Anita Kajtazovic
Rene Rocha
POLI:1900:001
October 30, 2018
Midterm
1) Describe her theory
Alexander’s theory in The New Jim Crow is that the racial caste system never ends and is just merely reshaped. Her argument brings awareness toward mass incarceration and the negative consequences of being a felon. She argues many vital parts that prove racial control systems are rooted in the history of the United States. Beginning with the initiatives in the War on Drugs, practices of policing and enforcement, unfairly convicted sentences, Supreme Court decisions, and consequences or punishments that continue for convicts after their convictions. These vital parts support her theory that mass incarceration has replaced Jim Crow segregation and slavery before it. This replacement is the current criminal justice system, functioning as a new reshaped system of racialized social control. Alexander thinks in order to challenge her theory; we must make a change to the structure of racial inequality in the United States because racial inequality is the ingredient to new systems of racialized control and immortality of racial caste in America.
2) Explain how her theory can be leveraged to understand an earlier phase of American history, the era described in Katznelson When Affirmative Action Was White.
Michelle Alexander’s theory states that when a racial caste system collapses a new system can emerge in a redesigned way. During the era of When Affirmative Action Was White, in spite of previous programs coming to an end, affirmative action programs continued. To be specific, these social programs are known as Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal in the 1930's and 1940's. It states that those programs not only discriminated against blacks, but contributed to widening the gap between white and black Americans, especially regarding educational achievement, quality of jobs and housing, and maintaining a higher income. Those with the power of affirmative action in their hands failed to be mindful of how bad blacks had been treated in the past by the federal government, before the civil rights revolution. The government discriminated against African American citizens as it created and managed these social programs that provided a crucial structure for a strong, thriving white American middle class. New enforced legislations included, the Social Security system, minimum wage, unemployment compensation, rights of workers to join labor unions, and the G.I. Bill of Rights. Blacks benefited to an extent from these programs, but they for a fact received far less assistance than whites did. Southern Congress members hindered these programs in discriminatory ways, as a result for supporting themselves and their interests. “Roosevelt, the paper accurately observed, ‘hasn’t brought social security to domestics or farm workers, and over half the colored people are in those two classes’” (Katznelson 27). At the time, as quoted, most blacks in the labor force were employed in agriculture or domestic household work. To secure the racist economic and social order known as the Southern "way of life,” members of Congress ordered that those specific labors (agriculture and domestics) be excluded from minimum wage, Social Security, unemployment insurance, and workman's compensation. But, there were far more harsh executions toward blacks in the G.I. Bill of Rights, which was a series of programs that poured $95 billion into expanding opportunity for soldiers returning from World War II. The G.I. Bill was praised by President Clinton as, “‘the best deal ever made by Uncle Sam,’ the moment ‘when dreams came true’” (Katznelson 117). This Bill helped 16 million veterans attend college, receive job training, start businesses, and purchase their first homes, so overall it was a dramatic success. However, African American veterans received significantly less help from the G.I. Bill than whites holding the same position. “Written under southern auspices, the law was deliberately designed to accommodate Jim Crow” (Katznelson 114). Katznelson cited a study that was summarized from groups of people, which concluded, “as though the GI Bill had been earmarked ‘For White Veterans Only’” (Katznelson 115). These programs were directed by local white officials, people in business, bankers, and college administrators who honored past practices and goals shared by their Founding Fathers. In result, thousands of black veterans were denied housing and business loans, as well as admissions to whites only colleges and universities. They were excluded from the access to skilled employment that they trained for, worked for, and were promised while in the military. Blacks were directed toward low paying “black jobs” and small black colleges, which were poorly financed and unequipped to meet the needs of a returning soldier. Katznelson provides drastic statistics in a result of this different treatment, “by October 1946, 6,500 former soldiers had been placed in non-farm jobs by the USES in Mississippi; 86 percent of the skilled and semi-skilled positions were filled by whites, 92 percent of the unskilled by blacks” (Katznelson 138). At the same time, blacks were being discriminated against, and white universities were doubling their enrollments and thriving with students who had G.I. Bill benefits, along with new public and private funds. The New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the civil rights movements of the 1960's could not have been more applicable at a time where the whites were determined to weaken federal programs. For decades, these federal programs have sustained the nation's minorities and built its solid middle class, only to have it tampered with whites of affirmative action. Even though there were years of battling racial discrimination and laws were being enforced to advance equal rights, white Americans continued creating new legislations that strengthened the American middle class and discriminated African Americans. Michelle Alexander’s racial caste system theory enabled an understanding of the era described in Katznelson When Affirmative Action Was White. She defines the term racial caste as a, discriminated racial group who are locked into an inferior position by law and custom. Her theory states that there’s a pattern of birthing new racial caste systems after a previous one comes to an end. This pattern correlates to the When Affirmative Action Was White era after the South’s segregation laws were struck down, new legislations were enforced and were shaped in discriminatory ways. Alexander’s theory also enabled an understanding of this earlier phase of American history. Her theory mentions how racial caste systems have been present throughout U.S. history, which is shown most definitely throughout the When Affirmative Action Was White phase, there’s an understanding of a continued reality, which is the proceeding and repetitive racial bias in the history of American life.
3) Explain how the caste system described in Katznelson is similar to and different from that described in The New Jim Crow.
Katznelson’s caste system revolves around affirmative action. This caste system grew deep roots during the 1930’s and 1940’s when the New Deal and Fair Deal were enforced by the Southern wing of the Democratic Party. However, affirmative action didn’t grow and come to light until the late 1960’s. Prehistory of affirmative action was supported by Southern Democrats who were committed to maintaining a racial hierarchy. They deliberately excluded or treated the vast majority of African Americans in their policies differently so that their programs made certain that whites received the full benefit of rising success while blacks were left out. For instance, the New Deal denied African Americans access to economic relief, which resulted in the deepening of black poverty. The Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 was an excellent help for factory workers but did nothing for maids and agricultural workers, who were dominantly employed by blacks at the time. In 1944, the G.I. Bill was signed and was vastly discriminatory against African Americans, while blacks experienced segregation in the armed forces whites were unfairly privileged and able to participate in the military. On top of that, in the years that followed the war, all soldiers were promised to be treated with eligibility for benefits and given assistance, regardless of color, but Southern members of Congress used occupational exclusions and took those benefits away from black veterans. When affirmative action grew and came to light in 1965, it was addressed by Lyndon Johnson, who went into detail with policies that would not target the black middle class, but instead the “the poor, the unemployed, the uprooted, and the dispossessed” (Katznelson 143). His vision wasn’t instinctively followed and instead went into a different direction but later began to evolve slightly, helping African Americans make gains in society, but no real change. Even in this new century, today affirmative action has reached a dead end, the principles Lyndon Johnson hoped aren’t expressed enough. This caste system of affirmative action is similar to the caste system of racial social control. Affirmative action programs were just as useless for most African Americans just like racialized control systems are. African Americans hinder from both caste systems, not being able to receive the same benefits and equality as white people, is the biggest similarity they have. Racial hierarchy is well alive in both of these systems. This hierarchy allowed the opening of black people being left out of a vast range of things while whites were able to benefit and evolve in society, even this is current in today society. Obviously, we can’t return to 1965 and start affirmative action again, or even change the view of racial inequality. But we can picture how affirmative action might be renewed and reshaped today in a form more in harmony with the interest Lyndon Johnson addressed. Though the word reshaped being connected to affirmative actions sounds similar to the connection of mass incarceration being reshaped as a new current racial caste system, the forms of liveliness are different. Affirmative action was proclaimed with intentions of positive gains for African Americans, Lyndon Johnson wanted to veer the target away from African Americans and focus more on who and what is impacting the classes of society. Racial caste systems are intended to target African Americans and put limits on how active or how much freedom they have in society. Throughout history, this is shown when laws were enforced to discriminate specifically against people of color, not only history but the present day as well, most importantly in mass incarceration. “The current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy” (Alexander 13).