Here is the third and final part of the Chapter 1 review. I made this a part of its own because it covers the main thesis of the book – a section titled The Birth of Mass Incarceration. Think of all the other sections covered in this chapter as the leadup to the punchline – a punchline that falls flat on its face. I was underwhelmed by this section to say the least. Its main function was not to clearly state the thesis of the book, but it was to build a narrative. This is the narrative I talked about in each review covering this chapter, even though I am covering it as I read, so I did not know this was going to be stated so explicitly in the book. The narrative is: Democrats good, Republicans evil racists.

Throughout this whole chapter, and many pages into this last section, the political labels of ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’ were largely ignored. Instead, the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ were used to describe the ideologies at play. To most political observers, Democrat is synonymous with liberal, and Republican is synonymous with conservative. This is not always true, but if there is a consistent standard to the applications of the terms, the author can use them however he or she wants to. But I find it interesting as the chapter moves along, starting in this last section, that the Democrat and Republican labels start to be used more often after Alexander explained her version of the American political realignment after the implementation of Nixon’s Southern Strategy.

“In fact, law and order rhetoric – first employed by segregationists – would eventually contribute to a major realignment of political parties in the United States.”

Segregationist is more synonymous with Democrat than liberal is in this context. Effectively, the popular argument that Republicans – who supported ending slavery and passing civil rights laws – and Democrats – who supported slavery and many rejected civil rights laws – switched platforms on race issues is to believe their marketing teams got together and had focus groups testing out how well swapping for each other’s names would do for their popularity. It sounds stupid because it is stupid. And, in the immortal words of Dwight Schrute, “Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, would an idiot do that? If the answer is yes, I do not do that thing.” Arguing that the two major American political parties just decided with switch on arguably the biggest issue at the time is what an idiot would do, and data backs that up. Do not take my word for it. Take the word of author, editor, and NAACP award nominee Clay Risen who writes in the very Right-wing New York Times an article titled The Myth of ‘the Southern Strategy’.

Risen writes, “In their book ‘The End of Southern Exceptionalism,’ Richard Johnston of the University of Pennsylvania and Byron Shafer of the University of Wisconsin argue that the shift in the South from Democratic to Republican was overwhelmingly a question not of race but of economic growth… The two scholars support their claim with an extensive survey of election returns and voter surveys. To give just one example: in the 50s, among Southerners in the low-income tercile, 43 percent voted for Republican Presidential candidates, while in the high-income tercile, 53 percent voted Republican; by the 80s, those figures were 51 percent and 77 percent, respectively. Wealthy Southerners shifted rightward in droves but poorer ones didn’t… They voted by their economic preferences, not racial preferences.” Shafer says these results should give liberals hope. ‘If Southern politics is about class and not race,’ he says, ‘then they can get it back’.”

Alexander has also made a habit out of giving examples of possible racism in the criminal justice system, and I use the word ‘possible’ very unconvincingly here. She used the Jarvious Cotton example at the beginning of the book as an extremely dishonest attempt to get the reader to feel sorry for a man who had his voting rights taken away – which is the part she decided to tell the reader about – because he murdered a 17-year-old kid and escaped from jail – the part she decided to leave out. She does this for a second time. She uses the example of the execution of Ricky Ray Rector in 1992.

“Clinton chose to fly home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved from him until the morning.”

She used this to slander then presidential nominee Bill Clinton for trying to look tougher on crime than the Republicans. The stated problem with this execution is Ricky Ray Rector was mentally impaired and black. So, much like I had to do with the Jarvious Cotton case that was devoid of context, I had to look up Ricky Ray Rector’s background story. But before I start, I must admit I believe the mental state of someone who committed a capital crime like murder is completely irrelevant. The person who was unjustly killed should not receive less justice because the killer had a condition completely unrelated to the person who was killed. That is not justice, that is injustice. In this case, Ricky Ray Rector committed armed robbery in 1981 where he ended up killing two people, including a police officer. After realizing he had no way out, he decided to shoot himself in the head but did not end up killing himself. What he did accomplish, however, is he destroyed the frontal lobe of his brain which effectively resulted in a self-lobotomy. He was then found to have an IQ of 70, or as doctors at the time referred to as ‘mentally retarded’. The point here being, he did not seem mentally impaired during the crime, therefore, it should not be an obstacle for capital punishment. Yes, I know there is some concern about the inability to properly defend yourself in a court of law when you are not mentally competent to do so, but as long as a competent lawyer is provided, that should not be an obstacle either. To me, this is another instance of Alexander purposefully omitting context to build a narrative.

Alexander goes over a ton of loose connections, third-hand claims, and sloppy assumptions to make it seem like the ‘conservatives’ – meaning Democrats – who wanted to keep the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow became Republicans – not really – between the Civil Rights era and now. She lists out the names of legislators who were considered segregationists like Robert Byrd, George Wallace, John McClellan, Sam Ervin, and Strom Thurmond without mentioning they were all Democrats, although Strom Thurmond later switched to Republican. A quick side note I want to mention because I talked about political realignment before and I just brought up Strom Thurmond – the lie of the ‘big switch’ is not backed up by the fact that Senator Thurmond was the only senator to move from Dixiecrat to Republican during the Civil Rights era, and there was only one House member to make that switch, while the other 200-plus Dixiecrat politicians never switched sides. She does, however, mention the political affiliations of Republicans like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. She says President Nixon went tough on drugs because… you know… racism, I guess, even though he was fighting the drug abuse fallout from the Vietnam War (and he hated hippies). She attacked President Reagan for fighting for federalism and fighting against affirmative action, drugs, and crime. During this attack, she highlights the strategy the Democrats will use all the way up to the present day – call everyone and everything that disagrees with you ‘racist’.

“[Reagan’s] critics promptly alleged that he was signaling a racial message to his audience, suggesting allegiance with those who resisted desegregation, but Reagan firmly denied it, forcing liberals into a position that would soon become familiar – arguing that something is racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist language.”

I expect a lawyer, like Michelle Alexander, to not use the ‘we do not need proof’ argument when making this kind of claim. I have learned to lower my expectations.

I normally give more quotes during my reviews, especially for a closing segment to a chapter like this, but honestly, there is nothing here. Most of her main points were already covered in the introduction chapter (check out those reviews if you have not already), and the rest of the information is, frankly, useless narrative building made on the worst assumptions possible. Every quote from every politician she does not like is spun as some sort of racist sentiment. The only politician she praises is President Lyndon B. Johnson for his, and she refers to it as this exactly, “Democrat New Deal.” She decided the emphasize Democrat so it can be opposed to the evil Republicans which, for anyone who knows about the New Deal, is not really necessary. What I find amazing here is she liked digging up dirt on Republicans and how they are secretly racist, but she does not mention the undisputed reports of LBJ’s habit of using the N-word, especially with his sometime chauffer, Robert Parker, who happens to be black.

I was really looking forward to reading a more sophisticated and articulate book on race than the last one by Ibram Kendi, but if the introduction and first chapter is an indicator of what I will get moving forward, I am going to fall way short of that goal. This genuinely saddens me. The only thing I really learned so far is that Alexander is pro-racial integration (as opposed to racial segregation) which means, according to Ibram Kendi’s logic laid out in his book How To Be An Antiracist, makes Alexander a racist because she does not sufficiently appreciate different racialized spaces. Score one potato for antiracism.

Thanks for reading my rant style review of Chapter 1 (Part 3) 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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