2014 Shaping the Future of New York Fridays: 11:00-1:45 Boylan Hall, 2231

What Michelle Alexander presents in chapters 2 and 3 of her book, The New Jim Crow, is brutally, honestly, hard to stomach. The idea that racism exists is not a foreign or sensational concept, unfortunately. But the idea that the people put in place to create, promote and enforce justice are failing spectacularly by creating a racial “undercaste”, as Alexander puts it, is both infuriating and depressing. And the evidence Alexander continues to present in chapter three only makes the picture bleaker. There are implicit as well as explicit biases, she explains, and the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand. You may think you are not racist, and you may vehemently oppose racism consciously, but you can, at the same time, STILL have implicit racist biases. What can we do?!

I think there are two important concepts here, one easier to start with than the other. The first, easier (yet elementary) concept, is awareness. At the most basic level, we should be trying to bring our unconscious biases into our conscious minds in order to scrutinize them- we should be aware that there is such thing as implicit racism. By reading material like this book, we call attention to the fact that racism, even in the era of colorblindness, is still an issue.

The other important concept, as alluded to in Alexander’s writing, is media. Of course, portrayal in the media is the root of many, many problems. I am by far not the first and will not be the last to suggest this idea. But if the War on Drugs originally gained momentum because of portrayals in the media of black drug users, such portrayals in the media must be stopped and countered in order for the War on Drugs to die.

I found the reading for this week to be insightful, eye-opening and thought-provoking. Michelle Alexander constructs an argument around the idea that the system of mass incarceration in the United States today serves as a transfigured form of slavery or the Jim Crow laws, designed to oppress and control black people. Her claims were indeed sensational at first, but disturbingly real as she went on to present her evidence. While many of my fellow students have focused specifically on Alexander’s thesis in their responses, and how it made them feel, what struck me most in the reading was a particular excerpt that had nothing to do with incarceration, quoted from historian Loic Wacquant on page 26:

“Racial division was a consequence, not a precondition of slavery, but once it was instituted it became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own.”

I found this quote to be incredibly important and profound because it provided a small distinction in the history of slavery that makes a huge difference- slavery came before racism. Racism was simply a means created to justify the institution of slavery. I hope I’m not betraying my own ignorance by focusing on this quote; maybe this concept is obvious to most people. But the fact that slavery came before racism is so important, in my opinion, because it underscores the utter falsity of what it means to be a racist. I had always understood racism as a horrible concept that just existed, that began when white people came into contact with foreigners and genuinely believed that they were superior. But that is not the case, at least according to Wacquant and Alexander- the people who created racism didn’t even believe in it. Racism was created, it didn’t simply exist, and it was understood as a tool to justify the cruel enslavement of so many people. But racism spiraled and blossomed and spread to such a degree that its origins were forgotten. I perceived the idea of discriminating against others to be as old as time itself, but the specific concept of racism, according to this reading, has a concrete beginning, a concrete group of creators, and a concrete reason for being created.

We must remember that there is no original ideological basis for racism. I think that is a very important fact to highlight, for everyone, in order to fully understand the absurdity of what it means to be racist. And Alexander would argue that the absurdity of racism is something to highlight very heavily in our day and age, where we dangerously believe that racism is on the decline when it is simply being expressed through other outlets.