03/07

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07
Mar 14

New Jim Crow

Flipping through TV channels the other night, I came across one of my favorite shows, Cops. I only had to watch for about 10 minutes before I started noticing some biased policies within the police force. Officers often talk about how they drive through the “projects” or down dark alleys to look for criminal activity, usually petty drug deals, instead of patrolling random areas. They also set up undercover operations where they use former convicted drug users to set up drug deals and then bust the dealers, taking advantage of poverty, race, and lack of opportunity on both ends of the situation.

According to the NAACP, “African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population” (x) which clearly indicates bias and discrimination within the system, as African Americans make up roughly 13% of the total U.S. population and yet represent close to 50% of individuals in jail or prison. It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that these numbers don’t match up, and yet so many people deny the existence of statistically provable institutionalized racism in our beautiful United States of America. This is largely due to the fact that racist policies have moved from Jim Crow and the KKK to “New Jim Crow”, as is discussed in the reading for this week. One recently published book by Ian Haney López, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, examines in-depth the language used by the likes of Clinton and Reagan to appear colorblind, unbiased, and politically correct in order to disguise true underlying racist and classist biases and policies. I would recommend giving this book a flip-through, as it sheds light on our politicians and our media, revealing discrimination and 1984-esque “newspeak” that is present in the very sources that we normally look to for information, education, and enlightenment. Another great tool to check out is The Sentencing Project, which takes a look at racial disparities within the American justice system and proposes reform projects. 

This is an extremely pressing and serious issue, and the public needs to have their eyes opened to the new ways in which racism is subtly integrated into our American way of life. But besides grassroots and org efforts, how can such a large, complex, and historically rooted system of inequality be dismantled? There was a recent discussion on the news of the new requirement of Los Angeles police officers to wear small video cameras on their uniforms in order to increase police accountability and to limit biases. In my opinion, this may be just the sort of thing needed to begin fighting institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system, but do you think it will be good enough? Is this the type of policy we need, and will it be effective, or will it bring up even more issues? What do you think?   

JE

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07
Mar 14

The New Jim Crow

As I began the reading, I felt that the claims being made were quite outlandish- a sentiment I’m sure many of my classmates felt as well. However, as noted by some of the posts that I’ve looked at, the author provides a well-thought out argument that, by the end of the first chapter, has you convinced that her claims are true to a large extent.

What bothers me most about this disturbing idea- that our justice system is, in fact, a vehicle for racism- is the fact that it is so unnoticed. How can it be that in such a race-conscious time, where the idea of equality is ingrained in us and stressed in most institutions of higher education, that such an elaborate system of racism exists under our nose? How can it be that officials who went through several years of schooling meant to provide a liberal arts education of rational and free thinking make policies intended to freeze out a sizeable portion of our population from their rights?

The idea of the ‘new Jim Crow’ and these questions are things that leave much to be thought about. We must answer these crucial questions if we hope to ever achieve true equality.

Posted by in 03/07 — No Comments
07
Mar 14

The New Jim Crow

I fail to understand how anyone could be even the slightest bit surprised at the idea of discrimination in our justice system, especially since, as of late, we have become all too familiar with the injustices and racism inherent in so many of our police policies.  Stop and Frisk, for example, has dominated the New York media outlets in recent years, particularly because of the shocking extent of discrimination that it brings to light. In New York City, 80% of all stops made by NYPD officers were either black or Latino. The ignorance that that percentage implies is frankly just mind-boggling. In what may perhaps be the most egregious illustration of our country’s nearly irreparable level of racism, the U.S. Sentencing Commission divulged that “Black male offenders have continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders.” Black offenders receive sentences 10% longer than their white counterparts. There can be no greater indication of police and judicial contempt of Blacks in America than that extremely depressing, and slightly nauseating, reality.

While the concept of institutionalized racism did not catch me off guard, the crux of Michelle Alexander’s argument was, initially at least, a bit off-putting. The idea that our justice system was engineered to restrict the rights and liberties of black communities struck me as conspiratorial. Yet, as Alexander continuously and deliberately built her case, the possibility emerged that her seemingly outlandish claims could, in fact, contain some truth. If I understand the author correctly, our current state essentially arose from the political incentive to exploit the racist tendencies of Americans nationwide by “cracking down on crime,” which, at that point, was basically code for “discriminating against blacks.” Just the consideration of these concepts is enough to bring an entirely new perspective with which to view crime in America.

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