Today I attended a presentation by Professor Alexander on her new book: The New Jim Crow. It was a brilliant talk. One of Alexander’s points of introduction was around the reality of: who we hear and who we see in our society. Her argument was that the moment we hear felony we immediately turn our ears off and we turn away from the individual while systemically those labeled as felons are banned and discriminated against in every sector of our communities. If you are a felon you do not have access to public housing, you are banned from receiving food stamps, you cannot receive financial aid for an education, your rights to vote are revoked, employment, to name a few. These systemic legal discriminations affirm our beliefs that someone with a felony is unworthy to be heard.
Much of what Alexander said today intersected with similar themes and trends I see in the community I work with who are homeless. We find ourselves with similar responses when we learn of someone being homeless– we no longer hear and we no longer see. We think that this response is okay because what we believe about the homeless is that they are dangerous, they are criminal thus, making them unworthy of acknowledgement or the basic human rights of dignity.
Professor Alexander closed her conversation with the need for a great awakening. As much as this has to happen on a large societal scale, the awakening process has to begin with the individual– what keeps us from being awake? Or from wanting to wake up?
Alexander’s findings are alarming, but they should be. We should be alarmed by a system that has legally maintained the segregation and discrimination of so many people in our society. I hope our alarm can compel us towards that great awakening and then lead us to places of change.
