The Arc of Justice (Final Thoughts)

     Reading The New Jim Crow has been eye-opening for me. Michelle Alexander raises issues that I do not run into on a daily basis. I've learned that serious injustices still plague our American government and justice system. Although we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and learn about the Civil Rights Movement, systemic racism runs deeper than ever, unfortunately.
     Only in the last five to ten pages of the book does the author begin to dive into what change needs to happen to change this unfair system. She still looks back, citing powerful words by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the writer James Baldwin to begin to express the kind of change that is needed. At least for me, the change needed feels overwhelming and at times unclear. The problems seem insurmountable, too. She says there needs to be a move away from the "model of civil rights advocacy" toward what King called a "radical restructuring of our society" (Alexander 260). How will this restructuring occur? Who will lead it? How can it happen when there are competing priorities of climate change, the economy, health care, and education? How can all of these problems be solved at once?
     Alexander puts this issue on the shoulders of the younger generation, our generation. She writes, "Hopefully the new generation will be led by those who know best the brutality of the new case system--a group with greater vision, courage, and determination than the old guard can muster, trapped as they may be in an outdated paradigm" (Alexander 260). I agree that a paradigm shift is needed, but the future feels uncertain and rocky, especially this week as I write this, when even day-to-day life is disrupted, school buildings are closed to students, and the very prisoners Alexander writes about, whose lives are filled with problems, now have new worries with COVID-19 spreading throughout the "cages" where they are living in prisons from New York to North Carolina.
     Readers of The New Jim Crow can no longer stand by innocently while racism runs rampant. Baldwin writes that it is the people who look the other way, who aren't affected and don't even see the racism, who are guilty because "their innocence ... constitutes the crime" (261). However, the path to solving these problems feels very long and uncertain. Alexander paraphrases King's well-known quote in which he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" (260). It does feel very long, but it's up to us to shorten it and to figure out how to do that.

The Caged Bird: Racism in America (Rhetorical)

     Imagery of cages is prevalent in 2020. First there were the images of refugee children being held in cages at the border of the United States with Mexico. Then, people around the world were told to "shelter in place" with their homes becoming cage-like areas of confinement. However, Michelle Alexander uses the image of a birdcage to show how there isn't just one law or one faulty part of the system that holds African Americans back and keeps them confined. There are many bars woven together that form the cage. Therefore, there is no simple solution to this complex problem.
     The reader, confronted with this strong imagery, notices that the cover of the book shows the cage of a prison cell, the bars that are grasped by two human hands. Alexander uses the comparison of a bird cage to a prison cell effectively. A person cannot easily get out of the criminal justice system, just as a bird cannot easily escape from its cage and fly free.
     Alexander uses this image of the cage to draw together the many forces in society and in the criminal justice system that trap people and doom them to struggle and often to failure. She writes, "The war on drugs is the vehicle through which extraordinary numbers of black men are forced into the cage" (Alexander 185). The roundup is first step, the way police patrol and discriminate in communities of color, to bring African Americans into the system, even though they do not commit drug crimes at higher rates, compared to white people. This leads to conviction and formal control by the system, the second phase of bringing people of color into cages. The third and final part of building this cage is called that of "invisible punishment" (Alexander 186). This includes housing discrimination, job discrimination, custody challenges, public shaming, and more, all the result of the first two steps. Alexander writes, "They become members of an undercaste--an enormous population of predominantly black and brown people who, because of the drug war, are denied basic rights and privileges of American citizenship and are permanently relegated to an inferior status. This is the final phase, and there is no going back" (187). The systemic racism found within our criminal justice system is like a cage made of many bars, and Alexander shows how removing one bar is not enough to solve the problem. More effort is needed to remove the cage.
     The imagery of this bird cage is a clear and convincing analogy for systemic racism. Alexander wonders what Martin Luther King, Jr. would think if he came back today, for example, to a city like Chicago. She believes he would be disappointed that the Civil Rights era and the work of so many activists did not remove the bars of this cage and set people free. Instead, Alexander writes, "In the few short decades since King's death, a new regime of racially disparate mass incarceration has emerged in Chicago and become the primary mechanism for racial oppression and the denial of equal opportunity" (189). Instead of racism being dismantled, it's become more entrenched. And the people who have built the bars have built a system of sneaky and underhanded laws that are racist and target African Americans without using racial terms. This is even more dangerous and hard to dismantle, but it's work that needs to be done to ensure equality.
     It's hard to read this section of The New Jim Crow without thinking of Maya Angelou's poem "Caged Bird" and its hopes for the future, hopes for freedom and equality. Angelou writes:
          The caged bird sings 
          with a fearful trill 
          of things unknown 
          but longed for still 
          and his tune is heard 
          on the distant hill 
          for the caged bird 
          sings of freedom. (31-28)

The Insidious Effects of Racism and Poverty (Relevance)

     After having been isolated in my house for days on end, it comes to mind to talk about COVID-19 in relation to Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow. These days it's hard to avoid the subject of this pandemic. The coronavirus is affecting the entire world, and like the effects of racism, it is hitting poorer families especially hard and its origins are bringing ugly racism to the surface (Galea; Chandra).
     Systemic racism that lasts long after someone has served their sentence and walked out of prison is a central theme in Alexander's book. In this week's section, former prisoners are barred from getting jobs due to past prison time, as they have to check the box on most job applications admitting to their felony conviction in they are "in the box" of joblessness (Alexander 153). Once they release this information, the job offers dry up. About 33 percent of young black men are out of work, and the number is as high as 65 percent for those who have dropped out of school, including those incarcerated (152). Their past convictions, even long after their sentences have been served, affect their ability to get housing, to support their families, sometimes even to vote, and to survive.
     Similarly, while COVID-19 can affect anyone, the long-lasting effects of it are more present and harmful in families with lower socioeconomic status, affected by homelessness or lack of affordable housing, refugees, and other "low-income and marginalized communities" (Benfer and Wiley). Not being able to work or afford to stock up on two weeks worth of groceries or seek medical care makes these families more vulnerable to this virus. Lack of a job is a major financial burden because not everyone can work from home. For example, laborers or other physical jobs do not have the luxury of working online, which creates a massive financial burden. The mom who works in the grocery store or is a cashier at the pharmacy can't bring her kids with her to work, creating an impossible situation.
     In this time, our president has called this virus the "Chinese Flu" and the "Kung Flu" (Chandra). This type of blatant racism causes discrimination toward Asians and Asian Americans, especially when such language is used by a government official. There have been many videos online of people moving away from Asian Americans on the subway.  A writer in Psychology Today says, "For the president to not take a clear line denouncing these racist and fear-based actions puts the entire Asian American community at risk . . . The problem is not just the term 'Chinese Virus,' but also the implicit linkage to a long history of anti-Asian rhetoric and violence" (Chandra). This sort of racism embedded within our government is not unlike the systemic racism discussed in The New Jim Crow.
     This pandemic is on everyone's minds and affecting everyone's day to day lives. Although none of us can escape the harmful effects of the virus, except maybe by social distancing, we can do something about the criminal justice system, employment policies, housing policies, and the United States' long history of racism against Asian Americans.
                                                       Works Cited
Benfer, Emily A., and Lindsay F. Wiley. "Health Justice Strategies To Combat COVID-19: Protecting Vulnerable Communities During A Pandemic." Health Affairs, 19 Mar. 2020, www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200319.757883/full/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2020.
Chandra, Ravi. "Calling COVID-19 a 'Chinese Virus' or 'Kung Flu' Is Racist" ["psychology Today"]. Psychology Today, 18 Mar. 2020, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-pacific-heart/202003/calling-covid-19-chinese-virus-or-kung-flu-is-racist. Accessed 24 Mar. 2020.
Galea, Sandro. "The Poor and Marginalized Will Be the Hardest Hit by Coronavirus." Scientific American, 20 Mar. 2020, blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-poor-and-marginalized-will-be-the-hardest-hit-by-coronavirus/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2020.

The Caste System: Systemic Racism in the United States (Argument)

The purpose of The New Jim Crow is to expose the discriminatory and ingrained, systemic racism that distorts the American foundations of equality and justice. Author Michelle Alexander shows where this racism lurks in a society that used to enslave people and now uses the criminal justice system to incarcerate African-Americans. I agree that systemic racism is ingrained in our society because I have seen inequality first hand both in New York City, where I was born, and in New Hampshire where I live. The book gives me a larger perspective on how poorer schools are primarily black and how this affects teaching staff and distribution of resources. This is the caste system that Alexander describes.

Most people think of Indian when they hear the words “caste system,” but the author shows the rebirth of this system in the United States. Writing about the birth of slavery and then indentured servitude, Alexander calls the system that was developing, which affects today’s criminal justice system, “legalized terror against black and white bondsmen” (23). The author argues that our government, through systemic racism, made terror and atrocious acts on an entire race acceptable. Furthermore, this racism has taken many forms throughout history, the most recent being the way the legal system functions and rising levels of imprisonment of African-Americans. Alexander writes, “Since the nation’s founding, African Americans repeatedly had been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time” (21). This is how our nation pretends to repeal unjust laws without fixing the effects of them and then reimplementing them in other forms.

Alexander looks at how segregation is one of the oldest forms of systemic racism, whether its through slavery, through racism, or through incarceration. She builds toward defining the problems with U.S. prisons with this term. She also examines how the successes of African-Americans, such as President Barack Obama, do not outweigh or erase the serious problems that still plague the United States related to race. She shows the work at the system level that urgently needs attention.

Doublespeak Lives On In the Criminal Justice System (Rhetorical Analysis)

When discussing race or other sensitive topics, it is important to weigh one’s words carefully. Michelle Alexander not only weighs her words in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, but she also looks at how language is used within the criminal justice system in ways that harm people of color. Language appears, along with prosecutors and judges, as a character in this important book.

Coded language is a tool used by those in the criminal justice system that allows racism to flourish. Alexander shows how words like “crack cocaine” and “crime” are used racially to suggest African-Americans (105). The use of this coded language has allowed many cases that are rooted in racism to go unseen and unchallenged. Alexander quotes Jerome Miller, former executive director of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives. Miller says, “There are certain code words that allow you never to have to say ‘race,’ but everybody knows that’s what you mean and ‘crime’ is one of those. . . . So when we talk about locking up more and more people, what we’re really talking about is locking up more and more black men” (qtd. in Alexander 105). The ellipses are used to create a sort of cause and effect relationship between the statements before and after the ellipses. The first part connects the word “crime” with African-American men, and Alexander shows how they are incarcerated at much higher rates than white men. Although evidence says that African-Americans do not use or sell drugs more than other races, 93 percent of those convicted of crimes involving crack cocaine are black (Alexander 112). The second part of Mitchell’s quote shows the effect of this use of the word “crime, which is the high number of convictions, long sentences, loss of jobs and family life, and other harmful effects.

Alexander also speaks to the sense of “doublespeak” that is used when referring to the kind of policing that leads to these convictions (131). This “doublespeak” is exemplified by an attitude that says “we do not racial-profile; we just stop people based on race” (131). This use of opposites helps Alexander point out hypocrisy both in policing and in the courts. Similar to intense patrols of African-American neighborhoods, jurors can be weeded out and dismissed based on race without ever using that word. Alexander shows how “prosecutors almost never fail to successfully craft acceptable race-neutral explanations to justify striking black jurors” (121). The clothing they wear, poverty, educational level, and other terms may signify racial motives. This exclusion of black jurors makes it unfair for black defendants because they may not have a jury of their peers.

As stated in the preface, this book was written for people who do not fully understand or appreciate the scale of the injustice described in the book. This may be because they have never been a black defendant facing a judge or jury and a long prison sentence. Or perhaps the reader has never been in such a severe unfortunate circumstance. In Chapter 3, “The Color of Justice,” the opening passage heavily uses the “you” voice. This makes the reader feel more connected to the argument that the author is making. This is an efficient way to draw the reader in, grab their attention, and instead of making it just a study, it humanizes the problem. “You are also now branded a drug felon. You are no longer eligible for food stamps,” Alexander writes (97). This grips the reader and makes the problem real, all too real for the 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, a country that we call home that has the highest rate of incarceration now in the world (6).