Even though Professor Braine warned us that this reading could be depressing, I had not adequately braced myself before starting to read it. It’s one thing to have prison abolitionist and anti-racist political opinions on generalized, non-specific grounds; it’s entirely another to see all the reasons for those ideologies clearly laid out. I’m not sure if I want to read the rest of the book–I’m sure it will be both (a) brilliantly articulated and (b) a terrifying dose of reality.
One dominant cultural narrative in particular that Alexander challenges that she doesn’t discuss at length is the “things are gradually improving” trope. In a way, this trope is, I think, one of her main reasons for writing the book, because the misguided notion of a gradually equalizing society comes directly out of collective ignorance of racism in history, racism today, and racism as a systemically oppressive force (not individual prejudice). It seems to me that racism in the very recent past (last 40ish years) is less discussed in schools than racism from the time of the Civil Rights Movement and before. It’s not just racism, either; I learned very little about the very recent past in history classes, which makes no sense to me from a pedagogical perspective (isn’t it more important to know recent political history like the War on Drugs and benign neglect and HIV/AIDS stigma than about the War of 1812?). Anyway, this is all to say that I think the work Michelle Alexander is doing with this book is extraordinarily important, and I applaud her for it. Her book makes me extremely uncomfortable, which I find to be an appropriate emotional response to a comprehensive, oppressive system of social control that targets Black Americans.
