Documentary Weekend Wk1 : "The House I Live In"

Chapter 1
The Rebirth of Caste
[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again
toward slavery.
—W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in 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. A civil war had to be won first, hundreds of
thousands of lives lost, and then—only then—were slaves across the South set free. Even that
freedom proved illusory, though. 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. Constitutional
amendments guaranteeing African Americans "equal protection of the laws" and the right to
vote proved as impotent as the Emancipation Proclamation once a white backlash against
Reconstruction gained steam. Black people found themselves yet again powerless and
relegated to convict leasing camps that were, in many ways, worse than slavery. Sunshine gave
way to darkness, and the Jim Crow system of segregation emerged—a system that put black
people nearly back where they began, in a subordinate racial caste.

Few find it surprising that Jim Crow arose following the collapse of slavery. The
development is described in history books as regrettable but predictable, given the virulent
racism that gripped the South and the political dynamics of the time. What is remarkable is that
hardly anyone seems to imagine that similar political dynamics may have produced another
caste system in the years following the collapse of Jim Crow—one that exists today. The story
that is told during Black History Month is one of triumph; the system of racial caste is officially
dead and buried. Suggestions to the contrary are frequently met with shocked disbelief. The
standard reply is: "How can you say that a racial caste system exists today? Just look at Barack
Obama! Just look at Oprah Winfrey!"
The fact that some African Americans have experienced great success in recent years does
not mean that something akin to a racial caste system no longer exists. No caste system in the
United States has ever governed all black people; there have always been "free blacks" and
black success stories, even during slavery and Jim Crow. The superlative nature of individual
black achievement today in formerly white domains is a good indicator that the old Jim Crow is
dead, but it does not necessarily mean the end of racial caste. If history is any guide, it may
have simply taken a different form.

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
kind, 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.
This process, though difficult to recognize at any given moment, is easier to see in
retrospect. Since the nation's founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled
through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in
new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time. As described in the pages that
follow, there is a certain pattern to this cycle. Following the collapse of each system of control,
there has been a period of confusion—transition—in which those who are most committed to racial hierarchy search for new means to achieve their goals within the rules of the game as
currently defined. It is during this period of uncertainty that the backlash intensifies and a new
form of racialized social control begins to take hold.

The adoption of the new system of control is
never inevitable, but to date it has never been avoided. The most ardent proponents of racial
hierarchy have consistently succeeded in implementing new racial caste systems by triggering a
collapse of resistance across the political spectrum. This feat has been achieved largely by
appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites, a group of people who are
understandably eager to ensure that they never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the
American hierarchy.

The emergence of each new system of control may seem sudden, but history shows that the
seeds are planted long before each new institution begins to grow. For example, although it is
common to think of the Jim Crow regime following immediately on the heels of Reconstruction,
the truth is more complicated. And while it is generally believed that the backlash against the
Civil Rights Movement is denned primarily by the rollback of affirmative action and the
undermining of federal civil rights legislation by a hostile judiciary, the seeds of the new system
of control—mass incarceration—were planted during the Civil Rights Movement itself, when it
became clear that the old caste system was crumbling and a new one would have to take its
place.

With each reincarnation of racial caste, the new system, as sociologist Loic Wacquant puts
it, "is less total, less capable of encompassing and controlling the entire race."2 However, any
notion that this evolution reflects some kind of linear progress would be misguided, for it is not at
all obvious that it would be better to be incarcerated for life for a minor drug offense than to live
with one's family, earning an honest wage under the Jim Crow regime—notwithstanding the
ever-present threat of the ? . Moreover, as the systems of control have evolved, they have
become perfected, arguably more resilient to challenge, and thus capable of enduring for
generations to come. The story of the political and economic underpinnings of the nation's
founding sheds some light on these recurring themes in our history and the reasons new racial
caste systems continue to be born.

obnoxiouslyfresh wrote: »

I finally watched it. This ? off. When you just consider that America has more of its citizens behind bars than any other nation on the planet, and we presently have more Blacks incarcerated than were slaves in the Confederate States of America during the 1850's... that is just mind-blowing to me. That coupled with the fact that our misguided approach to the issue of illegal drugs is the single most important reason why so many of us are in prison. It's slavery. It makes me so sad

Dr.Chemix wrote: »

Theres always a choice.

Dr.Chemix wrote: »

Bully_Pulpit wrote: »

Dr.Chemix wrote: »

Theres always a choice.

You have to have the will to make that choice.

? please. That is a ? ass excuse for ? .