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How does institutional racism manifest
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How does institutional racism manifest
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Michelle Alexander states, “slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen)” (Alexander 197). She also says blackness has changed during different time periods, and these definitions have worked to create a societal consciousness of inferiority to the race as a whole. The symbolic production of race developed through institutional racism, which is the embeddedness of racially discriminatory practices in institutions, laws, and agreed upon values and practices of society. Institutions that were once clearly defined through de jure segregation of the Jim Crow laws, have now changed into de facto systems of oppression that define blackness through mass incarceration.
From the study, Michelle Alexander’s argument is true and correct that the mass incarcerations are just a representation of Jim Crow. The Jim Crow has just been redesigned as the blacks have continued to be mistreated and denied some of the rights and privileges that their counterparts enjoy. There is discernment against the African Americans towards different privileges which are essential to their lives. This discrimination is political as leaders steer operations that are aimed at racially discriminating people from particular groups of race.
Michelle Alexander in her book "The New Jim Crow" argues that Mass Incarceration is similar to Jim Crow; Alexander believes that caste systems such as Jim Crow and slavery are similar to the existing system of mass incarceration. In addition, Alexander accuses the U.S. criminal justice system, implying their laws undividedly target African Americans through the War on Drugs and racial limitation. In comparing mass incarceration with Jim Crow, Alexander points to compelling parallels regarding political disenfranchisement, legalized discrimination, and symbolic production of a race. Alexander, moreover, effectively offers a rebuttal to the counterargument that the New Jim Crow does not carry the same level of racial hostility as the Old Jim
...ty and their survival as a group in society because of restraint from the federal government in the ability to litigate their plight in Court. The Author transitions the past and present signatures of Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow with the suggestion that the New Jim Crow, by mass incarceration and racism as a whole, is marginalizes and relegates Blacks to residential, educational and constitutionally endowed service to Country.
Following the success of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Americas in the early16th century, the Spaniards, French and Europeans alike made it their number one priority to sail the open seas of the Atlantic with hopes of catching a glimpse of the new territory. Once there, they immediately fell in love the land, the Americas would be the one place in the world where a poor man would be able to come and create a wealthy living for himself despite his upbringing. Its rich grounds were perfect for farming popular crops such as tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton. However, there was only one problem; it would require an abundant amount of manpower to work these vast lands but the funding for these farming projects was very scarce in fact it was just about nonexistent. In order to combat this issue commoners back in Europe developed a system of trade, the Triangle Trade, a trade route that began in Europe and ended in the Americas. Ships leaving Europe first stopped in West Africa where they traded weapons, metal, liquor, and cloth in exchange for captives that were imprisoned as a result of war. The ships then traveled to America, where the slaves themselves were exchanged for goods such as, sugar, rum and salt. The ships returned home loaded with products popular with the European people, and ready to begin their journey again.
Michelle Alexander wrote a book called "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." The original Jim Crow was a racial caste system that segregated whites from blacks, where whites were privileged and viewed as the chosen ones while blacks were taught to be minority and used as servants between 1877 and the 1960s. The Jim Crow system kept whites superior to blacks with laws created to keep whites favored. It was a legal way to prevent African Americans from getting an equal education, from voting; it was a system of "Separate but Equal". In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed to outlaw discrimination due to ones skin color. Although this act was passed we still continue to live in a society where discrimination is quite relevant but systemized. Through Michelle Alexander's book we can understand her argument that there is a new form of legal discrimination although laws state that discriminating an individual because of their race is illegal. Michelle explains that there is a current mass incarceration among black men in the United States. The use of, possession of, or selling drugs is illegal but it has been systematically created that laws make it impossible to. She claims that the criminal justice system uses the War on Drugs as a way to discriminate and repress the black man.
The ideologies morphed into a different type of racism that is still connected to that from the 18th and 19th centuries, which is set up into the contemporary carceral state and prison-industrial complex in the terms of black criminality, black inferiority, domination of black people, and white supremacy. In Angela Davis’s lectures on liberation, she states the conditions of freedom include: physical or violent resistance, resistance of the mind, and recognition of alienation (Narrative of Frederick Douglass, p. 58, 64). In order to maintain the institution of slavery, “black people were forced to live in conditions not fit for animals,” in which “white slave-owners were determined to mould black people into the image of the subhuman being which they had contrived in order to justify their actions” (50 - 51). The slaves were under the condition of alienation, reducing them to “the status of property; This was how the save was defined: something to be owned” (53). This produces the idea that his existence is subjected down to property, capital, and money. Under the conditions of slavery, they were stripped of their rights, treated repressively, forced into free labor, and treated as an object. The abolishment of slavery, enacted by the 13th amendment, was supposed to rid such treatment, yet the prison-industrial complex still holds onto that legacy; as Davis puts it, it is “reincarnated through new institutions, new practices, and new ideologies” (The Meaning of Freedom, 140). The prison system sustains sediments of slavery as it deals with the ownership over the prisoner, controlling their every move. Prisoners are “not able to participate in the political arena or in civil life,” stripping their right to vote and depriving them of human rights (140). Prisoners are forced into free labor: fighting fires, building materials and supplies for
“Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. This is what it means to be black” (Alexander 197). Today our nation represents an interracial racial caste system - a caste system that includes white people within its control as a means to remain a colorblind system. Mass incarceration is no different than slavery or Jim Crow, it is simply a new racial caste system in the age of colorblindness (Alexander
In Michelle Alexander’s article The New Jim Crow, she addresses the importance of educating people on the harsh reality of racial caste in America. As a civil rights lawyer and with previous work experience at the ACLU in northern California, Alexander knows the importance of getting relevant information to the public in order to inform them of important information. In The New Jim Crow, Alexander uses a specific writing style through rhetorical devices to convey her message that the US justice system is turning into the modern day laws of Jim Crow, outlawing African Americans and taking away their basic natural rights while creating a new racial caste system and the possibility of the system to change. Throughout the article, Alexander utilizes diction in order to grab people’s attention and emphasize the united front that America needs to have in order to protect struggling and impoverished African Americans.
The first arrivals of Africans in America were treated similarly to the indentured servants in Europe. Black servants were treated differently from the white servants and by 1740 the slavery system in colonial America was fully developed.
Slavery was the main resource used in the Chesapeake tobacco plantations. The conditions in the Chesapeake region were difficult, which lead to malnutrition, disease, and even death. Slaves were a cheap and an abundant resource, which could be easily replaced at any time. The Chesapeake region’s tobacco industries grew and flourished on the intolerable and inhumane acts of slavery.
7) Symbolic production of race. Perhaps this is the most important category of her analyses. She stresses that mass incarceration as Jim Crow and slavery define and reinforce what being a black person means. During slavery being black meant to be a slave. During Jim Crow meant to be a second class citizen. And mass incarceration defines black people, especially men, as criminals.
The newly freed slaves during the Reconstruction Era was very difficult because whites and blacks had to be separated and also be treated differently, like they were some sort of abomination. The newly freed slaves during the Reconstruction Era was very difficult because whites and blacks had to be separated, be treated differently like they were some sort of abomination, and they were also beaten and damaged by not following the rules. The newly freed slaves must have felt like they were still slaves because they were still being treated different and not the same as whites and also the money that they earned eventually rolled back/ made their pay less. Plessy was the one to make the decision to make it so that the separation between whites
No one really likes to think back to the time of segregation and separation. Yet, any time Jim Crow is mentioned that what it takes us back to the time in which the laws were made and enforced. Those laws and what they symbolized is so synonymous what the 50’s that it’s hard for me to think that in this time and age that we would have something similar going on. In the article Michelle Alexander says she believes the criminal justice system of today has created a new form Jim Crow law. She says that with the war on drugs that began in the 1980’s and 1990’s we now have mass incarcerations. She says like the Jim Crow laws long such gone away, we now have the incarcerations of black people is today’s segregation and separation. She states that in the
Did race prejudice cause slavery? Or was it the other way round? Winthrop D. Jordan, in his monumental study of white American attitudes to black people from 1550 to 1812, argues that prejudice and slavery may well have been equally cause and effect, 'dynamically joining hands to hustle the Negro down the road to complete degradation. But we must go deeper than that, if we are to understand the rise of English racism as an ideology, the various roles it has played in the past, and the role it is playing today.
The abuse and harsh treatment that slaves received from their masters, was left hidden. Due to that slaves didn’t have any legal rights to protect them and no voice that could be taken seriously. They could not go and complain to court and build a trial, to receive justice. They had no protection at all, but only the protection the slave community gave to each other. They acquired skills “needed to protect themselves and their loved ones from a brutal slave system” (Hine 159). Through, folktales the slave learned skills which were “watch what they said to white people, not to talk back, to withhold information about other African Americans, and to dissemble” (Hine 159). In doing this the African slave protected himself and gave the master less problem and opportunity to punish him.