Free The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander Page A

go in again.... At my school my teachers talk about calling the cop[s] again to take me away.... [The] cop keeps checking up on me. He’s always at the park making sure I don’t get into trouble again.... My P.O. [probation officer] is always knocking on my door talking shit to me.... Even at the BYA [the local youth development organization] the staff treat me like I’m a fuck up.... Shit don’t change. It doesn’t matter where I go, I’m seen as a criminal. I just say, if you are going to treat me as a criminal then I’m gonna treat you like I am one, you feel me? I’m gonna make you shake so that you can say that there is a reason for calling me a criminal.... I grew up knowing that I had to show these fools [adults who criminalize youth] that I wasn’t going to take their shit. I started to act like a thug even if I wasn’t one.... Part of it was me trying to be hard, the other part was them treating me like a criminal. 80
     
    The problem, of course, is that embracing criminality—while a natural response to the stigma—is inherently self-defeating and destructive. While “black is beautiful” is a powerful antidote to the logic of Jim Crow, and “gay pride” is a liberating motto for those challenging homophobia, the natural corollary for young men trapped in the ghetto in the era of mass incarceration is something akin to “gangsta love.” While race and sexual orientation are perfectly appropriate aspects of one’s identity to embrace, criminality for its own sake most certainly is not. The War on Drugs has greatly exacerbated the problems associated with drug abuse, rather than solved them, but the fact remains that the violence associated with the illegal drug trade is nothing to be celebrated. Black crime cripples the black community and does no favors to the individual offender.
    So herein lies the paradox and predicament of young black men labeled criminals. A war has been declared on them, and they have been rounded up for engaging in precisely the same crimes that go largely ignored in middle-and upper-class white communities—possession and sale of illegal drugs. For those residing in ghetto communities, employment is scarce—often nonexistent. Schools located in ghetto communities more closely resemble prisons than places of learning, creativity, or moral development. And because the drug war has been raging for decades now, the parents of children coming of age today were targets of the drug war as well. As a result, many fathers are in prison, and those who are “free” bear the prison label. They are often unable to provide for, or meaningfully contribute to, a family. Any wonder, then, that many youth embrace their stigmatized identity as a means of survival in this new caste system? Should we be shocked when they turn to gangs or fellow inmates for support when no viable family support structure exists? After all, in many respects, they are simply doing what black people did during the Jim Crow era—they are turning to each other for support and solace in a society that despises them.
    Yet when these young people do what all severely stigmatized groups do—try to cope by turning to each other and embracing their stigma in a desperate effort to regain some measure of self esteem—we, as a society, heap more shame and contempt upon them. We tell them their friends are “no good,” that they will “amount to nothing,” that they are “wasting their lives,” and that “they’re nothing but criminals.” We condemn their baggy pants (a fashion trend that mimics prison-issue pants) and the music that glorifies a life many feel they cannot avoid. When we are done shaming them, we throw up our hands and then turn our backs as they are carted off to jail.

The Antidote
     
    It is difficult to look at pictures of black people performing in minstrel shows during the Jim Crow era. It is almost beyond belief that at one time black people actually covered their faces with pitch-black