“It is far more convenient to imagine that a majority of young African American men in urban areas freely chose a life of crime than to accept the real possibility that their lives were structured in a way that virtually guaranteed their early admission into a system from which they can never escape.” p. 229
“It is simply taken for granted that in cities like Baltimore and Chicago, the vast majority of young black men are currently under the control of the criminal justice system or branded criminals for life. This extraordinary circumstance—unheard of in the rest of the world—is treated here in America as a basic fact of life, as normal as separate water fountains were just a half century ago.” p. 225
In Chapter 5, Prof. Alexander reviews the information she has already well established about mass incarceration and its effects on people of color and then explores more thoroughly the specific correlations between the “old” and “new” Jim Crow. She opens chapter 5 with a discussion of how deeply in denial Americans are about mass incarceration, noting that when politicians or the media talk about “missing” black fathers or a lack of eligible black men for black women interested in marriage, the blame is placed on black men, not mass incarceration. It is easier to avoid the knowledge of mass incarceration than it was the knowledge of slavery or Jim Crow because it is considerably more hidden.
According to Prof. Alexander, we also avoid knowing by believing that racist systems require racial animosity, which we like to think no longer exists in the U.S. To counter this belief, she borrows the metaphor of a birdcage—individual policies (i.e., wires) do not have to be designed to further racist ideologies; it is the working together of many policies that creates a system that is racist in its effect (i.e., many wires together create a cage). Why she does not also say that racial animosity is alive and well even if it has changed form over the last hundred years is not clear.
She does acknowledge the racial animosity at the root of mass incarceration when she reviews the similarities between the “old” Jim Crow and the “new” Jim Crow—that conservative politicians appealed to the racism of poor whites to win their support, to keep them from joining with poor people of color to vote for progressive policies. The list of similarities she draws between the “old” and “new” Jim Crow goes on to include:
The first half of chapter 5 ends with the interesting observation that for white felons, the stigma of “felon” is non-racialized. In fact, whiteness mitigates the criminal status. For African Americans, particularly young black men, they are stigmatized by criminal status regardless of whether they have committed a crime.
Prof. Alexander cites statistics showing that more African American adults are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850. What is your reaction to this? How much power, if any, does this shocking statistic lose if you consider percentages of the population instead?
At times, Prof. Alexander seems reluctant to say that individual people can be racist and policies can be based on racism. Does this bother you and/or is it the right approach for her audience? Do you think our ability to admit to racism grown since she wrote this book in 2010?