New Jim Crow Lesson 5, Chapter 5. The New Jim Crow

(I've adapted these ideas from Chapter 3 of How to Write Anything by John J. Ruszkiewicz.)

Know what kind of argument you are writing:

Argument to advance a thesis:

You argue for a thesis as you champion an idea or a cause.

For example, you might argue for eating steamed vegetables three times a day and provide the many benefits of employing such a practice.

Another example would be a writer who argues that the Paleo diet is the most effective way to maintain lean muscle mass.

Another example would be for a writer to argue for water rationing and triple water bills for homeowners who go over their water threshold.

Another example would be to argue for prison reform to address concerns raised in The New Jim Crow.

Refutation argument:

You refute an already existing argument or practice, showing point by point why the argument is weak, precarious, or even fallacious (fallacy-laden).

For example, you might refute Civil War reenactments on the grounds that they are white male fantasies based on the infantile hunger for nostalgia, the toxic Kool-Aid of White Supremacy, and the denial of moral accountability for the evils of slavery.

In your refutation, you paint Civil War reenactments as a grotesque pageantry akin to a racist Disneyworld where are all the actors are white and black history has been erased because "it would be too disturbing" to the bogus, idealized world inhabited by the emotionally-arrested aspirants of "the good old Confederate days" and their other shameless displays of morally-bankrupt tomfoolery.

Once you decide on your argument or claim, you must consider finding compelling reasons to support your claim.

Support Your Claim

Without support consisting of data, statistics, reasoning, logic, and refutations to counterarguments, your opinion exists in an abyss or a vacuum. You must develop a considered or educated opinion, which is the result of fearlessly studying the pros and cons of your subject in which you try to minimize your prejudices, biases, and other emotional baggage that might blind you from the truth.

Understand Opposing Claims and Points of View

You don't have an educated or considered opinion until you have been tested by your opponents' strongest arguments. If you can refute those arguments, then you can continue with your claim.

You will also gain credibility with your readers for showing your understanding of your opponents' views.

You will gain even more credibility when you can refute your opponents with assured insouciance rather than infantile hostility. Also choose polite insouciance over hostility as the former is a sign of intellectual superiority; the latter is a sign of juvenile fear and inexperience.

Give Appropriate Sartorial (Clothing Style) Splendor (Writing Style) to Your Arguments

Your argument is the "body" of the essay. Your writing style is the fashion or sartorial choice you make in order to "dress up" your argument and give it power, moxie, and elan (passion).

Here is the same claim dressed up differently in the following two thesis statements:

Plain

Civil War reenactments are racist gibberish that need to go once and for all.

More Dressed Up

Our moral offense to civil war reenactments rests on our understanding that the participants are engaging in nostalgia for the days when the toxic religion of white supremacy ruled the day, that the participants gleefully and childishly erase black history to the detriment of truth, and that on a larger scale, they engage in the mythical revisionism of the Confederacy narratives, hiding its barbaric practices by esteeming racist thugs as if they were innocent and venerable Disney heroes. Their sham is so morally egregious and spiritually bankrupt that to examine its folly in all its shameless variations compels us to abolish the sordid practice without equivocation.

Plain

We need to stop blaming the poor for their poverty.

More Dressed Up

The idea that the rich are wealthy because of their superior moral character and that the poor live in poverty because of their inferior moral character is a glaring absurdity rooted in willful ignorance, the blind worship of money, and an irrational fear of poverty as if it were some kind of contagious disease.

Qualify Your Thesis to Make It More Persuasive and Reasonable

Qualifiers such as the following will make your thesis more bullet-proof from your opponents:

some

most

a few

often

under certain conditions

when necessary

occasionally

Example:

Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.

Examine Your Core Assumptions

Assumptions are the principles and values upon which we base our beliefs and actions.

Claim

Under most conditions, narcotics should be legalized in order to decrease crime, increase rehabilitation, and decrease unnecessary incarceration.

Assumption

Treating drug use as a medical problem that requires rehabilitation is morally superior to relying on incarceration. Some may disagree with this assumption, so the writer will have to defend her assumption at some point in her essay.

Here's a link (with grammar errors) for writing counterarguments and refutations in your essay.

Notice the link, which is from a community college, is riddled with grammar errors. We all make mistakes from time to time, especially on the Internet, but a pattern of errors is disturbing indeed.

Study Questions, 221-261

One. Why would there be huge resistance to reforming the New Jim Crow and Mass Incarceration?

We read on page 230 that if we got back to the incarceration rates of the 1970s, before the War on Drugs, we’d have release 4 out of 5 prisoners. This would reduce prison jobs and would be met with all-out war from the 700,000 prison guards, administrators, service workers and other prison personnel.

In a report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics in 2006, the U.S. spent $185 billion for police protection, detention, judicial, and legal activities in 2003. This is a tripling of expenses since 1982.

The justice system employed almost 2.4 million people in 2003. If 4 out of 5 prisoners were released, far more than a million prison employees would lose their jobs.

Private sector also has an investment in prison growth and the mass incarceration of helpless and vulnerable people of color. For example, former vice president Dick Cheney has invested millions in private prisons. His bank account depends on the incarceration of more and more black men (230).

On page 231, the author gives a sample of “prison profiteers” who look for new ways to increase the prison business, with the targets always being the same: poor black men, the people this country has abandoned.

Consider this: On page 237 we read that 75% of all incarceration has no impact on crime, that if between 7 and 8 prisoners out of 10 were released, there’d be no change in crime; however, this 75% generates $200 billion annually. It’s a money-making device.

The moral bankruptcy of the New Jim Crow is that this multi-billion-dollar economy has been built on the backs of poor black men whom America doesn’t give a damn about. There’s an “it ain’t me” mentality that is morally loathsome and detestable.

Two. What fuels the New Jim Crow in addition to greed? Is it racial hatred?

On page 242, the author argues racial hatred is not the culprit but something far worse: indifference. “My narrow, insular world is not effected so why should I give a damn?” A moral country would be like the group, All of Us or None (255). This group tirelessly advocates the “least among us,” which is the central message of the greatest religions and philosophies. Yet America has turned toward the other direction.

Review of Alexander's Major Claims and Arguments

One. The NJC was based on race-neutral language to exert racist control and to make a rich prison empire on the backs of poor black men.

Two. Prisons don't reduce crime. They increase it.

Three. NJC was created by elite whites to appease poor whites.

Four. NJC is a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement merging with the Poor People's Movement (threatening to take more pie from the white elite who needed to break the alliance).

Five. Treatment, prevention, education, and decriminalization of drugs reduces drug use; mass incarceration increases it.

Six. War on Drugs threw away the Fourth Amendment for people of color.

Seven. Poor people don't get legal representation.

Eight. U.S. legal system accomodates white crimes (alcohol, powder cocaine, marijuana) but prosectutes to the full extent black crimes.

Overview of "The Caging of America" by Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik from “The Caging of America”

We give longer sentences for the same crime than all other countries in the world.
Over 400 teen-agers in Texas have life sentences.
6 million Americans are under “correctional supervision.” There are 2.4 Americans in prison.
In 1980, there were 220 Americans in prison for every 100,000 people. In 2010 that number has jumped to 731. No developed country in the world comes close to this.
Here’s some evidence or data for our immoral prison system being part of The New Jim Crow: In two decades prison spending is up 600%. Here’s the warrant, the logic that connects the data to the claim that the modern prison system is part of The New Jim Crow: The money incentive, not smart and moral public policy, is the driving force.
Gopnik: The US prison system is the “moral scandal of American life.” It’s a scandal most Americans are indifferent to because they’re sedated by the blue pill in The Matrix. Reading Gopnik’s essay and Alexander’s book is the equivalent of taking the red pill.
Today’s prison policy is influenced by 19^th Century America when prison was seen as a slave plantation.
There is a landmark book that analyzes the corruption of our prison system. It’s Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William J. Stuntz. It reinforces many of the points made in The New Jim Crow.
We see an evil marriage of public policy and private interests: Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, enjoys financial growth that is dependent on America’s growing arrest rate (which is 90% people of color). The company’s stockholders want more arrests (not caring about the racial disparities and draconian nature of those arrests for all people) because they want to see their stock grow and grow. To make sure their stockholders are happy, CCA “spends millions lobbying legislators” to serve the purpose of the stockholders. Human rights can be damned as far as they’re concerned. They want their money.
The above example evidences that America is less of a democracy and more of an oligarchy. The word oligarchy is Greek which means the state is ruled by a only a few. In fact the Greek root oligos means “few.” We can conclude—and this would be in my conclusion of my paper when I restated my thesis—that to perpetuate The New Jim Crow is not only about the perpetuation of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow; it’s about a country being degraded into a corrupt oligarchy. I emphasize this because a conclusion should show the wider ramifications of your claim’s message.

Review of Principles of an Argumentative Essay

The Rhetorical Triangle Connects All the Persuasive Methods

Logos, reason and logic, focuses on the text or the substance of the argument.

Ethos, the credibility or expertise from the writer, focuses on the writer.

Pathos, the emotional appeal, focuses on the emotional reaction of the audience.

The Elements of Argument

Thesis Statement (single sentence that states your position or claim)

Evidence (usually about 75% of your body paragraphs)

Refutation of opposing arguments or objections to your claim (usually about 25% of your body paragraphs)

Concluding statement (dramatic restatement of your thesis, which often also shows the broader implications of your important message).

Thesis

Thesis is one sentence that states your position about an issue.

Thesis example: Increasing the minimum wage to eighteen dollars an hour, contrary to “expert” economists, will boost the economy.

The above assertion is an effective thesis because it is debatable; it has at least two sides.

Thesis: We should increase the minimum wage to boost the economy.

Antithesis: Increasing the minimum wage will slow down the economy.

Evidence

Evidence is the material you use to make your thesis persuasive: facts, observations, expert opinion, examples, statistics, reasons, logic, and refutation.

Refutation Section (also called Counterargument and Rebuttal)

Your argument is only as strong as your understanding of your opponents and your ability to refute your opponents’ objections.

If while examining your opponents’ objections, you find their side is more compelling, you have to CHANGE YOUR SIDE AND YOUR THESIS because you must have integrity when you write. There is no shame in this. Changing your position through research and studying both sides is natural.

Conclusion

Your concluding statement reinforces your thesis and emphasizes the emotional appeal of your argument.