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Race, Identity, & Social Order Michelle Alexander. “There are certain code words that allow you never have to say ‘race,’ but everybody knows that’s what you mean”. The Southern Strategy.
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Race, Identity, & Social OrderMichelle Alexander “There are certain code words that allow you never have to say ‘race,’ but everybody knows that’s what you mean”
The Southern Strategy • Interviewer: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps? • Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. • You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. • But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.”
Colorblindness • “Jerome Miller, the former executive director for the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, described the dynamic this way: • ‘There are certain code words that allow you never have to say ‘race,’ but everybody knows that’s what you mean and ‘crime’ is one of those. . . . So when we talk about locking up more and more people, what we’re really talking about is locking up more and more black men.’ • Another commentator noted, • ‘It is unnecessary to speak directly of race [today] because speaking about crime is speaking about race.’” (105)
“A black minister in Waterloo, MS, explained his outrage at the fate that has befallen African Americans in the post civil-rights era. • ‘It’s a hustle,’ he said angrily. ‘Felony’ is the new N-word. They don’t have to call you a nigger anymore. They just say you’re a felon. In every ghetto you see alarming numbers of young men with felony convictions. • Once you have that felony stamp, your hope for employment, for any kind of integration into society, it begins to fade out. • Today’s lynching is a felony charge. Today’s lynching is incarceration. Today’s lynch mobs are professionals. They have a badge; they have a law degree. A felony is a modern way of saying, ‘I’m going to hang you up and burn you.’ Once you get that F, you’re on fire.’” (164)
Infra-Law • Foucault: Disciplines as “infra-law” (222) • System of omnipresent but uncertain surveillance • “systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical” • Example: female sexual morality, health, violence, surveillance • Treated as very foundation of society, without which it will collapse • “a series of mechanisms for unbalancing power relations definitively and everywhere; hence the persistence in regarding them as the humble, but concrete form of every morality, whereas they are a set of physico-political techniques.” (223) • “The formation of knowledge and the increase of power regularly reinforce one another in a circular process” (224) • Names and power • Welfare queens, drug lords, gangsters • The law is not a set of abstract rules, but a social practice. It is always embodied.
Central Park Jogger • Trisha Meili • Raped & beaten in Central Park April 19, 1989 • Multiple lacerations, internal bleeding, skull fractured, eye had to be removed • Due to severe trauma, had no memory of assault • 5 juveniles arrested, 4 confess, all convicted • “Wilding” • Details of confessions do not match • Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise, Yusef Salaam (4 black, 1 Hispanic) • DNA evidence matches none, came from 1 other man • Later retract, claim intimidation • All serve between 6 and 16 years in prison • 2002: Serial rapist Matias Reyes confesses, linked to DNA evidence
“Studies indicate that people become increasingly harsh when an alleged criminal is darker and more ‘stereotypically black’; they are more lenient when the accused is lighter and appears more stereotypically white.” (107)
