Rhetorical Analysis/Style

For this post I will be talking about Alexander's use of rhetoric from pages 170 to 221.

I found this section of the book to be well rounded as she chose to add new examples of how the justice system effects the black community. Previously I had noted that Alexander had been doing a small portion of fact dropping, but since then I have seen an increase of relevant facts and quotes. This section I found her to be exploring and explaining new ways that judicial racism effects people, not only the person being incarcerated, but friends and loved ones as well.

To me, this section of the book had a very well done question and response aspect. Alexander proposed the question "where have all the black men gone?" on page 181, and continuously gave evidence to answer the question she asked. She stated that they are mostly all in jail or prison which builds onto her argument that the criminal justice system targets African Americans. Throughout the chapter, labeled 'The New Jim Crow', she kept addressing the new problem, being the absence of black men in a family dynamic, then ties it back with her previous claims. She does a nice job of keeping the flow of the book moving, being as informative as possible. 

I first was curious as to why she would label 'The New Jim Crow' as chapter five seeing as how the book is also titled The New Jim Crow. After reading this section, in my opinion chapter five was named 'The New Jim Crow' because it shows how the unfair enforcement of laws can effect the whole black community.

Through this section she chose to reach out a little more, to expand her audience. In the beginning of the book, she builds her argument only using persuasion to feel pity for those who have been wrongly incarcerated. Now, she mentions the families of black incarcerated men, but also what seems to be the common everyday American who does not feel the justice system is racist. She states 'Upon reflection, it is relatively easy to understand how Americans come to deny the evils of mass incarceration (Alexander 182).

Her whole argument is about having the justice system be racist, but blatantly setting herself apart from someone who does not believe it is racist provides more of a realization to there being separation. It makes you question immediately if she is talking about you or if you agree with what she is claiming. I feel like this helps her argument by explaining she feels pity to those who do not understand that the system has a bias.

Broadening the amount of audience that could relate to what she was saying definitely strengthened her message. I found it to be a very good choice of hers. Another well written approach was the way in which she sectioned her passages. I touched on this a bit in my last post, but I want to mention it for a second time because I found it to be a big key of how well people can perceive her writing.

She goes along with her facts and explanations, then breaks off her paragraph to a section titled 'How it Works'. In that portion, she gives an in depth domino effect of how it can end up hurting more than just the one person being imprisoned.

Overall her rhetorical strategies she is using are doing a very nice job of getting her point across with just enough persuasion to where I feel it is not repetitive, but affective. Widening her audience was a great choice of hers to make more of her readers feel connected. Still, I am enjoying seeing how this book unfolds. Thanks for reading! :)

Argument

Throughout the book, Alexander argues that in the age of colorblindness, the criminal justice system fights to keep african americans incarcerated and of less opportunity than the rest of society. She finds similarity between the Jim Crow Laws during a segregated era, and the way the criminal justice system handles today's laws in an era we claim to be colorblind. She includes many surveys, facts, and quotes to form a strong argument as to how racist society today really is. She connects society to a Caste System, commonly known in the Hindu religion, which means once born you are to stay in your class, no matter if it is the 'Untouchable' class. Making connections to other cultures and ways of life help build her audience as well as provide more examples of how we are not as different as we had originally though we were.

During the most recent reading from page 130 to page 170, the book was more focused on how prison and incarceration will affect you after you are out. More specifically being, 'a newly released prisoner- homeless, unemployed, and carrying a mountain of debt. How do you feed yourself? (Alexander 157)'. As you can imagine, putting yourself in the shoes of someone in that situation is tough, especially when you're sixteen with no encounters with the law and the thought of being homeless seems impossible because you still live with your parents. Alexander does a really nice job of setting the stage of how people feel in that situation, and asks questions that would make you think about what you would do, which I find to be very helpful by engaging the reader and preparing them for her following statistics. This also helps her argument because the way you feel connected by putting yourself in someone else's position.

When Alexander asks, 'How will you feed yourself?' on page 157, I first thought you need to get a job to get money, then use that money to buy food. Simple enough right? That would potentially be the case, but unfortunately I did not consider the fact that I have to imagine coming out of prison for a felony charge.  Finding a job upon release from prison after a felony will no doubt be a challenge,  Alexander herself faced that challenge when trying to get hired.

She stated her own experience of having her hopes up by being told her start date, to later receive a message telling her upon further investigation she is no longer eligible for the job due to her conviction. Happening on multiple occasions, she explained this would be a depressing cycle to have to face. Alexander mentioned that out of one dozen jobs, she was only considered for two. Fortunately out of those two she was able to be hired, but in many cases some are not as lucky. 'One survey showed that although 90 percent of employers say they are willing to consider filling their most recent job vacancy with a welfare recipient, only 40 percent are willing to consider doing so with an ex-offender (Alexander 149)'. This means that 60 percent of ex-offenders will not even be considered. Although 40 percent are considered, it does not guarantee that they will receive the job, making them go on to search again with slim chances and declining hope.

'Felon is the new N-word (Alexander 168)'.

When released from prison, many find themselves in debt, both to society and financially. 'In this system of control, like the one that prevailed during Jim Crow, one's "debt to society" often reflects the cost of imprisonment (Alexander154)'. I found her connection to Jim Crow at this time to be very thoughtful on not only the debt that people are facing regarding their financial situation, but also the toll society takes on these ex-offenders by treatment. On top of that, there also comes an extra charge being an ex-offender. Once on probation there is a, '$50 monthly supervision fee as a condition of probation. Failure to pay may warrant additional community control or a modification of the offender's sentence (Alexander 155)'. Due to this, even if a convict is provided a house and food, they still must find some way of income.

The way she sections off her paragraphs I found to be very interesting. She would first explain the common troubles that a felon would face when getting a job, then she would explain troubles that specifically African American felons would face. On top of a felony charge, being a person of color in some cases would make it harder to get hired. Breaking down into categories shows the difference between the way white and colored ex-offenders recover very easily.

The way she connects the book to the reader definitely engages the audience and makes for a better experience. Her argument is well organized because of the way she sectioned off the difficulties African American felons face apart from what white ex-offenders face. While reading, her argument is not only strong, but displayed in an easily perceived way so you know she made an effort to construct her writing to make sure the reader understands exactly what she wishes. 

About mid way through the book, I am continuing to enjoy it and am pleased with the amount of factual information I now know about a topic I really did not have much other knowledge about. Again, let me know what you think! Thanks for reading! :)

Relevance

For this week's blog post, I read up until page 140 from page 97. I noticed Alexander does not fail to have a wide array of topics in her book, all very important as they are todays issues. Reading about problems that I do not see makes the book very interesting because I am ignorant of mistreatment shown to different races.

Although I do enjoy reading this book because it shows a different side to social interaction that I am unaware of, I do find it hard to give full credibility to the facts that Alexander seems to just be dropping. There was a certain statistic that I found to be biased in the fact that there was no explanation of how specifically the survey was conducted. To give full credibility, I look at where, when, and who answered the survey. In the books’ circumstances, Alexander only gave us the year in which the survey was conducted. Although important to know when, it is also important to know what age groups answered this survey as well as where it took place. If a survey was conducted on the more ‘open minded’ millennial generation, results would differ greatly to the ‘less tolerant’ boomer generation. Millennials generally grow up in a more ‘free’ era as there becomes less and less of a social boundary between various groups. This means they are more magnanimous toward new ideas of tolerance. This would prove to be a critical detail when reading about a survey. Where the survey takes place is also essential to reflect on the results of the survey. In this case Alexander states, ‘A survey was conducted in 1995 asking the following question: “Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?... Ninety-five percent of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups (Alexander 106)’. 

When reading that fact, which was in my opinion ‘fact dropped’, I had to ask myself where this survey took place. Living in Hopkinton, a predominately white town with little to no diversity, I imagined that the results of this survey would differ remarkably to if the survey took place in an inner city school, or even a more southern area. This information once again would prove to be a major detail that Alexander left out. I took it upon myself to silence my curiosity and conduct a survey in our school. 

I asked the same question to ten people, ‘Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?’. My results were polar but expected. Only 10% of participants replied with black as their race, 70% of participants answered white, while the remaining 20% was hispanic. In my opinion, there is almost no relevance to this fact due to the lack of specifics. Although interesting to see what some of our population has to say, it does need to be questioned about who is answering. 

Relevance of the topic however, what people think of blacks in society, brings forward something that I can grasp. According to that survey, generally blacks are viewed as the common criminal. This could be a result from crack cocaine drug convictions and the publicity around the misconception of a higher sentence for the ‘same drug’. Because of this, a large factor of racism seen in the articles we read in class about racism in Boston could be because of the false impression that blacks are criminals. For those of you like me who read the article about the Boston Celtics, I’m sure you can recall the line when a player was called a racial slur by a fan right after playing in the game. Being unrecognized, then insulted, the player was shocked; as one should be. Racism in Boston, an area near to us, can be compared to racism described by Alexander. Not by a fan, but from the NYPD. According to Alexander, ‘the NYPD frequently attempts to justify stop and frisk operations in poor communities of color on the grounds that such tactics are necessary(Alexander 136)’. The survey Alexander had mentioned as well as the way law enforcement sees the black community as criminals only adds to discrimination and racism. 

Overall I think Alexander is bringing great topics to the table, again I enjoyed reading her words on law enforcement, black prejudiced, and more. The topics she presents are things happening now in America which adds to the importance of reading this book. The relevant issues she addressed gives me a better understanding on what is going on from a standpoint that I can not experience. 

Let me know if you have any questions about the survey I conducted, or about my post generally. Thank you for reading! :)

Opening Thoughts

Reading the first 60 pages of The New Jim Crow, and reflecting on class today, I've finally set aside enough time to actually do my blog post.


Firstly, I am excited to see what other people bring to the table with their own posts and comments. Although I tend to sit back and listen, I find it very fascinating on what people think and share to be debated.


When the topic if white privilege was presented, it soon became a topic that was difficult to fully define because of the vast array of thoughts that we had. Although race is generally a very taboo subject to discuss in a classroom setting, it gives the controversial topic an opportunity to be seen by many views points because of the wide range of stances regarding questions surrounding race.


Questioning what white privilege is made me think not only what I had, but what I didn't have. This being treatment that I may or may not have experienced. The question of white privilege was soon strung to a new category of privilege, which would be economic privilege. Some may think these come hand in hand, while others may think they are barely related. The BuzzFeed video shown today in class displayed people and their social discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, gender, economic status, ect. helped bring up what discrimination we faced, which made for an uncomfortable yet incumbent discussion. Given the opportunity to read books on these topics with other peers with the intent to reflect on thoughts, comments, and concerns gives the comfort of being able to compare ideas to see how you relate and even disagree with the author and points brought up by classmates. It will even hopefully make these topics less of a treacherous subject to touch on with peers.


Early into the book, I found an abundance of charged language which made me reflect on why these words held so much value. Obviously sooner or later in the book we would come to see why it was titled The New Jim Crow. I found this to be very early on,


'I was rushing to catch the bus, and I noticed a sign stapled to the telephone pole that screamed in large bold print: THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW (alexander 3)'.


Right after reading this quote, I questioned why the author would compare something so drastic as the Jim Crow Laws to the drug war. Reading on, I came to the larger realization that the comparison was between the Jim Crow Laws and effects of mass incarceration. By throwing around the term 'colorblind' when talking about political, social, and judicial issues, it is easy to look past that this may not always be the case. The racial caste system is also something that is referred to a lot when reading this book. Although only the first chapter in, I already am aware that the author wants me to keep the racial caste system in my mind when reading. She touches on the history of race, as well as the birth of slavery. Making a comment that race is a relatively recent development, she explains that race is just something to categorize people to make poor treatment of other groups justified. The biggest thing I feel as though she is getting at is the fact that the racism in the government and judicial system makes it harder for people of color to receive the same treatment. The Jim Crow laws before she had explained her reasoning seemed much more far fetched than after she got to her point. Taking about the birth and death of slavery, as well as the 'start' of racism helped her develop her point as to why she is describing the racial caste system and law enforcement to be more like the Jim Crow laws than the help that they are there for.


She explains that there are laws in place to keep people of color down, and make sure they stick in their caste. Developing more on why the new law system is racist, I am excited to read more into what she has to offer to further promote her ideas. 

Overall I feel as though she explains her ideas thoroughly and defends what she says with evidence as well as opinion/experience. I find this book not only interesting but eye opening into a viewpoint I would not be able to fully understand without reading. It is interesting to see what I do not experience as much, which again brings up the point that white privilege may be to blame. Taking into account that the racial caste system as well as white privilege can arguably go hand in hand, this book helps give reasons as to why that is.


So far her focus was more on the explanation of race, the development of slavery, and laws put in place to keep discrimination among us even though we are not aware of it.



Works Cited:

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York : [Jackson, Tenn.] :New Press ; Distributed by Perseus Distribution, 2010.