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! :)