Obviously, when the author claims racism to be present in America, it isn’t through the form of blatant segregation laws like Jim Crow or voting restrictions for blacks. However, the level of racism lies underneath the skin of a nation with a stained history.
The big elephant in the room is mass incarceration, which is highly targeted towards blacks. This is commonly known by many of us, and even the author makes a jab at it: “Jim Crow and slavery were
caste systems. So is our current system of mass incarceration.” She refers to the process as a “caste system”. But how could it be a caste system if mass incarceration doesn’t contribute to issues in society as a whole?
Except it does. Implicit bias exists everywhere, and it is very rare to find occasions where it doesn’t exist. That matter is made only worse by being a felon. As a felon, you immediately lose out on certain privileges according to law, and your record becomes critiqued more often by employers. That is true tenfold if you are a black felon. See, mass incarceration is like a virus, a virulent one that steadily seeps through the cracks. It’s difficult to say where its effects end, but it is for certain that its effects are present. And it is, unfortunately, one that will not see an end soon, as politics and a lack of public discussion on race and class mobility deem it to be. The largest problem if anything is us not acknowledging the problem as a collective; we frown down on our American history and we push racism to the side today as if we don’t want to think about the past. But if we just took an ample amount of time to just listen to each other, then maybe we’d all understand.
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I agree with how you acknowledge that we are avoiding the discussion to understand one another. This is what is creating systemic racism within our society. Furthermore, being a felon in this society is disables one’s ability to be successful just as the Jim Crow Laws did with black society so I too believe there are also reformations to be held.
I like that you brought out the author’s point about how much harder life is for convicted felons. The author points out how the U.S.’s incarceration system is compared to other countries, but another big difference is the amount of prejudice that comes with being a convicted felon in the United States and how little the government does to help assimilate felons into society upon release.