Are We Colorblind? by Aliyah

Are We Colorblind? by Aliyah - October 2020 Scholarship Essay

Today in the era of colorblindness Michelle Alexander says there is something akin to a caste system, and it is “alive and well in America.” The mass incarceration of poor people of color in the United States locks poor people of color into permanent second-class citizenship, nearly as effective as earlier systems of racial and social control once did, such as the Jim Crow era. This parallelism is easy to miss for many who are not directly affected by this system of injustice. Even Alexander claims to have had to go through an awakening. Alexander herself was reading the newspaper and on the front page was, “The Oakland Riders’ Police Scandal Has Broken” A gang of police officers on the drug task force had been planting drugs on suspects, beating them up. Prior to this, she turned the man away for telling this same story, all because he had a felony on his record. The minute Alexander heard the young man was a felon, she stopped listening just like many Americans do today. We stop listening; we consider these people to be violent, not parts of families and communities. This is the prison label.

The prison label legalizes discrimination: that label being, a felon. Once labeled a felon you lose the right to vote, rights to food stamps, public housing. It puts African American men, especially into a cycle of mass incarceration, that lasts generations. Mass incarceration doesn’t require someone to be behind bars. The prison label follows those through probation and parole and doesn’t just disappear, it shows up when your paychecks are garnished, and you can’t find a job that doesn’t require you to check the box; it’s everywhere. At the same time, we must acknowledge that there are a lot of misconceptions about Mass Incarceration.

"The New Jim Crow" was the best book I've read in 2020 because it is both relevant given the current political climate with the Black Lives Matter Movement, but also it was very thought-provoking. Alexander claims that nothing less than a major social movement will solve our problem of mass incarceration in America, there must be a major shift in our public consciousness. This requires communication and work. People don’t want to talk about racial disparities in this country. People right now are not willing to have uncomfortable discussions about our colorblind society, and until we can talk and fight for change, this system of racial injustice will continue.