I attended a high school that is predominately of color, however, I don't remember a time when a teacher taught the students about systemic racism. So, I decided to take the matter into my own hands – I pressured my history teacher to talk about the issues that currently affect people of color. I recommended a book called "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander to be taught the last few weeks of school. Surprisingly, the teacher agreed to add the book to the curriculum. We talked about systemic racism, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the prison industrial complex. I was extremely excited and eager to learn, however, not everyone felt the same. I was scrolling through Twitter when I saw one of my classmate's tweets, which said, "Racism
The documentary “Class Divided” is a video that was done in the early 1960s to show students how racism and discrimination is shown, and how to put yourself in that other persons shoes. The teacher had divided her students into two different groups based on their eye color. This exercise shows the students how discrimination racism can cause so much trouble and drama. It shows that we take this on because of our surroundings and how we are taught growing up. I felt that this video is perfect for what we have been learning and doing in our last discussion.
Chapter 1 of “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, that is also a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, wrote this chapter to inform us the history of racism in America, and if African Americans really treated equally. When the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, many whites were scared that the slaves are now free because they might want revenge, so the whites made a stereo type that all black men are criminals. When the Reconstruction ended, the south had a redemption. The convicts had no legal rights, so they became the “slaves” to help rebuild after the civil war. Then the prison population of blacks rose so the whites can use them as free labor.
Jim Crow was not a person, it was a series of laws that imposed legal segregation between white Americans and African Americans in the American South. It promoting the status “Separate but Equal”, but for the African American community that was not the case. African Americans were continuously ridiculed, and were treated as inferiors. Although slavery was abolished in 1865, the legal segregation of white Americans and African Americans was still a continuing controversial subject and was extended for almost a hundred years (abolished in 1964). Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South is a series of primary accounts of real people who experienced this era first-hand and was edited by William H.Chafe, Raymond
The practice of segregation in American history was not black and white. Although technically segregation was the separation of the black and white races in American societies, it had a certain ambiguity and complexity that surrounded the practice. This ambiguity and complexity pertained mostly to its origin within American history. Though many people believe segregation was a practice throughout America emerging from Southern slavery in the 19th century, author C. Vann Woodward argues differently in his highly appraised historical work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Prior to the publication of The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Woodward worked very closely with individuals involved in the black community.
In The New Jim Crow, published in 2010, American writer and civil rights activist Michelle Alexander argues that a new racial caste system was born in the United States after the death of Jim Crow. A system that was caused by the war on drugs, which was created in 1971 by President Ronald Reagan, as well as the Fourth Amendment. Alexander conveys her argument that the war on drugs, and the government's disregard for the Fourth Amendment, led to the unfortunate birth of mass incarceration using logical and ethical appeals. In the beginning of the excerpt, Alexander discusses the Terry v. Ohio decision and how it limited the effectiveness of the Fourth Amendment when it comes to drug crimes.
One of the main reasons why race is not discussed in the classroom is because it is an uncomfortable subject to discuss. One reason why people do not talk about race in the classroom was because they were taught that it was impolite to do so. In an article titled Why Can’t We Talk About Race, the author Noliwe Rooks asserts Feeling uncomfortable because race or racism is mentioned in your presence just doesn’t compare to the economic, psychological, and spiritual consequences of structured racial inequality […] Of course, the problem is that many of us—black and white alike—have been taught that race and racism, like politics and money, are impolite topics best left unexplored with strangers. By the time we’ve entered the academy, many of us have already absorbed this truism.
While I was viewing these articles, I really started to get angry inside. I understood all this exists, but reading it over and over again brings me back to remember how serious this situation is. Many of these topics was covered in the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, but these articles are bringing up topics that I never even considered. Such as, in the Silverstein’s article it said “Discrimination has been shown to increase the risk of stress, depression, the common cold, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and mortality. ”(Silverstein)
Over the weekend, I watched the powerful Netflix Documentary”13th”, which addressed the loopholes outlined in the 13th Amendment, which allowed a form of slavery to continue through convict leasing of African-Americans, particularly the men. I learned that many Anglo-Americans in the 21st Century are misinformed or uninformed about racism today believing that it is a figment of the African-American community’s imagination. They are under the impression that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended racism. However, the reality for the African-American community is that racism is present in the 21st Century America, but repackaged to support the ideology of “The New Jim Crow Justice”, the mass incarceration of people of color.
Race is one the most sensitive and controversial topics of our time. As kids, we were taught that racism has gotten better as times has passed. However, the author, Michelle Alexander, of The New Jim Crow proposes the argument that racism has not gotten better, but the form of racism that we known in textbooks is not the racism we experience today. Michelle Alexander has countless amounts of plausible arguments, but she has failed to be a credible author, since she doesn’t give enough citations or evidence for her argument to convince people who may not have prior agreement with her agreement.. Alexander’s biggest mistake when it came to being a credible author was starting off the book with a countless number of claims without any evidence in her Introduction.
In the eyes of Martin Luther King Jr., Justice within a society is achieved through the implementation of just laws. Furthermore, “just laws are regulations that have been created by man that follow the laws of God for man” (“Clergymen’s Letter”). Any law that does not correspond with the ideals of God and morality are considered to be unjust or a form of injustice. King identifies that injustice is clearly evident within the justice system. This injustice can truly be seen through the misconduct imposed toward the African American community.
By acknowledging and understanding the privileges of my White identity, such as my cultural capital, I hope to change how I perceive issues and interactions with students throughout my future in higher
The film “A Class Divided” is a powerful and educational video that teaches how racism and prejudice are learned behaviors. Jane Elliott’s experiment on 3rd-grade students and Correction Officers yielded similar results. Although the film initially did not bring in many emotions, in contrast, it felt like another lecture. Then, unexpectedly, about 4 minutes into the video, a slew of emotions surfaced, ranging from empathy, sadness, disgust, and finally, relief. Being a minority, I can emphasize with some of the discrimination described in the video, such as name-calling, isolation, and feeling different from others.
courses in college that have opened up my mind to the issue. The more information I learn about this issue, the more surprised I am that our society still exhibits bias, because as much as the United States preaches about equality, it appears as if society has segregation in minor ways. Although the debate between whether there are biased questions on the SATs or not seems to favor that there aren’t by popular opinions, there is still biased behavior occurring in school systems that prevent certain groups of students from getting the proper resources needed. Because I would like to work in an low-income area, which most likely would contain minorities, as a teacher I would make the effort to help those students get the sufficient help needed. This motivates me to become a part of the education field, because caring teachers are much needed in area like this.
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.
In this extended case study, I am going to focus on Greenstown High School and the (Racist) Terms of Endearment. This is a diverse high school and the class in focus is a mathematics classroom taught by a first year teacher. In the classroom, there is an emphasis on equality and diversity. At the start of the year, several techniques were enacted to help students understand racial equity and show a commitment to this in the classroom.