On the broadest, and most disheartening, context for race and justice in 21st
century America.
I’ve written before in this space about the way that wars, even those with
the most noble or necessary purposes, tend
to draw out and feature the very worst in human behavior. I’ve also used
that dark reality to make my case for why the phrase and concept “the
war on terror” has been the worst outcome from the September 11th
terrorist attacks (and, fortunately, one that
seems to be waning in our national conversations). And I’ve likewise argued
for the striking wrong-headedness of the “war
on drugs,” a conflict that has produced just as many dark effects as and is
just as impossible to imagine “winning” as the war on terror, and one directed
even more overtly at those who are already victims (at least if you believe, as
I do, that the war on drugs is much more consistently a war on drug users and
drug addicts than on dealers or other criminals).
Given all of that, I can’t imagine a more trenchant and timely book, nor a
more thoroughly depressing and horrifying one, than Michelle Alexander’s The
New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010). Moreover,
while Alexander’s work focuses first and
foremost on the drug war and related realities of our horrifically distorted
justice system, her title indicates the book’s broader and crucial
historical sweep: her connection of these contemporary realities to the
histories of racism and discrimination
that have (as I hope this week’s series has illustrated) so long been
intertwined with law and justice in America. Quite simply, the book is like The
Wire in public scholarly form, only without the wonderful performances
and moments of humor and occasional happy endings and Omar Little-y goodness
(show spoilers in that video) to distract us from the crushing weight of all
the wrongs that both the show and book document and deconstruct.
So how on earth do we—we public scholars, we Americans, we people period—respond
to such realities? Other than by weeping softly, anyway, which I’m pretty much
doing right now. It’s not a magic bullet by any means, but I think one
important step is simply to read Alexander’s book, and thus to raise our
communal awareness of all these interconnected histories and current events,
issues and themes. I’m proud to say that my own institution, Fitchburg State
University, has chosen The New Jim Crow
as its first Common Community Read; over the next couple of years I’ll get some
direct evidence for what such communal reading and engagement might mean, and
will keep you posted for sure. Awareness and engagement are of course only the
first steps, and can’t themselves solve—or even necessarily address—any of the
root causes or problems that contribute to this dark national reality. But if
we’re going to fight this war—to fight against
this war, that is—they’re a pretty important ground from which to do so.
September Recap this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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