9/30 Reading Response

        After watching the Netflix documentary 13th directed by Ava Duvernay as well as watching  the Ted Talk “How we’re priming some kids for college and others for prison” by Alice Goffman and then reading the recommendations section from the policy report “Law and Order in School and Society: How Discipline and Policing Policies Harm Students of Color, and What We Can Do About It” written by Janelle T. Scott and others a clear theme emerges for me: people of color in America are seen as criminals. Moreover, the concept that people of color are seen as criminals (regardless of committing a crime or not) is one that has been manufactured and maintained throughout history by people with influence, namely our politicians.  Specifically, 13th begins by explaining how the thirteenth amendment has been utilized as a “tool” and “loophole” that politicians use to maintain the economy as much as possible to match the productivity and free labor that occurred during slavery. However, in order to create a climate that allows such use, the documentary also explains how leaders manipulate the public’s fear by creating campaigns and policies that strive for “law and order” while attributing lawlessness and chaos to communities of color. Thus, candidates create an environment where the public will support the passing of legislation that heavily targets communities of color, which once implemented then leads to the inevitable imprisonment of people of color at disproportionate rates; a system is created and maintained where 40% of the prison population in the U.S. is made up of black men (despite black men only making up 6.5% of the U.S. population), meaning that one in three black men are likely to face imprisonment at some point in their lifetime. The documentary ends with activists summarizing how laws and policies like the thirteenth amendment are the veneers that have replaced the teeth of slavery or rather as Michelle Alexander puts it, “systems of racial and social control that [have] appear[ed] to die, but then are reborn in a new form tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.”

        Moving on to Goffman’s Ted Talk, the theme of people of color being viewed as criminals is furthered, but this time with a focus on how youth are criminalized at alarmingly young ages. Through Goffman’s retelling of her observations of what she witnessed while living in predominantly African American neighborhood, Goffman describes with uncomfortable exactness how children ages 5, 7, and 11 mimic cavity searches, house arrests, and the use of excessive force when playing cops and robbers. More shocking, I think, are the statistics she shares to help us understand how the criminalization of black youth is an issue that surpasses her neighborhood and is systematic. “In the past 40 years, our incarceration rate has grown by 700 percent” (Goffman 1:46). With this statistic, Goffman informs us that not only is our current system criminalizing youth of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds at an increased rate, but our system is also creating a different kind of debt that prevents criminalized youth from succeeding later on in life due to court fees and parole restrictions. Goffman poignantly describes this debt when she says the following: 

“What's more, it's poor kids that we're sending to prison, too many drawn from African-American and Latino communities so that prison now stands firmly between the young people trying to make it and the fulfillment of the American Dream. The problem's actually a bit worse than this 'cause we're not just sending poor kids to prison, we're saddling poor kids with court fees, with probation and parole restrictions, with low-level warrants, we're asking them to live in halfway houses and on house arrest, and we're asking them to negotiate a police force that is entering poor communities of color, not for the purposes of promoting public safety, but to make arrest counts, to line city coffers” (Goffman 2:22).

        Goffman’s insight here made me think back to Pauline Lipman’s piece “This is America” and how she states that our economy prioritizes a neoliberal approach that places emphasis on zero tolerance policies in public schools, which ultimately leads to “the criminalization of school offenses” (Lipman 107). More specifically, Lipman states that with these zero tolerance policies in effect “what was once a school suspension now turns into a potential juvenile criminal record and the first step into the penal system. In a context in which many African American and other youth of color are a surplus labor force, the swelling prison industrial system has become an integral part of the new economy” (Lipman 107).  So, when put into context with one another, both Goffman and Lipman tell the tale that our youth of color already know very well: that current policies enable systems, like law enforcement and schools, to implement extremely strict and biased protocols that negatively influence the wellbeing of youth from communities of color and of low socioeconomic status in the name of “law and order” and “productivity”.

        And yet, despite this awareness, Goffman ends her talk on a positive note by sharing that policy changes are underway, which can lead to a different path for our youth of color if we continue to put pressure on our government to change these policies to be more preventative and restorative. Goffman’s encouragement aligns well with the recommendations presented in the policy report. Within this report, the authors suggest that with local and state policies changes--like divesting money from prisons and law enforcement and re-investing those same funds in educational supports, like “increasing the number  of  guidance  counselors,  advanced-level  and  enrichment  courses,  socio-emotional learning curricula, and high-quality extracurricular activities”-- there will be an increase in positive outcomes for youth rather than a continuation of criminalization (Scott et al, 19). Again, I was reminded of Lipman’s article here because when implemented with consistency and fidelity, the recommendations are presented as a means to disrupt what Lipman calls “the neoliberal model of education;” a system that continues to implement uniform standards and high accountability measures for teachers and students without addressing any of the inequities the communities are facing.

        In essence then, the policy report's recommendations and Goffman’s final words suggest that the way to a better future for our youth is through reform, however this idea is complicated when we return to the messages shared in 13th. Although almost all interviews within this documentary acknowledge a need for change within our criminal justice system, many also warn the public of how reform, even when well-intentioned, continues to negatively influence the communities they originally set out to improve. And so, I end this post with more wonderings than answers: How does one call for change without inadvertently causing history to repeat itself? How does one hold systems and leaders accountable when they so clearly have violated the rights of others for so long? How does one know for certain when a leader has truly seen the "error of their ways" when they begin to champion reform initiatives themselves? How does one get others to see that what we have been doing as a country is systematically harming many with the goal of benefiting others?  How does one get people to understand Black Lives Matter when others continue to retort “all lives matter” in response?