Castillo 1

Mark Castillo

Dr. Tarnoff

CTW 1 / Engl 1A

November 8, 2019

Not many people bring the idea of racism to light because we all figure that there have

been many programs that have created equal, safe environments for all people to thrive in.

However, we are shown time and time again that racism hasn’t been eradicated, but has evolved

to get around laws preventing it. There are two very important books that describe this injustice

and bring to light the new age of racism that we live in. One of those books being Bryan

Stevenson’s Just Mercy, as well as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow : Mass

Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Both address the problem of systemic racism and the

role of mass incarceration, describing how they both negatively impact these minority filled

societies, but they approach the problem in different ways. On the one hand, Stevenson connects

a particular case that continues throughout his book to present the history of lynching and

segregation, showing how it evolved over time. On the other, Alexander calls attention to the

belief that past racist viewpoints are gone, pointing out the flaws in the belief and calling out the

idea of a so-called “color-blind society.” Taken together, both these writings bring out the idea

of racism and racial bias through the US judicial and economic system, comparing them to the

Jim Crow laws. These sets of laws were legal ways to oppress African Americans and return

them to a point where it was basically, at the time, boarderline slavery. They also describe the

unfairness that African Americans have to deal with, in post civil rights movement times,
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because they were born with the skin that, at one point, marked the skin of slaves: human beings

turned into property and degraded to something that was lower than an animal.

In Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, he goes on to tell the story of many unfairly tried

people, particularly African Americans, who were sentenced to death and placed on death row.

There are a numerous amount of stories in this book, ranging from unfairness due to lack of full

representation to just plain ignorance of understanding the full story of the people. However, the

central case of Walter McMillian, that continues throughout the whole book, describing how

Walter was wrongfully convicted for the murder of woman in a small town. The basis for this

conviction was because of his interacial affair with a white woman, which was very much

frowned upon and outlawed in his home state of Alabama. Walter’s affair didn’t sit to well with

most people, and since they really was no legal actuon that could be done based upon the

interacial affair, they decided to pin the murder of the white woman on him in order to get back

at him for the affair. Racism is the reoccuring topic of this case, as when Walter was arreseted,

he rcounts what he rememebers hearing saying, “ ‘We’re going to keep all you niggers from

running around with these white girls. I ought to take you off and hang you like we done that

nigger in Mobile,’ Tate reportedly told Walter. The sheriff was referring to the lynching of a

young African American man named Michael Donald in Mobile...Tate still had not investigated

McMillian himself, his life or background, or even his whereabouts on the day of the murder. He

knew about the affair with Karen Kelly and had heard the suspicion and rumors that Walter’s

independence must mean he was dealing drugs”(Stevenson 33 pdf). Here specifically we can see

the injustice based on racism because there was a lack of evidence against Walter, however,

since people knew about the affair, the courts were really oblivious to the fact that this whole

thing was set up to try to punish Walter for that reason. The fact that a full investigation had not
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been conducted is a huge sign that there was no intent to truly find the killer of that lady, but it

was only an opportunity to assort some sort of harm on Walter, since lynching had been

outlawed at the time. This is a key example on the evolution of lynching because during the

whole time of Walter’s arrest, he mentions that he kept reciveing threats about lynching him and

killing him like Micheal Donald. Bringing back the whole idea of the Jim Crow laws, it basically

laid the foundation for the Alabama Law at the time, because the laws main focus was to

promote segregation. For this instance, we can see why Stevenson brings this up because it’s

basically ties in with Walter as the white people in the neighborhood don’t want him to be

associated with any white person.

I remember hearing that incarceration is the modern day lynching, which makes sense

that people would lie about Walter being the suspected killer because they can’t really put him in

jail for having an affair with a white woman but they can try to blame him for something else as

a replcaement. This shows how Stevenson is able to intertwine the historical facts into his story

in order to show the reader how the justice system is stacked against African Americans due to

there still being the idea of racism that lives within these previously slave orientated

communities. He is able to reference this later and it really adds to his whole writing in trying to

address the idea of racism and injustice. It also goes to show that people don’t really analyze a

situation and they don’t see the true reasons backing a certain topic. If this sort of thing were to

happen in a non-racist state, it would get discovered immediately but since it happened in a

southern state, it was able to pass off. Additionally, it displays how the unfairness in different

states can play out based on their previous identities and adds to the idea of the inclusion of

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which demonstrates how odds are stacked against

minorities in predominantly white areas.

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Another book that does an amazing job at showing discrimintaion and racism in the

justice system is Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of

Colorblindness. More specifically, in the chapter “The Fire This Time”, Alexander starts off by

displaying the repsonse to the Jena six, six African American teenagers who were charged with

attempted murder for allegdly beating a white classmate at their high school. The basis of the

fight was due to a series of racial conflicts, more specifically the hanging of nooses on a tree in

the school courtyard. There were many people arguing that because these teens were black, they

were being tried as adults and that the basis of this was solely racism. However, there were far

less serious cases where black teenagers were sentenced to serious jail time, all due to the fact

that they possess a darker skin tone. Alexander later goes on to talk about how all topics about

social equity and sustainability, even though we don’t acknowledge it, has an underlying

attachment with racism and how it affects us in a certain way. Most social programs deal with

helping out those who are treated unfairly, which happens to be minorities in poor

neighborhoods. I feel like this point really pushes and solidifies the statement made by Stevenson

in his opening chapter saying “the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is

justice” (Stevenson 14 pdf) because the majority of these programs often deal with creating

sustainable and positive programs that help minorities get out of the situation they are in and how

they are being discriminated against.

Another key point that Alexander makes in her text is the idea of a racial caste system.

One key part that perfectly demonstrates this idea is when Alexander presents the issues that

come with the idea of a “colorblind society,” saying that colorblindness “prevents us from seeing

the racial and structural divisions that persist in society: the segregated, unequal schools, the

segregated, jobless ghettos, and the segregated public discourse…” (Alexander 241). She pushes
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the idea that colorblindness in general contradicts its purpose. The whole idea of colorblindness

is the idea that everyone is the same, in race and cultures, and have equal opportunities.

Furthermore, it also poses the idea that those who have ended up in penitentiaries have made a

mistake in their path, and ultimately deserve to be in the position they are in. However, as

Alexander argues throughout this chapter, color blindness does what exactly what its supposed to

do, blind us. It blinds us from the idea that there is no racial discrimination and that the US

system is built on fairness and equity. Likewise, it also furthers the ideology that America has

grown and learned from its racist mistakes, creating this facade of a non-racist and equal

government system which advocates and represents all people. Nonetheless, Stevenson’s novel

clearly presents the fact that the ideas of the past are still very much at large in majority of

previously racist-orientated communities and that there will never be such a thing as a racially

equal society. Alexander also points the idea that social programs are essentially bribes to satisfy

these minority-filled communities and how they are there to “level the playing field.” She then

goes on to criticize these programs and show how even though they are there, they still have an

underlying ideas that minorities are still in the same position, if not worse, than they were back

when Martin Luther King Jr. was around because they didn’t change the structure minorities are

in. Minorities are still technically at the bottom but are given these programs as a boost in order

to mimic the idea that they are equal, when in reality they aren’t. I feel like this is a huge part of

Alexander’s whole piece, emphasizing the blindness not only in the justice system, but the entire

US government system as a whole. She basically points out the flaws in the system which

contradicts the purpose of the various programs. These ideas also show how racism is never

going to truly escape due to the underlying messages in these so called “solutions” and they

really create more harm than good.

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With both these ideas being pushed in these two major works of literature, there seems to

be this developing theme that maybe the United States as a whole hasn’t progressed at all since

the civil war. From what these texts advocate for, it seems as if racism hasn’t depleted but in fact

has been evolved and transformed to get around the laws that prevent them from ever happening

again. We can see that the whole American system is flawed because it hasn’t found a true way

to stop racial discrimination as a whole due to the government popping out programs to assist the

“less fortunate” when in reality they are all based upon race and until there is a way to fully

eliminate this foundation, there really is no way of getting rid of racism. Not only that but there

is also the notable idea that many of these people making these programs are oblivious of the

racism that lies beneath them and how they do more harm than good. Both these books make

very credible arguments that racism has indeed, evolved and there doesn’t seem to be a

permanent way of fully eradicating these ideas. However, they do seem to provide some sense of

hope that as long as people continue to fight against these unfair and corrupt systems, then

eventually the US will one day break free from the chains of obliviousness and eventually move

toward a state of having equity and justice for not only the less fortunate, but also for those who

struggle to feel safe in this environment of racism and discrimintation.

Work Cited
ALEXANDER, MICHELLE. NEW JIM CROW: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness. NEW PRESS, 2020.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.