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Today the
United States of America has become the leading society in world history to
incarcerate its own population, standing shoulders above Iran, China and even
the monstrous Stalin gulags in the Soviet Union, with 2.3 million men and women
warehoused in prison cells and 6 million under criminal “justice” supervision.
A hugely disproportionate number of these inmates are African American or
Latino. In “Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress,”
Dr. Becky Pettit, states: “Among male high school dropouts born between 1975 and
1979, 68 percent of blacks (compared with 28 percent of whites) had been
imprisoned at some point by 2009, and 37 percent of blacks (compared with 12
percent of whites) were incarcerated that year. With increased numbers of youth
caught in the school-to-prison pipeline, and with police state tactics like Stop
and Frisk and vile acts of police violence like in Anaheim, we are witnessing a
system of social control, criminality and a cheap labor system based on prison
labor.
Why History Matters
Michelle Alexander’ book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness” has greatly helped the developing grassroots movement to
challenge this system of mass incarceration of working and poor people,
particularly people of color and youth. Published in 2010, and recently released
in paperback with a new introduction from Dr. Cornel West, “The New Jim Crow”
has put into focus this new system of incarceration as a deliberate plan of
social control.
Alexander explains how, following the brief period of reconstruction
following the abolition of slavery a “great comprise” between the Democratic and
Republican party in the 1870s . Federal troops withdrawn from the south and the
Democratic Party and former planter caste introduced the Jim Crow system of
re-enslaving blacks in the south.
Alexander shows how the establishment of this Jim Crow caste system was based
on fostering disunity, (divide and conquer) among poor whites and blacks.
Despite being given an elevated status above blacks, white workers and poor
suffering low wages, they were also economically exploited the ruling white
elite.
Alexander explains the Jim Crow system of social control as: racial
segregation, political disenfranchisement, judicial racism, an imprisoned black
labor force based on phony criminal charges like vagrancy, and unbridled terror
by the racist Ku Klux Klan. Alexander states, “Convicts had no meaningful legal
rights at this time and no effective redress. They were understood, quite
literally, to be slaves of the state. The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution had abolished slavery but allowed one major exception: slavery
remained appropriate as punishment for a crime.” (p.31) Despite the formal
abolition of slavery, black labor was enslaved in a system of mass incarceration
cemented by judicial rulings, state and vigilante violence.
Alexander affirms the historic importance of the civil rights movement and
militant social struggle on the street in smashing the Jim Crow southern system
and legislative victories; Brown vs Board of Education, civil rights and voting
rights act. Alexander fails to highlight the development of black power activism
particularly in the urban areas around the country that would challenge the
constitutional reforms and gradual support for the Democratic Party by civil
rights movement. The radical left black freedom movement was crucial in
dismantling the inferiority complex and self-hate among black workers and youth,
challenging the capitalist mode of production and white supremacy at the
workplace, schools and communities.
However, a ‘law and order’ southern strategy was soon developed by the rich
white elite. This culminated in Richard Nixon’s successful 1968 presidential
campaign. Using coded racial language to define the revolutionary movements and
people of color particularly black youth as “criminals” this strategy
politically disoriented and galvanized sections of white workers and poor not
only in the south, but around the country, around the rich elite.
New War on Communities of Color
Today both parties of big business (Democratic and Republicans) follow
policies that criminalize black and brown youth using this same strategy of
associating blacks as “criminals,” “welfare queens” and “menaces to society”.
This method of social control is so normalized in US society that it’s not even
critically questioned by mainstream society. Crime and drug activity has been
racialized despite similar crime rates among different ethnicities and whites.
Alexander points out how communities of color became war zones: a highly
militarized police force, millions of dollars allocated to fight “crime,” the
elimination of well-paid union jobs and benefits, and the flooding of drugs to
depoliticize the community. The War on Drugs became a one-sided attack as
working class and poor communities.
Alexander fails to see that the War on Drugs is historically linked to the
FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover’s insidious Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro),
which was, itself, a continuation of law enforcement used by the ruling elite to
neutralize the movements of social struggle. The Palmer raids of the early
1900s, McCarthy witch-hunts of the late 40s early 50s are part of the US
government’s violent program against the working class and poor. It is
impossible to place the radical Dr. King, 21 year-old Black Panther Party leader
Fred Hampton or Malcolm X in the same political space as Wall Street funded
corporate politicians like Barack Obama, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick or
Newark mayor Corey Booker. In order to sanitize the radical and revolutionary
movements of the 1960s, the corporate elite the radical and revolutionary
leaders and organizations of the 1960s and 1970s had to be extinguished.
The New N-Word is “Felony”
Under the War on Drugs, extremely long mandatory minimum prison sentences
were established for low-level drug dealing and possession of crack cocaine.
Alexander makes the point that while many whites are ensnared in the drug
policies, black and brown youth are disproportionately targeted. Alexander show
how prison population continued to grow during President Bill Clinton’s 8 years
in office, who was responsible for passing the federal “three strikes and you’re
out” law in 1994.
Even the first black president has sought to continue the War on Drugs
despite his rhetoric against the policy, Alexander indicates, “…Obama is
pledging to revive President Clinton’s Community Oriented Policing Services
(COPS) program and increase funding for the Byrne grant program-two of the worst
federal drug programs of the Clinton era.” (p.240)
The prison label has become a scarlet letter on those entrapped in a system
of incarceration, particularly non-violent drug offenders. Alexander states,
“…people whose only crime is drug addiction or possession of a small amount of
drugs for recreational use find themselves locked out of the mainstream society
and economy-permanently.” (p.92). Upon release from prison, these men and women
are denied voting rights, employment opportunities, federal funded public
assistance and housing rendering outcasts in US society. This is the final nail
in the new Jim Crow of system of social control that has now entrapped tens of
millions of mainly black and latinos - system of economic servitude and denial
of rights that affects every aspect of their lives.
The distinct difference between Jim Crow policies in the post-radical
reconstruction period and today is that under this new Jim Crow not all blacks
are denied their humanity. The New Jim Crow is aimed at working class and poor
blacks specifically. While sweeping away the old Jim Crow laws, the post-black
freedom movement secured the ascendancy of only a tiny black political and
economic elite who have become indifferent to this type of suffering by the
black working class and poor, particularly among youth. This black political
leadership has failed to mount any serous struggle against the new Jim Crow
system of oppression.
Why the New Jim Crow Matters
Alexander correctly calls for a struggle against mass incarceration as part
of a wider struggle against poverty and economic inequality. She invokes the
need to rekindle the radical vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the need for
a radical grassroots social and political movement to challenge the policies of
big business. Dr. King’s legacy and political work should be instructive to us
all as a great counterweight to the betrayal of the black mis-leadership class
and the agenda of both parties of big business to criminalize, incarcerate and
ignore a whole generation of youth of color trapped in the prison system.
In order to make Dr. King’s radical vision a reality, a system change is
necessary to uproot the seeds of racism and mass incarceration. Alexander fails
to show how this New Jim Crow incarceration is a crucial tool of the elite to
maintain the capitalist system by dividing the working class. As Eugene Debs
stated, “Under the capitalist system, based upon private property in the means
of life, the exploitation that follows impoverishes the masses, and their
precarious economic condition, their bitter struggle for existence, drives
increasing numbers of them to despair and desperation, to crime and
destruction.”
Alexander doesn't show the essential role that a working class movement must
play to challenge capitalism and build a new socialist society. What must be
recognized is Alexander’s developing consciousness based on events around these
crucial issues facing working, poor and people of color and a system of mass
warehousing of black and brown people.
“The New Jim Crow” has raised the consciousness among this present
generation, criminalized and discarded by capitalism. Community organizations
like Cop Watch and activists like 70-year-old Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, a former
prisoner, who utilize this book as an organizing tool for study groups and
forums, beginning a process of educating and politically arming the working
class, poor and youth. A united movement of the working class, poor, youth and
people of color, and a resurgent militant prisoners’ rights movement, is needed
to lead a struggle to dismantle the New Jim Crow. By combining this with a
struggle against capitalism, we can forge unity among workers irrespective of
color or race in the struggle to create a truly egalitarian society based on
cooperation, solidarity and democratic socialism.
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