The poem The Joy of Motherhood shows several similarities to Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Both the poem and the book speak about the realities of being Black in America and they both use beautiful language. In Between the World and Me, Coates describes his experience trying to navigate being a minority in a world that’s dominated by Eurocentric ideas in an open letter to his son. Coates also touches on his own experience dealing with police brutality and some of the major issues that were going on during the time he was growing up. The Joy of Motherhood does the same thing, although it talks about these issues in the perspective of a woman looking onwards to the prospects of becoming a mother in America. Both works have the …show more content…
In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, she depicts the mass incarceration rate in American and recalls cases of people going to prison that personally affected here. The majority of the African-American men are either in prison or have some type of criminal record making it unable for them to vote and get jobs. Alexander describes the criminal justice systems as the “New Jim Crow,” a modern type of oppression for African Americans. Not only does FreeQuency talk about mass incarceration rate she also touches on police brutality in her poem. FreeQuency says, “criminal before child,” (FreeQuency, 59) and “I will not take it for Oscar Granted/that they will not come/and kill my son” (FreeQuency, 67-69). FreeQuency relates directly to prominent current events surrounding police brutality. Oscar Grant was an unarmed man that was shot in the back by a police officer. The events that transpired that day were recorded on the phone and caused protests to erupt. I related the lines “criminal before child,” to the shooting of Tamir Rice. Tamir was a twelve-year-old boy that was playing with a toy gun and was shot twice and died later on that day. Overall, in the poem FreeQuency uses emotional word choices that can directly relate to two prominent issues that involve …show more content…
I think that the point of the poem of FreeQuency’s poem is awareness, so that everyone that reads her poem will for a second be able to step into the shoes of minorities in America; the result of her poem would launch people to try to use their own white privilege and begin to speak up for a group of people that have continually been oppressed by different means in America. I think the issues that FreeQuency addresses in her poem needs to continue to be talked about and in the center of the media so we keep the conversation going. Police brutality has been happening for a long time and our access to technology has only brought the problem to the light recently. It’s important to keep the conversation going so that we can begin to change the system and that these issues that are holding FreeQuency back from having a child won’t be a problem anymore. Overall, what I took away from the poem is that we as a country need to come together and try to change the system so everyone is able to feel safe in our country. It’s so important for other people to begin to see and understand the constant struggles that minorities go through because since it doesn’t relate to the majority of people they won’t ever even give it a second thought. However, by having poems like The Joy of Motherhood FreeQuency is able to touch a large base of people with her personal experience being black in America, and I believe many other African-Americans can
Addressing police brutality must be done with empathy for and awareness of the plight of the African-American community. Historically speaking, there has not been a period wherein the African-American community was not inhibited by institutionalized barriers. American enslavement provided the foundation for later oppressive provisions that are especially prevalent within inner-city, predominantly Black communities, which, incidentally, many of the prominent instances of police brutality have taken place. Political regimes like the “war on drugs,” “school to prison pipeline,” and mass incarceration criminalize and dehumanize the African-American community, and thus affect the collective mindset of the population. I believe that an imperative first step that has not been taken is acknowledging the effects these may have on the Black community.
The first issue that was discussed in the article was about David Peace. Peace talked about missing out on life as a young man and how he feared going out into the real world. This an effect that mass imprisonment could have on young black men. They adapt to life in prison where they are control and once they receive freedom it scares them. The reason for this issue is due to political socialization.
In an interview that Matt Ford did with James Forman regarding the black support for mass incarceration, Forman tells us “I found Martin Luther King, Sr. saying in 1947 that the 105,000 Negroes of Atlanta needed and deserved one Negro officer.” This is clearly an issue now since a lot of protests are occurring because of white officers killing blacks, whether armed or unarmed. Establishing a connection with the past and the present shows us that the issue of mass incarceration of blacks has never stopped since blacks were first oppressed. As Forman later says, blacks that were trying their best for promotions after the Civil rights movement era began to see results. More blacks were being promoted to higher positions which were deserved.
The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their
It is an existing theory that our society is constructed via racial dimensions, and that racial equality is a figment of the imagination. This very principle is highlighted in Michelle Alexander’s novel, “The New Jim Crow.” The specific dimensions covered within the text include the unjust aspects of the federal drug policy, and by connection that of mass incarceration as well. Alexander claims that racism is still very prominent in present day society and is direct and frank about the heavy influence of white supremacy. One of the main arguments pushed by Alexander in this book is that mass incarceration is “ a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar
Michelle Alexander is a freelance writer, public speaker, and a consultant with advocacy organizations committed to ending mass incarceration. Alexander wrote her NAACP Image Award winning book called The New Jim Crow in 2011. Her book describes in depth details about racial justice and mass incarceration for people of color. “How could the War on Drugs operate in the discriminatory manner…when hardly anyone advocates or engages in explicit race discrimination” (Alexander, 2011, p. 102). Alexander asks this question and answers it as a whole throughout chapter 3.
In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander makes the case that the system of Jim Crow never died. It just took a new form in the shape of mass incarceration. Today, African American men are labelled “criminals” and stripped of their freedom, their voting rights, and their access to government programs. Alexander’s thesis is that we are currently living in a new Jim Crow era; the systemic oppression of slavery and segregation never actually went away, Alexander argues, but merely changed form.
Her thesis coins the term the “New Jim Crow” as a way to refer to the discrimination and inequity of the prison-industrial complex as a new form of bondage against poor people, and people of color. The New Jim Crow is a caste system which puts poor people and people of color into second class citizenship by incarcerating them and stripping them of their rights
She first supports her claim by chronicling America 's history of institutionalized racism and systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans. Then, she discusses America 's War on Drugs that disproportionately targets minorities and finally as she examines the hardship faced by felons she compares and contrasts Jim Crow Laws to mass incarceration. Alexander surmises that mass incarceration is designed to maintain white supremacy and sustain a racial classification system. Alexander 's book is relevant to my research paper because she provides evidence that the criminal justice system is rooted in racism and directly linked to the racist agenda of the white supremacist. Broussard, B. (2015).
Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
“Nikki-Rosa” Poem Analysis In the poem “Nikki- Rosa,” Nikki Giovanni writes with diction and imagery to prove that’s she had a happy childhood in spite of her family’s hardships. Giovanni creates a poem, that although short in words, provides a lasting effect on the reader. Giovanni’s creative use of language and descriptive words, the distinction of black culture from white culture, and memories of average times that made her childhood unique and happy made this poem distinct and exceptional. Giovanni frequently references to her happy childhood in her poem using words and phrases that create an image in your mind showing you that her childhood was in fact a happy one.
In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Era of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, she begins by points out the underlying problem in our Criminal Justice system. The problem being prioritizing the control of those in this racial caste rather than focusing on reasonable punishment and efforts to deter crime. Alexander begins by speaking of her experience as a civil rights lawyer and what soon became her priority after seeing a poster that mentioned how the war on drugs is the new jim crow when it comes to the application and outcome of it. As Alexander points out the correlation between the war on drugs and it being the new jim crow, she discusses the mass incarceration that is prevalent in our society and the number of African American
The poem Truth, by Gwendolyn Brooks, has a lot of symbolism in it. Different things throughout the poem both represent parts of the Civil Rights movement as well as things that we can relate to our lives today. She did really well with her literary elements used, especially personification. This makes her writing more relatable and realistic in our minds to grasp. Truth is a wonderful poem full of all sorts of different literary elements.
Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.
Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.