final thoughts

 So for my final thoughts I’ll be talking about my final thoughts of pretty much the whole book but also bringing in some key points in the last chapter. This book provoked interesting thoughts about race and the judicial system. I found especially in this chapter the author emphasized she isn’t proposing a fixed to the judicial system rather proposing that talking about it and starting the conversation is more important or is what she’s doing. I found this moderately refreshing and authentic. The argument against books like this is that they are just whining or not proposing any change, the author unapologetically states that this book is about conversation and understanding what’s going on in the criminal justice system. 

I found the book had an ebon flow between huge claims and more digestible claims. Making the author provoke ideas of things that may not be mainstream while also soothing the audience with mainstream acceptable ideas like things about affirmative action which she mentions a lot in the last chapter. I found this push and pull effective throughout the entire book which also made it seem like she wasn’t going on and on about the same thing because the topics do moderately change while still being in the same ballpark. One thing I didn’t really like about the whole book was parts felt extremely repetitive and towards the end I feel I already heard most of her argument and some portions just were boring.

As far as my opinion on her arguments it was a mixed bag. Some of them I found insightful and from a new perspective, like when she talked about the history of racism in the criminal justice system, The disproportionate amount of black people in prison and and that white people commit the same amount of crime and the discrepancies within fairness, and lastly the needing to have the conversation that’s uncomfortable. Having to push through the awkwardness that white people feel around topics of race and blame, to actually achieve anything. Well on the other hand there were some arguments I found moderately outlandish and made her other arguments less effective. In my last blog post I moderately ranted about how I did not agree with the fifth chapter talking about the unfairness of black men in jail, my issue with it was that anyone should get charged with a crime in that doesn’t make the black men doing the crime any less of a crime because somebody else doesn’t get punished. Regardless as a whole I mostly agreed with her arguments and she provided a lot of information and a lot of support. 

This book was well written and had many powerful symbolism and imagery. The only downfalls of the book were it’s overuse of the same arguments and I found a downfall in it and then I didn’t fully agree but it was still interesting to hear the perspectives and still a good book.

argument

In this section the author started off by talking about the stereotype of black men being absent fathers about breaking down that stereotype in this section. Then goes back to the whole book's main focus about black men getting disproportionately arrested for drug crimes. 

This chapter's main argument and how the author achieved her argument bothered me. One of Her main arguments was that black fathers are not present because they are ripped away by the justice system, and that they would want to be part of the children’s lives, if the justice system hadn’t taken them away. She used strong verbiage relating to cages, repeatedly saying they were behind bars of cages, and even going into a full analogy of the cage as the criminal justice system. She said cages so many times it was synonym for prison she used. Using cages makes it seem like they’re being treated like animals and that they’re forced to be there. She went more into this idea of being forced into the prison system, saying they didn’t want to be taken away in handcuffs from their children. Completely leaving out the fact that these people voluntarily committed crimes. Barely even mentioning the fact that these people did commit crimes. Leaving the reader feeling empathetic for these criminals.

Yes the Reader can be empathetic of the fact that a black man was charged with a crime and the white man did the same thing and didn’t get charged. Which is a huge issue. But just because the white man did not get charged does not mean that the black man shouldn’t get charged, it means they should charge the white man to. If a person is speeding on the highway and the police officer is looking for red cars that are speeding, yes it is an issue that the police officer is specifically looking for red cars but that does not take away from the fact that the red car was speeding. The gray car that was also speeding should get the same punishment. The crime does not become any less valid based on who did or did not get punished for it. I found this to be a huge discrepancy within this chapter and almost made it seem like she was justifying crimes if not everyone is charged. Another issue I had with her argument in this section. Is the negative association with the criminal justice system. She laid it out very clearly the three steps of the criminal justice system towards black communities. First is the round up which she personifies as an unjust action towards black people, but it’s really just the arrest for crimes they committed. Step two is formal control which is literally just their incarceration, she personifies it has this evil thing done to control black people. The third step is invisible punishment which is the societal punishments associated with being a felon, she implies that these invisible punishments are more prominent within black communities. She made a bold statement of saying “ If you say to anyone “ we have got to do something about white crime“ they will laugh and find it humorous. I know this was more of a statement then an actual claim but I wanted to put it to the test. I know having only a few subjects does not prove my point valid regardless I asked my entire family that question, and what white crime is. They all said crime committed by a white person. I know this does not show her point invalid but I think her generalization is too broad and abrasive. 

Her main point throughout this entire book is the war on drugs is disproportionately targeted towards black communities. This section was no different but I found her sub point in the section about fathers not wanting to leave their children, and negatively personifying the criminal justice system, very ineffective and I personally disagreed with it.

Rhetorical strategy

In this section I will be Talking about the rhetorical strategies Michelle Alexandra used in the section. I found certain strategies to be strengthening her argument and certain strategies to devalue some of her points. This section I found the hardest to get through and I feel like the writing in this section felt out of place with the rest of the book because the rest was very well supported and this section moderately felt like unsupported claims. Nonetheless the main rhetorical strategy I’ll be focusing on is actually the first pages. 

So far this book has been a lot about crime, black people and stereotypes. This chapter sets you up to dive more into specifically drug crimes. The first page of chapter 3 starts off with a point of view of a 31-year-old African-American mother who was arrested in a drug sweep and the author asked the reader to imagine themselves as this person. And then continues to unfold and what happened to this person (Erma Faye Stewart), her (your) court appointed attorney tells you to plead guilty, you refuse knowing you’re innocent, then you end up pleading guilty, in the end anyone who didn’t plead guilty was dismissed. So you're a felon and One tragedy after the next, the story unfolds. The author then puts you as another person in the same drug bust, but this person (Clifford) you are taken away by officers at your 18 month old daughter’s funeral and all of your stuff is taken and it ends up being nothing. 

Directly after this goes straight into talking about drug crime statistics. This section uses good literary strategies in the form of pathos. This section appeals to pathos because it puts you in the perspective of people in really bad situations. Situations that make the reader feel compassion and understanding for both of the stories, especially since both were about losing children, which appeals to strong emotions regardless of the race or situation. The way it was written forces the reader to be put in that point of view, which was smart on the authors part because it made the reader already emotional and ready to hear her argument out of compassion. 

The other rhetorical strategy that I’ll be analyzing is word choice. This in particular at the beginning of chapter, I found certain words to be ineffective and moderately distracting from her purpose. These words were used to refute The other argument but came off as distracting, when refuting an argument she would say “ The fact” or “ common sense“ and other things in that realm. These to refute an argument made her lose some ethos and credibility because if she had addressed it in a qualifying way, it would show she could understand the other side and give her argument maturity and style. Her way of refuting opposing arguments moderately reminded me of in our satire unit in the text we read. The way she refuted was like just denying the other side, I found this to be the same strategy, and I think it took away from her writing. 

These rhetorical strategies added and took away from her writing but I think the first one is extremely successful.

I found this section easier to read and more interesting than the last because it got into the bulk of the flaws within the judicial system, focusing on cocaine and drug crimes. I personally liked this more than the introduction and easier to read and more interesting than the last because it got into the bulk of the flaws within the judicial system, focusing on cocaine and drug crimes. I personally found this more interesting than the introduction and Last year I took intro to law where we talked about drug crime discrimination and race in law, I found this part of intro to law are very interesting. So I was excited that the book went into more depth about these topics. I also found the section easier to relate to current day and everyday situations, which is why I picked to do the current event prompt, because a lot of these things are everyday things we see in the news.

In this section of the reading I found the portion about Stop and frisk interesting. The thin line between privacy and encroaching on the amendment rights was continuously brought up, talking historically about Florida versus Bostick, this reminded me of a current event revolving around Bloomberg. This presidential candidate had an audio recording of him saying, 

“Ninety-five percent of your murders — murderers and murder victims fit one. M.O. You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops,``''They are male minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city,”“And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed.”(Forgey).

 This is exactly what the book was talking about about the racial bias behind stop and frisk, and also racial profiling of black men. It’s bizarre and revolting to me that racial bias and racial profiling are still so common in American politics and justice system, this book has opened up my eyes to the fact that racial inquality in the fight for justice isnt over and it didn’t end in the 60s, that the bills put in place and the civil rights that were fought for didn’t fix everything. It's shocking that a consideration for the United States of America’s presidency is someone who racially profiles.

Works Cited

FORGEY, QUINT. "Bloomberg in hot water over 'stop-and-frisk' audio clip." 

     Politico, www.politico.com/news/2020/02/11/ 

     michael-bloomberg-stop-and-frisk-clip-113902. Accessed 13 Mar. 2020

For my first blog post, I will be talking about my first thoughts of impressions of the book. The reading we have done of The New Jim Crow so far was mostly historical background. This first chapter started early with the original Jim Crow laws, the first sentence is “Jarvious cotton cannot vote”. Starting the reader off with the idea of old Jim crow and the racism behind that. The text then digs into the racism around laws and voting, the chronologically getting closer to the current day, only taking brief tangents, then getting back to the timeline. The way this was done was very seamless, it didn't feel like we were following history to get the current event, it felt like all of this information was vital and as interesting as the current-day topic. This timeline didn't spent too much time on any one topic over another so it flowed well and quickly. I found this section a very fast read, regardless of the dense information.

In this timeline I found two parts very interesting, it could be because I have little prerequisite knowledge of these two topics, or because the author went into deep detail. These two topics being 1) the number of black voters before and after voting rights laws were put in place and 2) Clinton's stance of crime and its effects on the black community.

I was in awe of how many black voters there were before and after voting laws were put in place. One section shows this “Mississippi, 6.7 percent to 66.5” when talking about black voter registration. This section I found interesting because in school I was taught that not a lot of black people could vote but l didn't know the sheer volume of how many couldn't vote. For that, I found this section interesting. It was also dense in statics which was a good break from just commentary.

The other section I liked was the section about Bill Clinton. I didn't know a lot about Bill Clinton's policies so when I read “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I'm soft on crime” It set up a good scenario to explain the beginning of the new Jim crow.

The last thing I liked about the section was regarding the timeline I mentioned before, it started with the old Jim crow and the last sentence was “the new Jim crow was born”. This structure came very full circle and set a good landscape to start the author's argument. This structure moderately felt like the whole first chapter was like a very long introduction to a paper, only now talking about the thesis.