Michelle Alexander starts out this chapter with a much better tone, at least in terms of tone not grounded in deception, than she did in the Introduction Chapter. She continues to talk about the new racial caste system the same way Ibram X. Kendi liked to talk about his almighty policy – you have to make sure to keep the idea in your head as you read the book so things make more sense. Alright, let’s learn about the evil history of America.

“For more than one hundred years, scholars have written about the illusory nature of the Emancipation Proclamation. President Abraham Lincoln issued a declaration purporting to free slaves held in Southern Confederate states, but not a single black slave was actually free to walk away from a master in those states as a result… As W.E.B. Du Bois eloquently reminds us, former slaves had ‘a brief moment in the sun’ before they were returned to a status akin to slavery… Sunshine gave way to darkness, and the Jim Crow system of segregation emerged – a system that put black people back where they began, in a subordinate racial caste.”

I highlight this quote not because I disagree with it, but because it is filled with truth. This is a major downside of a free people – change comes slow and gradually. Even though I do not agree with Alexander on where we are now, I think we would both agree that we have trended in the right direction. Going from slave to prosperous citizen is not an instant transition. It takes decades of cultural evolution to accept a group that has been looked down upon for so long, but that does not mean we should not try to make the process go faster. The unfortunate part is the only governing system that can quickly make transitions like this are dictatorships, but even those do not last long because dictators cannot force people to change. Alexander continues on to talk about how slavery has evolved to the ‘caste system’ we see today.

“Any candid observer of American racial history must acknowledge that racism is highly adaptable. The rules and reasons the political system employs to enforce status relations of any kinds, including racial hierarchy, evolve and change as they are challenged. The valiant efforts to abolish slavery and Jim Crow and to achieve greater racial equality have brought about significant changes in the legal framework of American society – new ‘rules of the game,’ so to speak. These new rules have been justified by new rhetoric, new language, and a new social consensus, while producing many of the same results. This dynamic, which legal scholar Reva Siegel has dubbed ‘preservation through transformation,’ is the process through which white privilege is maintained, though the rules and rhetoric change.”

Alexander starts out this paragraph with something I very strongly AGREE with. Racism, like many living organisms, is not going to just die out, but it will try to evolve. It will adapt to its environment. It will change with the “rules of the game.” But even an evolving organism changes to adapt itself to the environment for utilitarian purposes. So, what is the utility in preserving a racial hierarchy? I touched on this a little bit at the end of the previous review. Races in America are blending together more than ever. Racist behavior, in the traditional white supremacist sense, is no longer valued in society, and therefore, carries no social capital. If there is any “preservation through transformation,” might one think the political party who wanted to uphold slavery – and then created Jim Crow laws when they could not – be the end product of this transformation? During the time of slavery, black people where used as commodities. During the time of Jim Crow, black people where treated like commodities that no longer served a purpose, so those commodities were then taken out of circulation (in the most evil way possible). Starting in the mid-20th century, one political party found a new market for this commodity: buying votes. This is easy to see because one political ideology will fight for black Americans, unless that black American steps out of line (in terms of narrative), then they will call him or her the worst names in the book. Just ask yourself: who has more incentive to do what? Maintain a racial hierarchy in a world where that idea is almost entirely rejected (at least in the West), or claim ownership to a growing voting base by making promises guaranteed by the most powerful entity in world history as long as you can maintain that power? So, yes, the institution of racism in America has adapted itself to its environment, but you do not realize you are fighting to make that institution stronger and more powerful.

Alexander moves on to the next section in the chapter called The Birth of Slavery. This is where she goes over the history of slavery in short detail. There is nothing I really disagree with (or can because I am not a historian), until the end of the section which I will get to, but there are some quotes that stuck out to me.

“White settlers were allowed greater access to Native American lands, white servants were allowed to police slaves through slave patrols and militias, and barriers were created so that free labor would not be placed in competition with slave labor.”

In this paragraph, she explains how land-owning whites gave poor whites a greater sense of placement in the social hierarchy by giving them jobs that gave them some control over slaves. This is not what I am trying to highlight here. What I want to point out is the last part of the quote, “barriers were created so that free labor would not be placed in competition with slave labor.” Alexander does not make the common anti-capitalist argument many of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) types make, at least not yet (I review the material as I read so it may come up later in the book), but the point she makes here directly contradicts the argument that capitalism needed or upheld slavery. ‘Free labor’ is not allowed to ‘compete’ with ‘slave labor’ not out of a sense of social division, but because free labor, meaning, free market laborers who are compensated, cannot be allowed to compete because (1) this might make the slaves think they ought to be compensated and may fight back, and (2) free market labor incentivizes innovation and more efficient production. This second point, which is a point I made in the reviews for the last book during Kendi’s attempt to slander free market capitalism, is why most slaveholders were vehemently against capitalism. It is bad for the slave business when paid labor yields a more stable and prosperous economy, as well as incentivizes more freedom. Again, Alexander does not make the anti-capitalist argument here, but I think this is still important to point out.

“The notion of white supremacy rationalized the enslavement of Africans, even as whites endeavored to form a new nation based on the ideals of equality, liberty, and justice for all.”

Here is another seemingly small point that does not fit well in Alexander’s narrative. ‘White supremacy’ is used to rationalize slavery. This points out the direction of influence. Slavery is the end goal here, and white supremacy is a way to rationalize that goal. Slavery influences, or incentivizes, white supremacy. We know this to be true because slavery has been around for most of human history, even before different races knew of each other’s existence. Races enslaved people of their own race all the time. Unfortunately, and I do not take any pleasure in this observation, a sense of equality is not the default position in the human condition. This is why our rights are given by God, not man. But my point here is this: if white supremacy is used to rationalize slavery but slavery is now gone, what utility does white supremacy have today? Do we really use white supremacy to rationalize mass incarceration? One could argue that slavery actually served the purpose of free production. Jim Crow laws were the last attempt at maintaining the social hierarchy that was a product of slavery, but Jim Crow laws were abolished because less and less people cared about white supremacy. Today, white supremacy is pushed towards the fringes to groups and people who hold no power. It is a hard jump to go from ‘white supremacy rationalizing slavery’ to ‘white supremacy rationalizing mass incarceration’ because the former was believed to serve an economic purpose (very poorly), and the latter serves no purpose other than white supremacy itself. The influence stops there.

The final paragraph in this section is where she really goes full conspiracy theorist. And even though I am only about 10 pages into the chapter, I am going to have to make this the last thing I cover for this part of the review, but this needs to be covered and disputed.

“It may be impossible to overstate the significance of race in defining the basic structure of American society. The structure and content of the original Constitution was based largely on the effort to preserve a racial caste system – slavery – while at the same time affording political and economic rights to whites, especially propertied whites. The Southern slaveholding colonies would agree to form a union only on the condition that the federal government would not be able to interfere with the right to own slaves. Northern white elites were sympathetic to the demand for their ‘property rights’ to be respected, as they, too, wanted the Constitution to protect their property interests. As James Madison put it, the nation ought to be constituted ‘to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.’ Consequently, the Constitution was designed so the federal government would be weak, not only in its relationship to private property, but also in relationship to the rights of states to conduct their own affairs. The language of the Constitution itself was deliberately colorblind (the words slave or Negro were never used), but the document was built upon a compromise regarding the prevailing racial caste system. Federalism – the division of power between the states and the federal government – was the device employed to protect the institution of slavery and the political power of slaveholding states. Even the method of determining proportional representation in Congress and identifying the winner of a presidential election (the Electoral College) were specifically developed with the interest of slaveholders in mind. Under the terms of our country’s founding document, slaves were defined as three-fifths of a person not a real, while human being. Upon this racist fiction rests the entire structure of American democracy.”

This is a very popular dishonest assumption made by Leftists every election cycle when they do not win, but I will not lie, I am very surprised to see someone as seemingly intelligent as Alexander stoop this low. Almost none of what she said here is true, and she barely cites any sources to back her argument. The Constitution was never created to uphold slavery, which is why, as Alexander points out, there is no mention of race. She also calls out Federalism because of its inherent ability to protect state’s rights, and therefore, the ability for states to uphold slavery. Yes, under an unbound Federalist system, a state could uphold the institution of slavery except for states are still constrained to the Constitution – a Constitution that enshrines human rights for all. Now, of course, we did fall short of this during the signing of the Constitution, but it was the very words in the Constitution that ended slavery. Making up a piece of revisionist history where the US Constitution was created to maintain slavery is a strawman at best, and just horribly dishonest at worst. She also calls out the Electoral College as a system used to preserve slavery. There is no founding in this idea. The intention of the Electoral College is to give each state a voice, which is why it is called the United States of America, not the United People of America. In fact, the Electoral College helped end slavery in America by helping elect President Abraham Lincoln when he only earned 40% of the popular vote but won the electoral college in 1860. The three-fifths compromise was the North’s attempt to pushback against the slaveholding South who wanted to count their slaves as ‘full represented citizens’ (with no intention of allowing them to vote) to boost the South’s representation in the House of Representatives. This was not a way to consider a slave “three-fifths of a person,” but a way to dampen the influence of a slaveholding South. Alexander only got one thing right: this was a ‘racist fiction’.

Thanks for reading my rant style review of Chapter 1 (Part 1) of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. Please let me know if you find this useful. My goal here is to explain each chapter enough and in a somewhat objective way so others do not waste their time and money on investigating this material themselves. I always encourage anyone who wants to know more about the ideas in this book to go and read it themselves, but in case you do not want to, I am here for you. Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

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