The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

One of the least protected, least liked, least defensible groups in America is criminals. It’s hard to defend defending a criminal. Therefore, if you label a Black person a criminal, you can do almost anything you want to them.

After the end of slavery, there were laws, ridiculous laws, such as vagrancy laws that made it illegal not to have a job. So, after millions of formerly enslaved people were set free with no places to go and or places to work, they immediately made it illegal to not work and to not have a place to go. This allowed them to put these people right back into a system that amounted to slavery, involuntary servitude.

Eventually, Jim Crow laws emerged. The Jim Crow era lasted for decades, officially ending around 1964. But what happened to all of those formerly racist people? Did they suddenly die? Did they suddenly change their viewpoints? No. They simply found new ways to enact racism. That’s how we saw the explosion of mass incarceration, especially for Black people.

Mass incarceration began at a time when crime was actually on a downward trend. The War on Drugs was announced years before there was an influx of cocaine into America. These laws, these policies, they weren’t enacted to fight crime or to keep people safe. They were enacted to punish Black people.

Even more insidious than imprisoning these people, as Michelle Alexander details in her book, is what happens once they get out of jail. They are relegated to second-class citizenship. They can’t vote. They can’t receive public housing assistance. It’s hard to get a job with a record. So many of the things necessary to integrate back into society are prohibited for these people, effectively making them second-class citizens and perpetuating a caste system.

So it’s not just what happens to the people in jail, even out of jail, they are still in prison, so to speak.

We wonder why so many of our laws don’t logically make sense. That’s because they weren’t created with the intention of reforming people, helping people, stopping crime, or stopping drugs. They were created as a form of punishment, especially for Black people.

If you’re unaware of this history, it may seem ludicrous. This kind of information isn’t taught in American classrooms. It’s not widely broadcast in the media. The average citizen isn’t informed about it. And because these laws and policies have such a wide impact yet benefit such a small number of people, it may seem implausible that all of these things happened specifically to harm a particular group of people.

Addressing Racism in America

In order to combat racism, one of the things we must do as a country and as a world is to make discussions about racism and anti-Blackness regular conversations. These conversations need to happen in schools, K-12 and beyond. They need to be present in the media.

Now, Americans, believe in liberty, in limited government. So where do citizens come into play?

Media entities that uphold racist stereotypes and negative images of Black people need to be held accountable. On the flip side, media entities that show positive and diverse images of Black people need support and recognition. People need their own platforms to produce and consume the kind of content they want.

Unfortunately, racism is much harder to combat in some areas than others. That’s why we have tools like education. That’s why we have the ability to influence media narratives. While we can’t control what happens in individual homes, we can influence what happens in the media and in classrooms.

Racism won’t die easily. We’ve seen this before. Just like when schools were forced to integrate, there was a shift toward private schools. Now, we see an increase in charter schools. These shifts are not accidental. The underlying impact of racism takes years, decades, even centuries to undo.

But in the meantime, we need to give Black people the means to survive today. That means economic empowerment.

One of the most sinister symptoms of racism today is mass incarceration. If we think about it in terms of priorities, like the Eisenhower Box, mass incarceration is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

The Path Forward

What’s important is addressing racist beliefs and attitudes. Along those lines, economic empowerment for Black people must be a top priority. As Dr. Claude Anderson discusses in his book PowerNomics, economic empowerment should be a focus.

Use money to build an economic base. Use that economic base to influence politicians and shape policies in your favor. Then, use that political influence to change the police system and the justice system. From there, influence media, education, and beyond.

That should be the priority.

I think it would be interesting to see what that kind of plan looks like on a local level.

We understand the large-scale, macro-level issues. But on a day-to-day, person-to-person level, what does action look like?

Original draft written in July 2020.