Chris Hayes States Chapter Summaries

In the beginning of the book, Hayes states, “There are fundamentally two ways you can experience the police in America: as the people you call when there’s a problem, the nice man in uniform who pats a toddler’s head and has an easy smile for the old lady as she buys her coffee. For others, the police are the people who are called on them. They are the ominous knock on the door, the sudden flashlight in the face, the barked orders. Depending on who you are, the sight of an officer can produce either a warm sense of safety and contentment or a plummeting feeling of terror.” (Hayes, 2017, p. 1-2) The Colony is that in which the sight or sound of police brings about fear, while the Nation is that in which has trust in police and the justice system

The first of these was the progress of the civil rights movement, which exposed America’s racial hierarchy and incited white backlash. Second was the significant increase in the crime rate across all types, especially violent crime from 1965-1979. Lastly, street protests and rioting were becoming increasingly frequent, particularly in Detroit and after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a result, Richard Nixon ran for president and was subsequently elected under the premise of ‘restoring law and order,’ on the promise that the wave of crime was not going to be the wave of the future in the United States of America, and by playing on the fears of the predominantly white ‘nation’. Sounds familiar... Hayes then compares the fear that was used to further Nixon’s political agenda and increase law and order to the fear instilled in Americans by ‘threats’ like Ebola and terrorism. He also discusses the idea that Americans natural response to fear is to convert it into policy and respond with punishment, toughness, and violence. However, “because white fear is a constant, because it persists even when specific threats have subsided, it functions as a one-way ratchet in constructing the architecture of the Colony. It can build prisons but not knock them down.” (Hayes, 2017, p. 26) In other

He talks about how cities were seen as ‘dirty’ and infested with homeless people, drug addicts, panhandlers, and porn shops everywhere, while the suburbs were seen as a ‘clean’ and orderly place to settle down and raise a family, particularly referring to the ‘white-flight’ that occurred in the 1970s and 80s. Hayes discusses how the migration of black people out of the South turned America’s cities into places of ‘concentrated blackness.’ “Federal policy facilitated both the construction of the ‘ghetto,’ large areas of black residents and disinvestment, and white flight to the suburbs, abetted by subsidized mortgages and racially discriminatory lending guidelines.” (Hayes, 2017, p. 40) Because of institutional racism and classism, the cities became concentrated areas for the Colony, and the suburbs became a place of escape and solace for the