"In an era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt," she writes. "So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals' and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind."
I work in the Philadelphia prison teaching writing, and from what I see it's hard to dispute the existential fact of what Alexander argues. Meanwhile, people like George Zimmerman are extended the benefit of the doubt; we're asked to understand the stresses they live with, how hard it is to be a cop or a wannabe cop -- all important elements of "justice," but not evenly distributed.
Alexander's "new Jim Crow" is the first cousin of the great American institution of selective enforcement noted for the incredible amount of laws on the books and uneven enforcement. Some citizens find themselves caught in a demographic that is liberally arrested and charged to the max, where the operable word is not mitigation but demonization based on societal fears and the deep-seated (possibly unrecognized) racial prejudices of a ruling majority. Cops seem to be especially susceptible to this kind of thing.
Guns and Politics
I own an H&K nine-millimeter automatic pistol, a gun I bought and practice with largely out of principle. My principle is a bit different than the usual Second Amendment NRA nutcase. As a vocal, left-leaning writer/activist, I decided to buy a gun because it seemed important to me that the political right not have a monopoly on gun ownership. In the epic battle of the amendments, being a leftist I feel the First trumps the Second. The right I fear tends to see it the other way: The Second trumps the First.
So I'm more afraid of reactionary, lunatic rightists than I am of African American kids walking in my neighborhood. I would not articulate this fear, except that the Trayvon Martin story is heartbreaking and really disturbs me. I'm a 64-year-old white man who has had interracial relationships, and I know interracial kids who look like Trayvon. So I'm serious when I say, echoing President Obama, Trayvon could be my son.
It needs to be asked, exactly who are these right-wing, NRA-spawned Stand Your Ground laws meant to protect and who are they meant to control? Who is it the forces of rightist reaction fear? And how much of it is a factor of race and class?
The Black Panthers were famous for appearing with guns in a sixties version of Stand Your Ground. Why, in this case, is it so different when blacks arm themselves? The same goes for marginalized leftists? What difference should politics make when it comes to standing one's ground or defending one's life? Well, we all know the answer: Government and the Justice System favor certain political persuasions.
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