Blog Post #5: Final Thoughts
Hello readers! This is my fifth and final blog post about The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Since my last post I have finished the book. It has been a very revealing book and makes me wonder about the future of systemic racism. It has been disheartening but very educational and very relevant to my English class's current race unit as well as events and debates that are happening currently. This post will be a wrapping-up of the book but at the same time I will be discussing the question of if systemic racism through mass incarceration really is the "new Jim Crow".
Mass incarceration has been cut out of our courts and police departments to fit in with how America sees race now. The Jim Crow Laws explicitly segregated however with the mass incarceration, it's harder for one to segregate solely by race. As you can see in the image above, it's unimaginable to put that kind of sign up today. If mass incarceration were the new Jim Crow, everything about it would be less discrete. People wouldn't have to read this book to see what was happening or they wouldn't have to do extensive research to find out how federal systems discriminate. While mass incarceration does have its place as a racially controlling system, it's a different beast than Jim Crow.
"Saying that mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow can leave a misimpression. The parallels between the two systems of control are striking, to say the least--in both, we find racial opportunism by politicians, legalized discrimination, political disenfranchisement, exclusion of blacks from juries, stigmatization, the closing of courthouse doors, racial segregation, and the symbolic production of race--yet that are important differences." (200)
Alexander makes it clear that everything that she has talked about so far isn't necessarily the the Jim Crow over again but the analogy definitely has some overlap. I don't think they are the same though. While they have those similarities as discussed on page 200, Alexander also tells out clear differences between the two systems. She describes the analogy by comparing slavery to Jim Crow. Every form of discrimination and suppression of minorities is acquitted and adapted to its time period.
Mass incarceration has been cut out of our courts and police departments to fit in with how America sees race now. The Jim Crow Laws explicitly segregated however with the mass incarceration, it's harder for one to segregate solely by race. As you can see in the image above, it's unimaginable to put that kind of sign up today. If mass incarceration were the new Jim Crow, everything about it would be less discrete. People wouldn't have to read this book to see what was happening or they wouldn't have to do extensive research to find out how federal systems discriminate. While mass incarceration does have its place as a racially controlling system, it's a different beast than Jim Crow.
Some of the Jim Crow Laws were discrete however. For example literacy tests for voting was colorblind in that everyone had to take a literacy test in order to vote. The problem was that many African Americans at the time never had education because of slavery and lack of infrastructure to support education among black communities. Mass incarceration goes a little beyond that colorblindness. Police officers can deem a citizen suspicious for simply being black. Americans back then weren't given literacy tests because they were black, but because everyone had to take one, therefore targeting African Americans. This kind of singling out now though still goes largely unnoticed. There are so many masks today that people use to justify the high prison rate among African Americans such as crime rates. It's easy to see one solution to a problem and stick with it when in fact there's a much deeper case underneath it.
I know or have seen a lot of people justify the high amount of blacks in prison by using crime rates or other excuses. I think a lot of this does have to do with ignorance and simply not being aware of what happens in poorer neighborhoods and what happens to people who simply don't have money to defend themselves against the courts and the police departments. I mentioned in some of my earlier posts about mass incarceration being related to classicism. I know now that it's deeper than that. Mass incarceration is not only targeted to people of lower economic status but it targets African Americans and minorities even more.
Perhaps mass incarceration is not as openly offensive and intolerant towards minorities as the Jim Crow Laws were, but it doesn't make it any better. Is it better to be insulted in person or talked about behind your back? Is the situation less important because there are less people who know about the whole system? Of course not. While I don't think that mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow, it is mostly certainly a manipulative, evil system of loopholes and discrimination used to target African Americans and put them in jail. If you haven't read this book, I strongly recommend it. It's not a fun read, it's not a fast read, but it is definitely a book worth reading.
"Jim Crow Laws." PBS, WGBH Educational Foundation,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/ americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/. Accessed 1 Apr. 2021.
Hey Ethan, I thought that your commentary on how the oppressive laws now are not any better than the Jim crow laws then was very interesting. I think that If there is representation then the community has decided to outlaw some things that it is just if not fair. While it is not right in my opinion if the majority votes in favor then I think that we must do it no matter how deplorable.
ReplyDeleteEthan, do you think that the subtlety of some of the oppression happening now makes it harder to fight? Is that fight made even harder by the fact that it is for people who have committed a crime, a crime different from not getting out of one's seat for a white person? Sometimes justice is hardest for those we see as very different from us, since it's harder to empathize with such a group.
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