Hurdling Over Inequity
In both the readings I saw the underlying discourse of being the tradition of putting people into categories based on their race. As a social construct, race has always been the defining factors for opportunity, education, and overall fair treatment from the moment one is born. No longer than 100 years if you were black you were subjugated to servitude. In 1892, Homer Plessy, a ⅛ black man, was arrested on a train car in Louisiana for breaking the law of being on a ‘whites only’ train car. These social constructs have constituted people’s lives for all of history and it is no myth that it continues on to this day.
In Michelle Alexander’s The Injustice of This Moment Is Not an ‘Aberration’, she talks about mass incarceration and deportation that has imposed on the American system. She says, “In my experience, those who argue that the systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation simply reflect sincere (but misguided) efforts to address the real harms caused by crime, or the real challenges created by surges in immigration, tend to underestimate the corrupting influence of white supremacy whenever black and brown people are perceived to be the problem” (5). With the election of the first black president we leaped into a colorblind future without confronting our racial past. A new era with Trump as president then brought America back to a cadence of white nationalism. With his open views against historically marginalized and discriminated groups, “white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political, and economic dominance could be taken for granted — no apologies required” (3). Trump’s policies and views are based on false pretenses, but alike the War on Drugs are absorbed by the public and used as a political tactic against these marginalized groups. She also notes that there has always been a target on marginalized groups; blacks labeled as crackheads, single moms as welfare queens, and brown skinned immigrants as terrorists, rapists, and criminals. She also quotes W.E.B Du Bois in saying, “Between me and the other world, there is ever an asked question. How does it feel to be the problem?” (5).
In Patricia Hill Collins’s Another Kind of Public Education, she talks of an experience where her mannerism was undermined because of her skin when a colleague said to her, “It’s so nice talking to you — you’re so articulate” (40). This experience reminds me of a video called The Danger of a Single Story in which a Nigerian novelist talks about her own experience of being reduced to a single narrative. When she came to America to attend university, her roommate commended her for her excellent English when in reality English was the first language she learned in Nigeria. Then she also reflected on her own faults where she had done the same to a house boy she grew up with in assuming that he was not educated or cultured because he was poor. Then we have Joe Biden, former vice president to the first black president of America and now running presidential candidate rallying off of his work as VP and heavily depending on the African American vote in the south. During Obama’s campaign for presidency Biden is cited saying “I mean you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and nice looking guy. I mean that’s a storybook, man” (41). Though he retracted his statement, it does not override the gross obliviousness and blindness to the belittlement of African Americans.
Both Alexander and Collins divulges into the system of racism and persecution that still exists and is evident in the American system. Michelle Alexander talks about the “recurring cycles of racial reform, retrenchment, and rebirth of caste-like systems that have defined our racial history since slavery… Everything and nothing has changed” (1). She explains that mass incarceration, the acting and modern form of slavery, has quintupled over the span of 30 years with ⅓ of black men having felony records, stripping them of their right to vote, serve on a jury, and their right to equity concerning employment, housing, education, and much more. This concept of modern slavery is nothing new. Alexander also cites the unjust implementation of Jim Crow laws, segregation, poll taxes, and more recently, the War on Drugs, which targeted the black community for drug use, blaming them for the problems in the country such as violence and crime. Alexander then parallels this injustice with mass deportation of immigrants. Now with President Trump enforcing the idea that all brown-skinned immigrants are thieves, murderers, rapists, and have no overall in the American system, he has immigrants fearing for their lives with the threat of being taken away from their homes. While his rhetoric is special to his presidency, the actions against immigrants are not. Even with Obama, immigrants were being deported without the slightest infringes on their records and would be subsequently torn from their families. Alexander reasonably notes that the fix to these problems is not to just vote Democrat as they have followed the same pattern of injustice. Politics of white supremacy have defined the Constitution since the dawn if America until now. White nationalism reflects a belief that the country’s problems will be solved if people of color are rid of or controlled. She cites in Khalil Muhammad’s The Condemnation of Blackness that there are “enormous profits to controlling, exploiting, and eliminating vulnerable beings” (6). Politicians don’t change the law because it is morally right to but to benefit from it.
In Patricia Hill Collins’s piece, she talks about the switching and double standards of race. She relays her experience of going to her new job where she was blatantly ignored and pushed aside until she was recognized as the new hire. She explains these types of people as ‘gatekeepers’ who easily diminishes and belittles those of color. Collins states that the “Power to define race lies in the context and not necessarily in the person” (44). Whites have been seen to adopt or benefit from black culture which has hurt it though in their eyes they see it as improvement as the are supporting the culture.. Nowadays youth is always at the front of the line for change, “Because race has a catalyst for those widespread changes legal climate that outlawed color-conscious social policies would solve the long-standing problem of different and inferior treatment for people of color” (59).
I’m choosing to focus on the disciplinary domain of Collins’s synthesis of power dynamics. This domain focuses on how power is enforced and how “Implementing overtly racial rules produced racial hierarchy” (66). Nowadays, children are still being categorized by their race and discriminated against as black students are usually separated from their peers and “placed under surveillance because they fit the profile of a criminal or a terrorist or a shoplifter” (65). When this mindset that they deserve separate punishment is implemented, they begin to have internalized self doubt in believing they are worth less. I think this is important with my community partner because I have already witnessed the amount of self doubt they have in themselves because of their situations. Not only does the system not believe in them, but sometimes their own families. These kids have such great aspirations and have the skills to get there, but they work against the current of inequity.
