The Legacy of James Baldwin

The recently published collection of essays, The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward, includes 18 essays that reflect on similar themes that James Baldwin addressed in The Fire Next Time, written over 50 years ago.  Yet, as J. Ward writes in the introduction, "Replace ropes with bullets.  Hound dogs with German shepherds.  A gray uniform with a bulletproof vest.  Nothing is new."  The essays all explore race in America and are divided into three sections based on the historical, current, and future context (called legacy, reckoning, and jubilee).  Representing a diverse group of voices from academics to activists, The Fire This Time is essential, thought provoking reading. Some interesting perspectives and comments:

"If I knew anything about being black in America it was that nothing was guaranteed, you couldn't count on a thing, and all that was certain for most of us was a black death."  - Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah

"It seems the rate of police killings now surpasses the rate of lynchings during the worst decade of the Jim Crow era."   - Isabel Wilkerson

"And we must know deep in our bones and in our hearts that if the ancestors could survive the Middle Passage, we can survive anything."- Kiese Laymon

"...when my Grandmama hugs my neck, I'm going to tell her that when no one in the world believed I was a beautiful Southern black boy, she believed."  - Kiese Laymon

"...the wrongheaded question that is asked is, What kind of savages are we?  Rather than, What kind of country do we live in?"  - Claudia Rankine

Baldwin's Bold Words

James Baldwin' writing, in No Name in the Street, speaks for itself.  Examples of his beautiful writing:

But for power truly to feel itself menaced, it must somehow sense itself in the presence of another power - or, more accurately, an energy - which it has not known how to define and therefore does not really know how to control.

The powerless, by definition, can never be "racists," for they can never make the world pay for what they feel or fear except by the suicidal endeavor which makes them fanatics or revolutionaries, or both; whereas, those in power can be urbane and charming and invite you to hose which they know you will never own. 

The truth which frees black people will also free white people, but this is a truth which white people find very difficult to swallow. 

White people, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded- about themselves the world they live in.  White people have managed to get through entire lives in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky...

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

For if it is difficult to be released from the stigma of blackness, it is clearly at least equally difficult to surmount the delusion of whiteness. 

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. 

A Siren Call

Ron Rash is one of my favorite Southern writers.  Alongside One Foot in Eden and Serena, The Risen does not disappoint.  It's a siren call - the appeal of something alluring but potentially dangerous. Two brothers, Bill and Eugene befriend an intriguing, free spirited young woman, Ligeia, who is visiting relatives, all within the backdrop of small town North Carolina.  The book is set in current day, but flashes back to when the characters first met in 1969, and follows the very different trajectories of the brothers since that fateful summer.  As the truth surrounding a longstanding mystery bubble to the surface, so do the tensions between Bill and Eugene.  It's captivating, atmospheric, poetic.  Ron Rash is at his best with The Risen.

On incarceration

I recently read Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete?  Combined, these provide an accessible and informational overview of the history of mass incarceration in the United States, and provides some potential solutions. For the purposes of this blog post, I have focused on M. Alexander's book. 

The New Jim Crow posits that in the history of the United States, there have been three forms of racialized social control - a racial caste sysetm based on exploitation (slavery), subordination (the Jim Crow laws) and marginalization (mass incarceration).  It took a war to end slavery, and a mass social movement to end Jim Crow.  Alexander suggests that it would require another mass social movement to end mass incarceration and its stigmatizing effects on communities of color.  She sets out to stimulate conversation on thought on the role of the criminal justice system in perpetuating a racial caste system. 
 

Alexander describes some of the discrimination that the formerly incarcerated face, which include but are not limited to tangible impacts such as housing, employment, exclusion from jury service, denial of public benefits, ineligibility for food stamps, inability to secure a drivers license.  Coupled with intangible effects such as the social stigma and a "racially segregated and subordinated existence," felons are permanently on the margins of society, excluded from full participation as a citizen.  Alexander states, Hundreds of years ago, our nation put those considered less than human in shackles; less than one hundred years ago, we relegated them to the other side of town; today we put them in cages."  She further states that, "A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch."  

Alexander describes the history of the three racialized forms of social control, in particular mass incarceration, and describes its failure in actually preventing crime and that, in fact, it was not an increase in violent crime that accounted for the prison boom.  Rather, it stems largely from the war on drugs that was waged in poor black communities, as opposed to say, in white fraternity houses or wealthy white suburbs, that resulted in convictions for drug offenses.  The data shows that people of color are no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites.  Due to a combination of "stop and frisk" policies, pretext stops (ex. being pulled over for a supposedly broken tail light as a pretext for a drug search), and cash incentives to police departments for drug law enforcement, drug convictions soared.  Simultaneously, with a decline of jobs in the inner cities, there was an increased incentives to sell drugs to keep food on the table. 

Here are some facts and ideas she mentions:

- No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities

- 1 in 3 young African Americans is under the control of the criminal justice system (where it be in prison, jail, probation, or parole)
- African Americans are six times as likely to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes, than whites (among youth never sent to juvenile prison before)
- The stigma of incarceration leads to silence and a "collective denial of lived experience" and leads many to embrace a stigmatized identity
- Potential solutions:  meaningful re-entry programs, the elimination of incentives to arrest poor black and brown people.  She points out that affirmative action has been positive in providing psychological benefits to people of color, but in doing so abandons a more radical social movement