De Anza College Class and Race in America Reflection

  

Description

Write a 7 paragraph reflection on what you learned in this unit. Use the following format:

Paragraphs 1-2 are a reflection of the most important things that you learned from the films. These paragraphs do not have to be connected to the other parts of the essay. (Film A: The Uncomfortable Truth. Film B:

Frontline: A Class Divided.

)

Paragraphs 3-5 are a reflection on the most important things that you learned in the readings. Cite your sources in text (author year page #) and then provide works cited list on a final page. Citing a source does not mean quoting; it can just mean referring to a text as the source of your information. Try to integrate the major themes of the readings. Don’t summarize a lot of details. CITE ALLT 3 READINGS BLOW

Paragraphs 6-7 are your application of the concepts learned from this unit’s films and readings to a current events news article of your choice. Provide a link to the article at the top of this section and clearly explain how and why it relates to the course concepts.

Works Cited page should include all readings cited AND the news article.

Suggested template for a paragraph: The most important message in (Film A/B or the readings in Group A/B/C) is ….. We see this in (details from film or details from one or more readings. Approximately 3 sentences here.) This is important because (approximately 2 sentences here).

The Sweet
Enchantment
of Color-Blind
Racism in
Obamerica
It has become accepted dogma among whites in the
United States that race is no longer a central factor
determining the life chances of Americans. In this article, the authors counter this myth by describing how the
ideology of color-blind racism works to defend and justify the contemporary racial order. The authors illustrate
three basic frames of this ideology, namely, abstract
liberalism, cultural racism, and minimization of racism.
The authors then examine research that has empirically
shown the effects of color-blind racism on whites’ reactions to Hurricane Katrina, among whites who have
adopted children of color, and in America’s elite law
schools. Finally, the authors examine how the election of
Barack Obama is not an example of America becoming a
“post-racial” country but reflects color-blind racism. The
authors argue that the Obama phenomenon as a cultural
symbol and his political stance and persona on race are
compatible with color-blind racism. The authors conclude
with the prognosis that, under the Obama administration, the tentacles of color-blind racism will reach even
deeper into the crevices of the American polity.
Keywords: racism; color-blind racism; Obama; postracial; ideology
By
EDUARDO BONILLA-SILVA
and
DAVID DIETRICH
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs
constant struggle.
—George Orwell, In Front
of Your Nose (1946/1968)
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is a professor of sociology at
Duke. To date he has published four books, White
Supremacy and Racism in the Post–Civil Rights Era,
Racism without Racists, White Out (with Woody
Doane), and White Logic, White Methods (with Tukufu
Zuberi). He is working on a book titled The Invisible
Weight of Whiteness: The Racial Grammar of Everyday
Life in America. He is the 2007 recipient of the Lewis A.
Coser Award for theoretical agenda setting in sociology.
David Dietrich is a PhD candidate in sociology at Duke
University. His areas of interest are racial and ethnic
relations, social movements, immigration, social stratification, sociological theory, and sociology of law. His
recent research includes examinations of racism in the
popular debate over illegal immigration, race in online
virtual worlds, and an examination of anti–affirmative
action protests on college campuses. His dissertation is
titled “Rebellious Conservatives: A Study of Conservative
Social Movements.”
DOI: 10.1177/0002716210389702
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ANNALS, AAPSS, 634, March 2011
THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT OF COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN OBAMERICA
A
191
mythology that emerged in post–civil rights America has become accepted
dogma among whites with the election of Barack Obama: the idea that race
is no longer a central factor determining the life chances of Americans (D’Souza
1995).1 Journalists (Dowd 2009; B. Shapiro 2009), political advisors (Ifill 2009),
some people of color (W. Reed and Louis 2009), and most whites (CBS 2009)
have deemed the election of our first black president proof positive that we have
entered a “post-racial” era. However, whites and people of color remain mostly
separate and disturbingly unequal (Daniels 2008; Sampson and Sharkey 2008;
Massey 2007; Western 2006). Since whites believe race has “declined in significance” (Wilson 1978), they account for this seeming contradiction—America as
post-racial yet minorities lagging well behind whites—as the result of the cultural
deficiencies of people of color (Bobo and Charles 2009; Hunt 2007). Many conservative people of color (e.g., Steele 2006; Patterson 2004, 2006; McWhorter
2001) as well as many liberals such as comedian Bill Cosby (Cosby and Poussaint
2007) and actor Will Smith also embrace this view (W. Smith 2008).
In contrast, Bonilla-Silva (2001), among others (R. C. Smith 1995; Brooks
1996), argues that the existing racial inequality in the United States is the product
of a new racial regime, which he has labeled the “new racism.” We agree with
Feagin (2006) that racial oppression is still systemic in America, affecting all people, networks, and institutions. However, the main racial practices of this regime
are quite different from those typical of Jim Crow. Today, discrimination is mostly
subtle, apparently nonracial, and institutionalized (see also R. C. Smith 1995). Not
surprisingly, the ideological anchor of this new regime, which Bonilla-Silva has
labeled “color-blind racism,” is as slippery as the practices it supports (see Caditz
1976 for an early work that captured this ideological transition). Whereas Jim
Crow racism explained minorities’ social standing as the outcome of their imputed
biological and moral inferiority, color-blind racism avoids such facile arguments.
Instead, the ideology rationalizes the status of minorities as the product of market
dynamics, naturally occurring phenomena, and their alleged cultural deficiencies
(Berry and Bonilla-Silva 2008; Lipsitz 2006). Much as Jim Crow racism served as
the glue for defend­ing racial oppression in the past, color-blind racism provides
the ideological armor for the “new racism” regime (Sullivan 2006).
Although survey research shows a decline in overt or Jim Crow–style prejudice
among whites since the 1960s, there is broad consensus in the academic community that racial prejudice continues to plague America (Yancy 2008; Picca and
Feagin 2007). Nevertheless, unlike the prejudice of yesteryear, it is expressed in
covert, subtle, or symbolic fashion (Hill 2008; Myers 2005; Bush 2004). Various
terms have been used to refer to this new kind of prejudice, such as “laissez-faire
racism” (Bobo, Kluegel, and Smith 1997), “symbolic racism” (Tarman and Sears
2005), and “aversive racism” (Dovidio and Gaertner 2004). The concept of colorblind racism is related to these concepts but differs substantively and theoretically from them. Substantively, the examination of the ideology has uncovered
the existence of frames, stylistic components, and racial stories that, given their
reliance on surveys, most survey researchers have not addressed. Theoretically,
color-blind racism is not regarded as “prejudice” grounded in individual-level or
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
affective dispositions but rather as the collective expression of whites’ racial
dominance (Bonilla-Silva 1997). Thus, in our view, actors’ attitudes are fundamentally connected to their location in the racial order (Prager 1982; BonillaSilva 2001), whether they are expressed with animosity or not. Our main concern
is examining the various ways color-blind racism composes an ideology whites use
to explain, rationalize, and defend their racial interests.
In this article, we first outline and illustrate the basic frames of color-blind racism. Second, we examine recent research that substantiates and expands knowledge about this racial ideology. Third, we argue that in many ways the Obama
phenomenon reflects and enhances color-blind racism. We conclude with a discussion of the future implications of this ideology for the well-being of our nation.
The Ideology of Color-Blind Racism
In this section we discuss one of the three2 component parts of color-blind racism: frames. We use systematic interview data to illustrate how the frames function to create apparently nonracial explanations of race events. The data come
from two similarly structured proj­ects. The first is the 1997 Survey of Social
Attitudes of College Students, based on a convenience sample of 627 college students (including 451 white students) surveyed at a large midwestern university
(MU hence­forth), a large southern university, and a medium-size West Coast university. The second data source is the 1998 Detroit Area Study (DAS), a probabilistic survey of 323 white and 67 black Detroit metropolitan area residents.
Color-blind frames
The frames of any dominant racial ideology are set paths for interpreting information and operate as cognitive culs-de-sac because, after people invoke them,
they explain racial phenomena in a predictable manner—as if they were getting on
a one-way street without exits. Dominant racial frames are not “false consciousness” but rather unacknowledged, contextual standpoints that provide the intellectual (and moral) building blocks whites use to explain racial matters. The central
frames of color-blind racism are abstract liberalism, cultural racism, minimization
of racism, and naturalization; we illustrate the first three here (Bonilla-Silva 2006).
Abstract liberalism. This frame incorporates tenets associated with political and
economic liberalism in an abstract and de-contextualized manner. By framing
race-related issues in the language of liberalism, whites can appear “reasonable”
and even “moral” while opposing all practical approaches to deal with de facto
racial inequality. For instance, by using the tenets of the free market ideology in
the abstract, they can oppose affirmative action as a violation of the norm of equal
opportunity. The following example illustrates how whites use this frame. Jim, a
30-year-old computer software salesman from a privileged background, explained
his opposition to affirmative action:
THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT OF COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN OBAMERICA
193
I think it’s unfair top to bottom on everybody and the whole process. Often, you know,
discrimination itself is a bad word, right? But you discriminate every day. You wanna buy
a beer at the store and there are six kinds [of] beers you can get from Natural Light to
Sam Adams, right? And you look at the price and you look at the kind of beer, and
you . . . it’s a choice. . . . And it’s the same thing about getting into school or getting into
some place. . . . I don’t think [MU] has a lot of racism in the admissions process. . . . So
why not just pick people that are going to do well at [MU], pick people by their merit?
I think we should stop the whole idea of choosing people based on their color.
Since Jim assumes that hiring decisions are like market choices (choosing
between competing brands of beer), he embraces a laissez-faire position on hiring. The problem with Jim’s view is that labor market discrimination is alive and
well (Holtzer 2009), and most jobs are obtained through informal networks
(Royster 2003). Jim’s abstract position is further cushioned by his belief that
although blacks “perceive or feel” that there is a lot of discrimination, he does not
see much out there. Therefore, by upholding a strict laissez-faire view on hiring
and, at the same time, ignoring the significant impact of discrimination in the
labor market, Jim can safely voice his opposition to affirmative action in an apparently race-neutral way. This frame allows whites to be unconcerned about school
and residential segregation, oppose almost any kind of government intervention
to ameliorate the effects of past and contemporary discrimination, and prefer
whites as partners/friends.
Cultural racism. Pierre Andre Taguieff (2001) has argued that modern racial
ideology does not portray minorities as inferior biological beings. Instead, it biologizes their presumed cultural practices (i.e., presents them as fixed features) and
uses that as the rationale for justifying racial inequality. The newness of this frame
resides in the centrality it has acquired in whites’ contemporary justifications of
minorities’ standing. The essence of the frame, as William Ryan (1976) pointed
out a long time ago, is “blaming the victim”—arguing that minorities’ standing is
the product of their lack of effort, loose family organization, and inappropriate
values. An example of how whites use this frame comes from Kim, a student at
MU. In response to the question, “Many whites explain the status of blacks in this
country as a result of blacks lacking motivation, not having the proper work ethic,
or being lazy. . . . What do you think?” Kim said,
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I don’t think, you know, they’re all like that, but, I mean,
it’s just that if it wasn’t that way, why would there be so many blacks living in the projects? . . . If they worked hard, they could make it just as high as anyone else could. You
know, I just think that’s just, you know, they’re raised that way and they see that their
parents are so they assume that’s the way it should be.
Although not all whites were as crude as this student, most subscribed to this
belief either by overt racist comments or in a so-called “compassionate conservative” manner.
Minimization of racism. Whites do not believe that minorities’ social standing
today is the product of discrimination. Instead, they believe it is due to “their
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culture,” “class,” “legacies from slavery,” “the culture of segregation,” “lack of
social capital,” “poverty,” and so forth. In other words, it is anything but racism.
Sandra, a retail saleswoman in her early 40s, provides an example of how whites
use this frame when she explained her view on discrimination:
I think if you are looking for discrimination, I think it’s there to be found. But if you make
the best of any situation, and if you don’t use it as an excuse. I think sometimes it’s an
excuse because people felt they deserved a job, whatever! I think if things didn’t go their
way I know a lot of people have a tendency to use prejudice or racism as whatever, as an
excuse. I think in some ways, yes, there is [sic] people who are prejudiced. It’s not only
blacks, it’s about Spanish, or women. In a lot of ways there [is] a lot of reverse discrimination. It’s just what you wanna make of it.
Since most whites, such as Sandra, believe discrimination has all but disappeared, they regard minorities’ claims of discrimination as excuses or as minorities playing the infamous “race card.”
Research on Color-Blind Racism
Current research substantiates Bonilla-Silva’s claims (2003, 2006) about colorblind racism’s centrality to racial stratification in the United States. It demonstrates its broad impact in the population as well as in institutions. In this section,
we discuss efforts to quantify color-blind racism, examine color-blind racism
among individuals and institutions, and change color-blind racist attitudes.
Quantitative measures of color-blind racism
In addition to qualitative studies, recent research on color-blind racism has
employed quantitative measures. These range from simple questions about beliefs
in equal opportunity to a multidimensional scale, the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes
Scale (CoBRAS), which Neville et al. (2000) developed. Using more than eleven
hundred observations in five studies, Neville et al. (2000) identified several major
cognitive dimensions of color-blind racism, including denial of white privilege, lack
of awareness of the implications of institutional racism, rejection of social policies
such as affirmative action, and denial of pervasive racial discrimination in the
United States. Neville et al. (2000) also distinguished color-blind racism, a distorted
view of race relations, from racial prejudice, negative stereotypes of racial minorities. Although conceptually different, the CoBRAS measure of color-blind racism
was positively correlated with many measures of racial prejudice. Other studies
have found that the CoBRAS measure of color-blind racism was positively correlated with white fear of other races (Spanierman and Heppner 2004).
Individual-level analyses
Evidence of color-blind racism was found in several sociological analyses of
individuals’ reactions to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Sweeney (2006) studied
THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT OF COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN OBAMERICA
195
responses to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that expressed black
rapper Kanye West’s contention that the media coverage of New Orleans after
Katrina was racially biased. Sweeney found that most of the comments blamed
the disproportionately black hurricane victims for making the “choice” not to
heed warnings and leave the city. Many also blamed the victims as “whiners”
who expected government handouts instead of helping themselves. Their
answers implied that racism was not an issue. Another study analyzed the attitudes of Houstonians to the influx of black evacuees following Katrina. Using
data from the 2006 and 2008 Houston Area Surveys, Shelton and Coleman
(2009) found that antagonistic attitudes toward black Katrina migrants to
Houston were greater among respondents who professed a belief that America
had attained “equal opportunity for all” and adhered to individualistic explanations for existing racial inequalities, both central to the abstract liberal frame of
color-blind racism.
Research also suggests that color-blind racism is evident even among whites
most likely to have transcended race: white parents who have adopted children
of color. This is the major finding of Carla Goar (2009) in her study of parents in
interracial adoptive families who participated in three “adoption camps.” The
purpose of the camps was to provide support for the interracial families and to
“celebrate race” to positively influence the racial identity of the children. Goar
found, however, that many of the adoptive parents evinced a color-blind ideology
by de-emphasizing the importance of race and emphasizing instead their unique
individual characteristics (“We are special parents”) and those of their children
and minimizing the challenges of raising children of different races in a racially
stratified country.
Other work also suggests that the ideology of color-blindness is increasingly
affecting even those who are at or near the bottom of the economic and social
hierarchies in the United States: blacks and Latinos.3 Using data from a telephone survey of 1,005 respondents, Public Opinion on the Courts in the United
States, 2000, Kalscheur (2009) studied differences between whites, blacks, and
Latinos in their assessments of equal opportunity in the United States and perceptions of equality in the U.S. justice system. Kalscheur found that Latinos
were as likely as non-Hispanic whites to profess a color-blind view, regardless of
social class and gender. More than three-fourths of Latinos in the survey agreed
with the statement that the United States provides equal opportunity to blacks.
This evidence lends credence to the notion that Latinos have adopted anti-black
beliefs to distance themselves from blacks in the U.S. racial hierarchy (McClain
et al. 2006). What is more, more than three-fourths of Latinos in the survey also
agreed that Latinos had equal opportunity to get ahead in life. This may reflect
Twine and Gallagher’s (2008) contention that many Latinos identify as “white”
as well as Bonilla-Silva’s (2004) claim about some Latinos becoming white and
others “honorary whites.”
Other research reveals that many blacks subscribe to color-blind racism,
although fewer blacks than whites endorse its major frames (Kalscheur 2009).
Neville et al. (2005) studied 211 self-identified black American college students
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in the Midwest and West Coast. The black students who exhibited color-blind
attitudes were more likely to blame blacks for racial inequalities, believe in a
hierarchical system of inferior and superior social groups, have internalized
racial stereotypes about blacks, and prefer to associate with white rather than
black friends. This evidence substantiates Bonilla-Silva’s (2006, 2009) suggestions that the elite segments of the black community are more likely to subscribe
to color-blind racism and exhibit anti-black views. Neville et al. (2005) contend
that these color-blind racist perspectives of blacks represent a “false consciousness” that contributes to their own oppression by preventing them from supporting structural change.
Institutional analyses
Other research shows increasing evidence that color-blind racism permeates
American social institutions. Below we describe studies that highlight this development in two arenas: professional education and sports.
Educational institutions have significant power to maintain racial hierarchies by
limiting individual social mobility. Akom (2004) documents color-blind racism in
the educational system of one of America’s most politically liberal communities,
Berkeley, California. Akom argues that the students of Berkeley High School are
conspicuously racially stratified and attributes this racial inequality to abstract
liberalism, particularly the prevailing ideology of meritocracy, which assigns pejorative stereotypes to black and Latino students, blaming these students for their
own failures. This appears to create a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby the students
conform to a spoiled or stigmatized identity (Goffman 1963; Lewis 2003).
In addition to limiting social mobility, color-blind racism in higher education,
especially professional schools, influences the attitudes and, hence, the services
provided by the professionals who graduate from these schools. Wendy Moore
(2008) demonstrates this phenomenon in her study of color-blind racism at
two elite American law schools. In these law schools, the frame of abstract
liberalism—ignoring America’s racial history and contemporary discrimination—
dominated the discourse, including law school curricula, professorial and textbook
interpretations of the law, and advocacy of race-blind admissions. Consistent with
color-blind racism, white students used a narrative of cultural deficiency when
referring to students of color and attributed their imagined underperformance
(they speculate on this without data) to a pathological background. School administrators also minimized incidents of explicit racism. Furthermore, professors used
sarcastic humor when addressing race matters, thereby diminishing the seriousness of the subject and the potential empathy of white students. This evidence of
color-blind racism has disturbing implications given that elite American law schools
are the wellspring of our federal judiciary (Schleef 2006).
Color-blind racism also operates in another of America’s most powerful institutions: sports. Upon superficial examination, sports would seem to be the most
racially inclusive arena of American society. White fans have embraced black
athletes as celebrities, wearing their sports jerseys and purchasing their sports
THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT OF COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN OBAMERICA
197
memorabilia. On the surface, this hero worship would seem to suggest a breakdown
of racial prejudice. However, close inspection of the celebrity-media-audience
dynamic reveals the undeniable, covert presence of racism behind these seemingly
benign behaviors. For example, whites attribute the outstanding athletic performance of black athletes to their “superior” natural physical skills (Rada and
Wulfemeyer 2005). While whites may consider this as evidence of their own race
neutrality, this stand renders invisible the actual work of black athletes and contrasts with the attributions of mental acumen, leadership ability, moral character,
and hard work they attribute to white athletes (Coakley 2006; Collins 2005).
Buffington and Fraley (2008) found evidence of this brawn-versus-brain racial
dichotomy in their study of media coverage and college students’ racial attributions
to participants in the 2000 NCAA men’s basketball championships. The researchers
found that physical skills were much more likely to be assigned to blacks than to
whites. Even though blacks were also more likely to be mentioned as leaders, interestingly, their leadership skills were attributed to their superior physical skills, not
intelligence or leadership skills per se. These findings fit quite well with the naturalization frame of color-blind racism (see Bonilla-Silva [2006] for a full discussion
of the naturalization frame).
Implications for change
What can change racial attitudes in this age of new racism? Richeson and
Nussbaum (2003) explored whether color-blind (ignoring race and ethnic differences) or multicultural (celebrating racial and ethnic differences) ideologies were
more likely to change pro-white bias. In a controlled experimental design, fiftytwo white undergraduates at Dartmouth were exposed to messages advocating
color-blind or multicultural ideological approaches to reducing interethnic
tensions. The researchers employed as their dependent variable the IAT assessment of automatic racial attitudes (see Greenwald et al. [1998] for more information regarding the IAT assessment). Richeson and Nussbaum found that
pro-white bias was greater for participants exposed to color-blind ideology than
for those exposed to multicultural ideology.
McClelland and Linnander (2006) used longitudinal data to assess the role of
contact and information in producing change in color-blind racism. Survey data
were collected in five waves from 1990 to 2002 for a panel of white students from
two small, private, predominantly liberal arts colleges on the East Coast. The
researchers found both contact and exposure to information about race to predict
reappraisals of the discrimination that blacks face and the values of affirmative
action. White students who had black friends on campus, attended extracurricular
race-related programming, took courses in Africana studies, and engaged in informal discussions in racially diverse groups were more likely to reappraise their
notions of color-blindness. They also found that parental education was positively
related to reappraisals of racial group structures. McClelland and Linnander
speculate that the privileged class positions of these students obviated any threat
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they might have otherwise felt from the potential “redistributive” effects of affirmative action. Many of these findings fit quite well with Bonilla-Silva’s characterizations of “racial progressives” (see 2006, 131–49).
The work on color-blind racism taken together reveals how pervasive this ideology has become in America. But how can color-blind racism be central in a
nation that just elected a black man as its president?
Color-Blind Racism and Obamerica
There are two central ways in which the election of Barack Obama as president
relates to color-blind racism. First, Obama has become a cultural symbol compatible with color-blind racism. Second, Obama’s own political stand on race and the
way he has positioned himself are in line with color-blind racism.
Obama’s color-blind success
The secret to Obama’s rise to the nation’s highest office lies in his symbolic
appeal to both racial minorities and whites. Symbols are, in the words of Geertz
(1973, 45), “sources of illumination” that orient people to their cultural systems
of meanings. Hence, as Geertz (1973) and Turner (1967) have demonstrated,
cultural symbols can have immense power to instigate and guide action. But as
Turner (1974) points out, cultural symbols can be “multivocal” and thus interpreted quite differently by different people. Obama reveals his awareness of his
multivocal appeal in The Audacity of Hope (2006, 11): “I am new enough on the
national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly
different political stripes project their own views.”
Obama has become a symbol with especially different meanings for people of
color and whites. For non-whites, Obama became a symbol of their possibilities
in what they hoped would become a more egalitarian America (Hunt and Wilson
2009). For blacks, the possibility of having a black president became a symbol of
their historical aspirations as a people, of “a dream deferred, now realized”
(Howell 2008, 187). For older generations of blacks desperate to see racial equality before they die, and for many post–Reagan generation blacks and minorities
who have seen very little racial progress in their lifetimes, Obama became the
new messiah of the civil rights movement (Bonilla-Silva and Ray 2009). In contrast, the symbolic meaning of Obama to whites was compatible with their belief
that America was indeed a color-blind nation. Obama quickly became for whites
an Oprah- or Tiger Woods–like figure, a black person who has “transcended” his
blackness to become a national hero. Thus, for whites and other supporters
around the globe, Obama also represented “possibilities,” the American promise
of the Horatio Alger myth that “no matter how humble the beginnings, or how
tattered the overcoat, once washed up on America’s shores anyone can attain
anything” (Howell 2008, 187).
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199
Obama, the consummate politician, fostered these multivocal interpretations
with his “own American story”:
I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. . . . I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners—an
inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces,
nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is
my story even possible. (Obama 2008b)
Similarly, he said in his election-night victory speech,
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are
possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still
questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. (Obama 2008a)
Obama’s popularity also lies in his adoption of a post-racial (racially transcendent) persona and politics (Kamiya 2009; see Bonilla-Silva forthcoming). He has
distanced himself from most leaders of the civil rights movement, from his reverend, from his church, and from anything or anyone who made him look “too
black” or “too political.” Obama’s campaign even retooled Michelle Obama to
make her seem less black, less strong, and more white-lady-like for the white
electorate. For his white supporters, Obama was the first “black” leader they felt
comfortable supporting because he did not talk about racism; because he kept
reminding them he is half-white; because he was so “articulate” or—in Senator
Biden’s words, later echoed by Karl Rove—Obama was “the first mainstream
African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”
(CNN 2007). Furthermore, unlike black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al
Sharpton, he did not make them feel guilty about the state of racial affairs in the
country. Instead, Obama preached unity. As he said in the speech that catapulted him into the national spotlight, his keynote address to the Democratic
National Convention in 2004, “There’s not a black America and white America
and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America”
(Obama 2004).
Finally, and most important, having a black man “in charge” symbolizes to both
blacks and whites monumental change. For blacks, the symbolism of a black man’s
election has generated unprecedented optimism about the future of race relations
in the United States. In a Pew survey shortly after the election, 75 percent of
blacks expressed the belief that Obama’s election would make race relations in the
United States better (Pew 2008). And a more recent CBS/New York Times poll
found, for the first time in CBS polling history, that the majority of blacks (59
percent) and 65 percent of whites characterized the relationship between blacks
and whites in the United States as “good” (CBS 2009). Nevertheless, evidence of
racial prejudice in preelection and postelection surveys (Associated Press 2008;
Campus Compare 2008) reveals that Obama’s appeal to whites is not indicative
of post-racialism. Noted survey researchers Tom Pettigrew (2009) and Vincent
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Hutchings (2009) found that Obama’s white voters were just slightly less prejudiced than McCain’s white voters. The problem is that with the misconstrued
symbolism of Obama’s election, racism recedes even deeper beneath our individual
as well as national consciousness. After all, now many whites can state proudly,
“I voted for Obama, so I cannot be racist.”
Obama’s color-blind racist ideology
On March 4, 2007, at a commemoration of the Selma Voting Rights March,
then-senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama (2007) likened the civil
rights marchers to Moses, who challenged the “powers who said that some are
atop and others are at the bottom.” He credited this “Moses generation” with taking us “90 percent of the way” to equality. Acknowledging a still-existing “health
care gap,” “achievement gap” in the face of unequal school resources, “empathy
gap” as reflected by the government’s lack of response to New Orleans after
Katrina, and “hope gap” as reflected in disproportionately black low-wage jobs, he
challenged the present “Joshua generation” to take us the remaining 10 percent of
the way. Said Obama, “Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching
shoes. Go do some politics. Change this country.” But Obama was not calling for
the Joshua generation to socially protest for their rights. Rather, he beseeched
them to elect a responsible government and, in the same breath, “to ask what we
can do for ourselves.” “The civil rights movement wasn’t just a fight against the
oppressor; it was also a fight against the oppressor in each of us.”
Obama’s Selma speech was spiced with color-blind racist ideology, and this
color-blind spiciness becomes more apparent when Obama addresses wider (and
whiter) audiences. Obama minimized contemporary racism in his tribute to the
sacrifices of Selma’s civil rights marchers. The depth of racial inequalities of
health, achievement, and justice in this country clearly indicates that we have
much further to go than 10 percent. In addition, Obama framed the problems of
the black poor in the speech as cultural pathology—“black blame” (Price 2009).
These frames of color-blind racism were also evident in Obama’s (2006) book
The Audacity of Hope. He claimed that although race still matters, “prejudice” is
declining. As proof he heralded the growth of the black elite whose members
do not “use race as a crutch or point to discrimination as an excuse for failure”
(p. 241). He explicitly blamed poor blacks for their own failures, stating that they
watch “too much television,” consume “too much . . . poisons,” lack an “emphasis
on educational achievement,” and do not have two-parent households (pp. 244–45).
He chastised those unwilling to acknowledge how their “values” contributed to
their predicament (p. 254). And his structural solution to racial inequalities was
an “emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs,” which he
stated “isn’t just good policy; it’s also good politics” (p. 247).4
Obama’s color-blind racist ideology was also evident in his so-called “race
speech” in March 2008 to quiet the uproar over his association with the Reverend
Jeremiah Wright. Obama characterized Wright as divisive and condemned his
THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT OF COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN OBAMERICA
201
perspective as “a profoundly distorted view of this country—a view that sees white
racism as endemic” (Obama 2008b). Obama admitted that race was still an issue
that the “nation cannot afford to ignore” and acknowledged America’s segregated
schools, legalized discrimination, lack of economic opportunity, and the anger
these issues foster in the black community. However, he implied that racism is a
two-way street in his conciliatory reference to a similar anger among working- and
middle-class white Americans who “don’t feel they have been particularly privileged by their race. . . . So when they are told to bus their children to a school
across town, when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in
landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they
themselves never committed . . . resentment builds up over time.” Therefore,
Obama eschewed the need for structural solutions to racial problems. Instead, he
proposed an abstract liberal resolution to racial inequality: “to bind our particular
grievances—for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs—to the
larger aspirations of all Americans—the white woman struggling to break the glass
ceiling, the white man who’s been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family.”
He also challenged blacks to step up morally: “It means taking responsibility for
our own lives by demanding more from our fathers and spending more time with
our children.”
When pressed more specifically about affirmative action as a solution to current
racial inequality and the effects of discrimination, Obama hinted at a class-based
rather than racially based program. In an April 2008 interview with ABC’s George
Stephanopoulos, he stated,
I still believe in affirmative action as a means of overcoming both historic and potentially
current discrimination, but I think that it can’t be a quota system and it can’t be something that is simply applied without looking at the whole person, whether that person is
black, or white, or Hispanic, male or female. What we want to do is make sure that
people who’ve been locked out of opportunity are going to be able to walk through those
doors of opportunity in the future. (Quoted in Canellos 2008)
Obama’s minimization of racism and his refusal to tackle solutions to racial
inequalities carried over into his presidential press conferences. For example, in
Obama’s one-hundred-days press conference, Andre Showell, a black journalist,
asked what specific policies Obama had enacted to benefit specifically minority
communities. Obama answered,
Well, keep in mind that every step we’re taking is designed to help all people. But folks
who are most vulnerable are most likely to be helped because they need the most
help. . . . So my general approach is that if the economy is strong, that will lift all boats
as long as it is also supported by, for example, strategies around college affordability and
job training, tax cuts for working families as opposed to the wealthiest that level the
playing field and ensure bottom-up economic growth. And I’m confident that that will
help the African American community live out the American dream at the same time
that it’s helping communities all across the country. (Quoted in Huffington Post 2009b)
Obama even projected the minimization of racism onto the global stage when
he decided not to attend the 2009 UN-sponsored World Conference on Racism
202
THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
in Geneva. Obama’s reasons for not attending were quite similar to those of his
predecessor—he did not want to contend with the dicey issue of reparations for
racial injustice or attendees who would accuse Israel of being a racist state
(Huffington Post 2009a). He also used the cultural racism frame in his second trip
to Africa (specifically, in his visit to Ghana), where he focused on issues of local
governance rather than the negative effects of Western imperialism in the region
(Karenga 2009).
Conclusion: Prognosis for Obamerica
Although Jim Crow is all but dead and most Americans vociferously denounce
overt acts of racism, people of color remain economically and socially disadvantaged compared with whites (Pager and Shepherd 2008; Oliver and Shapiro 2006;
Shapiro 2004). Whites have explained this inequality over the past 30 years by
resorting to color-blind racism. This ideology, we argue, is central to understanding the Obama phenomenon. It was the cornerstone of the 43 percent white support he received in the election (Noah 2008) and of how whites explained their
support for this black politician. What is more significant, color-blind racism is in
many ways central to Obama’s stand on race, his post-racial politics, and his own
persona. Accordingly, the blessing of having a black president may become a curse
as he can legitimate whites’ color-blind views. The American public has interpreted Barack Obama’s election as president as all but the fulfillment of Martin
Luther King Jr.’s dream. But for whites, Obama’s blackness is more about style
than political substance (Wise 2009); “Obama is the ‘cool’ exceptional black man
not likely to rock the American racial boat” (Bonilla-Silva 2009, 1076). He advocates “universal” (class-based) policies in lieu of race-based social policy—a policy
stand that will not sufficiently ameliorate racial inequality. He talks about inequality and discrimination but always mentions the need for blacks to be personally
accountable. Consequently, Obama’s blackness is becoming whites’ new weapon
of choice for singing their color-blind lullaby.
Since whites have the upper hand discursively, the space for challenging
racial inequality may be reduced and even diluted. By de-racializing his presidency and sponsoring color-blindness, Obama has maneuvered himself into this
narrow “white space” (Street 2009, 120). Even as he has strategically claimed a
black insider standing (to attract the black electorate), he has simultaneously
distanced himself from the black community by interjecting the cultural frame
of blaming poor blacks for their own problems (A. Reed 2008). Blacks are
reluctant to challenge Obama’s repudiation of race-based policies out of their
strong desire to protect his image and “preserve the historic moment” (Price
2009, 178). And the few blacks who have criticized Obama’s race-neutral policies have incited outrage among other blacks (Holmes 2008). Hence, the unity
message of Obama (and white America) goes unchallenged (R. M. Smith and
King 2009), and we all, like Pangloss, believe we live in the “best of all possible
worlds” (Voltaire 1759/1929).
THE SWEET ENCHANTMENT OF COLOR-BLIND RACISM IN OBAMERICA
203
One clear indication of how the space for talking about race has been diminished is the recent national controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor
Henry Louis Gates. After President Obama made a seemingly “racial” (that is,
supportive of blacks’ narrative on this event) comment in a press conference
where he said the Cambridge police department “acted stupidly” (ABC News
2009), he was condemned by friends and foes (Political Bulletin 2009; Inside
Cover 2009). This forced Obama to recant, claiming that all parties misread and
overreacted to the situation (Baker and Cooper 2009). But this was not enough,
and he was forced to, in the interest of “unity,” invite all parties to the White
House for a “beer summit” to temper the political fallout from his comment
(Associated Press 2009). Obama’s resolution to this incident of racial profiling
reinforces whites’ views on racism: that it is no longer central; that most racial
incidents are misunderstandings with “two sides”; and that if we talk things out,
we can settle matters and create “racial harmony.”
Therefore, our prognosis is that, under the Obama administration, the tentacles
of color-blind racism will reach deeper into all the crevices of the American polity.
Unless people of color awake from the nationalist moment engendered by the
election of a black man as president (Bonilla-Silva forthcoming) and return to
militant social movements to advance racial justice in this country (Jeffries 2009),
the color-blind racist drama will monopolize America. If this happens, Obama’s
naive belief in a “United” States of America will simply reinforce the racial order
of white privilege. In the words of William Faulkner (misquoted by Obama in his
speech “A More Perfect Union,” 2008b), “The past is never dead. In fact, it isn’t
even past” (Faulkner 1951).
Notes
1. Bonilla-Silva has used the term “Obamerica” to capture the fact that Obama was elected president
without the backing of a social movement. This, he has argued, severely limits the possibility for meaningful
change during his presidency.
2. Besides frames, the ideology includes styles and racial stories. Because of space limitations we do
not discuss the latter two here. Interested readers should see Bonilla-Silva (2006).
3. This evidence confirms Bonilla-Silva’s claim that, as color-blind racism becomes cemented as the
dominant ideology, it dictates the terrain of ideological contestation for all Americans. See Chapters 7 and
8 in Bonilla-Silva (2006).
4. This “cultural racism” was part of his campaign’s appeal to whites. He used it in his criticism of black
fathers and in his relentless insistence on “personal responsibility.” Most recently, he used the frame again
in his speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of the NAACP.
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Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 9, no. 1
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The New Jim Crow’
Michelle Alexander*
The subject that I intend to explore today is one that most Americans seem
content to ignore. Conversations and debates about race-much less racial casteare frequently dismissed as yesterday’s news, not relevant to the current era.
Media pundits and more than a few politicians insist that we, as a nation, have
finally “moved beyond race.” We have entered into the era of “post-racialism,” it
is said, the promised land of colorblindness. Not just in America, but around the
world, President Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of
Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.
This triumphant notion of post-racialism is, in my view, nothing more than
fiction-a type of Orwellian doublespeak made no less sinister by virtue of the fact
that the people saying it may actually believe it. Racial caste is not dead; it is alive
and well in America. The mass incarceration of poor people of color in the United
States amounts to a new caste system-one specifically tailored to the political,
economic, and social challenges of our time. It is the moral equivalent of Jim
Crow.
I am well aware that this kind of claim may be hard for many people to
swallow. Particularly if you, yourself, have never spent time in prison or been
labeled a felon, the claim may seem downright absurd. I, myself, rejected the
notion that something akin to a racial caste system could be functioning in the
United States more than a decade ago-something that I now deeply regret.
I first encountered the idea of a new racial caste system in the mid-1990s
when I was rushing to catch the bus in Oakland, California and a bright orange
poster caught my eye. It screamed in large bold print: THE DRUG WAR IS THE
NEW JIM CROW. I recall pausing for a moment and skimming the text of the
flyer. A radical group was holding a community meeting about police brutality,
the new three-strikes law in California, the drug war, and the expansion of
America’s prison system. The meeting was being held at a small community
church a few blocks away; it had seating capacity for no more than fifty people. I
sighed and muttered to myself something like, “Yeah, the criminal justice system
is racist in many ways, but it really doesn’t help to make such absurd comparisons.
People will just think you’re crazy.” I then crossed the street and hopped on the
1 This article is adapted from two speeches delivered by Professor Michelle Alexander, one
at the Zocolo Public Square in Los Angeles on March 17, 2010, and another at an authors symposium
sponsored by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Open Society Institute
on October 6, 2010.
* Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at The Ohio State University Moritz
College of Law, where she holds a joint appointment with the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
and Ethnicity.
7
OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMNAL LAW
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[Vol 9: 1
bus. I was headed to my new job, director of the Racial Justice Project for the
ACLU in Northern California.
When I began my work at the ACLU, I assumed the criminal justice system
had problems of racial bias, much in the same way that all major institutions in our
society are plagued to some degree with problems associated with conscious and
unconscious bias. As a civil rights lawyer, I had litigated numerous class-action
employment discrimination cases, and I understood well the many ways in which
racial stereotyping can permeate subjective decision-making processes at all levels
of an organization with devastating consequences. While at the ACLU, I shifted
my focus from employment discrimination to criminal justice reform, and
dedicated myself to the task of working with others to identify and eliminate racial
bias whenever and wherever it reared its ugly head.
By the time I left the ACLU, I had come to suspect that I was wrong about the
criminal justice system. It was not just another institution infected with racial bias,
but rather a different beast entirely. The activists who posted the sign on the
telephone phone were not crazy; nor were the smattering of lawyers and advocates
around the country who were beginning to connect the dots between our current
system of mass incarceration and earlier forms of social control. Quite belatedly, I
came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a
stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control
that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.
I state my basic thesis in the introduction to my book, The New Jim Crow:
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do
with the basic structure of our society than the language we use to justify
it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use
race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social
contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal
justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all
the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to
discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways it was once legal to
discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon,
the old forms of discrimination-employment discrimination, housing
discrimination, denial of the right to vote, and exclusion from jury
service-are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more
rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at
the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we
have merely redesigned it.2
I reached this conclusion reluctantly. Like many civil rights lawyers, I was
inspired to attend law school by the civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s.
2
MICHELLE ALEXANDER, THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF
COLORBLINDNEsS 2 (2010),
2011]
THE NEWJIMCROW
9
Even in the face of growing social and political opposition to remedial policies
such as affirmative action, I clung to the notion that the evils of Jim Crow are
behind us and that, while we have a long way to go to fulfill the dream of an
egalitarian, multiracial democracy, we have made real progress. I understood the
problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with
crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access
to quality education-the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. I
strenuously resisted the idea that a new caste system was operating in this country;
I was nearly offended by the notion. But after years of working on issues of racial
profiling, police brutality, drug law enforcement in poor communities of color, and
attempting to assist people released from prison “re-enter” into a society that never
seemed to have much use for them in the first place, I had a series of experiences
that began what I call my “awakening.” I began to awaken to a racial reality that is
so obvious to me now that what seems odd in retrospect is that I was blind to it for
so long.
Here are some facts I uncovered in the course of my work and research that
you probably have not heard on the evening news:
*
*
*
More African American adults are under correctional control
today-in prison or jail, on probation or parole-than were enslaved
in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
In 2007 more black men were disenfranchised than in 1870, the year
the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that
explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.4 During the
Jim Crow era, African Americans continued to be denied access to
the ballot through poll taxes and literacy tests. Those laws have
been struck down, but today felon disenfranchisement laws
accomplish what poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not.
In many large urban areas in the United States, the majority of
working-age African American men have criminal records. In fact,
it was reported in 2002 that, in the Chicago area, if you take into
account prisoners, the figure is nearly 80%.
One in eleven black adults was under correctional supervision at year end 2007, or
approximately 2.4 million people. PEW CTR. ON THE STATES, PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS, ONE IN 31:
THE LONG REACH OF AMERICAN CORRECTIONS 5 (Mar. 2009), available at
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/PSPPlin3lreportFINALWEB_3-26-09.pdf.
According to the 1850 Census, approximately 1.7 million adults (ages 15 and older) were slaves. U.S.
CENSUS BUREAU, THE SEVENTH CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES: 1850 9 (1853), available at
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1850a-01.pdf, see also University of Virginia
Library,
Historical
Census
Browser,
UNIVERSITY
OF
VIRGINIA
LIBRARY,
http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/state.php (last visited July 17, 2011).
4 Contribution by Pamela S. Karlan, Forum: Pamela S. Karlan, in GLENN C. LOURY, RACE,
INCARCERATION AND AMERICAN VALUES, 41, 42 (2008).
5
PAUL STREET, CHICAGO URBAN LEAGUE, THE VICIOUS CIRCLE: RACE, PRISON, JOBS, AND
COMMUNITY IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, AND THE NATION 4 (2002).
OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMNAL LAW
10o
[Vol 9:1
Those bearing criminal records and cycling in and out of our prisons today are
part of a growing undercaste-not class, caste-a group of people, defined largely
by race, who are relegated to a permanent second-class status by law. They can be
denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally
discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public
benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim
Crow era.
I find that when I tell people that mass incarceration amounts to a New Jim
Crow, I am frequently met with shocked disbelief. The standard reply is: “How
can you say that a racial caste system exists? Just look at Barack Obama! Just
look at Oprah Winfrey! Just look at the black middle class!”
The reaction is understandable. But we ought to question our emotional
reflexes. The mere fact that some African Americans have experienced great
success in recent years does not mean that something akin to a caste system no
longer exists. No caste system in the United States has ever governed all black
people. There have always been “free blacks” and black success stories, even
during slavery and Jim Crow. During slavery, there were some black slave
owners-not many, but some. And during Jim Crow, there were some black
lawyers and doctors-not many, but some. The unprecedented nature of black
achievement in formerly white domains today certainly suggests that the old Jim
Crow is dead, but it does not necessarily mean the end of racial caste. If history is
any guide, it may have simply taken a different form.
Any honest observer of American racial history must acknowledge that
racism is highly adaptable. The rules and reasons the legal system employs to
enforce status relations of any kind evolve and change as they are challenged.6 In
the first chapter of the book, I describe the cyclical rebirths of racial caste in
America. Since our nation’s founding, African Americans have been repeatedly
controlled through institutions, such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die,
but then are reborn in new form-tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.
For example, following the collapse of slavery, the system of convict leasing
was instituted-a system many historians believe was worse than slavery.7 After
the Civil War, black men were arrested by the thousands for minor crimes, such as
loitering and vagrancy, and sent to prison. They were then leased to plantations. It
was our nation’s first prison boom. The idea was that prisoners leased to
plantations were supposed to earn their freedom. But the catch was they could
never earn enough to pay back the plantation owner the cost of their food, clothing
6
See, e.g., Reva Siegel, Why Equal ProtectionNo Longer Protects: The Evolving Forms of
Status-EnforcingAction, 49 STAN. L. REv. 1111, 1113, 1146 (1997) (dubbing the process by which
white privilege is maintained, through the rules and rhetoric change, “preservation through
transformation”).
DOUGLAS A. BLACKMON, SLAVERY BY ANOTHER NAME: THE RE-ENSLAVEMENT OF BLACK
AMERICANS FROM THE CIVIL WAR TO WORLD WAR 11 (2008); DAVID M. OSHINSKY, WORSE THAN
SLAVERY: PARCHMAN FARM AND THE ORDEAL OF JIM CROW JUSTICE (1996).
20 11]
THE NEW JIM CROW
11
and shelter to the owner’s satisfaction, and thus they were effectively re-enslaved,
sometimes for the rest of their lives. It was a system more brutal in many respects
than slavery, because plantation owners had no economic incentive to keep
convicts healthy or even alive. They could always get another one.
Today, I believe the criminal justice system has been used once again in a
manner that effectively re-creates caste in America. Our criminal justice system
functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control.
For those who find that claim difficult to swallow, consider the facts. Our
prison system has quintupled for reasons that have stunningly little do with crime.
In less than 30 years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to
more than 2 million.9 The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration
in the world, dwarfing the rates of nearly every developed country, including
highly repressive regimes like China and Iran.’ 0
In fact, if our nation were to return to the incarceration rates of the 1970s-a
time, by the way, when civil rights activists thought that imprisonment rates were
egregiously high-we would have to release four out of five people who are in
prison today.” More than a million people employed by the criminal justice
system could lose their jobs.12 That is how enormous and deeply entrenched the
new system has become in a very short period of time.
As staggering as those figures are, they actually obscure the severity of the
crisis in poor communities of color. Professor Loic Wacquant has argued that the
term “mass incarceration” itself is a misnomer, since it implies that nearly
8
See id.
9 Key Facts at a Glance: CorrectionalPopulations,BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS (updated
Dec. 16, 2010), available at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/corr2tab.cfm; JOHN IRWIN,
ET AL., AMERICA’S ONE MILLION NONVIOLENT PRISONERS, THE JUSTICE POLICY INSTITUTE (1999),
available at http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/America s OneMillionNonviolent Prisoners.pdf;
Robert Longley, U.S. Prison Population Tops 2 Million, U.S. GOVERNMENT INFORMATION,
http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/censusstatistic/a/aaprisonpop.htm.
10 PEW CTR. ON THE STATES, ONE IN 100: BEHIND BARS IN AMERICA 2008, at 5 (Feb. 2008),
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf.
11 According to data provided by the Sentencing Project, in 1972, the total rate of
incarceration (prison and jail) was approximately 160 per 100,000. See MAUER, supra note 9, at 17.
Today, it is about 750 per 100,000. LAUREN E. GLAZE, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’T OF
JUSTICE, CORRECTIONAL POPULATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES, 2009, at 2 (2010), available at
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus09.pdf. A reduction of 79% would be needed to get
back to the 160 figure-itself a fairly high number when judged by international standards.
12
According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics
in
2006, the U.S. spent a record $185 billion for police protection, detention, judicial, and legal
activities in 2003. Adjusting for inflation, these figures reflect a tripling of justice expenditures since
1982. The justice system employed almost 2.4 million people in 2003-58% of them at the local
level and 31% at the state level. If four out of five people were released from prisons, far more than a
million people could lose their jobs. KRISTEN A. HUGHES, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’T
OF JUSTICE, JUSTICE EXPENDITURE AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, 2003, at 1 (2006),
availableat http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdfljeeus03.pdf
12
OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW
[Vol 9: I
everyone has been subject to the new system of control.13 But, of course that is not
the case. The overwhelming majority of the increase in imprisonment has been
poor people of color, with the most astonishing rates of incarceration found among
black men. It was estimated several years ago that, in Washington, D.C.-our
nation’s capital-three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the
poorest neighborhoods) could expect to serve time in prison. 14 Rates of
incarceration nearly as shocking can be found in other communities of color across
America.15
So what accounts for this vast new system of control? Crime rates? That is
the common answer. But no, crime rates have remarkably little to do with
skyrocketing incarceration rates. Crime rates have fluctuated over the past thirty
years, and are currently at historical lows, but incarceration rates have consistently
soared.’ 6 Most criminologists and sociologists today acknowledge that crime rates
and incarceration rates have, for the most part, moved independently of one
another. 17 Rates of imprisonment-especially black imprisonment-have soared
regardless of whether crime has been rising or falling in any given community or
the nation as a whole.18
So what does explain this vast new system of control, if not crime rates?
Ironically, the activists who posted the sign on that telephone pole were right: The
War on Drugs. The War on Drugs and the “get tough” movement explain the
explosion in incarceration in the United States and the emergence of a vast, new
racial undercaste. In fact, drug convictions alone accounted for about two-thirds of
the increase in the federal system, and more than half of the increase in the state
prison population between 1985 and 2000.19 Drug convictions have increased
more than 1000% since the drug war began, an increase that bears no relationship
to patterns of drug use or sales.20
13
See Lokc Wacquant, Class, Race & Hyperincarcerationin Revanchist America, DAEDALUS,
Summer 2010, at 74.
14 DONALD BRAMAN, DOING TIME ON THE OUTSIDE: INCARCERATION AND FAMILY LIFE IN
URBAN AMERICA 3 (2004) (citing D.C. Department of Corrections 2000).
15 ERIC LOTKE & JASON ZIEDENBERG, JUSTICE POLICY INSTITUTE, TIPPING POINT: MARYLAND’S
OVERUSE OF INCARCERATION AND THE IMPACT ON COMMUNITY SAFETY 3 (2005) (reporting that in
Baltimore the majority of young African American men are currently under correctional supervision).
Nationwide, one in three black men will go to prison during their lifetime. See THOMAS P.
BONCSZAR, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, PREVALENCE OF IMPRISONMENT IN
at
available
(2003),
1974-2001
POPULATION,
U.S.
THE
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/piusp0l.pdf.
16 BRUCE WESTERN, PUNISHMENT AND INEQUALITY IN AMERICA 30 (2006) (Figure
2.1).
17 See, e.g., MARC MAUER, RACE TO INCARCERATE.23-35, 92-112 (2d ed. 2006); MICHAEL
TONRY, THINKING ABOUT CRIME: SENSE AND SENSIBILITY IN AMERICAN PENAL CULTURE 14 (2004).
18 See, e.g., WESTERN, supra note 16, at
35, 43.
MAUER, supra note 17, at 33.
MARC MAUER & RYAN S. KING, A 25-YEAR QUAGMIRE: THE WAR ON DRUGS AND ITS
at
available
2007),
2,
4
(Sept.
SOCIETY
ON
AMERICAN
IMPACT
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/dp.25yearquagmire.pdf.
1
20
2011]
THENEWJIMCROW
13
People of all races use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates, but the
enemy in this war has been racially defined. 21 The drug war has been waged
almost exclusively in poor communities of color, despite the fact that studies
consistently indicate that people of all races use and sell drugs at remarkably
similar rates.22 This evidence defies our basic stereotype of a drug dealer, as a
black kid standing on a street corner, with his pants hanging down. Drug dealing
happens in the ghetto, to be sure, but it happens everywhere else in America as
well. Illegal drug markets, it turns out-like American society generally-are
relatively segregated by race.24 Blacks tend to sell to blacks, whites to whites,
Latinos sell to each other. University students sell to each other. People of all
races use and sell drugs. A kid in rural Kansas does not drive to the ‘hood to get
his pot, or meth, or cocaine, he buys it from somebody down the road. In fact, the
research suggests that where significant differences by race can be found, white
youth are more likely to commit drug crimes than youth of color.25
21 The overwhelming majority of those arrested and incarcerated for drug crimes during the
past few decades have been black and brown. When the War on Drugs gained full steam in the mid1980s, prison admissions for African Americans “skyrocketed, nearly quadrupling in three years,
then increasing steadily until it reached in 2000 a level more than twenty-six times the level in 1983.”
JEREMY TRAVIS, BUT THEY ALL COME BACK: FACING THE CHALLENGES OF PRISON REENTRY 28
(2002); see, e.g., U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVS., SUBSTANCE ABUSE & MENTAL HEALTH
SERVICES ADMINISTRATION, SUMMARY OF FINDINGS FROM THE 2000 NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD SURVEY
ON DRUG ABUSE 21 (2001), available at http://oas.samhsa.gov/NHSDA/2kNHSDA/chapter2.htm
(reporting that 6.4 percent of whites, 6.4 percent of blacks, and 5.3 percent of Hispanics were current
illegal drug users in 2000); U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVS., SUBSTANCE ABUSE &
MENTAL HEALTH SERVS. ADMIN., RESULTS FROM THE 2002 NATIONAL SURVEY ON DRUG USE AND
HEALTH: NATIONAL FINDINGS 16 (2003), available at http://oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/reports.htm#2k2
(revealing nearly identical rates of illegal drug use among whites and blacks, only a single percentage
point between them); U.S. DEP’T OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVS., SUBSTANCE ABUSE & MENTAL
HEALTH SERVS. ADMIN., RESULTS FROM THE 2007 NATIONAL SURVEY ON DRUG USE AND HEALTH:
NATIONAL FINDINGS 25 (2003), available at http://oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/reports.htm#2k2 (showing
essentially the same findings).
22 See generally supra, note 21.
23 A national survey conducted in 1995 illustrated the profound and pervasive racial
stereotypes associated with drug crime. Survey respondents were asked: “Would you close your eyes
for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?” 95% of respondents pictured a
black drug user, while only 5% imagined all other racial groups combined. Betsy Watson Burston,
Dionne Jones, and Pat Robinson-Saunders, Drug Use and African Americans: Myth Versus Reality,
40 J. ALCOHOL & DRUG EDUC. 19, 20 (Winter 1995).
24 Researchers have found that drug users are most likely to report using as a main source of
drugs someone who is of their own racial or ethnic background. See, e.g., K. JACK RILEY, OFFICE OF
NAT’L DRUG CONTROL POLICY, NAT’L INST. OF JUSTICE, CRACK, POWDER COCAINE, AND HEROIN:
DRUG PURCHASE AND USE PATTERNS IN SIX U.S. CITIES 1 (1997); Patricia Davis & Pierre Thomas, In
Affluent Suburbs, Young Users and Sellers Abound, WASH. POST, Dec. 14, 1997, at A20.
25 The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white youth aged 1217 were more likely to have used and sold illegal drugs than African American youth. NEELUM
ARYA & IAN AUGARTEN, CAMPAIGN FOR YOUTH JUSTICE, CRITICAL CONDITION: AFRICAN-AMERICAN
YOUTH IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM (2003), at table 5, p. 16 and p. 19, available at
Another study
http://www.campaignforyouthjustice.org/documents/AfricanAmericanBrief.pdf
14
OHIO STATE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW
[Vol 9:1
But that is not what you would guess when entering our nation’s prisons and
jails, overflowing as they are with black and brown drug offenders. In the United
States, those who do time for drug crime are overwhelmingly black and brown.26
In some states, African Americans constitute 80 to 90% of all drug offenders sent
to prison. 27
I find that many people are willing to concede these racial disparities once
they see the data. Even so, they tend to insist that the drug war is motivated by
concern over violent crime. They say: just look at our prisons. Nearly half of the
people behind bars are violent offenders. Typically this is where the discussion
ends.
The problem with this abbreviated analysis is that violent crime is not
responsible for the prison boom. Violent offenders tend to get longer sentences
than nonviolent offenders, which is why they comprise such a large share of the
prison population. One study suggests that the entire increase in imprisonment can
be explained by sentence length, not increases in crime. 28 To get a sense of how
large a contribution the drug war has made to mass incarceration, consider this:
there are more people in prison today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated
published that year revealed that white students use cocaine and heroin at significantly higher rates
than black students, while nearly identical percentages of black and white students report using
marijuana.
LLOYD D. JOHNSTON ET AL., NAT’L INST. ON DRUG ABUSE, MONITORING THE FUTURE,
NATIONAL SURVEY RESULTS ON DRUG USE, 1975-1999, Vol. 1, SECONDARY SCHOOL UNITS 146, 197
More
(2000), available at http://monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/mtf-voll-1999.pdf.
recent studies continue to suggest higher rates of illegal drug use and sales by white youth. See, e.g.,
HOWARD N. SNYDER & MELISSA SICKMUND, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, NAT’L CTR. FOR JUVENILE
JUSTICE, JUVENILE OFFENDERS AND VICTIMS: 2006 NATIONAL REPORT 81 (2006), available at
http://www.ojdp.gov/ojstatbb/nr2006/downloads/NR2006.pdf (reporting that white youth are more
likely than black youth to engage in illegal drug sales); LLOYD D. JOHNSTON ET AL., NAT’L INST. ON
DRUG ABUSE, MONITORING THE FUTURE: NATIONAL SURVEY RESULTS ON DRUG USE, 1975-2006,
VOLUME 11: COLLEGE STUDENTS & ADULTS AGES 19-45, at 28 (2007), available at
(stating “African-American
http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2006.pdf
12th graders have consistently shown lower usage rates than White 12th graders for most drugs, both
licit and illicit”).
26 Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, roughly threefourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses since the War on Drugs began have been African
American or Latino.
MARC MAUER & RYAN S. KING, THE SENTENCING PROJECT, SCHOOLS AND
PRISONS: FIFTY YEARS AFTER BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION 3 (Apr. 2004). In recent years, rates
of black imprisonment for drug offenses have dipped somewhat-declining approximately 22% from
their zenith in the mid-1990s-but it remains the case that African Americans are incarcerated at
grossly disproportionate rates throughout the United States. MARC MAUER, THE SENTENCING
PROJECT, THE CHANGING RACIAL DYNAMICS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS 5 (2009), available at
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/dpraceanddrugs.pdf.
27 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, PUNISHMENT AND PREJUDICE: RACIAL DISPARITIES IN THE WAR ON
DRUGS, Vol. 12, No. 2, at 19 (May 2000).
According to this study, the entire increase in the prison population between 1980 and 2001
can be explained by sentencing policy changes, not increases in crime. MAUER, supra note 17, at 33,
36-38 (citing Warren Young & Mark Brown, Cross-national Comparisons of Imprisonment, in
CRIME AND JUSTICE: A REVIEW OF RESEARCH, Vol. 27, at 33, 1-49 (Michael Tonry, ed., 1993)).
20 1 1]
THE NEW JIM CROW
15
in 1980 for all reasons. 29 The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people
who are swept into this system are non-violent offenders.
In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that most people who are under
correctional control are not in prison or jail. As of 2008, there were approximately
2.3 million people in prisons and jails, and a staggering 5.1 million people under
“community correctional supervision”-i.e., on probation or parole.3 o Millions
more have felony records and spend their lives cycling in and out of prison, unable
to find work or shelter, unable to vote or to serve on juries. This system depends
on the prison label, not prison time. It does not matter whether you have actually
spent time in prison; your second-class citizenship begins the moment you are
branded a felon. It is this badge of inferiority-the criminal record-that ushers
you into a parallel social universe in which discrimination is, once again, perfectly
legal.
How did this extraordinary system of control, unprecedented in world history,
come to pass? Most people insist upon a benign motive. They seem to believe
that the War on Drugs was launched in response to rising drug crime and the
emergence of crack cocaine in inner city communities. For a long time, I believed
that too. But that is not the case. Drug crime was actually declining, not rising,
when President Ronald Reagan officially declared the drug war in 1982.’
President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term a “war on drugs,” but
President Reagan turned the rhetorical war into a literal one. From the outset, the
war had little to do with drug crime and much to do with racial politics.
The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party
strategy-often known as the Southern Strategy-of using racially coded political
appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white
voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and
affirmative action.32 Poor and working class whites had their world rocked by the
“Unfairness in FederalCocaine Sentencing: Is it Time to Crack the 100 to 1 Disparity?”
Hearing on H.R. 1459, H.R. 1466, H.R. 265, H.R. 2178 and H.R. 18 Before the H. Subcomm. On
Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security of the H. Comm. On the Judiciary, 11 1h Cong. 2 (2009)
29
(testimony of Marc Mauer, Executive Director, Sentencing Project).”
30 PEW CTR. ON THE STATES, supra note 3, at 4.
3 President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term a “war on drugs,” but the term
proved largely rhetorical as he declared illegal drugs “public enemy number one” without proposing
dramatic shifts in public policy. President Reagan converted the rhetorical war into a literal one,
when he officially announced the War on Drugs in 1982. At the time, less than 2 percent of the
American public viewed drugs as the most important issue facing the nation. See KATHERINE
BECKETT, MAKING CRIME PAY: LAW AND ORDER IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POLITICS 62, 163
(1997); see also Julian V. Roberts, Public Opinion, Crime, and Criminal Justice, in CRIME AND
JUSTICE: A REVIEW OF RESEARCH, Vol. 16, at 99, 129-37 (Michael Tonry ed., 1992).
32 See, e.g., BECKETr, supra note 31, at 31; Vesla M. Weaver, Frontlash: Race and the
Development of Punitive Crime Policy, 21 STUD. INAM. POL. DEv. 230, 233, 237 (Fall 2007). See
generally ROBERT PERKINSON, TEXAS TOUGH: THE RISE OF AMERICA’S PRISON EMPIRE (2010)
(offering a compelling account of how the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement gave rise to
mass incarceration in Texas, and, ultimately, the nation).
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Civil Rights Movement. White elites could send their kids to private schools and
give them all of the advantages wealth has to offer. But poor and working class
whites were faced with a social demotion. It was their kids who might be bused
across town, and forced to compete for the first time with a new group of people
they had long believed to be inferior for decent jobs and educational
Affirmative action, busing, and desegregation created an
opportunities.33
understandable feeling of vulnerability, fear, and anxiety among a group already
struggling for survival.
Republican party strategists found that thinly veiled promises to “get tough”
on “them”-the racially defined others-could be highly successful in persuading
poor and working class whites to defect from the Democratic New Deal Coalition
and join the Republican Party. 34 H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s
former Chief of Staff, reportedly summed up the strategy: “[T]he whole problem is
really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not
appearing to.”35
A couple years after the drug war was announced, crack cocaine hit the streets
of inner-city communities.36 The Reagan administration seized on this
development with glee, hiring staff who were responsible for publicizing inner-city
crack babies, crack mothers, the so-called “crack whores,” and drug-related
violence. The goal was to make inner-city crack abuse and violence a media
sensation that, it was hoped, would bolster public support for the drug war and
would lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it.17
33 During the 1950s, the majority of Southern whites were better off than Southern blacks, but
they were not affluent or well educated by any means; they were semiliterate (with less than twelve
years of schooling) and typically quite poor. Only a tiny minority of whites was affluent and well
educated. They stood far apart from the rest of whites and virtually all blacks. C. Arnold Anderson,
Inequalities in Schooling in the South, 60 Am. J. ON SOCIOLOGY 547, 553, 557 (May 1955); Lani
Guinier, From Racial Liberalism to Racial Literacy: Brown v. Board of Education and the InterestDivergence Dilemma, 91 J. AMER. HIST. 92, 103 (June 2004). What lower class whites did have was
what W.E.B. Du Bois described as “the public and psychological wage” paid to white workers, who
depended on their status and privileges as whites to compensate for their low pay and harsh working
conditions. W.E.B. DuBois, BLACK RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA, AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF
THE PART WHICH BLACK FOLKS PLAYED IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA,
1860-1880, at 700 (1935). Because the Southern white elite had succeeded in persuading all whites
to think in racial rather than class terms, it is hardly surprising that poor and working class whites
experienced desegregation as a net loss. Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Brown v. Board of Education and the
Interest-ConvergenceDilemma, 93 HARv. L. REv. 518, 525 (1980).
34 See ALEXANDER, supra note 2, at 43-49; see, e.g., PATRICK J. BUCHANAN, THE NEW
MAJORITY: PRESIDENT NIXON AT MID-PASSAGE 60, 62 (1973); KEVIN P. PHILLIPS, THE EMERGING
REPUBLICAN MAJORITY 467-68 (1969).
3s WILLARD M. OLIVER, THE LAW & ORDER PRESIDENCY 126-27 (2003).
36 See Craig Reinarman & Harry G. Levine, The Crack Attack: America’s Latest Drug Scare,
1986-1992, in IMAGES OF ISSUES: TYPIFYING CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL PROBLEMS 152 (Joel Best ed.,
1995).
1
Id. at 170-71 (“Crack was a godsend to the Right ….
politically opportune moment”).
It could not have appeared at a more
2011]
THE NEWJIMCROW
17
The plan worked like a charm. For more than a decade, black drug dealers
and users became regulars in newspaper stories and saturated the evening TV
news-forever changing our conception of who the drug users and dealers are.38
Once the enemy in the war was racially defined, a wave of punitiveness took over.
Congress and state legislatures nationwide devoted billions of dollars to the drug
war and passed harsh mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes-sentences
longer than murderers receive in many countries. Many black politicians joined
the “get tough” bandwagon, apparently oblivious to their complicity with the
emergence of a system of social control that would, in less than two decades,
become unprecedented in world history.39
Almost immediately, Democrats began competing with Republicans to prove
that they could be even tougher on “them.”40 In President Bill Clinton’s boastful
words, “I can be nicked on a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.” 1 The
facts bear him out. Clinton’s “‘tough on crime’ policies resulted in the largest
increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American
history.””2 But Clinton was not satisfied with exploding prison populations. In an
effort to appeal to the “white swing voters,” he and the so-called “new Democrats”
championed legislation banning drug felons from public housing (no matter how
minor the offense) and denying them basic public benefits, including food stamps,
38 Id.; DoRIs MARIE PROVINE, UNEQUAL UNDER LAW: RACE INTHE WAR ON DRUGS 88 (2007).
39 PROVINE, supra note 38, at 117. Today the black community is divided in many respects
about how best to understand and respond to mass incarceration, with some academics (and
celebrities) arguing that poor education and cultural traits explain the millions of black men rotating
in and out of correctional control, and others emphasizing the role of racial bias and structural
inequality. See, e.g., DEMICO BOOTHE, WHY ARE So MANY BLACK MEN IN PRISON? (2007)
(emphasizing the discriminatory nature of the prison system); BILL COSBY & ALVIN F. POUSSAINT,
COME ON PEOPLE: ON THE PATH FROM VICTIMs TO VICTORS (2007) (arguing that poor education, as
well as lack of personal responsibility and discipline, largely explain the status of black men today).
The fact that many African Americans endorse aspects of the current caste system, and insist that the
problems of the urban poor can be best explained by their behavior, culture, lack of education, and
attitude, does not, in any meaningful way, distinguish mass incarceration from its predecessors. To
the contrary, these attitudes and arguments have their roots in the struggles to end slavery and Jim
Crow. As numerous scholars have observed, many black advocates during the Jim Crow era
embraced a …
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