Relevance
Hey guys, and welcome back for the third time! In this post, I would like to talk about the relevance of the topics discussed in The New Jim Crow. In other words, I am going to do my best to express why inequity in the criminal justice system and unconscious discrimination against African-Americans is important today.
One of the main points Michelle Alexander makes in writing this book is to express to the reader that while times have changed, and African-Americans have been granted many of the freedoms they have a right to at different points over the years, there are still many injustices that they have to cope with. For example, it is far more likely that an African-American man or woman will be arrested over a caucasian man or woman. There are statistics to support this. According to the NAACP website, specifically the "Criminal Justice Fact Sheet," African-Americans are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites. This racial disparity is not limited to just African-Americans, however; despite the fact that Hispanics and African-Americans combined make up about 32% of America's population, they make up about 56% of imprisoned people today.
As stated in The New Jim Crow, the War on Drugs has had an immense impact on the incarceration differences between blacks and whites. For example, also according to the "Criminal Justice Fact Sheet" composed by the NAACP, the results of a 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 17 million whites reported having used an illegal drug within the past month while only 4 million African-Americans reported doing so. If these facts that clearly defy the stereotype don't surprise you, in spite of these clear facts that African-Americans use illegal drugs less than or equal to the amount that whites use, African-Americans are incarcerated at six times the amount white people are. I know you're probably asking yourself: how can this be possible if you simply look at the statistics? Trust me, I'm wondering that too, and I think the only possible answer to this question is an underlying racial bias. After all, the War on Drugs gave anyone working in law enforcement an excuse to stop and frisk you if you looked "suspicious." Just as you may have guessed already, according to "stop-and-frisk" data provided by the Civil Liberties Union from 2003-2017, nine out of ten of the people who have been stopped and frisked have been completely innocent, and more than 50% of the people who were stopped and frisked in New York every year have been black. Mind you, this is in comparison to the mere 10% of white people who are stopped and frisked every year. Racial profiling? I think so.
Thank you so much for reading my third post; I'll see you again soon.
Works Cited:
Adams, Ronnie. "'I could have been Mike Brown': your stories of racial profiling
by the world's police." US News, 29 Aug. 2014, www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/ng-interactive/2014/aug/29/
-sp-mike-brown-stories-racial-profiling-police. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
"Criminal Justice Fact Sheet." NAACP, 2018, www.naacp.org/
criminal-justice-fact-sheet/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
End Stop & Frisk. 2018, NAACP.
"Stop and Frisk Data." Civil Liberties Union, 2018, www.nyclu.org/en/
stop-and-Frisk-data. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
One of the main points Michelle Alexander makes in writing this book is to express to the reader that while times have changed, and African-Americans have been granted many of the freedoms they have a right to at different points over the years, there are still many injustices that they have to cope with. For example, it is far more likely that an African-American man or woman will be arrested over a caucasian man or woman. There are statistics to support this. According to the NAACP website, specifically the "Criminal Justice Fact Sheet," African-Americans are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of whites. This racial disparity is not limited to just African-Americans, however; despite the fact that Hispanics and African-Americans combined make up about 32% of America's population, they make up about 56% of imprisoned people today.
As stated in The New Jim Crow, the War on Drugs has had an immense impact on the incarceration differences between blacks and whites. For example, also according to the "Criminal Justice Fact Sheet" composed by the NAACP, the results of a 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 17 million whites reported having used an illegal drug within the past month while only 4 million African-Americans reported doing so. If these facts that clearly defy the stereotype don't surprise you, in spite of these clear facts that African-Americans use illegal drugs less than or equal to the amount that whites use, African-Americans are incarcerated at six times the amount white people are. I know you're probably asking yourself: how can this be possible if you simply look at the statistics? Trust me, I'm wondering that too, and I think the only possible answer to this question is an underlying racial bias. After all, the War on Drugs gave anyone working in law enforcement an excuse to stop and frisk you if you looked "suspicious." Just as you may have guessed already, according to "stop-and-frisk" data provided by the Civil Liberties Union from 2003-2017, nine out of ten of the people who have been stopped and frisked have been completely innocent, and more than 50% of the people who were stopped and frisked in New York every year have been black. Mind you, this is in comparison to the mere 10% of white people who are stopped and frisked every year. Racial profiling? I think so.
I would now like to leave you with a heartbreaking personal anecdote of a young African-American woman who experienced terrible racial profiling only four years ago. I daresay that most white people are unable to relate to a story like this, and I know that it and other information brought to my attention by Michelle Alexander certainly opened my eyes to the racial disparity that still thrives in our world today.
“I was 19 years old, and my son and my 11-year-old nephew were in the back seat – they were both wearing seatbelts, as was I – when a state trooper pulled us over into a restaurant parking lot. She asked me to step out of the car, then proceeded to handcuff me and told me to sit in the front of her squad car. She provided no answer when I asked why I was being pulled over.
Apparently I must have been some threat. The honor student who simply got pregnant too young. The young mother who decided to take her son and nephew for a ride, because it was a beautiful summer day, and they hadn't been anywhere. My son is 19 now, and he still remembers that day. He has feared the police ever since.”
Works Cited:
Adams, Ronnie. "'I could have been Mike Brown': your stories of racial profiling
by the world's police." US News, 29 Aug. 2014, www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/ng-interactive/2014/aug/29/
-sp-mike-brown-stories-racial-profiling-police. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
"Criminal Justice Fact Sheet." NAACP, 2018, www.naacp.org/
criminal-justice-fact-sheet/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
End Stop & Frisk. 2018, NAACP.
"Stop and Frisk Data." Civil Liberties Union, 2018, www.nyclu.org/en/
stop-and-Frisk-data. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018.
Grace, I appreciate your compilation of a variety of the arguments that Alexander includes in this section of the reading, as well as your additional inclusion of a specific story to support your ideas. Your rhetorical questions are also very effective.
ReplyDeleteHi Grace! I have to say, one of my favorite things about your blog is the fact that you always include pictures! It’s so simple to do, but I really think it adds to it. I agree with the points you made in this post. Even though it makes more sense for law enforcement to target white people because there are far more of them who actually use drugs, they continue to target African-Americans. It is illogical, and can only be explained by the media’s influence on the drug war, misrepresentation, and implicit/explicit racism. I might be wrong, but it seems like the racial disparities in the statistics are less drastic now than they were in the studies she included in the book from the early 2000s. Do you think the system is actually improving, or is this just a coincidence? Really nice job!
ReplyDeleteHi Myah! Thanks so much for taking the time to read and respond to my post and for your compliment about the pictures I included. Good question; honestly, I think that the system has improved slightly as awareness spreads, but not very much. We've watched a couple of videos in my Civics class about this issue, and they are more recent, which tells me that the situation has not gotten too much better.
DeleteHi grace,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your post! I was so shocked by all the statistics and facts Michelle Alexander brings up because I obviously knew that there were racial disparities in the criminal justice system but seeing it all laid out was actually crazy to think about. I loved your statistics that you included and also the story about the mother. I’ve kind of had this question for myself, but I was wondering what your thoughts are on how to fix this issue? In The New Jim Crow she talks a lot about how it’s often implicit bias that plays a huge role in these racial disparities and I just wonder how you could fix that when it’s not even operating on a conscious level?