What a Year of Reading Changed in Us
By Cindy Herr
Flourish Collective book cohorts are great! If you want to read seminal books about racial justice but can't seem to get around to it, our cohorts provide that extra push. Instead of passively reading an unsettling book alone, you're rewarded with a caring, open Zoom discussion that makes learning active and social.
Last September, we embarked on Flourish’s first year-long allyship book club, reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. This book shows how our criminal justice system has created a large caste of "criminals" and former criminals who face legalized discrimination. The vast majority are people of color — because that was the intent, and because selective enforcement, biased police, and prosecutorial discretion have maintained that system.
We learned how mass incarceration began with the "War on Drugs" — a political strategy to convince white voters that the biggest problem in the US was unsafe neighborhoods caused by young Black drug users, as portrayed in fear-mongering media. Our cohort was surprised to learn the US had no significant drug problem at the time. Yet voters backed leaders who promised to get tough on drugs. These elected politicians then made possession of drugs favored by Black people (marijuana, crack cocaine) a felony, while downplaying harms from powder cocaine and alcohol (favored by whites). They enacted mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws, and harsh parole requirements to fill the huge number of prisons they built.
We discussed how police and judicial incentives led to prisons disproportionately filled with people of color, even though their rates of drug use are statistically similar to whites. Cash incentives pushed police to maximize arrests and prosecutors to maximize convictions — both easier to achieve in poor neighborhoods of color than in white upper-class ones. Black and brown people had been taught to be compliant with police (even when rights were violated) and were easily pressured into guilty pleas, while whites with resources hired lawyers to fight back.
Our cohort was also struck by the vast web of laws and regulations that follow the formerly incarcerated long after their release: loss of eligibility for student aid, public housing, food stamps, welfare and professional licenses; bans on voting and jury service; and a cascade of financial obligations — bail, jail fees, drug testing fees, probation fees, and late penalties — beginning at the moment of arrest. Succeeding economically under these conditions is an enormous uphill battle.
We agreed with the author that this discriminatory labyrinth is largely invisible to those without personal experience in the system. Unlike Jim Crow, these laws use race-neutral language, allowing the casual observer to believe that our criminal justice is fair. Courts have declined to provide legal remedies, on the grounds that prosecutors and police haven’t stated discriminatory intent explicitly.
Our cohort found hope in talking about progress made since the book's publication. Sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine have been reduced, mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders have been cut, marijuana use is no longer even a crime in many states, and many states have restored voting rights for felons and eliminated cash bail. We also discussed ways to take action, such as supporting new proposals for criminal justice reform legislation, volunteering with re-entry nonprofits like Friends Outside, and patronizing businesses that employ the formerly incarcerated, like Dave's Killer Bread and Delancey Street Restaurant in San Francisco (read more about Delancey Street’s training program here and visit the restaurant here).
