Tackle the System, Don’t Shackle the Victim
In NPR’s interview of Brian Stevenson, lawyer and author of Just Mercy, he talks about his reasoning behind the Equal Justice Initiative, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Legacy Museum, both museums commemorating African Americans who were lynched in the south. Though he states that he believes “in the law to help people, to help marginalized people, to help people who don’t have the political power to get things they deserve,” he also acknowledges that the movement could not just stay in the courts. He saw the necessity to introduce the narrative of American history concerning African Americans, slavery, segregation, and more. He talked about his experiences visiting other countries with violent pasts; Rwanda with the mass slaughter of Tutsis and Germany with the holocaust. These countries wanted to change the narrative of their futures by educating their people, but also expressing their foremost regret and shame for their actions. In America, there are no institutions expressing any wrongdoings. There was an appalling example he gave in which the two most populated high schools in Alabama have a African American student percentage of 98% and both schools are named after confederate leaders as the confederacy is still a celebrated landmark in southern history. As American romanticizes its brutal history, people think there is no need to educate and motivate people to not repeat the past. The interviewer interjects and asks Stevenson if there is anger. To which he responds that “you can’t let your emotions be the end.” He cites the example of former slaves and their resistance to incited violence. He says that we cannot be governed by fear or anger or we end up as the oppressors.
In his book, Just Mercy, Stevenson directly talks about his experience as a black man after civil rights and his work to emancipate those wrongfully sentenced. He talks about mass incarceration cited so many daunting and depressing figures that have grown exponentially in the past few decades.
“We’ve given up on rehabilitation, education, and services for the imprisoned because providing assistance to the incarcerated is apparently too kind and compassionate. We’ve institutionalized policies that reduce people to their worst acts and permanently label them as “criminal”, “murder”, “rapist”, “thief”, “drug dealer”, “sex offender”, “felon” — identities they cannot change regardless of the circumstances of their crimes or any improvements they might make in their lives” (15).
The system greatly disadvantages racial or ethnic minority groups which is evident in Stevenson’s work as a lawyer. He specifically talks about one of his clients, Walter McMillian, a black man who was wrongfully accused of murdering a white woman in 1986 and put on death row in Alabama. His identity and life as a reliable, hardworking man was stripped from him because of scandal and one treacherous accusation. The school-to-prison-pipeline is related because as the video stated, marginalized students are more likely to receive harsher punishment. Those are just the facts. White kids are subjected to punishment if their actions are provable, but with black students it is all subjective. This zero tolerance policy makes students of color have to constantly, tirelessly navigate through presumptions.
Stevenson talks thoroughly about his own identity in his book. He grew up in a segregated Delaware with working class parents where there was a racial hierarchy commemorating the confederacy. He lived in the ghetto, where they were isolated by railroad tracks, and his grandfather was murder, however it didn’t matter to anyone outside of their family. His grandmother was the daughter of slaves, specifically a slave who could read and tell stories of runaways and different policies. Years later when Stevenson was practicing law to help families that victims of police brutality, he experienced his own injustice when it came to the law. As he sat in his car in front of his apartment one night after work, he was apprehended by a SWAT team that threatened his life, pointing a gun directly at his face. His first instinct was to run away, but he didn’t (If he did he would have had a drastically different outcome). He stayed calm, reassuring the officers that he wasn’t a criminal, as they illegally searched his car and onlookers condemned as a thief. When the police found nothing, they let him go, bolstering about how lucky he was. Reading about this experience horrified me. Knowing that there are and have been worst situations that are ongoing today absolutely horrifies me. As he stated before, because America hasn’t faced there own reality, there has not been anything actually done to fix this institutionalized racism and as a result, slavery has evolved with white supremacy. America has been cultivated to exclude and hold a bias against African American kids. I have never had to experience such violence or hate. I think that it’s not something anyone should encounter, but I know it happens and sometimes it’s easier to turn the other way so you don’t have to understand the crude reality we live in.
Social structures have been made to benefit the rich, white, upper class, male, and so on. Even in one of my classes the other day, discussing University of California Regents vs Bakke, a student in my class was pressed on his opinion that race should not be a factor and that in order to end discriminations we need to stop giving the upper hand to marginalized groups. To put it short, I was pissed. Further on, we read about Clarence Thomas, the second black man to serve as a justice on the United States Supreme Court, and he held that same view. I think that this disregard and insensitivity is because we haven’t been able to fully address our past as Stevenson mentioned. We can never truly understand because “we have gone past it”. When I went to my internship in Marin City I was surrounded by African Americans playing loud music, watering their gardens, and having barbecues. I know these are people who are just living their lives and meaning no harm so I asked them where my internship was located and they answered earnestly and helpfully. It saddens me to think that people, if they were in my position, would act otherwise and maybe fear them. These barriers stop us from growing and learning about more than just our immediate communities. These judgements and forethoughts have nothing to do with one’s character, but the role that they’ve been assigned in society.
