Embedded Files
Written by James Harrell Jr., the Summarization of Chapter One of Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow
A new system of control-mass incarceration was planted during the Civil Rights Movement by the undermining of federal civil rights legislation of a hostile judiciary. Its purpose was to preserve a racial caste system and promote political and economic rights to whites; the Southerners agreed that it would not interfere with slavery. Northern decided that it would protect their property rights.
The Constitution was established to be weak, allowing the wealthy minority to be protected from the majority to keep their slaves in the South and preserve their land in the North. James Madison thought the foundation should be “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”
The colonial population was an equality of a great mass of white and black bondsmen being treated as one by the lords of the plantations and legislatures when color did not matter, called indentured servitude. The colonial settlement was Indigenous black and white bondsmen of equality before forced slavery.
Supply and demand for tobacco and cotton farming interested a need for more labor and land. The attack turned against the American Indians to take their land. The white European printed publishing to make the American Indians be thought of as salvages with negative writings.
Sociologists Keith Kilty and Eric Swank observed that it was easier to eliminate savages as a moral issue than to destroy human beings. So, American Indians were to be understood as a lesser race, uncivilized savages, native people. To degrade the Native American Indians to siege their land for farming. The demand for labor was met through free labor—not the American Indians because of their ability to come together better and fight back, not the European immigrants because they were too few to meet the labor demand, and race had nothing to do with it.
Historian Lerone Bennett Jr. noted that during the colonial period. Indentured servitude was the labor force of both blacks and whites, and both had a common enemy: “the big planter apparatus and a social system that legalized terror against black and white bondsman.”
Edmund Morgan, a Virginian, was part of the planter elite, which had substantial land grants and occupied significant positions for workers of all colors. Southern colonies invented ways to broaden servitude. The planter class restricted the options of free workers through accumulated uncultivated land, making conditions ripe for revolt and travel enablement by distance.
Nathaniel Bacon conducted the attack on the planter elite by inspiring an alliance of white and black bond laborers. The Jamestown, Virginia, property owner brought the unity of slaves, indentured servants, and poor whites to revolution to overthrow the planter elite; the minority rich whites and the revolution failed and quickened the ideal of enslaving Africans.
The planter elite in Virginia did not support Nathaniel Bacon's 1675 plan to seize Native American lands. Bacon retaliated and led an attack on the planter elite, their homes, and properties. He united all who wanted to put an end to servitude, and word spread, and uprisings of a similar type followed. False promises of amnesty and force brought it to an end, and many were hanged.
The Jamestown events alarmed the planter elite and caused great fear of a multiracial alliance of bond workers and slaves. Their revolution to protect superior status and economic position for dominance turned to importing non-English speaking slaves directly from Africa instead of slaves from the West Indies.
Africans became the focal of the plantation owners, as being relatively powerless, as the idea slaves. They are not readily able to come together due to the distance and the elite rearing of their slaves’ children under bondage. Electoral votes by the Congress were later put into place for the slaveholders.
The planter class also caused a wedge between poor whites and black slaves. With no better plight for the white settlers than with black slaves. They permitted the poor whites to exercise their race as a privilege to police slaves through patrols and militias to remove the competition with slave labor. The elite strategically gave poor whites privileges over blacks and gave them the standard to be above slavery but of no better plight.
Poor whites, now having a stake within a race-based system, sought how to expand their racially privileged position, and by the mid-1770s, the system of bond labor was entirely transformed. Reva Siegel called it “preservation through transformation,” meaning white privilege through the process is maintained by rules and rhetoric change. It is a new game with new regulations being justified by new rhetoric, new language, and a new social consensus, but like slavery results. Negative publishing becomes a tool to justify black slaves as savage people and uncivilized lesser races like the Indians but lesser intelligence than the red-skinned natives.
The Electoral College and Congress's sole purpose is developed with the interest of slaveholders. A Slave is defined as three-fifths of a man, resting the foundation of American democracy from a racist fiction. Racial caste would have ended with the Civil War in the United States without the varied ideas.
Wacquant stated, “Racial division was a consequence, not a precondition of slavery, but once it was initiated, it became detected from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own,” the idea did not die. The New World's justification for espousing tension between slavery and democratic ideals was to believe that whites were inherently superior and that for the bestial blacks' good, slavery was needed.
The elite and poor whites were outraged due to the Emancipation of four million freed slaves. C. Vann Woodward's 1955 book, Martin Luther King Jr., described it as the “historical bible of the Civil Rights Movement.” The strange career of Jim Crow had explained that Southern whites needed a new system of race control but didn’t know what or how.
The opportunity for racial order under slavery and maintaining a specific relationship between slaves and slave owners was gone due to the Civil War and the death of Jim Crow. The threat of possible insurrections by blacks terrified whites. The Southern whites made stereotypes of black men as aggressive and unruly predators to be traced to this period. Also, their state of the economy was endangered by a lack of free labor and the idea that African Americans lacked the motivation to work.
Alabama planter expressed, “We have the power to pass stringent police laws to govern the Negroes-this is a blessing-for they must be controlled in some way or white people cannot live among them.” The Southern legislatures provisioned and adopted the notorious black codes. William Cohen stated, “The main purpose of the codes was to control the freedman, and the question of how to handle convicted black lawbreakers was very much at the center of the control issue.” They targeted blacks and mulattoes, while establishing systems of peonage resembling slavery and the like of the dead Jim Crow laws prohibiting the equality of seating first class, sharing water fountains and schools, etc. Southern states adopted vagrancy laws such as “all free negroes and mulattoes over the age of eighteen” must have papers of employment to show at the beginning of every year, or they will be criminally charged. No lawful employment was viewed as vagrants.
The Reconstruction Era overturned the black codes, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 protected the newly freed slaves through its thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments: abolishing slavery and full citizenship, due process and equal protection of the laws, the right to vote and a federal offense to interfere with voting and violent infringement of civil rights as a crime. The Freedmen’s Bureau was formed in the Reconstruction Era to help supply the needs of impoverished former slaves. At the dawn of the Reconstruction Era in 1867, there were no black politicians until three years later. It was increased by 15% of southern black politicians and less fifteen years later, with only 8% being elected.
The Fifteenth Amendment lacked the language to prevent imposing education, residential, and qualifications for voting. Blacks were too poor to fight Southern affair cases in the federal courts, and the NAACP had not yet been developed. The Northerners started racial segregation to prevent race-mixing and to maintain after the abolition of Northern slavery their racial superiority.
Southern conservatives vowed to “redeem” Reconstruction and the Freedmen’s Bureau and political means used to secure Negro supremacy. The resurgent Ku Klux Klan in the South defected Reconstruction through means of terrorist campaigns with bombings, lynchings, and mob violence. The vagrancy laws and other defining laws posed “mischief” and “insulting gestures” as crimes against blacks. Tens of thousands of African Americans being arrested had to pull time with free labor to pay off their court cost and fines per Douglas Blackman, Slavery by Another Name.
Virginia Supreme Court, Ruffin v Commonwealth, at the peak of Southern Redemption, “the court put to rest any notion that convicts were legally distinguishable from slaves,” a landmark decision crippling the Thirteenth Amendment. Prisoners were sold as forced laborers to plantations and private companies with no regard for their well-being and were subjected to continual horsewhipping lashes. They were to be slaves of the state with no rights at all and easily replaced.
The state of Mississippi formed the Parchman Farm by organizing its convict labor camp, which was adapted by others. Imprisonment continues to be successful for generations to come. New rules were strategically formed to exploit and repress blacks, even as convict leasing faded, and Redemption gave new racial equilibrium for dominant whites to protect their economy, political, and social means in a no-slavery world.
There were other thoughts about the new racial order without a complete consensus among the whites. Three racial alternative philosophies battled for regional support, being against the doctrines of extreme racism supported by some Redeemers. The three are liberalism, conservatism, and radicalism, each in their defining.
The conservatives blamed the liberals for peradventure pushing blacks into positions that led to their failures. The conservatives needed blacks to understand that liberal’s preoccupation with political and economic equality is a danger of losing what they gained. The radicals had the best to offer for African Americans. The radical philosophy formed the Populist Party, revealing the privileged classes conspiring to make the poor whites and blacks be at odds with each other for their gain.
The Populists had an effective potency with the alliance between poor whites, working-class whites, and African Americans that resulted in the conservatives resorting to the Redemption tactics, which drove a wedge between poor whites and blacks with segregation laws with another bribe. William Julius Wilson noted, “As long as poor whites directed their hatred and frustration against the black competitor, the planters were relieved of class hostility directed against them.” With the threat of the poor and illiterate whites and blacks losing their right to vote, the Populists caved in to join with the conservatives by pressure. Tom Watson concluded that Populist ideas would not take hold in the South until all blacks were eliminated from politics, per M. Alexander.
Nearly two years later, another racial caste system emerged as the white elite quickened following Bacon’s Rebellion. The South's laws promoted the disenfranchisement of blacks. Blacks were discriminated against in every way of their life, leading to racial ostracism. Churches and burial groupings were supported across the entire political spectrum by whites rejecting other alternatives and possibilities and then allowing the new racial order, Jim Crow. Per scholars, World War II influenced the legal campaign challenging Jim Crow, and the legal campaign was also influenced by the North migration of political power of blacks and the NAACP.
The credibility of the United States became a factor towards the “free world,” posing the contradiction between the “American Creed” regarding freedom and equality and discrimination towards African Americans being unjust as an embarrassment against the economic and foreign-policy interests of the United States. The Supreme Court agreed and ended all-white primary elections against segregation and discriminated purchases. Brown v Board of Education stood out most for desegregating and demolishing the entire system of legalized discrimination in the South. Sam Ervin Jr., the North Carolina Senator Congress, vowed to protect Jim Crow with a racist polemic, “the Southern Manifesto,” and the “White Citizen’s Councils” were formed. They reacted in likeness to the first Reconstruction and increased black codes, and because they were met with resistance and violence, there were attacks from the Ku Klux Klan on NAACP leaders, including black churches.
At the peak of the Civil Rights Movement of 1963, a group of black students protested peacefully as the largest movement launched for racial reform and civil rights in the twentieth century; thousands of thousands from 1961-1963 had been arrested and imprisoned across the regions of more than 100 cities. President Kennedy became a great advocate for the Civil Rights Movement, announcing to deliver to Congress a solid civil rights bill. After his assassination, President Lyndon Johnson dismantled the Jim Crow system due to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and the mandating of federal review. Alexander (2010, 2012) stated, “Miscegenation laws were declared unconstitutional, and the rate of interracial marriage climbed.”
The Civil Rights Movement began to focus on socioeconomic inequality, and President Kennedy started a series of staff studies for job equality. He promised to eradicate poverty in the following year, 1964. President Johnson followed through with antipoverty rhetoric as an “unconditional war on poverty,” the Economic Opportunities Bill of 1964. Martin Luther King Jr., the only American civil rights leader, told the people that all of America needed transformation for economic justice for all. He had a populist approach to financial and political redistribution of power. As with the elite whites, the same pattern with the result like racial order now understands the new order must be without slavery and abide according to the new rules of American democracy. Alexander (2010), “Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating the law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding “law and order” rather than “segregation forever,”
Southern governors and law enforcement officials blame the rise in crime on the breakdown of law and order due to the Civil Rights Movement. The media did not expose the economic and demographic factors contributing to increasing crime but focused on the breakdown in lawfulness due to the Civil Rights Movement. The media is a constructive tool for political revelation. Robert Stutman DEA was given the responsibility to correlate using the media to heighten the War on Drugs, and the Reagan administration welcomed the opportunity to publicize crack cocaine to support the drug war.
Barry Goldwater laid the foundation for the New Jim Crow being born with the “get tough on crime.” The civil rights activists blamed rising crime on police harassment and brutality, which was dismissed by the conservatives. Vanessa Barker noted that due to the rising crime, black activists helped the notorious Rockefeller drug laws and harsh sentencing, which the conservatives seized as the opportunity to turn back the clock on racial progress in the United States. Marc Maver of the Sentencing Project noted that all concerns were forged to be considered a “crime in the street” to cover up hidden political motives and truth. Kevin Phillips, a republican strategist, is credited with the best solution for a race-based dominance strategy in the South. The North Republicans were more inclined to racial justice reforms than the South.
President Nixon called for a War on Drugs once again wedging division between the poor whites and blacks, breaking down the solid liberal coalition. Thomas and Mary Edsalls stated, “The pitting of whites and blacks at the low end of the income distribution against each other intensified the view among many whites that the condition of life for the disadvantaged - particularly for disadvantaged blacks - is the responsibility of those afflicted.” The decision to create a contest between blue-collar whites and poor blacks would lead to its unknown future for racial and social order to be revealed.
Reagan successfully masked the language of race from conservative public discourse. Reagan fueled his campaign by favoring the right wing of the Republican Party, feeding emotional distress and fear of the whites against the Negro. His potential to keep them in their place encouraged votes, which caused a high percentage of Democrats to vote against their party, favoring Reagan—President Reagan's campaign rhetoric aimed at street crime and welfare. Reagan's mastery of non-racial verbiage misdirected the true intentions of the public concern about race but appeared to do with the public concern about drugs. The budget for antidrugs increased significantly and decreased significantly for drug treatment, prevention, and education.
Portugal has proven the best option to deal with drug addiction and abuse by decriminalizing drugs and drug preventive and treatment solutions. In contrast, the Reagan administration launches an attack using the media to turn the fault towards the African Americans and not police brutality towards them, keeping the support of the new Republican majority and Congress. The rural whites, being more punitive than blacks, remained less likely to be crime victims. The signing of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 sealed the War on Drugs against blacks. The Act allowed the decline of public housing, federal aid, and the minimum five-year sentence for using and distributing crack cocaine with blacks over powder cocaine with whites, even providing falsified evidence.
Unemployment in the metropolitan areas between the 1950s and 60s due to manufacturers relocating. Them pulling their companies from American cities to non-union countries with lower pay than fair wages in the United States did not help the War on Drugs of crack cocaine in the inner-city neighborhoods. The lack of college education and the underfunded schools of the 1970s, especially in the ghetto communities, had provided no support to adapt to the change in the U.S. economy.
President George Bush Sr. used racial appeals, learning how to win over the Democratic Party as with the conservative politicians by mobilizing the poor and working-class whites, the blue collars. This solidified the new racial caste system of mass incarceration. Bush's appeals stayed on message, upholding the War on Drugs and opposing affirmative actions and the civil rights movement to empowerment. Even the democratic politicians learned to use the same tactic to revert its party again to itself by proposing to be even more complex on anticrime and antidrug laws.
President Bill Clinton endorsed the federal “three strikes and you’re out,” proving to be more challenging than any Republican, causing the most significant increase in federal and state prison inmates in America as a president. He succeeded in supporting a racial agenda on welfare. He signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act limiting welfare assistance to five years, and even if convicted of a felony drug offense, as little as marijuana to be denied welfare with it aimed at racial and ethnic minorities. Later, he implemented the most demanding admission and eviction HUD policy, “One Strike and You’re Out.” Alexander (2010, 2012) stated, “Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for (a) drug offense in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, as (an) adaptation to the need and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow.”
Source
Alexander, M (2012). The New Jim Crow. The New Press, New York
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