In Ava DuVernay’s film 13th she analyzes the pioneering events that led up to this toxic system known as the Prison Industrial Complex. She critically examines how the same golden ticket that, supposedly, granted our freedom was the same rabbit hole that kept black Americans in a cycle of slavery. DeVernay illuminates the ideology that if this system of “militarism, racism, and capital” could somehow manage to criminalize black Americans their institutions could continue and perhaps excel. Jordan Camp & Christina Heatherton’s Policing the Planet expounds upon this ideology that allowed those systems of “militarism, racism, and capital” to maintain power. Broken windows policing, “emerges as an ideological and political project,”(2) ideological in the sense of DeVernay’s examination of embedding criminality on the character of the
When black americans are convicted as criminals, which is the central ideology that is ruling, they are often stripped of all those rights that make them american, but more importantly make them human. Policing the Planet’s Patrise Cullors discusses her take on why the current discourse is divorced from abolition that summarizes 13th and the broken windows policing, she says “We live in a police state, in which the police have become judge, juror, and executioner. They’ve become the social worker. They’ve become the mental health clinician. They’ve become anything and everything that has to do with the everyday life of mostly Black and Brown poor people…Many of us understand that [police’s] original task was to patrol slaves.”(37) Broken windows policing was the ideological and political project that allowed for the criminalization of black bodies, resulting in mass incarceration that allows the prison system to reach the level where it could be considered modern day
In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing journalist Ted Conover, who has a background in anthropology, goes undercover as correctional officer in order to examine the US prison system. The central problem to this analysis is that is inherently subjective because the author is documenting his experience from the lens of the guard. In such a polarizing and negative power dynamic a singular perspective shows a severely inadequate representation of what occurs at the institution and the circumstances that allow it to perpetuate. This failure is evident in the author’s personal transformation from the beginning of the book to the end. His writing becomes desensitized and begins to see prisoners as increasingly evil. Although this type of first hand journalism is admirable and provides interesting anecdotal evidence it will never be able to fully examine the precise and intricate social, economic, and political conditions that are the root cause of the injustice that is our criminal justice system.
Lappin, H. G., & Greene, J. (2006). Are prisons just? In C. Hanrahan (Ed.), Opposing Viewpoints: America’s prisons (pp. 51-98). Detroit: Bonnie Szumski.
To begin, Alexander points out how felons are depicted as life-long prisoners in her article ”The New Jim Crow”. However, Alexander states that The War on Drugs caused many blacks to be put in prison and scrutinized by the government thereafter. Similarly, according to Arnold, welfare/workfare recipients are under constant supervision and are required to work menial jobs. In addition, Arnold mentio...
“The New Jim Crow” is an article by Michelle Alexander, published by the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Michelle is a professor at the Ohio State Moritz college of criminal law as well as a civil rights advocate. Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law is part of the world’s top education system, is accredited by the American Bar Association, and is a long-time member of the American Law association. The goal of “The New Jim Crow” is to inform the public about the issues of race in our country, especially our legal system. The article is written in plain English, so the common person can fully understand it, but it also remains very professional. Throughout the article, Alexander provides factual information about racial issues in our country. She relates them back to the Jim Crow era and explains how the large social problem affects individual lives of people of color all over the country. By doing this, Alexander appeals to the reader’s ethos, logos, and pathos, forming a persuasive essay that shifts the understanding and opinions of all readers.
The work by Victor M. Rios entitled Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness depict ways in which policing and incarceration affect inequalities that exist in society. In this body of work I will draw on specific examples from the works of Victor M. Rios and Michelle Alexander to fulfill the tasks of this project. Over the course of the semester and by means of supplemental readings, a few key points are highlighted: how race and gender inequalities correlate to policing and incarceration, how laws marginalize specific groups, and lastly how policing and incarceration perpetuate the very inequalities that exist within American society.
As Elie Wiesel once stated, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (“Elie Wiesel Quote”). Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which discusses criminal justice and its role in mass incarceration, promotes a similar idea regarding silence when America’s racial caste system needs to be ended; however, Alexander promotes times when silence would actually be better for “the tormented.” The role of silence and lack of silence in the criminal justice system both contribute to wrongly accused individuals and growing populations behind bars.
Today, more African American adults are under correctional control than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began (Alexander 180). Throughout history, there have been multiple racial caste systems in the United States. In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander defines a “racial caste” as “a racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom” (12). Alexander argues that both Jim Crow and slavery functioned as racial caste systems, and that our current system of mass incarceration functions as a similar caste system, which she labels “The New Jim Crow”. There is now a silent Jim Crow in our nation.
Through the thirteenth amendment emancipation was born. Through the language of the constitution— “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime”, the amendment was able to make loopholes for certain social agendas that led to the opposite of what the amendment intended to do. It has been able to metaphorically enslave blacks by creating the ability to have the stereotype of black criminality. Black criminality is the myth that has played throughout our society, that depicts black people as criminals, especially black men. This stereotype has caused people to fear away from black people due to the prejudices that the stigmatization of being black holds. Once the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery, Jim Crow Laws appeared within our society, which orchestrated the myth of Blacks being criminals. This stigmatization of a whole race was created through an anomaly of the thirteenth amendment. Something that seems to start the upward battle of a race of people who had been held back because of the laws of slavery, have now found a new struggle to endure, called black criminality, through the unconscientious decision of the wording of the thirteenth amendment that was made to grant
Many people claim that racism no longer exists; however, the minorities’ struggle with injustice is ubiquitous. Since there is a mass incarceration of African Americans, it is believed that African Americans are the cause of the severe increase of crimes. This belief has been sent out implicitly by the ruling class through the media. The media send out coded messages that are framed in abstract neutral language that play on white resentment that targets minorities. Disproportionate arrest is the result of racial disparities in the criminal justice system rather than disproportion in offenders. The disparities in the sentencing procedure are ascribed to racial discrimination. Because police officers are also biased, people of color are more likely to be investigated than whites. Police officers practice racial profiling to arrest African Americans under situations when they would not arrest white suspects, and they are more likely to stop African Americans and see them as suspicious (Alexander 150-176). In the “Anything Can Happen With Police Around”: Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Michelle Fine and her comrades were inspired to conduct a survey over one of the major social issues - how authority figures use a person’s racial identity as a key factor in determining how to enforce laws and how the surveillance is problematic in public space. Fine believes it is critical to draw attention to the reality in why African Americans are being arrested at a much higher rate. This article reflects the ongoing racial issue by focusing on the injustice in treatment by police officers and the youth of color who are victims. This article is successful in being persuasive about the ongoing racial iss...
There are several significant, as well as less significant, themes that are put forth by the author. Some themes that are not as meticulously elaborated on, but still contribute to the book, include the idea that war can corrupt the government and it’s actions, police brutality was part of the norm of the 1960s, and the word “power” had more than one meaning during the civil rights era. All these themes are important to take into consideration upon reading this book; however th...
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander (2010) argues that despite the old Jim Crow is death, does not necessarily means the end of racial caste (p.21). In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes a set of practices and social discourses that serve to maintain African American people controlled by institutions. In this book her analyses is centered in examining the mass incarceration phenomenon in recent years. Comparing Jim Crow with mass incarceration she points out that mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that works together –almost invisible– to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined by race, African American (p. 178 -190).
Rios describes how patrol officer didn’t really care, or to help these youth. Instead of helping out, law enforcement targeted these young deviant boys. Rios shows us a depth overview of Oakland Police Department. In doing so, he shows us how the miscommunication, and the inequality these law agencies in the inner city ghetto
If we had actually learned to show love, care, compassion, and concern across racial lines during the Civil Rights movement – rather than go colorblind—mass incarceration would not exist today (Alexander, 2012, p.177). Nowadays, that would be considered police discretion. In J101, police discretion was one of the main topics discussed. Police have the right to decide whom they want to arrest. In most cases, if the victim is white, then there is a greater likelihood that a black person, or other minority will be
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
According to the Oxford Index, “whether called mass incarceration, mass imprisonment, the prison boom, or hyper incarceration, this phenomenon refers to the current American experiment in incarceration, which is defined by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage.” It should be noted that there is much ambiguity in the scholarly definition of the newly controversial social welfare issue as well as a specific determination in regards to the causes and consequences to American society. While some pro arguments cry act as a crime prevention technique, especially in the scope of the “war on drugs’.