Two pandemics are ravaging concurrently across the United States–the Coronavirus and racism. One book that does a great job of outlining what modern day racial injustice looks like is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.  The title says it all. Many feel as though since we elected our nation’s first black president Barack Obama twelve years ago, we entered a post racial America. ‘Racism doesn’t exist or else a black person wouldn’t have been elected as president of the United States.’ ‘Racism doesn’t exist because there’s no segregation and black people can do the same thing as white people.’ ‘If black people aren’t as successful as white people, it’s their fault.’ ‘Black people are lazy and leech off of welfare services, but they have an equal opportunity to succeed.’  This is the rhetoric highlighted in the book and later on during the fall semester, I watched the documentary White Like Me and the same logic and wording was emphasized.

The thesis of this book is that our new “post racial” era is more dangerous than the clear cut segregation and blatant racism that was seen just a few decades prior.  People now claim to be “colorblind” and that they don’t see skin color. That shouldn’t be the goal. We should be able to see each other’s colors, understand the stories and struggles behind each person’s background, embrace the differences, learn from them, and grow as a multicultural community. If the only way to “see” someone is by ignoring the color of their skin then we have a new problem. That is how the age of mass incarceration was able to flourish. Under Richard Nixon’s presidency a War on Drugs was waged where police were sent to occupy predominantly black and brown communities and imprison millions for nonviolent drug possessions/offenses. Now, these people are locked up for a longer period of time compared to other countries and when released, stripped of their basic rights such as to vote; to serve on juries; be free of legal discrimination in terms of finding housing, work, and public benefits; and are outcasted to a second-class citizen status (Childress).  On paper however, the push was simply to get drugs off the street. Meanwhile there is just as much if not more drug usage in ‘privileged’ neighborhoods by teenagers “experimenting” and “having fun”. The mass incarceration movement through the War on Drugs waged against people of color is the new Jim Crow, the new ‘non-racist and colorblind’ system of dehumanizing black and brown people.

The re-energizd Black Lives Matter movement strives to emphasize that we are not living in a colorblind ‘post racial’ nation.  Since many Americans in positions of power either don’t believe or choose to ignore that the systems put in place centuries ago were designed to suppress black people, legislatively, activists are struggling to affect change.  On the surface, if a black man is killed by the police and the officer claims he felt threatened or the victim wasn’t complying, the office was simply doing his job. There’s not an easy way to prove that the black man was killed because he is black and racism was the factor.  Statistically though, deaths due to lethal force by law enforcement are “disproportionately black (32%) with a fatality rate 2.8 times higher among blacks than whites. Most victims were reported to be armed (83%); however, black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims” (DeGue).  This trend shows something but racism is difficult to prove unless racist rhetoric is used. This is the issue now that BLM and social justice activists are facing. There needs to be change in the social justice and law enforcement systems because the problem is not that they are broken, but that they are working exactly how they were designed to work. Police and those in positions of power are being treated like they are above the law and they are not held accountable for their actions.

Is it feasible for us to move away from our racist past and become a nation that isn’t full of people who are colorblind but is instead are color sensitive, appreciative, and embracive? I don’t believe so because since the dawn of time, humans have established hierarchies and systems to put down groups of people while bettering the standing of others. It’s in human nature to make others second-class because of some difference. Even though obtaining a true sense of unity and cultural appreciation is not really a possibility, this “we are in a post-racial society” ignorance is not something we should promote, as it’s destructive.  We should strive to make concrete change in our governing systems and use our democratic power of the vote to elect officials into office who will work to move us in the right direction of true liberty and justice for all.  It’s not ethical to be idle and allow current and future generations to stay in the same place especially since there is so much room for tangible improvement.

Just before the spring semester started, I read Michelle Obama’s book Becoming and a question to ponder from it that she asked was one her husband said in a speech:  “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” (Obama).  I think that’s the mentality that we all should have in terms of bettering our nation and our world. We won’t reach perfection but perfection shouldn’t be the enemy of progress. We should never stop trying to improve our country to create not only a better society for ourselves but for our children. The reality is that our lives are all intertwined and when one suffers, we all pay for it in one way or another. The question is, when do we pay and how much? When we ask our representatives to fund better education in black communities, that means people with greater means have to pay for it. When the school system is short changed in black communities, black people are disadvantaged in college admissions and many go unemployed, crime goes up and everyone now has to pay higher taxes for policing, jails, and welfare. Funding education is less expensive than supporting incarceration. In New Jersey, the state spends over three times more annually to imprison someone than to educate them (Bauman).  We all have a shared humanity and need to be each other’s keepers.  We all must acknowledge where we are as a nation and agree to move forward for the betterment of our country.

Works Cited

Bauman , Valerie. “Incarceration vs. Education: America Spends More on Its Prison System than It Does on Public Schools.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 25 Oct. 2018, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6317783/Incarceration-vs-education-America-spends-prison-does-public-schools.html.

Childress, Sarah. “Michelle Alexander:  ‘A System of Racial and Social Control.'” WPSU, Public Broadcasting Service 29, April 2014.  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/michelle-alexander-a-system-of-racial-and-social-control/

DeGue, Sarah, et al. “Deaths Due to Use of Lethal Force by Law Enforcement: Findings From the National Violent Death Reporting System, 17 U.S. States, 2009-2012.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Nov. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/.

Obama, Michelle. Becoming. CNIB, 2019.