Free The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

like other Americans—indeed like nearly everyone around the world—want safe streets, peaceful communities, healthy families, good jobs, and meaningful opportunities to contribute to society. The notion that ghetto families do not, in fact, want those things, and instead are perfectly content to live in crime-ridden communities, feeling no shame or regret about the fate of their young men is, quite simply, racist. It is impossible to imagine that we would believe such a thing about whites.
    The predictable response is: What about gangsta rap and the culture of violence that has been embraced by so many black youth? Is there not some truth to the notion that black culture has devolved in recent years, as reflected in youth standing on the street corners with pants sagging below their rears and rappers boasting about beating their “hos” and going to jail? Is there not some reason to wonder whether the black community, to some extent, has lost its moral compass?
    The easy answer is to say yes and wag a finger at those who are behaving badly. That is the road most traveled, and it has not made a bit of difference. The media fawn over Bill Cosby and other figures when they give stern lectures to black audiences about black men failing to be good fathers and failing to lead respectable lives. They act as though this is a message black audiences have not heard many times before from their ministers, from their family members, and from politicians who talk about the need for more “personal responsibility.” Many seem genuinely surprised that blacks in the audience applaud these messages; for them, it is apparently news that black people think men should be good fathers and help to support their families.
    The more difficult answer—the more courageous one—is to say yes, yes we should be concerned about the behavior of men trapped in ghetto communities, but the deep failure of morality is our own. Economist Glenn Loury once posed the question: “are we willing to cast ourselves as a society that creates crimogenic conditions for some of its members, and then acts-out rituals of punishment against them as if engaged in some awful form of human sacrifice?” A similar question can be posed with respect to shaming those trapped in ghettos: are we willing to demonize a population, declare a war against them, and then stand back and heap shame and contempt upon them for failing to behave like model citizens while under attack?
    In this regard, it is helpful to step back and put the behavior of young black men who appear to embrace “gangsta culture” in the proper perspective. There is absolutely nothing abnormal or surprising about a severely stigmatized group embracing their stigma. Psychologists have long observed that when people feel hopelessly stigmatized, a powerful coping strategy—often the only apparent route to self-esteem—is embracing one’s stigmatized identity. Hence, “black is beautiful” and “gay pride”—slogans and anthems of political movements aimed at ending not only legal discrimination, but the stigma that justified it. Indeed, the act of embracing one’s stigma is never merely a psychological maneuver; it is a political act—an act of resistance and defiance in a society that seeks to demean a group based on an inalterable trait. As a gay activist once put it, “Only by fully embracing the stigma itself can one neutralize the sting and make it laughable.” 79
    For those black youth who are constantly followed by the police and shamed by teachers, relatives, and strangers, embracing the stigma of criminality is an act of rebellion—an attempt to carve out a positive identity in a society that offers them little more than scorn, contempt, and constant surveillance. Ronny, a sixteen-year-old African American on probation for a drug-related offense, explains it this way:
    My grandma keeps asking me about when I’m gonna get arrested again. She thinks just ’cause I went in before, I will