Why I need to read the New Jim Crow

For our most recent topic in my AP language class, we chose to discuss issues of race. I was very excited about this unit because I think that it's tremendously important to educate myself on these issues as I will have very little personal experience in them. I chose to read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexandra, and here's why.

As a white person born in Hopkinton New Hampshire, my experience with prejudice and racial problems is slim to none. I am probably the definition of white privilege, yet until maybe a year ago, I wouldn't have been able to describe how. White privilege has given me a tremendous amount of opportunities that I have done nothing to earn for myself, and yet I was still grievously ignorant about the ways in which I have benefited because of my race, and also how others have not. While this may lead some to shy away from the issue of race, I feel that I must do the opposite. Because of how little exposure I've had to race and diversity in my life, it's my job to educate myself about issues that many people in my country deal with every day.

Growing up, I read books and learned about segregation and slavery as many children do in school, and yet it never really affected me in the way it does now. Learning about race when I was young felt separate from the world I lived in as if it was some other country. I felt detached from the issues I was learning about partially because they seemed so long ago, and also because I had very little experience with black people in my life. I felt sympathetic and upset about what happened in our nation's history, however, it never really reached me on a deeper level.

See, the difference between me and many African-Americans is that once the race unit in school was over, or once that newspaper headline of another black person killed unjustly faded from the forefront of my mind, I could be blissfully ignorant and unaware. It was almost like a switch I could turn off. Unfortunately, I think that this is how many white Americans deal with the issue of race. We feel sympathetic, maybe even outraged, but eventually, it fades from our busy lives. African-Americans don't have this privilege. Race affects them every single day of their lives, and the plight of African-Americans directly affects them, not me.

Until maybe a year ago I always felt passionate and interested in issues of race in our history, but it never occurred to me that I was actually living in a time that these issues existed. My first brush with what seems like an awakening in my understanding of racial issues was when I was watching the news with my dad and there was a story about an unarmed black man who was shot by a policeman. I remember being confused and somewhat shocked that this happened that day, not 50 years ago. I made my dad pause the TV and we proceeded to have a discussion about police brutality and issues of race in America. Although I obviously knew that race was a problem in our country, I wasn't really aware of how much it was a problem, probably because it didn't affect me.

I feel embarrassed of how self-centered I was looking back on my attitudes and opinions about race, not because I wasn't sympathetic or upset by racial prejudice, but because I truly believed that the problem was declining to the point that very few people actually acknowledged race or were affected by it. This is probably partially because of the town I was raised in, the school I grew up in, and the way that all the adults around me talked about race. However, this idea that race was a declining entity and that racial oppression and discrimination barely existed is just downright false.

After the news story I watched, my dad and I began to watch 60-minute episodes about racial issues as well as other things, and I started actually paying attention when the news was on. I read books about race, watched documentaries such as The 13th, downloaded podcasts, and listened more closely to discussions in history class about race. I paid attention to little details throughout my life that I was completely unaware of before, such as how my managers at Marshalls dealt with black people walking into our store. This year, in my introduction to law class, we discussed things like the stop and frisk and three strikes laws and I began to understand the depths of this issue and how it has direct ties to our criminal justice system.

One of my favorite quotes from The 13th is "People say all the time, ‘well, I don’t understand how people could have tolerated slavery?’ ‘How could they have made peace with that?’ ‘How could people have gone to a lynching and participated in that?’ ‘That’s so crazy, if I was living at that time I would never have tolerated anything like that.’And the truth is we are living in this time, and we are tolerating it." This stood out to me because we actually are living in a time that will be written down in history books, and I am one of those people who is doing absolutely nothing about issues that are going on in my country directly affecting millions of black lives. I realized that this struggle of race was far from over, and issues like Jim Crow Laws and even slavery were existing in my lifetime. While I grew up worrying about college applications and homework, some people in my country were worried about going to jail or being shot by policemen.

This awakening of sorts that I went through regarding racial issues is still happening, and I still feel like I'm woefully ignorant about what African-Americans experience in the country we both share. To some extent, this will always be true because I will never be black in America. However, books like The New Jim Crow help broaden my understanding of these topics so that I may be more informed and empathetic to those who struggle with prejudice every day. It is important that I inform myself as much as possible to these issues because as Michelle Alexander says in the introduction of her book, "Racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or even bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference" (pg 14).