When you've got to chooseIbram X. Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, says of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow that her "bestseller struck the spark that would eventually light the fire of Black Lives Matter." The Chronicle of Higher Education says it is one of the "Most Influential Books of the Last 20 Years." Others have reacted with words and phrases such as "devastating," "stunning," "invaluable," and "explosive."
Any way you look at it you lose.
-- Simon & Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson"
From slavery to segregation to incarceration
The recent protests were triggered by, and focused on, policing practices, such as the knee on the neck of George Floyd that resulted in Floyd's murder. Outrage was expressed by protesters in many countries around the world. Reforms have followed pressures both inside and outside institutions from city councils and police departments to corporations' cultures and hiring practices, NASCAR's ban on Confederate flags, removal of statues, and renaming military bases.
The Black Lives Matter movement has been a huge, significant force in raising everyone's awareness of America's 400-year history of racist oppression of Blacks. So long as its leadership, and millions of participants, remain active it can continue to be.
I mention Michelle Alexander's book in this context, not only because it belongs on the reading list of every aspiring anti-racist, but because of the way it puts police practices in a context of the entire judicial system -- disproportionate number of Blacks involved in stops, searches, arrests, prosecutions, incarceration, lengthy sentences, along with the biases of prosecutors and judges -- up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court. She supports her assertions with frightening statistics -- including the death penalty research of my late friend and beloved UI College of Law faculty colleague David Baldus.
And I want to make a further point by including here just one of her many stories from the 325 pages of text (Chapter 3, p. 120). (Her fulsome notes cite a Frontline (PBS) program and Angela Davis' Arbitrary Justice as sources. Notes, p. 343.)
Imagine you are Erma Faye Stewart, a thirty-year-old, single African-American mother of two who was arrested as part of a drug sweep in Hearne,Texas. All but one of the people arrested were African-American. You are innocent.I reproduce the story here for five reasons. (1) It is compelling in its own right; those with even one ounce of empathy cannot help but be moved. (2) It powerfully makes the point that, innocent (as she was) or guilty, as I open this blog post: "When you've got to choose/Any way you look at it you lose." How many innocent Blacks, like Ms. Stewart, end up pleading "guilty" because the consequences of that choice are better than the alternative? (3) As itemized in the next to last paragraph above, to go through the justice system can result in consequences as, and often more, serious than the fines or prison time.
After a week in jail, you have no one to care for your two small children and are eager to get home. Your court appointed attorney urges you to plead guilty to a drug distribution charge, saying the prosecutor has offered probation. You refuse, steadfastly proclaiming your innocence.
Finally, after almost a month in jail, you decide to plead guilty so you can return home to your children. Unwilling to risk a trial and years of imprisonment, you are sentenced to 10 years probation and ordered to pay $1000 in fines, as well as court and probation costs.
You are also now branded a drug felon. You are no longer eligible for food stamps; you may be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least 12 years; and you are about to be evicted from public housing. Once homeless, your children will be taken from you and put in foster care. . . .
At trial, the judge finds that the entire sweep was based on the testimony of a single informant who lied to the prosecution. You, however, are still branded a drug felon, homeless, and desperate to regain custody of your children.
But my most important reasons for reproducing it is as a lead in to an observation and a proposal.
(4) The observation involves the web of obstacles confronting, especially, those who are both Black and poor. It's not just police practices, or even the racial bias throughout the entire justice system. As I title this post, "Everything Needs Fixing." Everything is interconnected and reinforced for the Black and poor. Your mother may have been without the benefit of quality pre-natal care. If your pre-K and K-12 education was inadequate, even if you could afford to pay the tuition while not working full time, an additional community college education -- let alone four-year college or university -- may be beyond your ability. If so, you're left with little choice beyond the income and status of low or minimum wage jobs. And if you were unlucky enough to have been among the disproportionate number of poor Blacks put in the "kindergarten to prison" pipeline during your K-12 years you carry the added burden of a "felon" during your job search. Financially, you have no inheritance, investments, equity in a home, savings, or ability to borrow (at rates below pay-day loan rates). Without a car, transportation to a job (if you have one) or job interviews (if you don't) is an expensive hassle. If you have an unreliable junker, the day you miss work is the day you may be fired.
I could go on with examples, but you get the idea. Every disadvantage is connected to all the others. "Any way you look at it you lose." "Everything Needs Fixing."
(5) Many of the world's religions, including Christianity, have some equivalent of the "do unto others" admonition. Sadly, many find the preaching easier than the practice. And so advocates of social justice must revert to economic arguments -- that they are really just proposing "doing well by doing good."
That was how housing for the homeless was sold to the doubters. It turned out to be cheaper than insisting homeless continue to sleep on the sidewalks.
I suspect the same would be true for efforts to improve the lives of everyone in the bottom 40% of our socio-economic caste system -- including all races and nationalities. I suspect that it really is true that "We all do better when we ALL do better." As with the global eradication of smallpox, and our current need to eradicate every COVID-19 case on Earth, we will not see the full fruition of an anti-racial culture until we clean every dark and dusty corner containing elements of our systemic racism.
To work toward that goal I believe an essential element is the gathering of the hundreds of thousands of stories from Blacks in all walks of life (such as that of Erma Faye Stewart, above) -- ideally in a single, online location. We need to encourage this reporting, make it easy, and anonymous when desired, for Blacks to report the daily indignities and hurdles they confront.
For change to occur, whites need to know -- emotionally as well as intellectually -- what it's like to live as a Black person in America's 21st Century, and then get about the job of making the necessary reforms. (In the course of doing this they will be improving the lives of the white poor as well.) The distribution of Blacks' experiences is a job for the mass media, book publishers, television and film producers. That's what it took to reduce the health hazards of tobacco. This will be more difficult. But it is possible. It's up to all of us -- and will benefit all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment