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Part III - "The Cruel Hand"

Hello again and welcome back! In my third posting, I will be discussing how The New Jim Crow, and the topics it addresses, is relevant and applicable to current society. I want to thank you again for joining me, and I hope that you enjoyed my previous post(s)!

This post is specifically focusing on issues discussed in the third chapter: "The Cruel Hand"

"The Cruel Hand" is a reference to American civil rights author and advocate Frederick Douglass.


Image of Frederick Douglass from The New York Times

Alexander begins this chapter with the following quote from Douglass:

A heavy and cruel hand has been laid upon us. As a people, we feel ourselves to be not only deeply injured, but grossly misunderstood. Our white countrymen do not know us. They are strangers to our character, ignorant of our capacity, oblivious to our history and progress, and are misinformed as to the principles and ideas that control and guide us, as a people.

This quote serves to reinforce the described systematic racism towards African-Americans. Specific to this chapter, it further introduces the notion that White Americans' understanding of life and culture does not transcend the racial divide. This is particularly relevant to the chapters, as "The Cruel Hand" discusses issues with reintegration into society, after incarceration, that may be unfamiliar to White Americans.

"The Cruel Hand" details the hardships that go along with one's reintegration to society subsequent to release from a correctional facility or program. This chapter elaborates on the previous chapter, which focused on, among other things, implicit bias in law enforcement. In "The Color of Justice" Alexander argues that by being unfairly targeted by Police, and therefore being at a much higher risk of being incarcerated, African-Americans face severe injustice in the process that is America's criminal justice system. "The Cruel Hand" focuses on the specific challenges faced by African-Americans after they've been incarcerated, which is due in large part to the discriminatory nature of this system, and when they are released from prison.

Alexander writes:

"Once you have that felony stamp, your hope for employment, for any kind of integration into society, it begins to fade out. Today’s lynching is a felony charge. Today’s lynching is incarceration. Today’s lynch mobs are professionals. They have a badge; they have a law degree. A felony is a modern way of saying, ‘I’m going to hang you up and burn you.’ Once you get that F, you’re on fire."(164)

Equating being convicted of a felony to being lynched may seem like a highly controversial comparison, but it yields effective emphasis. This illustration of enforced systematic racism results in African-Americans being denied a manageable quality of life and quite frankly condemns them to suffer.

In "The Cruel Hand," Alexander chooses to focus on the topic of felony disenfranchisement. This topic is particularly notable for two reasons. 

The first of these reasons being the gruesome history of denying African-Americans the right to vote, whether it be through poll taxes, literacy tests, or Klan intimidation. This is yet another form of preventing people of color from having any sort of voice in the context of who they will be governed by. African-Americans have been historically put through forms of racial control, and this is no different from slavery or the extreme discrimination of the Jim Crow south.

The second of these reasons is felony disenfranchisements' relevance to American politics.

Alexander writes: 

"Following the election, it was widely reported that, had the 600,000 former felons who had completed their sentence in Florida been allowed to vote, Al Gore would have been elected president of the United States rather than George W. Bush." (160)

Keep in mind, the felons that Alexander is referencing are people who have already paid for their supposed crimes with, in some cases, lengthy prison sentences. These people are American citizens just like everyone else, yet they are prevented from exercising the most basic American right: the right to vote. Some of you may disagree with my logic here; you may argue: "But Colby, these are people who have been convicted of Felonies." And to that, I say: "While this may be true, many of those convicted are African-Americans who are only put in handcuffs because of the color of their skin and the inherently racist American criminal justice system." 

When I first read this passage, I thought of the damage to the integrity of our democracy that these discriminatory practices entail. This damage also prompted me to consider the 2016 presidential election. This election resulted in Donald Trump as the President-elect. I thought of this election mainly because of supposed Russian collusion with Donald Trump's campaign; another instance of the integrity of our electoral process being diminished. 

According to BBC News:

"US intelligence agencies concluded in 2016 that Russia was behind an effort to tip the scales of the US election against Hillary Clinton, with a state-authorised campaign of cyber attacks and fake news stories planted on social media."

The magnitude of this Russian influence may still be unknown, however, both this supposed collusion and the discriminatory processes that allow the political silencing of innocent African-Americans still render the same thing: the appalling reality that our electoral process, in practice, is indisputably flawed.


Works Cited


“Trump Russia Affair: Key Questions Answered.” BBC News, BBC, 6 Mar. 2019, 
               www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42493918.





Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 21, 2019 at 12:14 PM

    Hi Colby, I really liked your blog. I though you did a great job connecting the arguments in the books with current events. The quote you use that compares lynching to America's modern criminal justice system really showcases the harsh reality that African Americans face. The information you choose to include was very insightful and interesting to learn about. Did you find any information on the number of arrests made against Whites compared to African Americans?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousMarch 22, 2019 at 8:41 PM

      Hi EB,

      Thanks so much for commenting on this post! I'm glad you felt the same way that I did about the lynching quote; it was so powerful and revealing, and I was very much moved by it. As far as the number of arrests of African-Americans versus Whites, Alexander writes:

      "A report in 2000 observed that among youth who have never been sent to a juvenile prison before, African-Americans were more than six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes." (115)

      Thanks again for responding!

      Delete
    2. AnonymousMarch 22, 2019 at 11:44 PM

      As usual, this is a great post! This time, I think you did really well interacting with the text. Your quotes were well integrated and discussed. I also really liked the little, informal conversation you had with the "But Colby" bit. I thought that was a great way to keep the reader engaged while refuting the opposing argument, and it helped contribute to your voice.
      Again, you did a great job! I'm looking forward to reading your next two posts

      Delete
  2. Ms. LaClairMarch 23, 2019 at 1:23 PM

    Colby, while you've linked the election of Bush and Trump through the idea of the impact of certain aspects of the democratic systems/elements on the voting results, do you think that the idea of racial discrimination impacted both of these elections?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousMarch 24, 2019 at 2:17 PM

      Hi Mrs. LaClair,

      I personally believe that the supposed collusion in the 2016 election was not a distinguished instance of racial discrimination, but I also believe that there were most likely situations in which racial discrimination was present in this same election. My main focus was to highlight that in both the Bush and Trump election(s), the integrity of our electoral process was tarnished.

      Thanks!

      Delete

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Important Quotations


"We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." (2)




"Any candid observer of American racial history must acknowledge that racism is highly adaptable." (21)




"Members of Congress who voted against civil rights measures proactively designed crime legislation and actively fought for their proposals." (43)




"The act also expanded use of the death penalty for serious drug-related offenses and imposed new mandatory minimums for drug offenses, including a five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession of cocaine base—with no evidence of intent to sell. Remarkably, the penalty would apply to first-time offenders. The severity of this punishment was unprecedented in the federal system." (53-54)




"The level of public concern about crime and drugs was only weakly correlated with actual crime rates, but highly correlated with political initiatives, campaigns, and partisan appeals." (55)




"During Clinton's tenure, Washington slashed funding for public housing by $17 billion (a reduction of 61 percent) and boosted corrections by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), 'effectively making the constructions of prisons the nation's main housing program for the urban poor.' " (57)




"Despite all of the new procedural rules and formal protections, the law does not address the single most serious problem associated with drug-war forfeiture laws: the profit motive in drug-law enforcement. Under the new law, drug busts motivated by the desire to seize cash, cars, homes, and other property are still perfectly legal." (83)




"This caste system extends far beyond prison walls and governs millions of people who are on probation and parole, primarily for nonviolent offenses." (101-102)




"Drug use, once considered a private, public-health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order." (105)




"Decades of cognitive bias research demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions, even when an individual does not want to discriminate." (106)




"In other words, the [Supreme] Court barred any victim of race discrimination by the police from even alleging a claim of racial bias under the Fourth Amendment." (109)




"Once you have that felony stamp, your hope for employment, for any kind of integration into society, it begins to fade out. Today’s lynching is a felony charge. Today’s lynching is incarceration. Today’s lynch mobs are professionals. They have a badge; they have a law degree. A felony is a modern way of saying, ‘I’m going to hang you up and burn you.’ Once you get that F, you’re on fire." (164)




"The unfortunate reality we must face is that racism manifests itself not only in individual attitudes and stereotypes, but also in the basic structure of society." (184)




"[African-American men] will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives—denied employment, housing, education, and public benefi ts. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then be released again, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality." (186)




"The Supreme Court’s famous proclamation in 1857—“[the black man] has no rights which the white man is bound to respect”—remains true to a significant degree today, so long as the black man has been labeled a felon." (194)




"It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the United States from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by marginalization (mass incarceration). While marginalization may sound far preferable to exploitation, it may prove to be even more dangerous . . .'It’s actually better to be exploited than marginalized, in some respects, because if you’re exploited presumably you’re still needed.' " (219)