Essay 4 Options for 150 points. Options. 1,400 words and is due no later than start of class on May 10
(Added a new option)
One. Based on Adam Gopnik's essay "The Caging of America," support, refute, or complicate the assertion that mass incarceration is "The New Jim Crow." You can refer to the Netflix documentary 13th, about the New Jim Crow in the aftermath of slavery. Is there enough evidence to support the claim that mass incarceration is a continuation of Jim Crow and therefore is aptly called The New Jim Crow?
Two. Defend, refute, or complicate Conor Friedersdorf’s assertion in “A Social-Media Mistake Is No Reason to be Fired” that too often digital mobs pervert our ability to distinguish a social media mistake from job-termination-worthy behavior.
Three. Develop an argumentative or cause and effect thesis of your choice that addresses one of the essays we’ve read on online shaming and digital mobs.
Four. Addressing Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly’s “The Unsafety Net,” develop an argumentative or cause and effect thesis of your choice about misogynistic trolls and social media.
Five. Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the unstoppable presence of trolls on Twitter has made being on Twitter, for many, an exercise so embedded in futility that deleting one's Twitter account is probably the best option. Consult Lindy West's "I've Left Twitter," Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet," Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win," Andrew Marantz's and "The Shameful Trolling of Leslie Jones." And the following YouTube Video:
Six. Comparing “Faces in the Mirror” and “Markets and Morals,” develop an argumentative or cause and effect thesis about how the relationship between the commodification of everything, including celebrity, results in dehumanization.
Seven. In the context of “Our Baby, Her Womb,” support, defend, or complicate the argument that surrogate motherhood is a moral abomination.
Eight. In the context of “Unspeakable Conversations,” defend, refute, or complicate Peter Singer’s position that there are moral grounds for infanticide or “mercy killings.”
Schedule to 5-10-17
4-19 Essay 3 Due. "Caging of America" by Adam Gopnik.
4-24 "The Flip Side of Internet Fame" (90) and "Evolution of Shaming." Also see "Social Media Mistake Is No Reason to be Fired."
4-26 Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the unstoppable presence of trolls on Twitter has made being on Twitter, for many, an exercise so embedded in futility that deleting one's Twitter account is probably the best option. Consult Lindy West's "I've Left Twitter," Joel Stein's "How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet," Kathy Sierra's "Why the Trolls Will Always Win," Andrew Marantz's and "The Shameful Trolling of Leslie Jones." Also see "The Unsafety Net: How Social Media Turned Against Woman."
5-1 "Faces in the Mirror" 31 and "Markets and Morals" 40
5-3 "Our Baby, Her Womb"418
5-8 "Unspeakable Conversations" 96
5-10 Essay 4 Due
America's Prison Crisis
We imprison so many more people compared to other countries. However, our victimization rate is not larger than other countries. The Economist says we're imprisoning small-time dealers.
"The Caging of America" by Adam Gopnik
Read paragraphs 3-13 in class.
Two Books of Record on Mass Incarceration
Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow published in 2010
James Forman's Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America published in 2017.
Essay Option for "The Caging of America":
Based on Adam Gopnik's essay "The Caging of America," support, refute, or complicate the assertion that mass incarceration is "The New Jim Crow." You can refer to the Netflix documentary 13th, about the New Jim Crow in the aftermath of slavery. Is there enough evidence to support the claim that mass incarceration is a continuation of Jim Crow and therefore is aptly called The New Jim Crow?
Suggested Outline
In paragraph 1, define and explain "The New Jim Crow" in the context of mass incarceration. 250 words.
In paragraph 2, your thesis, support, defend, or complicate the assertion that the industrial prison complex is a racist system that amounts to the New Jim Crow. 100 words (350).
Paragraphs 3-7 are your supporting paragraphs (5 x 150=750 for subtotal of 1,100).
2 Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraphs (2x 150=300 for 1,400 total).
Conclusion of 100 words for 1,500 total.
Lexicon
One. Racial Caste System:
We had a caste system, based on the creation of race, during the time of slavery and during Jim Crow, but now we have Jim Crow 2.0 and a new racial caste system: a disproportionate number of black men in prison (7 black men for every white man) based on so-called "due process," which targets the poor and people of color. The United States is 5% of the world's population, yet we imprison 25% of all the world's prisoners.
As a country, we have an immoral appetite for putting people, especially poor people of color, in prison.
Two. Jim Crow:
During Reconstruction after the Civil War poor white farmers were angry that their lives were no better than the recently freed black people. White politicians, who needed those poor white votes, exploited the poor farmers' grievances by implementing Jim Crow, a system that separated black Americans into horrible conditions, racism, sub-wage work, failed schools, nonexistent government support, etc.
White politicians catered to the white supremacy religion of the poor white people who, having little, only could cling to their pathetic "religion" of white supremacy.
Three. Black Exceptionalism and the denial of racism in America:
Black Exceptionalism is the idea that since Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, Oprah, and others have "made it,"; therefore, there can't possibly be racism and that any failure on a black person's part results from an individual failure of will and character.
We read in The Autobiography of Malcolm X that since the beginning of America, white people love to parade black people "who made it" to assuage white guilt for slavery, racism, and Jim Crow.
Four. False Equivalency Argument When Discussing Racism and Slavery:
Now some people will say, "But other people, including people of color, have enslaved others? What do you say to that?"
My response:
Slavery is unique to America because an entire country of white people drank the White Supremacy Kool-Aid to justify an evil that was exacted for over 100 years, perpetuating in ugly forms of Jim Crow to this day.
So when we talk about slavery, we must consider
scale
duration
brainwashing
pervasiveness (an entire country brainwashed or an outlier group of rogue criminal?)
Five. Colorblind Code Language as the New Racist Language: using code words to demonize a race: "thugs, felons, stamp abusers, welfare queens . . ."
Race-Based Social Control (21), various institutions control African Americans; first slavery, then Jim Crow, then the US Prison System, AKA Jim Crow 2.0. Institutions die but "are reborn in new form."
Trifold Narrative of the book: Slavery (born of a religious mass psychosis called White Supremacy), Jim Crow, Jim Crow 2.0
Summary of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow
In the New Jim Crow, or Jim Crow 2.0, we replace offensive racial epithets, now banned, with the term “criminals.”
These "criminals" are mostly poor people of color and they are the new undercaste and they are denied human rights. They can’t vote, get housing, jobs, etc.
The author thought ten years ago it was stupid to compare today’s war on drugs to Jim Crow (post civil war oppression of African Americans), that such a comparison would make people think you’re crazy, but the evidence has shown that indeed such a comparison is compelling.
"Only crackpots would compare the plight of black America today with Jim Crow, or worse, with slavery." The author had these thoughts but her research showed her otherwise. There is a system designed to incarcerate black and brown Americans and this system makes money, a huge prison system. And it gains political points for politicians. Both the prison industry and the politicians, MA will show, make their careers off the blood and backs of brown and black people.
Here are some key features of the New Jim Crow, AKA, The War on Drugs:
The War on Drugs started in 1982 and picked up momentum in 1985 when the black community was demonized as a Crack Den. These demonized images saturated TV news and gave a very thin slice of African Americans, not the whole picture.
The Drug War started when crime and drug use was on decline and the author suggests that it started as a form of social control.
In thirty years, the number of US prisoners increased from 300,000 to over 2 million.This number has gone unquestioned
The US has the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized country. Such a fact speaks volumes about our freedom and our democracy and our morality.
In Germany, 93 out of 100,000 adults are incarcerated; in the US, the number is 8 times that amount or 750 out of 100,000.
Between 1960 and 1990 crime rates in Finland, Germany, and US were the same but during that time the US incarceration rate quadrupled, the Finnish rate decreased 60 percent, and the German rate remained unchanged. The author seems to suggest we have unsavory motives for our high incarceration rate.
Indeed, a New Yorker essay "The Caging of America" traces the moral bankruptcy that informs the US prison system.
The majority of US prisoners are black and brown men. Black men outnumber white men 7 to 1 yet are only 13 percent of the population. We call this disparity the "racial caste system."
Black and brown men are, in spite of similar rates of drug activity to whites, imprisoned 20-50 times greater than whites.
In Washington D.C. 3 out of 4 black men will be in prison.
In major cities throughout the US, 80% of black men have criminal records.
But illegal drug activity is not greater among blacks. Illegal drug activity happens in similar numbers among the different races.
The growth of US prisons is the largest form of race-based social control in world history.
Experts agree that prisons make more crime; they don’t reduce crime, yet there is an incentive to grow the prison industry: It makes billions of dollars (and employs about 2.5 million people) and as long as this money is made on the backs of black and brown men, the media and the public remain indifferent.
Racial caste system is hard to fight.
Because it is largely invisible and insidious with code words but evidence for its existence is overwhelming as we can see from the statistics above.
And because we throw people in prison under "due process," from the Bill of Rights, which we worship like some kind of God. We get so caught up with "due process," that we become blind to the results of this "due process."
Continuum of the racial caste system
Slavery, Jim Crow, and Jim Crow 2.0, AKA The War on Drugs, is “a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom.” The new laws and customs put black and brown men into mass incarceration at disproportionate rates when their drug activity is not higher than other people’s.
This incarceration makes black and brown men members of the undercaste or second-class citizens based on prison label or criminal label, not prison time. Once labeled, they are denied citizen rights to vote, to serve jury duty, to work, etc.
On page 21, we see that when one type of racial oppression dies, a new one takes its place, what Reva Siegel has called “preservation through transformation.”
We no longer use racist language; we call people of color criminals or felons. Prison is the new form of control.
In American history, we see control over people of color has been largely to appease lower-class whites, who feel trapped at the bottom of society. The privileged whites throw the poor whites a dog bone: “Even though you’re poor, we’ll make people of color even more poor and even less privileged than you.”
We read further that Jim Crow was a reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation, the abolishment of slavery and it is the author’s contention that Mass Incarceration is the reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. See page 22.
Some claim to bathe in the glory of colorblindness and black exceptionalism (the idea that great blacks such Obama, Oprah, Bill Cosby, etc., and say these black celebrities are proof that blacks can climb the American ladder. However, according to Alexander, these arguments actually provide the essential tools for Jim Crow 2.0.
On page 14 we read, and this point will be developed later in the book, that they make us feel good for not having bigotry and hostility toward people of color while we have something far worse: indifference. Indifference to what? To quote the author, “A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch” (15).
The privileged whites had to appease poor whites. See the case of Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion on page 24. By appeasing Bacon, rich whites broke up the alliance between poor whites and blacks.
Tragedy of racism and slavery
During America’s Colonial period, there was no such thing as race. People of light and dark skin color worked side by side oblivious of race. The idea of race didn’t become prominent until European imperialism and American slavery a few hundred years ago. To kill and exploit people with justification, the term “savages” was created to replace human beings.
During slavery, white supremacy became a religion that “served to alleviate the white conscience and reconcile the tension between slavery and the democratic ideals espoused by whites . . .” (26). This religion endured beyond slavery.
American government is founded on property ownership and privilege over equal rights.
We see on page 25 that James Madison said the nation ought to be constituted “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”
We read further that the Constitution “was designed so the federal government would be weak” in relation to private property and the “states to conduct their own affairs.”
Economic incentives created Jim Crow in the aftermath of slavery’s abolishment.
Southern regions depended on the labor of former slaves or those economies “would surely collapse.”
The attributes of Jim Crow:
Backlash and hostility against blacks in the face of the Reconstruction Era, a period of poor white resentment
Stereotypes of black males and predators and lazy ne’er-do-wells.
Strict unemployment laws against blacks and job discrimination, a disastrous combination.
No interracial relationships, seating, eating, hotels, rooms, etc. In other words, complete segregation. These laws kept a rift between poor whites and blacks and prevented them from forming an alliance.
KKK interference with black voting.
KKK lynchings of black men with no arrests.
An overall “terrorist campaign” against blacks (31)
Tens of thousands of blacks were “arbitrarily arrested” for “mischief” and “insulting gestures” (31).
Let's be clear: Mischief and insulting gestures are terms open to wide interpretation.
Black prison convicts had no human rights; they were as good as dead (31)
A new form of slavery emerged: black labor from prison (32)
Civil Rights foreshadowed the Birth of Mass Incarceration, AKA Jim Crow 2.0:
The Civil Rights Movement merged with the Poor People’s Movement and this alliance between poor whites and blacks threatened to challenge the distribution of wealth. A new racial control, splitting whites and blacks again (see 47-49), had to be established. See pages 39 and 40. Whites had to see blacks as “criminals” and pay taxes to erect a multi-billion-dollar prison system that employs over 2.5 million people.
President Reagan and other conservatives demonized the Civil Rights Movement:
We see on page 48 that the helping of the poor became “enabling welfare queens and criminal predators,” and in essence was ballooning this huge criminal underclass, which had to be controlled with The War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration.
In this Jim Crow 2.0 there was no explicit racist language. Instead a new language was created based on words like criminality, welfare bums, food stamp abusers and these terms became codes for poor black people, the “undeserving others” (49).
The Effects of the War on Drugs and Criminals:
On page 49 we read that “overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI anti-drug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.”
Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991.
Antidrug spending grew from $38 to $181 million.
Agencies for drug treatment, prevention, and education were dramatically reduced.
The budget for National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 to $57 million from 1981 to 1984.
Department of Education suffered cuts from $14 million to $3 million.
All of these cuts and the demonization of the black inner cities as crack dens happened during huge economic collapse, a time when poor blacks were most vulnerable. We read, for example, that in the big cities black employment for blue-collar jobs went from 70% of all blacks working, in the late 1970s, to 28% by 1987.
During this time manufacturing jobs moved to the white suburbs and only 28% of black fathers had access to an automobile so they could drive from the cities to the suburbs.
These job losses were accompanied by increased incentives to sell drugs. “Crack hit the streets in 1985” (51).
Crack did indeed eviscerate the black community. But the government response was wrong. The correct response can be seen in Portugal. During a period of high drug use, Portugal decriminalized drugs and invested in treatment, prevention, and education and in ten years addiction and drug-related crime plummeted (51). But conservatives decided to wage a war against the “enemy.” And the media got into the act with images of “crack whores,” “crack babies,” and “gangbangers.” See page 52.
The Portugal study speaks to America's motives. Do we choose a solution, prison, that makes more criminals or do we choose a solution, decriminalization, which reduces drug use? Why would we choose the wrong path? If a parent learns that education disciplines a child more than spanking, why would the parent stick to spanking?
In 1988, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act with a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of cocaine base with no evidence of intent to sell. And this law applied to first-time offenders.
The American people, 64%, supported this new drug war and they imprisoned huge numbers of black men but could feel colorblind and non-racist, because in their minds this was not about race; it was about criminality and drug use. But white drug users weren’t going to prison in the same numbers. A new racial caste system through mass incarceration was born (55).
Democrats didn’t want to appear soft on crime, so Clinton more than any other president did more to create the racial undercaste with a variety of bills (57).
Under Clinton, felons could not get public housing and other benefits. They lost all rights as human beings and lived under the shadow of oppression, just like in the days of Jim Crow (57).
By 1996, the penal budget doubled while food stamps and other benefits were slashed.
Ninety percent of those admitted in prison for drugs were black or Latino and yet the War on Drugs used race-neutral language. Jim Crow 2.0 was born.
Single leading cause of rising incarceration:
Drug offenses, which account for two thirds of the rise and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000 (60). There are more people in prisons and jails today for just drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.
We read on page 60 that most prisoners are first offenders arrested for possession, not selling. In 2005, four out of five were arrested for possession only, not selling.
Another glaring fact: In the 1990s, marijuana was the leading cause for arrest. Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. By 2007 one in every 31 adults were behind bars, on probation, or on parole.
"Reasonable Cause" and War on Drugs:
First, the Fourth Amendment, the law against search and seizures, has been eradicated since a cop can say he had “reasonable cause” to do a drug search. This results in police harassment and intimidation in poor communities as the police can do warrantless searches (63).
Second, law enforcement can now use invasive means to do drug surveillance and forced drug tests and use of informants and allow the forfeiture of cash, property, and other belongings (62). So we see a huge economic motive to make these arrests.
Third, consent searches are now police policy and studies show that most people, intimidated by the police, will consent (66). As a result, human rights are being violated under the huge umbrella of "reasonable cause."
Fourth, the police can now rely on a pretext traffic stop (failing to make a turn signal or going 1 MPH over speed limit, to cite 2 examples) and use that stop as an excuse to do a drug search (67). Many people are forced to spread eagle on the ground during these searches. Ninety-nine percent of these people being investigated are innocent but left humiliated. The majority of these people are of color.
The author asks why would the police choose to arrest such an astonishing percentage of the American public for minor drug crimes (between 1980 and 2005 drug arrests more than tripled)?
Especially since drug use was in decline when the War on Drugs began in the early 1980s.
Here we get to the crux of the matter: The system’s design was control with tangible and intangible benefits. And these benefits were a “massive bribe” offered to state and local law enforcement. Millions of dollars are given to local law enforcement. The military gives weapons, including bazookas, helicopters, night-vision goggles (74).
SWAT raid inappropriate for the War on Drugs:
Trauma, disproportion, and financial incentives. Each drug arrest brought $153 in funding, so the more arrests, the more money. See page 78.
Other dramatic changes took place under the Reagan Administration during the War on Drugs:
On page 78, we see that the police now had the right to seize and keep everything for themselves, including cash and other assets. State and local police could keep up to 80 percent of assets’ value. This in turn increased police budgets. So not only was the prison industry expanding into a multi-billion-dollar business, police departments were getting richer with the incentive to make more arrests. Between 1988 and 1992 alone, this forfeiture law amassed over a billion dollars in assets.
And the targets of these arrests were poor because they lack the means to hire an attorney and defend themselves. And since the poor represent easy cash, the police are encouraged to engage in illegal shakedowns, searches, and threats in search of forfeitable cash (80).
The big drug kingpins, the ones presumably targeted by the Drug War, go free because they can afford attorneys. It’s the little man who gets put in jail, so the War on Drugs fails on that level as well (79). For example, an investigation showed that when a person arrested can pay 50,000 dollars from drug profits seized would earn 6.3 year sentence reduction and agreements of $10,000 reduced trafficking charges by three-fourths (80).
After a poor person is arrested his chances of being free from the legal system are forever thin:
On page 84 we see that thousands of defendants are escorted through the courts with no legal counsel at all. Eighty percent of the defendants cannot hire a lawyer. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, we read that the defender office had only two investigators for the 2,500 new felony cases and 4,000 misdemeanor cases each year (85). We further read that defendants often plead guilty, even when innocent, without understanding their legal rights or what is occurring (86).
In most cases there is not trial because there is a plea bargain which results in a reduced sentence but carries with it a lifetime of stripped human rights: he can’t get government benefits or get a job. He’ll be under constant surveillance. The condition is called by Loic Wacquant a “closed circuit of perpetual marginality” (95).
We currently have 2.3 million in the prisons and another 5.1 million on probation or parole (94).
According to Human Rights Watch, 80-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison are African American (98).
Violent crimes are at historically low levels yet mass incarceration is on the rise (101).
Of the 7.3 million under correctional control, only 1.6 million are in prison (101).
The prison system encourages criminality so that 68% of those released from prisons are back in 3 years (94). And only a small minority for violent crimes.
The poor were targeted by the media at the onset of the Drug War as pathological and created an “us vs. them” mentality (105).
“Drug criminals” became a code word for black and this makes sense when we consider that about 90% of those arrested are poor black males (105).
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