Blog Post #2: Analysis and Thoughts
Hello! In this post I will be analyzing the content and argument of Alexander's writing up to the end of Chapter 2 and into Chapter 3, providing my own thoughts and reactions to what I read. It will be a mix of rhetorical analysis and an argument analysis as well as a reaction.
(This is not a post intended to go in depth at each, it's more of a laidback, reactionary post)
So far in The New Jim Crow, Alexander has talked about how the War on Drugs targets poorer communities as well as black communities. She goes into depth about how police have been bribed into making pretextual traffic stops and then arresting a person for drug possession. The police also are able to perform unwarranted searches through loop holes and intimidation to scare a person for drugs. Alexander also talks about the court system and how a first time offender for selling just a few grams of drugs can go to jail for ten years, and a third time offender is applicable for a life sentence.
It's strange to think that someone would have to forfeit their car for accidentally giving a drug dealer a ride. If you drove a car worth about $5,000, and the police seized your car because you were under suspicion of ferrying around a drug dealer, there wouldn't be much you could do. Maybe if you had a solid job and were making enough money to afford a lawyer, you could go to court against the government. You might spend thousands in legal fees and to pay the lawyer, and eventually you might get your car back. However the inside is trashed and now your car is worth $3,000.
Even then, someone paying for all of this would likely lose a couple thousand overall with a now worse car than they had before. However, what if you couldn't afford a lawyer. Then you have to forfeit your car, and you don't get it back. The police could sell it and use it for a vacation. This is the sense of hopelessness that Alexander portrays, especially in Chapter 2. She uses anecdotes from all sorts of these helpless people, without enough money to defend themselves from the police.
"Most people simply cannot afford the considerable cost of hiring an attorney. Even if the cost is not an issue, the incentives are all wrong. If the police seized your car worth $5,000, or took $500 cash from your home, would you be willing to pay an attorney more than your assets are worth to get them back?" (Alexander 83)
I used an example based off the one she used in her argument. Alexander talks about more than just forfeiting assets though too. Poor people in general can simply not afford lawyers, as the annual income someone must earn in order to "be able to afford a lawyer" is just $3000. So even for non drug related crimes, people will be put to jail for years on end before they can hire an attorney to revisit their case. Alexander uses an anecdote here to display the helplessness of poor people that become incarcerated.
"One extreme is the experience of James Thomas, an impoverished day laborer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was charged with murder in 1966, and waited eight and a half years for his case to go to trial. It never did. His mother finally succeeded in getting his case dismissed, after scraping together $500 to hire an attorney, who demonstrated to the court that, in the time Thomas spent waiting for his case to go to trial, his alibi witness had died of kidney disease." (Alexander 86)
Before discussing the content of the anecdote, I think it's important to note the specificity she uses to support her arguments and topics. Alexander adds in very specified examples such as the one above to prove her point. The anecdote is such a detailed story and it displays that hopelessness that poor people have when they have any encounter with breaking the law.
The story itself was very shocking. It's hard to imagine waiting eight and a half years in jail before your case is even considered. Especially since it's a poor person in a poor family, he had no control over his case or in the court system and when he finally received enough money to buy an attorney when his one alibi had already died.
My thoughts on this story and the others in general surrounding police searches and unstoppable incarcerations definitely bring me back to that idea of classicism. This matches up similarly with what Alexander is trying to prove as well in that there is an "undercaste", or a makeshift caste system that was designed to keep poor people below everyone else. While this is definitely prevalent in the War on Drugs and in incarcerations in general, it also moves into racism which she talked about in Chapter 3. However, once again it becomes hard to see the difference between racism and classicism when it comes to the War on Drugs. Police target poor communities, and single out Blacks as an excuse to search them or find drugs. It's absolutely disgusting. And it'll be very hard to change this for the future especially since the laws surrounding drugs and searches at this point are so rooted to incarcerating more people for longer than ever.
Change at this point seems impossible without an immense amount of protests or power shift in the government. After reading this book so far, I don't see how the culture in this could possibly change.
Shaffer, Catherine. "Michigan Lawmakers Vote to Limit Civil Asset Forfeiture." Michigan Radio, 28 Feb. 2019,
www.michiganradio.org/post/ michigan-lawmakers-vote-limit-civil-asset-forfeiture. Accessed 11 Mar. 2021.
I think your point about how class and race go hand in hand is an interesting one. The key is to consider whether a poor white person would be in the same situation. Does Alexander provide any information or evidence that this isn't so?
ReplyDeleteChapter 3 describes most of the general lower class, court and police abuse. In Chapter 4 Alexander then turns to the racism side. Basically police were more likely to target African Americans and it was easier to, especially when it came to winning cases in courts as juries and whatnot were primarily white. I think I may of made it a little unclear in that it's definitely a predominantly racist issue, but it is interesting to see that because it's so much easier to target poorer black people, often anybody in a poor community suffers.
DeleteI think that the facts about how long you can get locked away for low level drug offences is really thought provoking. It seems ridiculous that something that is a disease will get you locked in prison for years and years. And you can get life for three offences? That seems like a very steep price to pay for something you don't have that much control over. Overall I really enjoyed reading your blog post!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Yeah it is really wild and frustrating to hear that someone can get life in prison for three small drug offenses. And these three could happen at the same time. For example if you transported marijuana and then used it and got caught, that would count for two. And then if you had another drug on you as well, just like that you could get sentenced. The problems with this are really imbedded with the loopholes that courts and police forces use to discriminate.
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