"The Fire This Time"

Mass incarceration. Is it really a modern equivalent to Jim Crow?

After reading The New Jim Crow, my answer has to be yes.

I am not going to lie and say I loved this book. If you’ve read my previous blog post, you would know that I found this book incredibly repetitive to the point where the reading was mind numbing and painful. This is a generalization of my impression of the book. I did like the first few chapters when Michelle Alexander’s ideas were still fresh. These chapters provided me with a new perspective on civil rights that I wasn’t already conscious of, and I found this point of view very interesting. I also really enjoyed the last chapter, “The Fire This Time.”

In “The Fire This Time,” Alexander introduces many new ideas, starting with black respectability. The article I chose for my English presentation, “Is King All That We Are Allowed to Become?”, focuses on the same issue. The article discusses how many people do not take the action of seemingly non respectable advocates seriously. If they wear hoodies and saggy pants, somehow they don’t deserve the same respect as someone in a suit. Martin Luther King Jr. and activists of the past dressed nicely; they had to appear respectable in spite of their race. This was necessary for progress in their time, but it has resulted in elite control of the progress of civil rights. Because of respectability being tied to appearance, only the black population that is educated and well off can expect to have any effect. The people who need the change (the poor, working class black people in ghetto communities) have no impact on their own rights.

On a different topic, I am currently looking at colleges. I receive mail from schools all over the United States, and I have noticed many common themes. First, the weather is absolutely perfect in all of the pictures of campus, the campus is really clean, and the nature surrounding it is beautiful. Second, nearly all pictures of smiling students includes a minority of some type. Whether it’s a person with a disability, a woman wearing a hijab, or a person from a racial minority, it’s a very safe bet that colleges are advertising their diversity.

Universities want to make their ratios of non white to white students higher.

It makes them look good.

This is affirmative action: consciously providing opportunities to minorities who have previously suffered from discrimination.

Prior to reading this chapter, I thought affirmative action was good. Yes, it takes away from ideas of acceptance solely based on merit, but our society is not ready for this and would revert back to its subconsciously racist ways. It seemed like a good idea to create a societal incentive to promote racial equality. What could be wrong with that?

Apparently a lot.

An idea Alexander repeats throughout the chapter is that of “some but not all.” Some African Americans manage to achieve economic equality but not all. Some African Americans, notably Barack Obama, have significant political power but not all. Some African Americans are seen as socially respectable. Not all. But because some are equal, our society makes the inaccurate inference that those who are not have chosen to be “inferior”. Without those “some African Americans,” there would be a distinct racial line between “superior” and “inferior”. However, with those individuals, we can argue that our system is colorblind. Mass incarceration is not colorblind.

Affirmative action often is the source of those “some African Americans.” Affirmative action is part of the reason why many people are unaware of the racial undercaste of mass incarceration. Affirmative action is a method of maintaining mass incarceration as a racial system without the general public being suspicious of explicit bias.

This is Alexander’s argument against affirmative action. I find it persuasive, but I stand by my original belief that affirmative action is good.

None of the effects of affirmative action Alexander described where good, but without affirmative action, there would be little to no diversity in education. Traditionally disadvantaged groups would have an even harder time increasing their social mobility, and the racial undercaste would be more rigid. In the long term, I think a lack of affirmative action would be helpful, but the quality of life for those in the short term would be greatly depreciated.

A colorblind society is like communism: good in theory, horrible in actuality. Colorblindness takes away our moral obligation to not be racist by replacing overtly racist mechanisms with covertly racist mechanisms. Alexander calls us to be aware of this which, before reading this book, I wasn’t. I knew black people were more likely to be pulled over, and I’d heard about the police brutality and such. However, I was unaware of the drug laws designed to keep black people in prisons without appearing racist.

I am glad I read this book. It certainly wasn’t a pleasure read, but I feel more aware of subconscious biases and legislation that targets minorities. I think this book will change the way I look at drug legislation. Before, I hadn’t even thought about the specific groups these laws would affect, but now I hope to be more aware of what people are targeted by these actions.

I recommend reading The New Jim Crow. I can’t promise that you will enjoy it, but I can attest to the unique and eye-opening perspective that Alexander provides.