Have a Little Mercy
The issue of US mass incarceration is a critical problem in this nation that unfortunately not enough people are aware of it. In Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, he uses not very well-known historical events to describe the discourse in the system of US mass incarceration; one, for example, is the Attica Prison riots in the 1970s: “[It] drew national attention to horrible prison abuses. The takeover of Attica by inmates allowed the country to learn about cruel practices within prisons such as solitary confinement, where inmates are isolated in a small confined space for weeks or months. Prisoners in some facilities would be placed in a ‘sweatbox,’ a casket-sized hole or a box situated where the inmate would be forced to endure extreme heat for days or weeks. Some prisoners were tortured with electric cattle prods as punishment for violations of the prison’s rule. Inmates at some facilities would be chained to ‘hitching posts,’ their arms fastened above their heads in a painful position where they’d be forced to stand for hours. The practice, which wasn’t declared unconstitutional until 2002, was one of many degrading and dangerous punishments imposed on incarcerated people. Terrible food and living conditions were widespread” (Stevenson 36).
Knowing the narrative is important in this system because mass incarceration in the US shows to target the black community the harshest. Stevenson, as a black lawyer, has to stand up for this community disadvantaged by the system. Interestingly, the 13th Amendment (the one that abolishes slavery) has a loophole: slavery is illegal unless it’s a form of punishment. So, what embodies modern day slavery? One example is the Attica Prison riots previously stated, and prison in general. The US has the most people in the prison system in the world, meaning that the country has the most people shunned out of society and taken in as (virtually) slaves.
Although Stevenson is a lawyer who graduated from an Ivy League university, he is still physically a black man, which is enough for police to conduct racial profiling. His encounter proves he is not immune to the issue black Americans face: “As soon as I opened my car door and got out, the police officer who had started walking toward my vehicle drew his weapon and pointed it at me…my first instinct was to run. I quickly decided that wouldn’t be smart. Then I thought for an instant that maybe these weren’t real police officers. ‘Move and I’ll blow your head off!’ The officer shouted the words, but I couldn’t make any sense of what he meant. I tried to stay calm; it was the first time in my life anyone had ever pointed a gun at me. ‘Put your hands up!’ The officer was a white man about my height…I put my hands up and noticed that he seemed nervous. I don’t remember deciding to speak, I just remember the words coming out: ‘It’s all right. It’s okay”” (Stevenson 40). This incident leads him to file a police complaint, but he regretfully leaves out that he’s an attorney. He succumbed to the fear presented to him by the white police officer that he might die for doing nothing wrong or look too ‘threatening.’ Naturally, this leads him to question his purpose in American society, until a 70 year-old man emphatically tells him at the end of the chapter: “‘I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re beating the drum for justice!…‘You’ve got to beat the drum for justice’” (Stevenson 46). Stevenson, as a black man in the law practice, has the power to be a figure for righteousness and humanity, defending those in prison who cannot defend themselves in society.
However, Stevenson cannot be the only one to beat the drum for justice; that’s a universal responsibility. Although he shares the skin color of many prisoners in the system, his constraints are less than his counterparts. He was able to obtain a top-notch education at Harvard and become a lawyer; many of his counterparts either only received a high school education or any other factor that prevents them from achieving that success. The people that Stevenson represents are limited to what they can repair in their social identities: they can become a father figure to younger prisoners who have a chance of getting out, but outside of prison, that label is always going to follow them around.
As for my community partner, the label of ‘HIV positive’ is staggering to those who have that label for their identity. They can never get rid of their disease, so they’re forced to live with it. Advocacy is what the Spahr Center provides, which foundationally, is also what’s going to help fix the US mass incarceration system. To quote Stevenson in his TED talk: “One’s humanity depends on everyone’s humanity.” We aren’t going to see change anytime soon unless all of us come together.
