Black History Month Heroes: Michelle Alexander

“McClesky v. Kemp has immunized the criminal justice system from judicial scrutiny for racial bias. It has made it virtually impossible to challenge any aspect, criminal justice process, for racial bias in the absence of proof of intentional discrimination, conscious, deliberate bias. Now, that’s the very type of evidence that is nearly impossible to come by today…People know not to say, ‘The reason I stopped him was because he was black. The reason I sought the death penalty was because he was black.’ …So, evidence of conscious intentional bias is almost impossible to come by in the absence of some kind of admission. But the U.S. Supreme Court has said that the courthouse doors are closed to claims of racial bias in the absence of that kind of evidence, which has really immunized the entire criminal justice system from judicial and to a large extent public scrutiny of the severe racial disparities and forms of racial discrimination that go on every day unchecked by our courts and our legal process.”

Michelle Alexander spoke these words on the 42^nd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death to Bill Moyers and Bryan Stevenson on Bill Moyers Journal. Alexander is a strong advocate of criminal justice reform and civil rights. She’s taught law courses at premier universities, such as Stanford Law School, where she earned her law degree and headed the school’s Civil Rights Clinic. She was also the 2005 recipient of the Soros Justice Fellowship that supported her authorship of bestseller, The New Jim Crow, and acted as Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California.

Her interest in social justice is framed upon the mass incarceration of black men for drug charges. However, Alexander wasn’t always a stalwart proponent against these types of injustices, citing that she herself believed in the myths about drug use and crime in the black community until her work at the ACLU began. Today, Alexander has taken on the task of exposing how the justice system’s role in the War on Drugs has facilitated and targeted poor people and communities of color. “In truth the drug war has primarily resulted in the incarceration of nonviolent, low-level offenders…law-enforcement agencies are rewarded as much for arresting addicts as they are for bringing down the big bosses. This gives them an incentive to go into poor communities and round up as many users as possible by employing mass stop-and-frisk operations, or by stopping cars and searching them for drugs, or by sweeping housing projects. The other big myth is that most people who use and sell drugs are African American. But studies have consistently shown that people of color are no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Users typically buy drugs from someone of their own race, and plenty of drugs are sold in suburbs, in rural white communities, on college campuses, and so forth. But the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color…So, when I say that we have a new racial caste system, what I mean is that we have a system of laws, policies, and practices in the United States today that operate to lock people of color, particularly poor people of color, living in ghetto communities, in an inferior second-class status for life. The enemy in this war is not drugs. The enemy has been defined in racial terms.”

Alexander contends that in the same vein as the Civil Rights Movement, it is time for a human rights movement; one that is focused on securing the right to work, the right to quality education, and the right for housing for all Americans, including those released from prison. Alexander asserts that for this to happen society must be able to see the dignity and humanity of all people, and must also “awaken from its colorblind slumber to the realities of race in America.”

Sources

• “About the Author.” Newjimcrow.com. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <http://newjimcrow.com/about-the-author>.
• Cooper, Arnie. “The Sun Magazine | Throwing Away The Key.” The Sun Magazine | Throwing Away The Key. 1 Feb. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/422/throwing_away_the_key>.
• PBS. PBS, 10 Apr. 2010. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04022010/transcript1.html>.
• “The Future of Race in America: Michelle Alexander at TEDxColumbus.” YouTube. YouTube, 13 Oct. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ6H-Mz6hgw>.