for many federally funded health and welfare benefits, food stamps, public
housing, and federal educational assistance. His driver’s license may be
automatically suspended, and he ay no longer qualify for certain employment and
professional licenses. He will not be permitted to enlist in the military, or
possess a firearm, or obtain a federal security clearance.
·
In 2002, The US Supreme Court ruled that public
housing tenants can be evicted regardless of whether they had knowledge of or
participated in alleged criminal activity. Perlie Rucker was rightly evicted
following the arrest of her daughter for possession of cocaine a few blocks
from home.
·
Work is deemed so fundamental to human existence
in many countries around the world that it is regarded as a basic human right.
·
Employers in growing number of professions are
barred by state licensing agencies from hiring people with a wide range of
criminal convictions, even convictions unrelated to the job or license sought.
(Physical and Occupational Therapy)
·
Not long ago, young, unskilled men could find
decent, well-paying jobs at large factories in most major Northern cities.
Today, due to globalization and deindustrialization, that is no longer the
case.
·
Half of European countries allow all
incarcerated people to vote, while others disqualify only a small number of
prisoners from the polls. Had 600,000 former felons who had completed their
sentence in Florida been allowed to vote, Al Gore would have been elected
president of the United States rather than George W. Bush.
·
Psychologists have long observed that when
people feel hopelessly stigmatized, a powerful coping strategy—often the only
apparent route to self-esteem—is embracing one’s stigmatized identity.
“Even in church, a place where many people seek solace in times of
grief and sorrow, families of prisoners often keep secret the imprisonment of
their children or relatives. Far from being a place of comfort or refuge,
churches can be a place where judgment, shame, and contempt are felt more
acutely. Services in black churches frequently contain a strong mixture of
concern for the less fortunate and a call to personal responsibility.”
Chapter 5. The New Jim Crow
·
The unfortunate reality we must face is that
racism manifests itself not only in individual attitudes and stereotypes, but
also in the basic structure of society.
·
Phases of Mass Incarceration:
o
1st stage: Roundup
o
2nd stage: The conviction
o
Final stage: invisible punishment—criminal
sanctions that are imposed on individuals after they step outside of the prison
gates.
·
Jim Crow laws mandated residential segregation,
and blacks were relegated to the worst parts of town. Roads literally stopped
at the border of many black neighborhoods, shifting from pavement to dirt.
Racial segregation rendered black experience largely invisible to whites,
making it easier for whites to maintain racial stereotypes about black values
and culture. It also made it easier to deny or ignore their suffering.
·
The temptation is to insist that black men
“choose” to be criminals; the system does not make them criminals, at least not
in the way that slavery made blacks slaves or Jim Crow made them second-class
citizens. African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell
prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher
rates for precisely the same conduct.
·
Racial stigma today makes collective action
extremely difficult—sometimes impossible, whereas racial stigma during Jim Crow
contained the seeds of revolt.
·
Describes the movement of MADD (Mothers Against
Drunk Driving) and how the media coverage helped crack down on drunk driving.
Numerous states now have some type of mandatory sentencing for this
offense—typically two days in jail for a first offense and two to ten days for
a second offense Possession of a tiny amount of crack cocaine, on the other
hand, carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison.
Drunk drivers are predominantly white and male, comprising 78% of the arrests
in 1990.
·
African American women in poor neighborhoods are
torn. They worry about their young sons getting involved in gang activity. They
worry about their sons’ possibly selling or using drugs. They worry about their
children getting caught in the crossfire of warring gangs…These mothers want
better crime and law enforcement. Yet, they understand that increased levels of
law enforcement potentially saddle their children with a felony conviction—a
mark that can ensure economic and social marginalization.
·
Booker T. Washington urged blacks to focus on
improving themselves rather than on challenging racial discrimination.
·
Underlying
causes of mass incarceration: While some argue that it is attributable
primarily to racial bias and discrimination, others maintain that is due to
poor education, unraveling morals, and a lack of thrift and perseverance among
the urban poor. Just as former slaves were viewed as unworthy of full
citizenship due to their lack of education and good morals, today similar
arguments can be heard from black people across the political spectrum that
believe that reform efforts should be focused on moral uplift and education for
ghetto dwellers, rather than challenging the system of mass incarceration
itself.
·
MLK
warned of this danger: the blindness and indifference to racial groups is
actually more important than racial hostility to the creation and maintenance
of racialized systems of control. “It’s actually better to be exploited than
marginalized, in some respects, because if you’re exploited presumably you’re
still needed.” Prescient words from Martin Luther King
Chapter 6. The Fire This Time
·
A new civil rights movement cannot be organized
around the relics of the earlier system of control if it is to address
meaningfully the racial realities of our time. Any racial justice movement, to
be successful, must vigorously challenge the public consensus that underlies
the prevailing system of control.
·
Racial justice advocacy has generally revolved
around grassroots organizing and the strategic mobilization of public opinion.
·
Lawyers have taken over racial justice advocacy.
This reflexively distanced advocates and lawyers from the very people on whose
behalf they brought the cases in the first place.
·
Challenging mass incarceration requires
something civil rights advocates have long been reluctant to do: advocacy on
behalf of criminals, outside of the death penalty arena, civil rights advocates
have long been reluctant to leap to the defense of accused criminals.
·
Particular individuals have been used during
racial justice advocacy. Take Rosa Parks for example. Rosa Parks was not the
first person to refuse to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery,
AL. Civil rights advocates considered and rejected two other black women as
plaintiffs when planning a test case challenging segregation practices: Claudette
Colvin and Mary Louise Smith. Both of them were arrested for refusing to give
up their seats on Montgomery’s segregated buses, just months before Rosa Parks
refused to budge. Colvin was 15 years old when she defied segregation laws. Her
case attracted national attention, but civil rights advocates declines to use
her as a plaintiff because she got pregnant by an older man shortly after her
arrest. Advocates worried that her “immoral” conduct would detract from or
undermine their efforts to show that blacks were entitled to (and worthy of)
equal treatment. Likewise, they decided not to use Mary Louise Smith as a
plaintiff because her father was rumored to be an alcoholic. It was understood
that, in any effort to challenge racial discrimination, the litigant—and even
the litigant’s family—had to be above reproach and free from every negative
trait that could be used as a justification for unequal treatment. Rosa Parks
was a dream come true. She was a medium-sized, cultured mulatto woman; a civic
and religious worker; quiet, unassuming, and pleasant in manner and appearance;
dignified and reserved; of high morals and strong character.
·
If the mass incarceration system was to be
uprooted, many people will suffer. 700,000 prison and jail guards,
administrators, service workers, and other personnel represent a potentially
powerfully political opposition. In
2006: the US spent $185 billion for police protection, detention, judicial and
legal activities.
·
Although it is common to think of poverty and
joblessness as leading to crime and imprisonment, this research suggests that
the War on Drugs is a major cause of
poverty, chronic unemployment, broken families, and crime today.
·
Dred Scott
Case: “the negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”
·
For liberals, the ideal of colorblindness is
linked to the dream of racial equality. The hope is that one day we will no
longer see race because race will lose its significance. In this fantasy,
eventually race will no longer be a factor in mortality rates, the spread of
wealth, educational or economic opportunity, or the distribution of wealth.
Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing
to care for the people we see is the problem.
·
Although some African Americans are doing very
well—enrolling in universities and graduate schools at record rates thanks to
affirmative action—as a group, in many respects African Americans are doing no
better than the times after MLK was assassinated and riots swept across inner
cities in America. The child poverty rate is actually higher today than it was
in 1968
·
“ White America must recognize that justice for
black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our
society.”
How
to make a change:
o
Racial impact statements that assess the racial
and ethnic impact of criminal justice legislation must be adopted
o
Mandatory drug sentencing laws must be
rescinded. Marijuana ought to be legalized. Meaningful re-entry programs must
be adopted
o
Prison works should be retrained for alternative
jobs. Drug treatment on demand must be provided for all Americans, a far better
investment of taxpayer money that prison cells for drug offenders
o
It will take a long time. Brown v. Board of
Education was formally introduced in 1954, but not a single black child
attended an integrated public grade school in SC, AL, or MS as of the 1963-1964
school year. A civil war had to be waged
to end slavery; a mass movement was necessary to formally dissolve Jim Crow.
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