Book a Week 2016 - Rabindranath Tagore

[Pam in CT]

re but... but... how could you not already know that??!

Pam, remember my how could you not know that question (which nobody else should take as aimed at them, by the way, and which was more a comment on the quality of Pam,s awesome booklist compared to my cowardly one than anything else)? Well, reading a comment of Eliana,s made me realize something - I grew up in a Unitarian church and have spent my adulthood in a Universalist-now-UU church. I never really paid much attention to the sermons, but years of sitting through the stories and ramblings of ministers who marched with King might perhaps have affected my outlook on life somewhat. The not paying much attention part might explain why I thought some of this stuff was obvious. Sigh.

Nan

 

:lol: You're the best, Nan.

 

I'm sure I grew up with different specific stories, but I expect the overall gestalt of mine was largely similar; and I'm quite certain that the, uh, intermittent attention that I paid was, also, uh, largely similar.

 

I suspect that part of our delightful syncopation is that I tend to think a bit more in terms of abstract systems (like the judiciary & legislative processes), whereas you seem to me to process in more grass roots, personal terms?  

 

In one of our back-and-forths over the last few weeks, I mentioned that I'm very interested in the mechanics of how the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, even if it does take a longer interval than we'd like... what are the change agents that cause that bend...

 

... and the big picture narrative that I constructed, as a youngster, out of the personal stories that I heard and the (perhaps too lionizing -- my parents were Very Big Fans) attribution to MLK's personal role and the shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity of fellow travelers like Rabbi Abraham Heschel and so on, when viewed through both my aforementioned intermittent attention and also my big-picture systems bias, was a narrative in which individual leaders played a key role in mobilizing public sympathy (which was crucial to the passage of legislation like the VRA) but in which civil systems, particularly the judiciary, were crucial in effecting change in specific areas (voter registration, public accommodations) well in advance of public opinion.  In my personal narrative of understanding, the courts served as crucial "mechanism" pulling that arc-of-the-universe towards justice.

 

So Michelle Alexander's scrupulously researched and documented indictment of the judiciary over the last 20 years, detailing its centrality in ratifying and strengthening racially unequal treatment at virtually every stage of the process, was... well, yes, surprising to me, but also felt like a betrayal.  An agent that is supposed to be For Good is acting to support and validate injustice.  Like Percy Weasley going over to the Dark Side or something.  (I don't mean to be flip, just bringing it back around to books...)

[aggieamy]

Rose - Congrats on your row! 

 

Finished:

 

A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck -  DD and I did this as a read aloud and it was fantastic.  The book told the adventures two Chicago kids in the 30's had visiting their country grandmother.  It was an easy read as each chapter was setup as a one summer vacation.  My review isn't doing the book justice.  It was just a fun book!  Each chapter generally had DD and myself laughing out loud. 

[Kareni]

I finished a re-read last night ~ Elle Kennedy's new adult contemporary romance The Deal (Off-Campus Book 1).  I enjoyed it again.  Trigger alerts: this does deal with the aftermath of both rape and domestic/child abuse.

 

"She’s about to make a deal with the college bad boy…

Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she’s carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction. If she wants to get her crush’s attention, she’ll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice…even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date.

…and it’s going to be oh so good

All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he’s worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he’s all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn’t take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn’t going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him."

 

Regards,

Kareni

 

 

[Pam in CT]

PS to Nan: On a Light Side note, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed that sentencing juveniles to lifetime imprisonment without any possibility of parole constitutes cruel&unusual, and (today's decision) that this decision is retroactive, meaning that people who were imprisoned as juveniles now may apply for parole.  

 

The test case has spent 46 years in prison for a crime committed at age 17, without possibility of parole.  Alexander's book scrupulously documents how such sentences are, at every level of the process, disproportionately meted out on racially biased terms.  

[Chrysalis Academy]

re but... but... how could you not already know that??!

 

:lol: You're the best, Nan.

 

I'm sure I grew up with different specific stories, but I expect the overall gestalt of mine was largely similar; and I'm quite certain that the, uh, intermittent attention that I paid was, also, uh, largely similar.

 

I suspect that part of our delightful syncopation is that I tend to think a bit more in terms of abstract systems (like the judiciary & legislative processes), whereas you seem to me to process in more grass roots, personal terms?  

 

In one of our back-and-forths over the last few weeks, I mentioned that I'm very interested in the mechanics of how the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, even if it does take a longer interval than we'd like... what are the change agents that cause that bend...

 

... and the big picture narrative that I constructed, as a youngster, out of the personal stories that I heard and the (perhaps too lionizing -- my parents were Very Big Fans) attribution to MLK's personal role and the shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity of fellow travelers like Rabbi Abraham Heschel and so on, when viewed through both my aforementioned intermittent attention and also my big-picture systems bias, was a narrative in which individual leaders played a key role in mobilizing public sympathy (which was crucial to the passage of legislation like the VRA) but in which civil systems, particularly the judiciary, were crucial in effecting change in specific areas (voter registration, public accommodations) well in advance of public opinion.  In my personal narrative of understanding, the courts served as crucial "mechanism" pulling that arc-of-the-universe towards justice.

 

So Michelle Alexander's scrupulously researched and documented indictment of the judiciary over the last 20 years, detailing its centrality in ratifying and strengthening racially unequal treatment at virtually every stage of the process, was... well, yes, surprising to me, but also felt like a betrayal.  An agent that is supposed to be For Good is acting to support and validate injustice.  Like Percy Weasley going over to the Dark Side or something.  (I don't mean to be flip, just bringing it back around to books...)

 

I'm having a similar reaction. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I am: by the pervasiveness, the systematic nature, and the way that The Drug War has created institutions that are profoundly unfair, undemocratic, and oppressive.   It's shocking, really, taken as a whole. It challenges and upends the whole sense that we tend to have, in the larger culture, that we are making progress since the time of MLK on these issues.  In some ways, yes, but in some ways things are much worse now than they were pre-1980.  And if that is really intentional - which I'm still agnostic about, less than halfway through the book - then it is truly enraging.  And yes, shocking. Not that racism exists, but that systematic institutional racism is actually worse today, within the criminal justice system, than it was when I was 10.

 

ETA: I guess that's the part that is so hard to believe - I guess I'm as guilty of the Fallacy of Progress as the next girl. So many things have gotten better in my lifetime - women's rights, gay rights, some aspects of environmental protection, a general rejection of blatantly racist behavior in the social/interpersonal realm. It's hard to face the reality of the giant step backwards in the area of social justice/mass incarceration that Alexander describes.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Chrysalis Academy

[Pam in CT]

re The New Jim Crow, feeling betrayed by the court system, and whether "intentional" is the right focus:

 

I'm having a similar reaction. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I am: by the pervasiveness, the systematic nature, and the way that The Drug War has created institutions that are profoundly unfair, undemocratic, and oppressive.   It's shocking, really, taken as a whole. It challenges and upends the whole sense that we tend to have, in the larger culture, that we are making progress since the time of MLK on these issues.  In some ways, yes, but in some ways things are much worse now than they were pre-1980.  And if that is really intentional - which I'm still agnostic about, less than halfway through the book - then it is truly enraging.  And yes, shocking. Not that racism exists, but that systematic institutional racism is actually worse today, within the criminal justice system, than it was when I was 10.

 

ETA: I guess that's the part that is so hard to believe - I guess I'm as guilty of the Fallacy of Progress as the next girl. So many things have gotten better in my lifetime - women's rights, gay rights, some aspects of environmental protection, a general rejection of blatantly racist behavior in the social/interpersonal realm. It's hard to face the reality of the giant step backwards in the area of social justice/mass incarceration that Alexander describes.

 

I'll be interested in your thoughts once you've made it to the finish line (and thereafter... I'm finding that I'm taking a lot longer to process this and Coates' book than I usually take).  The more I dwell on this business of explicit intent, the more I'm coming, reluctantly, to a conclusion that to focus on that kind of acknowledged personal animus is actually a distraction, that impedes Progress.

 

 

[Robin M]

Just stumbled upon a translated story that Stacia and a few others may enjoy. Added it to my wishlist. 

 

The Deep Sea Diver's Sydrome:

 

 

 

In The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome, lucid dreamers called mediums dive into their dreams to retrieve ectoplasms—sticky blobs with curiously soothing properties that are the only form of art in the world. The more elaborate the dream, the better the ectoplasm.

 

David Sarella is a medium whose dream identity is a professional thief. With his beautiful accomplice Nadia, he breaks into jewelry stores and museums, lifts precious diamonds, and when he wakes, the loot turns into ectoplasms to be sold and displayed. 

 

Only the dives require an extraordinary amount of physical effort, and as David ages, they become more difficult. His dream world—or is it the real world?—grows unstable. Any dive could be his last, forever tearing him away from Nadia and their high-octane, Bond-like adventures. 

 

David decides to go down one final time, in the deepest, most extravagant dive ever attempted. But midway through, he begins to lose control, and the figures in the massive painting he’s trying to steal suddenly come to life . . . and start shooting.

 

 

 

 

Since Eliana(?) mentioned Joan Didion, just had to jump in because I'm leading a class in reading and discussing her Slouching Towards Bethlehem essays. I'm going in blind since I've never read any of her stuff, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.   Openculture lists 13 Masterful Essays to read online.  

[AmandaVT]

Highlight specific words (like the title of the book), look on the tool bar (where the Bold, Italic,etc buttons are), choose the one that looks like a chain link (the 9th icon to the right), and cut and paste your url.

 

 

Thank you so much!!

[Tawlas]

Finished three books this week: The Artist's Way for Parents, Pride & Prejudice as well as Little House in the Big Woods as a read aloud with my family.  Since 3/4 kids are gone next week, we've put off starting the second one in the series until everyone is back.  Pride and Prejudice is from WEM, I suppose I'll start the next one on that list now.  I have two more on my list for this "session" of home school and I'm sure I'll be able to finish them by the end of next week.  Oh and only a few hours left of "Renaissance and Reformation" through Great Courses.

 

Feeling smug.  My goal was to read six books in these six weeks, and I've done that already with weeks to spare!

 

[shage]

PS to Nan: On a Light Side note, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed that sentencing juveniles to lifetime imprisonment without any possibility of parole constitutes cruel&unusual, and (today's decision) that this decision is retroactive, meaning that people who were imprisoned as juveniles now may apply for parole.

 

The test case has spent 46 years in prison for a crime committed at age 17, without possibility of parole. Alexander's book scrupulously documents how such sentences are, at every level of the process, disproportionately meted out on racially biased terms.

I am thrilled with this SCOTUS decision! There are so many nuances when juveniles are tried as adults. Often the kids waive Miranda right without fully comprehending the consequences, then lack the life experience and wisdom to fully participate in their own defense. Maybe this will push prisons to rethink rehabilitation as an option? Hope springs eternal.

[shage]

re The New Jim Crow, feeling betrayed by the court system, and whether "intentional" is the right focus:

 

 

I'll be interested in your thoughts once you've made it to the finish line (and thereafter... I'm finding that I'm taking a lot longer to process this and Coates' book than I usually take). The more I dwell on this business of explicit intent, the more I'm coming, reluctantly, to a conclusion that to focus on that kind of acknowledged personal animus is actually a distraction, that impedes Progress.

I am not sure I am following you. Are you saying that determining whether the blame is explicit or not detracts from actions that might improve the current state of affairs?

 

(I have read neither of the books being discussed but have plenty of thoughts. Lol)

Edited January 25, 2016 by shage

[Pam in CT]

re today's Supreme Court ruling on life-without-parole sentences for juveniles:

 

I am thrilled with this SCOTUS decision! There are so many nuances when juveniles are tried as adults. Often the kids waive Miranda right without fully comprehending the consequences, then lack the life experience and wisdom to fully participate in their own defense. Maybe this will push prisons to rethink rehabilitation as an option? Hope springs eternal.

Yes -- and although those sorts of issues are not, to my understanding (not a lawyer!) the basis of either the 2012 cruel&unusual determination or today's decision of its retroactivity, they are very much the sorts of problems that Alexander works through in New Jim Crow.  Which I think you would find worthwhile....

 

 

re: presence / absence of explicit intent, and whether it matters

I am not sure I am following you. Are you saying that determining whether the blame is explicit or not detracts from actions that might improve the current state of affairs?

(I have read neither of the books being discussed but have plenty of thoughts. Lol)

Alexander's book details innumerable layers at which structural bias is evident -- the % of LEO discretionary stops is disproportionate by race; once stopped, the % of without-probable-cause search is disproportionate by race; once stopped, the % of tickets for discretionary infractions like cracked windows/rolling stop/stop too many feet from a crosswalk etc is disproportionate by race...  through to prosecution level where the % of arrests actually prosecuted, prosecuted for felony rather than misdemeanor, pushed to accept guilty pleas without counsel or (as you mention) full understanding of the likelihood of conviction were it to go to trial or the lifetime implications of accepting the plea... all the way through to sentencing treatment and post-prison, all have disproportionate racial bias at an aggregate level.  (It's discouraging reading, obviously.  Not suggesting you'd ENJOY it, more that I think you'd find it worthwhile.)

 

What I'm coming around to is, the business of individual explicit intent at all of these levels seems to me not to be the policy point... whether or not each and every human being at all those levels experiences and expresses conscious racial animus -- I'm sure most DON'T look into the mirror while shaving and consciously say, yeah, I'm going to go out today and disproportionately arrest black people! -- we nonetheless have an aggregate structural problem.

 

And while a few of the structural mechanics that Alexander's work points to are easily visible -- how mandatory sentencing has shifted power away from judges and toward prosecutors (which has tradeoffs, discretionary power can be abused by anyone... but non-mandatory sentences can be appealed, so at least in theory there's a second shot); the gutting of VRA; how SCOTUS' recent decisions not to accept preponderance-of-the-evidence statistical demonstrations of bias as in civil discrimination in employment suits for issues like discretionary stops but rather to insist on evidence of individual animus.... many are harder for me, at least, to tease out.  

 

Read it, and then come back help me figure out what next...   :001_huh:

[prairiewindmomma]

I traveled a bit last week and finished up some books:

 

6. Lord John & the Brotherhood of the Blade--Gabaldon

7. The Scottish Prisoner--Gabaldon

8. 1491 by Charles Mann. I read it first over a decade ago. I re-read it to see if I would want to include it in my oldest's reading stack. Nope.

9. House of Seven Gables by Hawthorne.  Not my cuppa, but a good example piece of gothic literature. I'm still trying to put together a gothic lit list for high school. I don't think this will make the cut, though.

10. The Vikings by Ferguson. This was actually quite good. The history was clear and engaging, the maps were helpful, and this is now my top pick for a Viking history.

 

I have three more books going right now--one on Roman life, one on Deuteronomist revisionism, and Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson.  We'll see what I finish up next.

[PeacefulChaos]

All right!

 

I finished The Heavenly Man today.  WOOHOO!!!  :lol: 

 

I'm glad to be finished with it.  Not that it's a bad book - I plan on keeping this one lol - it's just a bit long and drawn out.  There is apparently controversy surrounding it, but that's not for me to weigh in on, because who am I to say whether or not something I wasn't there for is the truth or not?  *shrug*  Overall, that part doesn't really matter to me.  

There were a few things that made me like 'hmmm' just in the phrasing he used when talking about some things, but honestly, that could be a translation thing, too.  Or a difference in meaning between cultures, even a slight one.  So I didn't really dwell on it.

 

Dude is preaching in chapters 24-25.  Which wasn't a bad thing - it was a refreshing break from the cycle of prison, not, prison, not... :lol: And the stuff he was saying was legit.  

 

But yeah.  The book, as a whole, was decent.  I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads.

 

 

 

And then today I started The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  So far I love it.  :)   

 

 

So far this year:

 

3. The Heavenly Man (Yun)

2. Captivating (Eldredge)

1. This Present Darkness (Perretti)

[Chrysalis Academy]

re today's Supreme Court ruling on life-without-parole sentences for juveniles:

 

Yes -- and although those sorts of issues are not, to my understanding (not a lawyer!) the basis of either the 2012 cruel&unusual determination or today's decision of its retroactivity, they are very much the sorts of problems that Alexander works through in New Jim Crow.  Which I think you would find worthwhile....

 

 

re: presence / absence of explicit intent, and whether it matters

Alexander's book details innumerable layers at which structural bias is evident -- the % of LEO discretionary stops is disproportionate by race; once stopped, the % of without-probable-cause search is disproportionate by race; once stopped, the % of tickets for discretionary infractions like cracked windows/rolling stop/stop too many feet from a crosswalk etc is disproportionate by race...  through to prosecution level where the % of arrests actually prosecuted, prosecuted for felony rather than misdemeanor, pushed to accept guilty pleas without counsel or (as you mention) full understanding of the likelihood of conviction were it to go to trial or the lifetime implications of accepting the plea... all the way through to sentencing treatment and post-prison, all have disproportionate racial bias at an aggregate level.  (It's discouraging reading, obviously.  Not suggesting you'd ENJOY it, more that I think you'd find it worthwhile.)

 

What I'm coming around to is, the business of individual explicit intent at all of these levels seems to me not to be the policy point... whether or not each and every human being at all those levels experiences and expresses conscious racial animus -- I'm sure most DON'T look into the mirror while shaving and consciously say, yeah, I'm going to go out today and disproportionately arrest black people! -- we nonetheless have an aggregate structural problem.

 

And while a few of the structural mechanics that Alexander's work points to are easily visible -- how mandatory sentencing has shifted power away from judges and toward prosecutors (which has tradeoffs, discretionary power can be abused by anyone... but non-mandatory sentences can be appealed, so at least in theory there's a second shot); the gutting of VRA; how SCOTUS' recent decisions not to accept preponderance-of-the-evidence statistical demonstrations of bias as in civil discrimination in employment suits for issues like discretionary stops but rather to insist on evidence of individual animus.... many are harder for me, at least, to tease out.  

 

Read it, and then come back help me figure out what next...   :001_huh:

 

Yep, Pam, you explained this well, and I just got to this section of the book today after we were posting earlier.  I totally get your point, and further, the fact that the Court won't even allow challenges under the 14th amendment unless you can show explicit and blatant racial discrimination that is intentional creates a situation where challenge is impossible - unless you can prove that a police officer or a prosecutor intentionally woke up in the morning, and decided over their cup of coffee, "I'm going to arrest/prosecute some black people today!" you can't even challenge on the grounds of racial discrimination, even when it is clear that racial disparities exist.  And of course, that is an impossible burden.

 

When I was thinking about the question of intent before, I was thinking about the intent of the people - politicians and otherwise - who created, started, and funded the drug war which has led to the system of mass incarceration. Not the intent of the people who are currently part of the system of mass incarceration, but the people who started the ball rolling.  What I have yet to see is evidence of exactly who these people are, and if they created this system to intentionally perpetuate the racial caste system that existed under slavery & Jim Crow.  Alexander is clearly claiming that this is the case, but I haven't seen the direct line of evidence yet.  Maybe it comes later in the book.  It's the part I'm most dreading, I guess. It's easy to see how shit happens, and hard to think that the shit was intentionally created.  

I'm trying to be uber-fair and open minded here, given my political leanings it would be really easy to look at the timing and the quotes by Nixon and Reagan and decide it's a vast right-wing conspiracy.   ;)  I'm really trying to not jump there, but to examine the evidence and see where it leads.  And even if it leads from point A to point B, to try and understand why.  Who benefits? What is the goal driving the process? (Accepting intentionality requires that there be a goal, right?)

[shage]

re today's Supreme Court ruling on life-without-parole sentences for juveniles:

 

Yes -- and although those sorts of issues are not, to my understanding (not a lawyer!) the basis of either the 2012 cruel&unusual determination or today's decision of its retroactivity, they are very much the sorts of problems that Alexander works through in New Jim Crow.  Which I think you would find worthwhile...

 

re: presence / absence of explicit intent, and whether it matters

Alexander's book details innumerable layers at which structural bias is evident -- the % of LEO discretionary stops is disproportionate by race; once stopped, the % of without-probable-cause search is disproportionate by race; once stopped, the % of tickets for discretionary infractions like cracked windows/rolling stop/stop too many feet from a crosswalk etc is disproportionate by race...  through to prosecution level where the % of arrests actually prosecuted, prosecuted for felony rather than misdemeanor, pushed to accept guilty pleas without counsel or (as you mention) full understanding of the likelihood of conviction were it to go to trial or the lifetime implications of accepting the plea... all the way through to sentencing treatment and post-prison, all have disproportionate racial bias at an aggregate level.  (It's discouraging reading, obviously.  Not suggesting you'd ENJOY it, more that I think you'd find it worthwhile.)

 

What I'm coming around to is, the business of individual explicit intent at all of these levels seems to me not to be the policy point... whether or not each and every human being at all those levels experiences and expresses conscious racial animus -- I'm sure most DON'T look into the mirror while shaving and consciously say, yeah, I'm going to go out today and disproportionately arrest black people! -- we nonetheless have an aggregate structural problem.

 

And while a few of the structural mechanics that Alexander's work points to are easily visible -- how mandatory sentencing has shifted power away from judges and toward prosecutors (which has tradeoffs, discretionary power can be abused by anyone... but non-mandatory sentences can be appealed, so at least in theory there's a second shot); the gutting of VRA; how SCOTUS' recent decisions not to accept preponderance-of-the-evidence statistical demonstrations of bias as in civil discrimination in employment suits for issues like discretionary stops but rather to insist on evidence of individual animus.... many are harder for me, at least, to tease out.  

 

Read it, and then come back help me figure out what next...   :001_huh:

 

Yes, what makes a good legal question to SCOTUS is often not the main objection of people on the ground.  To put it another way:  You pick the test case which most closely pushes a constitutional issue likely to interest the court.  And cross your fingers.  You might have an issue with stacks of data to suggest it is racially biased, but still might pick a case with a white defendant to push through because the legal questions are more clear cut.

 

And yes, agreeing 100% I should read the book.  I thumbed through it at a bookstore, then put it back because I was familiar already with most of the research strands.  But I regret that now because familiarity with research strands is not the same thing as understanding the author's complete argument. 

 

I am still pondering whether intent matters or not.  Because will we have the political will to change without people acknowledging some level of personal responsibility?  IDK. 

 

I do think that a big problem we have in our country is that we are still...segregated.  There are communities where it would be rare to encounter a person who did not have a relative or close friend incarcerated, and then other communities where it is rare for people to have ever known someone in jail.  Which means when it comes to political decisions, the two communities might as well be on two different planets.  No, that's not the right language.  Because community #1, by definition, will have fewer inhabitants with voting rights and fewer options for legal representation.

 

Nobody forces us to live these segregated lives.  There are ways we can voluntarily associate across color and class lines if it matters to us. 

 

I once asked the watch commander at a local jail if she would permit someone to come in and do read alouds.  She was intrigued but I had exactly zero follow through.  Which goes to show the kicker in all this is for me is that I have a busy, crazy life and need my margins too.

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2016 by shage

[Nan in Mass]

PS to Nan: On a Light Side note, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed that sentencing juveniles to lifetime imprisonment without any possibility of parole constitutes cruel&unusual, and (today's decision) that this decision is retroactive, meaning that people who were imprisoned as juveniles now may apply for parole.

 

The test case has spent 46 years in prison for a crime committed at age 17, without possibility of parole. Alexander's book scrupulously documents how such sentences are, at every level of the process, disproportionately meted out on racially biased terms.

Thank God

 

The most upsetting thing to me about the hunt for the remaining brother in marathon bombing was his age, which was about the age of my youngest. I know some people are warped in such a way that they are a danger to society when they are young and that age and guidance alone are probably not going to change that, but I also think there are people who go down a wrong path and wind up in a dangerous place, who lack the imagination and experience and knowledge to look at a path and say no way am I going there, and the young are especially vulnerable. I can,t judge the right or wrong of that particular case, but there seemed to be such a lack of... I don,t know... humility? A lack of there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-(or-luck)-go-I-ness...

 

Nan

[shage]

Yep, Pam, you explained this well, and I just got to this section of the book today after we were posting earlier.  I totally get your point, and further, the fact that the Court won't even allow challenges under the 14th amendment unless you can show explicit and blatant racial discrimination that is intentional creates a situation where challenge is impossible - unless you can prove that a police officer or a prosecutor intentionally woke up in the morning, and decided over their cup of coffee, "I'm going to arrest/prosecute some black people today!" you can't even challenge on the grounds of racial discrimination, even when it is clear that racial disparities exist.  And of course, that is an impossible burden.

 

When I was thinking about the question of intent before, I was thinking about the intent of the people - politicians and otherwise - who created, started, and funded the drug war which has led to the system of mass incarceration. Not the intent of the people who are currently part of the system of mass incarceration, but the people who started the ball rolling.  What I have yet to see is evidence of exactly who these people are, and if they created this system to intentionally perpetuate the racial caste system that existed under slavery & Jim Crow.  Alexander is clearly claiming that this is the case, but I haven't seen the direct line of evidence yet.  Maybe it comes later in the book.  It's the part I'm most dreading, I guess. It's easy to see how shit happens, and hard to think that the shit was intentionally created.  

I'm trying to be uber-fair and open minded here, given my political leanings it would be really easy to look at the timing and the quotes by Nixon and Reagan and decide it's a vast right-wing conspiracy.   ;)  I'm really trying to not jump there, but to examine the evidence and see where it leads.  And even if it leads from point A to point B, to try and understand why.  Who benefits? What is the goal driving the process? (Accepting intentionality requires that there be a goal, right?)

 

I do think there is a vast profit-making conspiracy.

 

Quick.  Pass me a tin foil hat.

[Chrysalis Academy]

I finished listening to Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe.  This is one of my HotRW read-alongs.  I've read quite a lot of English history, but not so much of other European countries, so I was wanting to fill in some of the gaps, and this book served that purpose well - the Provencal sisters were queens of England, France, Germany and Italy during the 1200s.  The lives of these four sisters created a nice thread that tied together the countries they ruled, the men they married, their children, and the events of their lifetimes.  It is an interesting time period that I'm getting well immersed in this month.

 

And did anybody notice that it has a number in the title?  ;)  :D

 

Next up for audio books I was planning on The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England.  Eliana, you marked this as abandoned in Goodreads - is it not worth the time? Do you have any alternative suggestions?

Edited January 26, 2016 by Chrysalis Academy

[Nan in Mass]

re but... but... how could you not already know that??!

 

:lol: You're the best, Nan.

 

I'm sure I grew up with different specific stories, but I expect the overall gestalt of mine was largely similar; and I'm quite certain that the, uh, intermittent attention that I paid was, also, uh, largely similar.

 

I suspect that part of our delightful syncopation is that I tend to think a bit more in terms of abstract systems (like the judiciary & legislative processes), whereas you seem to me to process in more grass roots, personal terms?

 

In one of our back-and-forths over the last few weeks, I mentioned that I'm very interested in the mechanics of how the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, even if it does take a longer interval than we'd like... what are the change agents that cause that bend...

 

... and the big picture narrative that I constructed, as a youngster, out of the personal stories that I heard and the (perhaps too lionizing -- my parents were Very Big Fans) attribution to MLK's personal role and the shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity of fellow travelers like Rabbi Abraham Heschel and so on, when viewed through both my aforementioned intermittent attention and also my big-picture systems bias, was a narrative in which individual leaders played a key role in mobilizing public sympathy (which was crucial to the passage of legislation like the VRA) but in which civil systems, particularly the judiciary, were crucial in effecting change in specific areas (voter registration, public accommodations) well in advance of public opinion. In my personal narrative of understanding, the courts served as crucial "mechanism" pulling that arc-of-the-universe towards justice.

 

So Michelle Alexander's scrupulously researched and documented indictment of the judiciary over the last 20 years, detailing its centrality in ratifying and strengthening racially unequal treatment at virtually every stage of the process, was... well, yes, surprising to me, but also felt like a betrayal. An agent that is supposed to be For Good is acting to support and validate injustice. Like Percy Weasley going over to the Dark Side or something. (I don't mean to be flip, just bringing it back around to books...)

 

I understand what you mean now about the court system and why you feel it is such a betrayal. I think you are quite right about it being the ultimate in the system. I,m just not surprised at the way the injustices build upon each other and grow on the way up through or that people are capable of making decisions that lead to this. This is where I want to say something about it not being a surprise about generally well-meaning people, as well as the few who don,t mean well, doing lots of things that are bad, but I can,t formulate it.

 

Hugs

Nan

Edited January 27, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[Nan in Mass]

Refrain inside my head: "Just keep Walking" said in the Ellen Degeneres/Dory voice from Finding Nemo :lol:

Lol lol This puts a whole new spin on "Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Gai Kyo" lol

 

Nan

[-M-]

Oh, my goodness! I haven't been here since my wrap-up post in late December. Well, happy and healthy new year, BaWers!

 

â–  The Heir Apparent (David Ives; 2011. Drama.)
Although I enjoyed The School for Lies, Ives' adaptation of Molière's The Misanthrope, his take on Jean-François Regnard's Le Légataire universel left me cold. The Heir Apparent, part of the 2015-16 season at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is, as Chris Jones reminds readers, a farce. That it's a farce that should end in half as much time, however, and with far less potty humor was painfully evident in text; it was particularly harrowing in person (as I mentioned here). I actually considered leaving at intermission, in fact. Only the cast's brilliance prevented me from doing so.

 

â–  Neighbors (Jan T. Gross; 2001. Non-fiction.)
â–  Our Class (Tadeusz SÅ‚obodzianek (adaptation by Ryan Craig); 2009. Drama.)
Earlier this month, I visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. I pulled Neighbors from my shelves that evening, and Gross' exploration of the senseless horror that occurred in the Polish village of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941, prompted me to read the play inspired by the National Book Award Finalist. Where Neighbors is brisk, relentless, insightful, and disturbing, however, Our Class, which is enslaved by its framing device, fails the material. In fact, had I not read Neighbors, I would have had no real context for events in the play, which culminate in the murder of 1,600 Jews by their friends, schoolmates, and neighbors.

 

â–  Scored (Lauren McLaughlin; 2011. Fiction.)
A friend mentioned Sesame Credit in our correspondence earlier this month, asking if it didn't remind me of a YA novel. At the time, I could not locate a conventional news source's report on China's "social credit" program, although numerous alarmist links were readily available. I have since read the CNN op-ed "The risks -- and benefits -- of letting algorithms judge us," however, and I think she may have been thinking of David Eggers' The Circle, which is not YA. That said, my search for a related YA title eventually led to Scored, a book that, while competent in its way, yielded few surprises. I did like this, though:

 

Imani knew that her parents would not have understood. Their grasp of the world was based on an obsolete value system that was probably the root of Imani's problems. Who else had gifted her with the dusty antique of loyalty, that "disempowering bond"?

 

â–  Ready Player One (Ernest Kline; 2011. Fiction.)
In which eighties references and geekery abound!

 

â–  Arcadia (Tom Stoppard; 1993. Drama.)
In an odd scheduling juxtaposition, I saw Marjorie Prime at the Writers Theatre about an hour after leaving the Illinois Holocaust Museum; hence, emotionally speaking, I received a gut-punch followed by a blow to the jaw. Kate Fry and Mary Ann Thebus, who will almost certainly be nominated Jeff Awards, reduced me to tears with their performances in this thought-provoking and timely play, which runs through March 13. Marjorie Prime may well be the last Writers Theatre production in its Books on Vernon location: The new theater space opens in March with Stoppard's Arcadia. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of my favorite works of literature, but I have read no other Stoppard. How delighted I am to have "found" Arcadia. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

 

By the way, articles in the playbill for Marjorie Prime are responsible for Brian Christian's The Most Human Human and Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence moving from my shelves to my nightstand. Other notable titles in my TBR stack include Bertolt Brecht's The Life of Galileo, the Remy Bumppo production of which will also open in March; Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air; and the third volumes of two graphic series, The Bunker and Letter 44.

[shage]

...And solitary confinement for juveniles in the federal system has been ended by executive order.

 

Booyah.

[Pam in CT]

re intent of voter & legislative cohorts in framing legislative framework, vs intent of specific individuals involved in specific interactions:

Yep, Pam, you explained this well, and I just got to this section of the book today after we were posting earlier.  I totally get your point, and further, the fact that the Court won't even allow challenges under the 14th amendment unless you can show explicit and blatant racial discrimination that is intentional creates a situation where challenge is impossible - unless you can prove that a police officer or a prosecutor intentionally woke up in the morning, and decided over their cup of coffee, "I'm going to arrest/prosecute some black people today!" you can't even challenge on the grounds of racial discrimination, even when it is clear that racial disparities exist.  And of course, that is an impossible burden.

 

When I was thinking about the question of intent before, I was thinking about the intent of the people - politicians and otherwise - who created, started, and funded the drug war which has led to the system of mass incarceration. Not the intent of the people who are currently part of the system of mass incarceration, but the people who started the ball rolling.  What I have yet to see is evidence of exactly who these people are, and if they created this system to intentionally perpetuate the racial caste system that existed under slavery & Jim Crow.  Alexander is clearly claiming that this is the case, but I haven't seen the direct line of evidence yet.  Maybe it comes later in the book.  

 

_________

 

 

It's the part I'm most dreading, I guess. It's easy to see how shit happens, and hard to think that the shit was intentionally created.  

I'm trying to be uber-fair and open minded here, given my political leanings it would be really easy to look at the timing and the quotes by Nixon and Reagan and decide it's a vast right-wing conspiracy.   ;)  I'm really trying to not jump there, but to examine the evidence and see where it leads.  

 

_________

 

And even if it leads from point A to point B, to try and understand why.  Who benefits? What is the goal driving the process? (Accepting intentionality requires that there be a goal, right?)

You're making a distinction between the bit-by-bit construction of the various, largely piecemeal legislation underpinning the mass incarceration system, vs. the day-to-day lives of the individuals who make their livings within it, that I haven't really thought of... I need to give this a good deal more thought.

 

_______

 

I don't generally believe in explicit conspiracies, but that's only because, first, they require too many people to be too honest with themselves about their nefarious intentions; and thereafter that, second, they require too many people to keep secrets.  

 

Less explicit, less organized, de facto structures, that enable people to continue to feel comfortable about their own righteousness, generally seem more plausible to me.

 

________

 

And your question of "who benefits" provides a path to understanding what less organized, de facto dynamics -- that do not require explicit individual animus -- might look like.

 

My most common follow-up marginalia throughout the second half of Alexander's book was Follow the Money.  The DOJ's Ferguson report laid out a pretty compelling case that the root cause for much of the difficulties began when financial pressures resulted in LEO having in substance to go out and issue tickets so as to cover their own salaries.  (I oversimplify, but really, not by much.)  What could possibly go wrong?  Since then I've been sort of collecting stories that I can't figure out what to do with -- people charged with civil offenses like parking tickets are being sent to jail when they are unable to pay?  Charged a per diem rate for time in jail?  Charged per diem for probation thereafter?

 

Who knew?  Well, shage did...

 

I do think there is a vast profit-making conspiracy.

 

Quick.  Pass me a tin foil hat.

But me, honestly, I feel like Rip Van Winkle arising out of a 20 year slumber.

 

The thing about cost-cutting imperatives on the state and local government levels, and about profit-making on the private sector side, is that you don't even need a tin foil hat.   There doesn't have to be a "conspiracy," just ordinary people responding predictably in ordinary ways to the rational incentives that face them.  Fiscal pressure on LEO and municipal agencies will drive pressure to issue tickets and fines.  As prisons and probation monitoring "services" are privatized, a new set of extra-legislative stakeholders looking, quite rationally, to increase profits.  

 

 

 

re political will to effect change, in the absence of acknowledgment of intent

Yes, what makes a good legal question to SCOTUS is often not the main objection of people on the ground.  To put it another way:  You pick the test case which most closely pushes a constitutional issue likely to interest the court.  And cross your fingers.  You might have an issue with stacks of data to suggest it is racially biased, but still might pick a case with a white defendant to push through because the legal questions are more clear cut.

 

And yes, agreeing 100% I should read the book.  I thumbed through it at a bookstore, then put it back because I was familiar already with most of the research strands.  But I regret that now because familiarity with research strands is not the same thing as understanding the author's complete argument. 

 

I am still pondering whether intent matters or not.  Because will we have the political will to change without people acknowledging some level of personal responsibility?  IDK. 

 

______

 

 

I do think that a big problem we have in our country is that we are still...segregated.  There are communities where it would be rare to encounter a person who did not have a relative or close friend incarcerated, and then other communities where it is rare for people to have ever known someone in jail.  Which means when it comes to political decisions, the two communities might as well be on two different planets.  No, that's not the right language.  Because community #1, by definition, will have fewer inhabitants with voting rights and fewer options for legal representation.

 

Nobody forces us to live these segregated lives.  There are ways we can voluntarily associate across color and class lines if it matters to us. 

 

I once asked the watch commander at a local jail if she would permit someone to come in and do read alouds.  She was intrigued but I had exactly zero follow through.  Which goes to show the kicker in all this is for me is that I have a busy, crazy life and need my margins too.

 

Garnering political will for any kind of change is tough, and tougher I think for War on Drugs/mass incarceration because even aside from unacknowledged racism, the cohort "convicted felons" doesn't, at face value, "sound" especially sympathetic.  

 

I was interested to note that those Hammond ranchers in Oregon got caught up in the same federal mandatory sentence/ineligible for appeal on the merits dynamic that Alexander documents as so common in War on Drug plea bargains.  That aspect of that circus seems to have faded, however.

 

_______

 

Re two planets, Separate Not Equal - yes.

[Stacia]

I am still working on NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names. For all the plaudits this book has received, I'm feeling somewhat 'meh' about it. It's easy enough to read (told from the viewpoint of a 10yo narrator, so it's childish reading in a way) & there have been a couple of great pieces in it. Otoh, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's just not totally meshing for me. I put it down a couple of days ago & haven't picked it back up, partly because it leans toward covering depressing territory (& I'm just not in the mood for that these days). But, I will most likely finish it sometime this week because my book club is reading it.

 

My ds finished The Boys in the Boat today & really enjoyed it. He'll probably start Gnarr! next.

 

If any of you are Sarah Maas fans (Throne of Glass fantasy series), my dd read a recent book by her (start of a new series by Maas) & enjoyed it too: A Court of Thorns and Roses. (Looks like it's $7.49 on kindle right now, which is probably not bad since it is normally $12.99 on kindle.)

 

 

 

2016 Books Read:

 

Europe:

• Gnarr! How I Became Mayor of a Large City in Iceland and Changed the World by Jón Gnarr, trans. by Andrew Brown, pub. by Melville House. 3 stars. Europe: Iceland. (A quick, easy, fun, & inspiring read with an emphasis on being nice & promoting peace. Just what I needed this week.)

 

Latin America:

• The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, trans. from the Spanish by Anne McLean, pub. by Riverhead Books. 4 stars. Columbia. (Brilliant & bittersweet story showing the impact of the rise of the Colombian drug cartels on an entire generation of people growing up during the violent & uncertain times of the drug wars.)
   

Edited January 26, 2016 by Stacia

[Lady Florida.]

Well I'm behind (not that I'm strict about a schedule) because I wasted time on two books I decided to ditch.

 

Deja Dead - I knew this Temperence Brennan wouldn't be like the tv character Bones, and that didn't bother me. However, I found myself not liking the story anyway. The descriptions were too graphic (that was my problem with the first chapter and I should have listened to my instinct and dropped it then), the writing bothers me, plus I appreciate her desire to be scientifically factual but she goes overboard. I know this was her first novel, and maybe someday I'll try another one, but for now I'm dropping it. I made it about 1/3 of the way through before admitting it was a chore. I don't mind books that are a chore if they're classics or I'm trying to learn something, but I don't want to feel like my fluff reads are a slog.

 

The Story of a New Name - I really enjoyed the first book, My Brilliant Friend, and liked this one at first too. After a while I had to admit I don't like any of the characters and I don't care what happens to them. I made it farther in this one - a little over halfway. 

 

So, I lost some time when I could have been reading something I was really enjoying but oh well. 

 

Still reading (and would have been farther along if not for my two abandoned books above):

 

Swann's Way - It keeps getting easier. It's quite an interesting experience. There are times I find the prose beautiful and times I find the long sentences and the meandering painful. Sometimes it's like the older relative who starts telling you about something, veers off to give you the life story of people you never met and never will, then eventually comes back to the original topic, which you've forgotten by then.  :lol:  There are also things that make me chuckle and things that make me nod my head in understanding. It's definitely not an easy read but I can't bring myself to give up. There is something worthy that keeps me reading.

 

A Suitable Boy - Still enjoying it and glad for the short chapters.

 

The Age of Reason - It's somewhat more boring than I remember. I loved this in high school, but maybe it it isn't one of those books that's enjoyable as a reread. 

 

Just added for my fluff book -

 

The September Society - Charles Lenox mystery #2

[Kareni]

I just finished an anthology that I've been slowly reading over the last couple of weeks ~ Charmed and Dangerous: Ten Tales of Gay Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy.  The contributors are Rhys Ford, Ginn Hale, KJ Charles, Nicole Kimberling, Jordan Castillo Price, Jordan L Hawk, Charlie Cochet, Lou Harper, Andrea Speed, and Astrid Amara.  As with most anthologies, there were some stories I liked more and some I liked less.  Overall though, it was a pleasant read.  (Adult content.)

 

You can find details about each story here.

 

Regards,

Kareni

 

 

[shage]

 

 

 

Garnering political will for any kind of change is tough, and tougher I think for War on Drugs/mass incarceration because even aside from unacknowledged racism, the cohort "convicted felons" doesn't, at face value, "sound" especially sympathetic.  

 

I was interested to note that those Hammond ranchers in Oregon got caught up in the same federal mandatory sentence/ineligible for appeal on the merits dynamic that Alexander documents as so common in War on Drug plea bargains.  That aspect of that circus seems to have faded, however.

 

_______

 

Re two planets, Separate Not Equal - yes.

 

I agree that the Hammond ranchers---not the armed occupiers--were caught up in the mandatory minimum black hole and it was very unfortunate. 

 

The other area of federal cases where this is happening is with child porn offenses.  Few people talk about this publically because it is an uncomfortable, even grotesque topic.  But the reality is, mandatory minimums in child porn world are significantly more draconian than many state laws for hands on child sexual offending.  It is very odd--a hands on child offender at high risk for reoffending likely will serve less in state custody than someone who has downloaded child porn.  Not filmed and distributed, but viewed.  These are mostly white men, btw, and  many well educated and with high incomes. 

 

I am no attorney either but it begs the question as to the value of the federal mandatory minimum system; specifically, the arbitrariness of it all and why incarceration is the de facto response.

 

There is significant intersection between mass incarceration and mental illness, and addiction in particular.  That's a whole other can of worms.  Limited mental health options dramatically impact daily operations in most of our jails. 

 

 

[mumto2]

I finished Wendy Jones' Wilford Price book last nighthttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114398-the-thoughts-and-happenings-of-wilfred-price-purveyor-of-superior-funer?ref=ru_lihp_up_rs_0_mclk-up2863763574and have to admit I found it pretty upsetting. It just was not the book for me at this time, I think. If you are planning to read the book which others here liked you should stop reading now!

 

I am so upset by the Grace portion of the storyline. I doubt that her real fate would have been anywhere near as kind as it was painted in the book, she most likely would have been institutionalized. I know her father was in a position to prevent it but..... Too many historical lectures for me with a woman's group I belong to. Woman were frequently institutionalized for life in her circumstances, frequently with the child. That did not change until the 70's.

 

I disliked Wilford greatly, pretty much all the way through, spineless wimp. I am not saying he shouldn't have followed his heart just that he needed to do it sooner.

 

I think my feelings come more out of the fact that I know the funeral practices part culturally so that wasn't so interesting. I think if I had found that portion interesting I wouldn't have looked at the book as a whole so harshly, instead I just found his funerals lacking too! Descriptions of things like semi professional pallbearers are the norm here but amazed me years ago would have distracted me. They have a military precision that I had never seen in a none miltary funeral before moving here. Very dignified and quite moving. They always come with the funeral director, part of the package you might say. He messed up some proper customs that wouldn't happen normally....wet earth at the graveside for the family, no kept dry in the box. The box is done in a ceremonial manor always. It has rained buckets at many of the funerals I have attended but people don't get muddy sprinkling dirt in the grave. His lack of respect bothered me greatly. I can't believe I am critiquing his funerals! Btw, some of the practices are obviously gone from custom. Did not like Wilfred at all and don't care that he was generous financially.

 

Last night I gave it a 3* in a fit of kindness but may downgrade it upon reflection. I also discovered that there is a second book in the series. I thought about reading it to learn about Grace's fate but no library has it, probably fortunately! Sorry for the vent but this one frustrated me.

[Melinda in VT]

I finished listening to Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe. This is one of my HotRW read-alongs. I've read quite a lot of English history, but not so much of other European countries, so I was wanting to fill in some of the gaps, and this book served that purpose well - the Provencal sisters were queens of England, France, Germany and Italy during the 1200s. The lives of these four sisters created a nice thread that tied together the countries they ruled, the men they married, their children, and the events of their lifetimes. It is an interesting time period that I'm getting well immersed in this month.

 

And did anybody notice that it has a number in the title? ;) :D

 

Next up for audio books I was planning on The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England. Eliana, you marked this as abandoned in Goodreads - is it not worth the time? Do you have any alternative suggestions?

I read Four Queens several years ago, as part of my trip-themed reading for a trip to Provence. I enjoyed it, and learned a lot.

[Onceuponatime]

Well, I've just finished Cold Comfort Farm. It left some unanswered questions, but apparently they didn't matter to the story. I nearly busted a gut laughing when old Aunt Ada Doom's perpetual moans about seeing "something nasty in the woodshed" long ago got an unexpected comeback of "Did it see you?" There was a satisfying, tidy ending.

 

Next up, Out of Africa by Isak Dineson for my IRL book club.

[Jane in NC]

Well, I've just finished Cold Comfort Farm. It left some unanswered questions, but apparently they didn't matter to the story. I nearly busted a gut laughing when old Aunt Ada Doom's perpetual moans about seeing "something nasty in the woodshed" long ago got an unexpected comeback of "Did it see you?" There was a satisfying, tidy ending.

 

Next up, Out of Africa by Isak Dineson for my IRL book club.

 

Didn't Robin have Out of Africa listed as a February read?  Perhaps you could lead the discussion or at least share some of your book club's insights.

 

[Nan in Mass]

Yep, Pam, you explained this well, and I just got to this section of the book today after we were posting earlier. I totally get your point, and further, the fact that the Court won't even allow challenges under the 14th amendment unless you can show explicit and blatant racial discrimination that is intentional creates a situation where challenge is impossible - unless you can prove that a police officer or a prosecutor intentionally woke up in the morning, and decided over their cup of coffee, "I'm going to arrest/prosecute some black people today!" you can't even challenge on the grounds of racial discrimination, even when it is clear that racial disparities exist. And of course, that is an impossible burden.

 

When I was thinking about the question of intent before, I was thinking about the intent of the people - politicians and otherwise - who created, started, and funded the drug war which has led to the system of mass incarceration. Not the intent of the people who are currently part of the system of mass incarceration, but the people who started the ball rolling. What I have yet to see is evidence of exactly who these people are, and if they created this system to intentionally perpetuate the racial caste system that existed under slavery & Jim Crow. Alexander is clearly claiming that this is the case, but I haven't seen the direct line of evidence yet. Maybe it comes later in the book. It's the part I'm most dreading, I guess. It's easy to see how shit happens, and hard to think that the shit was intentionally created.

I'm trying to be uber-fair and open minded here, given my political leanings it would be really easy to look at the timing and the quotes by Nixon and Reagan and decide it's a vast right-wing conspiracy. ;) I'm really trying to not jump there, but to examine the evidence and see where it leads. And even if it leads from point A to point B, to try and understand why. Who benefits? What is the goal driving the process? (Accepting intentionality requires that there be a goal, right?)

Is it being intentionally prejudiced if someone feels forced to choose between two bad scenarios? If someone feels forced to throw some party under the bus and has to choose which between a smaller number of "minorities" and a larger number of "majorities"? I don,t know the answer, just thinking about how many small bads could link and multiply unintentionally. (I already know how they could intentionally.)

 

Nan

 

As someone who has watched kids play those system-altering games, the ones with all the little models and shelves of rules and the online ones where a few friends try to win against some insomniac strangers in Europe, I find it all too easy to imagine how a group of like-minded people might think about how to tamper with a system quietly to achieve their goals. Teenager glee in a plot in deeper, older politician voices. But as someone who was trained as a software engineer, I also can imagine how a series of bad choices (a few intentionally prejudiced and many unintentional but un knowledgable or unthoughtful or unconciously prejudiced) could result in a catastrophy.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[Onceuponatime]

Didn't Robin have Out of Africa listed as a February read? Perhaps you could lead the discussion or at least share some of your book club's insights.

 

Somehow I missed that. What a coincidence. I also just happened to find an old hardback copy of the book in a thrift store, back in November. Are there any guidelines for the discussions? I'll have to take better notes.

[Bluegoat]

 

 

 

 

 

I've been going slow on Newman myself, for the same reason of temporary single-parenting, but will now accelerate a bit. Interested in your thoughts on Newman's critique of Christianity in an era when obvious devotion and churchgoing was expected as a default for the middle and upper classes.

 

Re: The New Domesticity: last year (or was it the year before?) I read Theory of the Leisure Class; and I think Veblen would have had a very different take on it.

 

So far I've only read the first sermon - and enjoyed it, it was very readable.  One of the nice things I think about sermons is that they are generally of a length that you can read in a short amount of time, and then think about going about other things.

 

I felt in the first sermon "Holiness is Necessary for Future Blessedness" that he was assuming that his listeners were generally sincere, but not necessarily in the same way one might assume in a congregation made up of converts.  Even now though when people generally attend because they have made a choice to do so, I felt that the kinds of inattention he was talking about are quite common. I think perhaps in part because we have a very strog tendency to accept the status quo as normal and to be expected, rather than some sort of real evil intent?

 

From my own personal perspective, I felt very much that it spoke to my general tendency to procrastinate - "I won't deal with this now when I am busy/tired/whatever, but later today, or tomorrow, would be much better time to get started" which of course can go on endlessly. 

 

I did though very much appreciate that he talked about this idea clearly as a logical necessity, not some tit for tat or extrinsic requirement.  I don't feel that I have a good sense of how familiar with that idea his congregation would have been, but it is certainly very common today for people to think in those ways about the nature of holiness.

 

I'd be interested to hear what you think based on Theory of the Leisure Class, which I'm going to talk about in a separate post.

[Nan in Mass]

I am copying and pasting Pam,s post rather than quoting so that Shage,s is included. My text editing capabilities are limited so I am putting stars around the bits that I have been trying to say since the beginning of our syncopation but wasn,t eloquent enough to express.

::::::::::::::::::::::

Posted Yesterday, 10:42 PM by Pam

re intent of voter & legislative cohorts in framing legislative framework, vs intent of specific individuals involved in specific interactions:

Chrysalis Academy, on 25 Jan 2016 - 7:05 PM, said:

Yep, Pam, you explained this well, and I just got to this section of the book today after we were posting earlier. I totally get your point, and further, the fact that the Court won't even allow challenges under the 14th amendment unless you can show explicit and blatant racial discrimination that is intentional creates a situation where challenge is impossible - unless you can prove that a police officer or a prosecutor intentionally woke up in the morning, and decided over their cup of coffee, "I'm going to arrest/prosecute some black people today!" you can't even challenge on the grounds of racial discrimination, even when it is clear that racial disparities exist. And of course, that is an impossible burden.

 

When I was thinking about the question of intent before, I was thinking about the intent of the people - politicians and otherwise - who created, started, and funded the drug war which has led to the system of mass incarceration. Not the intent of the people who are currently part of the system of mass incarceration, but the people who started the ball rolling. What I have yet to see is evidence of exactly who these people are, and if they created this system to intentionally perpetuate the racial caste system that existed under slavery & Jim Crow. Alexander is clearly claiming that this is the case, but I haven't seen the direct line of evidence yet. Maybe it comes later in the book.

 

_________

 

 

It's the part I'm most dreading, I guess. It's easy to see how shit happens, and hard to think that the shit was intentionally created.

I'm trying to be uber-fair and open minded here, given my political leanings it would be really easy to look at the timing and the quotes by Nixon and Reagan and decide it's a vast right-wing conspiracy. I'm really trying to not jump there, but to examine the evidence and see where it leads.

 

_________

 

And even if it leads from point A to point B, to try and understand why. Who benefits? What is the goal driving the process? (Accepting intentionality requires that there be a goal, right?)

***You're making a distinction between the bit-by-bit construction of the various, largely piecemeal legislation underpinning the mass incarceration system, vs. the day-to-day lives of the individuals who make their livings within it, that I haven't really thought of... I need to give this a good deal more thought.*** (Nan says this is what I was trying to say at the beginning of this syncopation, the part about people being people, that bit that went so drastically wrong lol.)

 

_______

 

***I don't generally believe in explicit conspiracies, but that's only because, first, they require too many people to be too honest with themselves about their nefarious intentions; and thereafter that, second, they require too many people to keep secrets.

 

Less explicit, less organized, de facto structures, that enable people to continue to feel comfortable about their own righteousness, generally seem more plausible to me.

 

________

 

And your question of "who benefits" provides a path to understanding what less organized, de facto dynamics -- that do not require explicit individual animus -- might look like.*** (Nan says Yup Yup Yup.)

 

My most common follow-up marginalia throughout the second half of Alexander's book was *** Follow the Money*** (Nan says And the wish for power, especially to protect a way of life and maybe pass it along to your children? Not that they aren,t often the same thing...). The DOJ's Ferguson report laid out a pretty compelling case that the root cause for much of the difficulties began when ***financial pressures resulted in LEO having in substance to go out and issue tickets so as to cover their own salaries*** (Nan says this is a really familiar problem in my almost all caucasian town - more later). (I oversimplify, but really, not by much.) ***What could possibly go wrong?*** (Nan says What indeed haha) ***Since then I've been sort of collecting stories that I can't figure out what to do with*** (Nan says she had to get a bigger drum bag to carry hers and she drops them on the doorsteps of the silent, empty McMansions as she walks by) -- people charged with civil offenses like parking tickets are being sent to jail when they are unable to pay? Charged a per diem rate for time in jail? Charged per diem for probation thereafter?

 

Who knew? Well, shage did...

 

 

shage, on 25 Jan 2016 - 7:14 PM, said:

I do think there is a vast profit-making conspiracy.

 

Quick. Pass me a tin foil hat.

But me, honestly, I feel like Rip Van Winkle arising out of a 20 year slumber.

 

The thing about cost-cutting imperatives on the state and local government levels, and about profit-making on the private sector side, is that you don't even need a tin foil hat. ***There doesn't have to be a "conspiracy," just ordinary people responding predictably in ordinary ways to the rational incentives that face them. *** (nan said, totally inadequately, people are people) Fiscal pressure on LEO and municipal agencies will drive pressure to issue tickets and fines. As prisons and probation monitoring "services" are privatized, a new set of extra-legislative stakeholders looking, quite rationally, to increase profits. (Nan says she can think up other reasons why it isn,t just money. Fear being an especially common one. Lack of energy being another one.)

 

 

 

re political will to effect change, in the absence of acknowledgment of intent

shage, on 25 Jan 2016 - 7:07 PM, said:

Yes, what makes a good legal question to SCOTUS is often not the main objection of people on the ground. To put it another way: You pick the test case which most closely pushes a constitutional issue likely to interest the court. And cross your fingers. You might have an issue with stacks of data to suggest it is racially biased, but still might pick a case with a white defendant to push through because the legal questions are more clear cut.

 

And yes, agreeing 100% I should read the book. I thumbed through it at a bookstore, then put it back because I was familiar already with most of the research strands. But I regret that now because familiarity with research strands is not the same thing as understanding the author's complete argument.

 

***I am still pondering whether intent matters or not. *** (Nan says I wonder also and that this is why, before Pam bribed me with tea, I was thinking it didn,t much matter whether I, personally, read the book or not. I am glad the book exists because if a system is being tampered with, one better understand it thoroughly, something previous tamperers didn,t, I think. I think reparation is important to the activists who are working hard to change things and knowing exactly what to apologize for is part of making that happen. I know that this is a complicated system and I am choosing not to put my time into figuring it out because I am not going to be in a position to lead system changes. I am working smaller. That bit was just to try to redeem myself in the eyes of those I respect here grin. It doesn,t matter, really. Nan stops saying.) Because will we have the political will to change without people acknowledging some level of personal responsibility? IDK.

 

______

 

 

***I do think that a big problem we have in our country is that we are still...segregated. There are communities where it would be rare to encounter a person who did not have a relative or close friend incarcerated, and then other communities where it is rare for people to have ever known someone in jail. Which means when it comes to political decisions, the two communities might as well be on two different planets. No, that's not the right language. Because community #1, by definition, will have fewer inhabitants with voting rights and fewer options for legal representation.***

 

(Nan says This made me cry. More at the bottom.)

 

Nobody forces us to live these segregated lives. There are ways we can voluntarily associate across color and class lines if it matters to us.

 

I once asked the watch commander at a local jail if she would permit someone to come in and do read alouds. She was intrigued but I had exactly zero follow through. Which goes to show the kicker in all this is for me is that I have a busy, crazy life and need my margins too.

 

Garnering political will for any kind of change is tough, and tougher I think for War on Drugs/mass incarceration because even aside from unacknowledged racism, the cohort "convicted felons" doesn't, at face value, "sound" especially sympathetic.

 

I was interested to note that those Hammond ranchers in Oregon got caught up in the same federal mandatory sentence/ineligible for appeal on the merits dynamic that Alexander documents as so common in War on Drug plea bargains. That aspect of that circus seems to have faded, however.

 

_______

 

Re two planets, Separate Not Equal - yes.

 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Nan again: This plays out across rich/poor lines as well, with immigrants and the mentally ill being particularly vulnerable.

 

Nan

Edited January 27, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[shage]

Is it being intentionally prejudiced if someone feels forced to choose between two bad scenarios? If someone feels forced to throw some party under the bus and has to choose which between a smaller number of "minorities" and a larger number of "majorities"? I don,t know the answer, just thinking about how many small bads could link and multiply unintentionally. (I already know how they could intentionally.)

 

Nan

 

As someone who has watched kids play those system-altering games, the ones with all the little models and shelves of rules and the online ones where a few friends try to win against some insomniac strangers in Europe, I find it all too easy to imagine how a group of like-minded people might think about how to tamper with a system quietly to achieve their goals. Teenager glee in a plot in deeper, older politician voices. But as someone who was trained as a software engineer, I also can imagine how a series of bad choices (a few intentionally prejudiced and many unintentional but un knowledgable or unthoughtful or unconciously prejudiced) could result in a catastrophy.

 

I think the bolded is a good summary.

 

I called the profit motive a "conspiracy," but really, a similar profit motive exists at other intersections of government.  Years ago I was deeply involved in small Midwestern town school board politics, and it was astonishing to me the amount of profit built into the contracts for construction, HVAC, food, etc.  There was much money to be made in public education, just not by the teachers.  It was the businesses who would quietly bid and/or negotiate for various services, sometimes at steeply inflated prices buried deep in the public records and likely to pass unseen (or underreported). Jails and prisons have less transparency built  into the system, so the potential for abuse is greater.

 

The mandatory minimum fiascos are no great mystery either since it comes down to Congress and we have history of "soft on crime" negative campaign rhetoric and advertisements being enormously effective in tanking political campaigns.  For decades is was a "no brainer" to always vote in favor of raising mandatory minimums because anything less opens the politician to uncomfortable allegations in a campaign.  Even now that the pendulum has swung the other way in favor of reform, I suspect it will be temporary because sooner or later another Willie Horton type ad will prove pivotal.  Then we are back to fear based voting.

[Bluegoat]

I agree that the Hammond ranchers---not the armed occupiers--were caught up in the mandatory minimum black hole and it was very unfortunate. 

 

The other area of federal cases where this is happening is with child porn offenses.  Few people talk about this publically because it is an uncomfortable, even grotesque topic.  But the reality is, mandatory minimums in child porn world are significantly more draconian than many state laws for hands on child sexual offending.  It is very odd--a hands on child offender at high risk for reoffending likely will serve less in state custody than someone who has downloaded child porn.  Not filmed and distributed, but viewed.  These are mostly white men, btw, and  many well educated and with high incomes. 

 

I am no attorney either but it begs the question as to the value of the federal mandatory minimum system; specifically, the arbitrariness of it all and why incarceration is the de facto response.

 

There is significant intersection between mass incarceration and mental illness, and addiction in particular.  That's a whole other can of worms.  Limited mental health options dramatically impact daily operations in most of our jails. 

 

 

 

As far as I can see, there is no question that mandatory minimum sentences are a bad thing - as in, not effective even in the way people who support them hope.

 

We've in recent years in Canada had more of that kind of legislation, even though when we looked south, we could see that it wasn't very effective.  It seemed here, at least, that the reason was it resonated with a segment of the population that feels very vulnerable and afraid.  For them, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the facts, but with their feelings of fear.  And I think it is fairly non-specific fear.

 

The bigger question is why the legislators were willing to push it, even though they knew quite well that it wasn't rational.  The simple answer I think is that it won them votes among the fearful crowd.  My slightly more conspiracy-ish feeling is that they are happy if people feel off balance because it tends to make them turn to parties that seem more authoritarian and inclines them to grant them more powers, and also because it distracts people fom the real reasons they feel fearful which might cause them to look at their governance for answers.

 

The vulnerable prison populations - here in Canada they are First Nations peoples, drug addicts, the poor, and those with mental health issues - are essentially sacrificed, not with any ill-will but perhaps a sense of indifference - that it is in the nature of the poor to be poor, one might say.  This is, IMO, the great failure of the idea of meritocracy, especially when combined with economic libertarianism and distrust of social programs.

 

I was interested in what you said earlier about the statistical aggregations about race.  I always feel like they are inadequate.  Not inadequate to show that significant racial separations exist, but to give us good indications of why, and in what contexts.  I'm always interested, for example, in comparing class experience to race issues, and perhaps especially if we look internationally to contexts where class is more visible, especially over generations, than in the US.  I think when looking for answers about these problems, why they happen and how to change them, it can make a significant difference to understanding to look at such things in more detail.

[shage]

 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

Nan again:

 

Referring to the jail bit -

 

In my small, almost all caucasian town, this is an issue that is divided along poor/rich lines. The kids of the poor get caught up in the drug laws and go to jail. The kids of the rich don,t. And the really heartbreaking part, for me, is that at age 18 or so, I could look at their faces and put that together with their families' incomes and predict which of my son's friends were going to be doing jail time. At that age, some faces were still a child's face and some were not. Drugs are common here. (We're next to a fishing town that has fished itself out. Or was polluted out, if you are talking to a fisherman.) Mental illness is a factor, also. The rich friends have families that can give them another ten years of retries with housing, jobs, and the legal system, enough to buy them time to finish growing up and get their meds stabilized. The poor friends are in jail. And how long do you think they will manage to stay out of jail when they get out, without that support. I am holding lots of friends in the light. Some have problems that medication won,t help. They are doomed, ultimately. I have no idea how to solve this problem. It is complicated. And for theurposes of this discussion on race, it doesn,t really matter that my community has this problem but looks like it should not. Or that so many in my community are politically conservative and would have voted in those tough on drug laws on purpose, if they,d had any idea they were doing that. I,m just saying that from where I am standing, the whole mess we are in looks more complicated than intentional/unintentional decisions about racial issues. I have met plenty of people who I am sure would have made some of the decisions in that chain intentionally. Really scary. And many who would be perfectly capable of making them unintentionally. (And this is why town meeting is so... interesting... depressing... reassuring... frustrating... selfenlightening... ...)

 

Nan

 

I was embarrassingly glued to the Duggar molestation scandal because I had some familiarity with Jim Bob Duggar's role in pushing through draconian juvenile sex offender legislation in Arkansas--as in, legislation requiring life long registration for preteen children caught in the dual worlds of victim and offending. He actively promoted and built the system, then turned around and did everything he could to keep his own child out of it.  The moral gymnastics of narcissistic political figures are exhausting.

 

And yes, the impact of the legal system is felt across color lines and does track with income.  There is sadness and to spare in all corners of our country and I don't want to minimize that.  However, I do think race is a significant variable especially in areas where minority communities are not able to determine, at the ground level, the kind of relationship they wish to have with law enforcement. It's not like places like Ferguson can actively "pick" community policing over a more military style occupation mindset.  And then the policing at the ground level is what sets the ball rolling....

 

(And now, I have officially become the annoying book club person who shows up without having read the book and offers endless commentary regardless.  Sorry about that.  I will post later in the day about what I am reading.  Mostly fluff.)

[Pam in CT]

yet more re intention and, whether or not it is explicit, who benefits?:  (apologies to the weary...  truly.  This stuff is weighing heavily on me, and I am very grateful for the sounding board)

.... When I was thinking about the question of intent before, I was thinking about the intent of the people - politicians and otherwise - who created, started, and funded the drug war which has led to the system of mass incarceration. Not the intent of the people who are currently part of the system of mass incarceration, but the people who started the ball rolling.  What I have yet to see is evidence of exactly who these people are, and if they created this system to intentionally perpetuate the racial caste system that existed under slavery & Jim Crow.  ....  

 

_____

 

I'm really trying to not jump there, but to examine the evidence and see where it leads.  And even if it leads from point A to point B, to try and understand why.  Who benefits? What is the goal driving the process? (Accepting intentionality requires that there be a goal, right?)

Rose, I was thinking more about your distinction between legislators/voters/(increasingly) private sector firms who have shaped the mass incarceration structures vs. the individual actors who live day-to-day inside those structures.

 

My musing actually brought me back around to Coates, and his focus on economically-driven "plunder."  There's a history-of-the-labor-market-driven narrative -- I don't believe that either he nor Alexander draws it quite this explicitly or or quite this far, but the pieces are implicit in both books -- that slavery was based on an economic imperative to extract low-cost agricultural labor; sharecropping essentially extended that labor plunder in a marginally modified form; while Jim Crow had the simultaneous triple effects of limiting black workers' ability to access higher wage sectors in the industrializing economy, suppressing wages in low-wage low-skilled sectors where their labor was required, and limiting voter franchisement that might mobilize change.

 

And then just around the time when the MLK civil rights was driving black enfranchisement and the legislative environment towards putative "colorblindness," the economy began another slow but permanent transformation, as globalization sourced an ever-greater number of low-skilled manufacturing jobs in other countries.  Increasingly, the US economy did not need low wage black labor, particularly male black labor (since the service jobs that have continued to expand in the new US economy are disproportionately female).  

 

You don't need to posit a big old Evil Empire tin foil conspiracy... just the tiniest, not-necessarily-conscious tinge of deep-rooted Fear of the Other... to see how the specter of a cohort of young men with no way to make a living and too much time on their hands could all too easily tilt into too-quick too-enthusiastic embrace of too-draconian measures in the context of a War on Drugs.  As Alexander says, many leaders in black communities themselves called -- originally -- for stronger measures against drug-related violence and crime.  It's not difficult, looking back, to recognize a sort of tipping point, to see how easily the voting and legislative actors could be persuaded of the logic of the early War on Drugs measures without conscious explicit intent.  

 

(Speaking personally -- I was young and pretty stupid, but I was certainly old enough to read newspapers, and I lived in New York City, in those early-shaping-structures days, and... I was not myself conscious at the time of racial animus behind city efforts to reduce drug-related crime... nor did I foresee where it was headed.  Not trying to justify or exonerate myself; just dispatching one note from one field...)

 

So there we were, back in say the early 1980s, perched on this tipping point, with this slightly threatening cohort of young men who'd grown up with limited opportunities for good education, facing a slack labor market with ever-fewer opportunities for steady employment...

 

... and it was a Game Theory kind of moment... (Oh, Nan, thank you for this image!!)

Is it being intentionally prejudiced if someone feels forced to choose between two bad scenarios? If someone feels forced to throw some party under the bus and has to choose which between a smaller number of "minorities" and a larger number of "majorities"? I don,t know the answer, just thinking about how many small bads could link and multiply unintentionally. (I already know how they could intentionally.)...

As someone who has watched kids play those system-altering games, the ones with all the little models and shelves of rules and the online ones where a few friends try to win against some insomniac strangers in Europe, I find it all too easy to imagine how a group of like-minded people might think about how to tamper with a system quietly to achieve their goals. Teenager glee in a plot in deeper, older politician voices. But as someone who was trained as a software engineer, I also can imagine how a series of bad choices (a few intentionally prejudiced and many unintentional but un knowledgable or unthoughtful or unconciously prejudiced) could result in a catastrophe.

 

 

 

So, like Nan, I can theoretically see it going either way, Evil Empire Cackling with Explicit Intent or Accrued Little Half-Thought-Out Things by a Decentralized Bunch of Oblivious Sorts...

 

... but ultimately, I vote for the theory that enables most people to continue to believe in their own righteousness.

 

I can visualize how the earliest mass incarceration structure-shaping arose from Big Picture changing labor market conditions combined with (possibly acknowledged, but not necessarily) racially based fear.  The thing about tipping points is, it doesn't take all that much to tip; and it's all downhill from there.  From there, the pressures of raising revenue (on the LEO and municipal government levels) and profit-making (once the really rather astounding concept of privatizing prisons and probation and surveillance/monitoring took off) will operate on their own.

 

All of which is to say, no, I don't think there does need to be a goal.  I don't think there ever was a person, or a conspiracy of people, who ever sat around a conference room table and said, Eureka!  I've got it!  Check this out -- I know just what to do with all these young black men that the economy doesn't any longer have jobs for!  Let's put them all in jail!  Except that might get expensive... hmmm... OK, I got a #Genius idea!  Let's charge them for their jail time!  And, get this -- how about even after they are released from jail, we'll continue to charge them for every day on probation!  And -- hey -- while we're at it, let's make sure they are never eligible to vote ever again, so we never again have to deal with political pressure!

 

I mean, who could say that, even to themselves, let alone to fellow conspirators?  I truly don't think most human beings are capable of holding that kind of monstrous narrative; it collides too frontally with our deep desire to think well of ourselves.  We push such thoughts away long before they arise to the level of explicit intention.

 

Yet that is pretty much where we've tipped to.  I don't really believe we got here "on purpose," but that really makes no differences; nonetheless here we are.

 

I am not writing all this out to defend the good intentions of white voters and legislators in the early War on Drugs days in which the groundwork for today's mass incarceration structures was laid. God knows there's already enough out there already on white defensiveness and fragility and blah blah blah.  I'm actually not ultimately that interested in intentions, personally, except to the extent that public opinion, electoral outcomes and evolving legislation have to be based on something, and it's hard to work out how to move forward without going there.

  

 

 

 

It is with some hesitation that I'm hitting Post here.  Off to count to 10.  No, maybe 20 is better.

 

 

 

18, 19, 20... (deep breath) okayyyyyyyyyy....

 

[Chrysalis Academy]

Pam, your post makes a lot of sense. My thoughts are still evolving on this, and I'm significantly behind where you are, as I haven't even finished the book yet . . . but yes, what you are saying makes a ton of sense. I've been reflecting all morning on the factors that lead people to vote against their own interests.  Ignorance is a huge one, as is an inability to forsee the implications of actions, as is fear, as is the desire on the part of politicians to pander to fear for the sake of power, as Bluegoat posted.

 

I think back to the 3 strikes law in CA.  It was passed in 1994.  I was 22, in college.  It was framed as - and I assumed it was about - keeping repeat violent criminals off the streets - murderers, rapists, etc.  I'm pretty sure I supported it.  I had no idea what the implications/consequences would be.  I didn't even know until yesterday that the "3 strikes" could all come from the same offense/arrest, I assumed that it meant three separate crimes, three separate arrests and convictions.  I'm gobsmacked by my own ignorance.  And since I give myself the benefit of the doubt as far as no evil/racist intent goes, I can easily see how all the other consequences can follow from something that seemed like a good idea at the time.  And this is just at the individual voter level, leaving aside all the economic issues shage posted about.

 

This is a fascinating discussion. I'm feeling sheepish that I'm talking when I haven't even finished the book yet, but this discussion is really helping me to delve into it more deeply and process it. So I do appreciate it, and hope we're not driving everybody else off the thread!  This is a conversation I never would have entered on the Chat Board, but I do appreciate this being a safe space for discussion.

[Nan in Mass]

I was embarrassingly glued to the Duggar molestation scandal because I had some familiarity with Jim Bob Duggar's role in pushing through draconian juvenile sex offender legislation in Arkansas--as in, legislation requiring life long registration for preteen children caught in the dual worlds of victim and offending. He actively promoted and built the system, then turned around and did everything he could to keep his own child out of it. The moral gymnastics of narcissistic political figures are exhausting.

 

And yes, the impact of the legal system is felt across color lines and does track with income. There is sadness and to spare in all corners of our country and I don't want to minimize that. However, I do think race is a significant variable especially in areas where minority communities are not able to determine, at the ground level, the kind of relationship they wish to have with law enforcement. It's not like places like Ferguson can actively "pick" community policing over a more military style occupation mindset. And then the policing at the ground level is what sets the ball rolling....

 

(And now, I have officially become the annoying book club person who shows up without having read the book and offers endless commentary regardless. Sorry about that. I will post later in the day about what I am reading. Mostly fluff.)

I agree about particularly bad snarls in the legal system showing up in areas where race is an issue. The words drugs, jail, poverty, and mental illness just sent up a personal wail out of my family life. Add in immigrant (white) issues and you can get a pretty good picture of why I am not jumping up and down saying that the legal system is fair. But as I said, none of that matters to this discussion on racial issues. I don,t even belong in this discussion, since I, too, haven,t read the book. Or any other ones. Sigh.

 

Nan

[Bluegoat]

Homeward Bound: THe Rise of the New Domesticity - I am enjoying this, it is an easy read, but I am also finding it a little frustrating.  I feel a bit like she is just a little held back somehow, like she is almost getting to the really interesting things and then doesn't go there.

 

For example - she quite validly takes seriously that domesticity is always more interesting to people when the economy is in poor shape.  And she has talked about people feeling unsatisfied with the type of work as well - she describes for example her first job out of university which was considered a great stable position with a real salary, and also was working on an important topic (disease prevention,) but which was really glorified data imput all day.  She has talked a fair bit about the corporate world having a poor work/life balance, especially for women.  She also had a chapter that outlines the movement from work and home being single spheres for both men and women to the later divide between paid work and domestic activity.

 

Within this context, she talks about people finding domestic work, handicrafts, and other types of craftsmanship or physical labour, offers a kind of satisfaction they aren't finding elsewhere. 

 

I feel like she should have taken another step and connected some dots - maybe asked some other questions.  What is it work is really supposed to do for us?  Why is it that so many jobs are actually humanly unsatisfying or innane, with no real social or ethical worth?  Can we really expect people to feel happy when the task they give over a significant amount of their time and energy to is inane?  Can we expect that people don't realize, deep down, that selling people more widgets is irrelevant, even if it pays the bills and the employees are well-treated?  Can we expect that doesn't leave them unsatisfied, and could that be why they want the widgets themselves? 

 

 

I also feel like her discussion of it as a women's issue falls short in a similar way.  It seems like she brings up all of the relevant facts.  She talks about many of the women she interviewed complained that feminism had in some way gone "too far" and I think she rightly argues that isn't really an accurate criticism.  I feel though that she then doesn't make any effort to dig into what the origin of their discomfort is - my feeling on this is that often when people feel a discomfort with a label, although they may not express it accurately, there is usually something that is bothering them about it.  (My own feeling on this is that because of its limited scope, 2nd wave feminism misunderstood the problem it was interested in particularly with relation to work, and that has led to real gaps in the solutions it has proposed or which have been adopted.)

 

There was some very interesting stuff on women who are looking to turn their New Domesticity into income, often as a way to combine childrearing and working, generally through bloggy or using platforms like Etsy to sell crafts.  She analyzes the numbers that attempt this compared to those who do it successfully, and concludes its a bit of a pipe dream for most - it is not going to be an answer to the problem of staying home and having adequate income.  But - she doesn't seem to go anywhere with it other than to say that women need more rights and services in the workplace (like maternity leave.)  While I agree as far as it goes, I'm not sure it is really an answer to the question of care of the domestic sphere.

 

One thing that was very interesting was an analysis of the attempt for these things - lifestyle blogging and craft-income opportunities - to be corporatized.  There were some great descriptions of conferences for Etsy folks sponsored by McDonalds and Starbucks, discussions at conferences of Bloggers on how to gain corporate sponsorship, and the understanding of corporations that bloggers represent an authentic, and supposedly honest, source of information by readers. 

 

Now - it may be that she will go on to draw more conclusions once she has talked about the basic concerns that she thinks are driving these things.  Right now I am in the section talking about intensive parenting and I still have to read the section on environmental concerns.  The latter in particular might bring a lot of the other sections into a closer relation.  So - I guess I should keep my questions in reserve for now.

 

My own feeling though is that her observation about the attempt to corporatize the New Domesticity could be a key, perhaps one that goes all the way back to the question of women and work  and the separation of the domestic sphere from "real" work.  My thought is that it is very difficult to corporatize or even monetize the domestic - that is why in order to do it with "men's" work it had to be moved outside of the home.  I think though that the non-domestication of work in general may have been/be closer to the root of the problem than women being excluded from the outside work. 

 

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now, I'm curious to see how she pulls it all together.

[Nan in Mass]

Agree that hitting post is pretty scary. But fear is a good part of how we got here, right? Fear of looking stupid or making a fuss, not just fear for the safety of one,s family.

 

Nan

[Bluegoat]

yet more re intention and, whether or not it is explicit, who benefits?:  (apologies to the weary...  truly.  This stuff is weighing heavily on me, and I am very grateful for the sounding board)

Rose, I was thinking more about your distinction between legislators/voters/(increasingly) private sector firms who have shaped the mass incarceration structures vs. the individual actors who live day-to-day inside those structures.

 

My musing actually brought me back around to Coates, and his focus on economically-driven "plunder."  There's a history-of-the-labor-market-driven narrative -- I don't believe that either he nor Alexander draws it quite this explicitly or or quite this far, but the pieces are implicit in both books -- that slavery was based on an economic imperative to extract low-cost agricultural labor; sharecropping essentially extended that labor plunder in a marginally modified form; while Jim Crow had the simultaneous triple effects of limiting black workers' ability to access higher wage sectors in the industrializing economy, suppressing wages in low-wage low-skilled sectors where their labor was required, and limiting voter franchisement that might mobilize change.

 

And then just around the time when the MLK civil rights was driving black enfranchisement and the legislative environment towards putative "colorblindness," the economy began another slow but permanent transformation, as globalization sourced an ever-greater number of low-skilled manufacturing jobs in other countries.  Increasingly, the US economy did not need low wage black labor, particularly male black labor (since the service jobs that have continued to expand in the new US economy are disproportionately female).  

 

You don't need to posit a big old Evil Empire tin foil conspiracy... just the tiniest, not-necessarily-conscious tinge of deep-rooted Fear of the Other... to see how the specter of a cohort of young men with no way to make a living and too much time on their hands could all too easily tilt into too-quick too-enthusiastic embrace of too-draconian measures in the context of a War on Drugs.  As Alexander says, many leaders in black communities themselves called -- originally -- for stronger measures against drug-related violence and crime.  It's not difficult, looking back, to recognize a sort of tipping point, to see how easily the voting and legislative actors could be persuaded of the logic of the early War on Drugs measures without conscious explicit intent.  

 

(Speaking personally -- I was young and pretty stupid, but I was certainly old enough to read newspapers, and I lived in New York City, in those early-shaping-structures days, and... I was not myself conscious at the time of racial animus behind city efforts to reduce drug-related crime... nor did I foresee where it was headed.  Not trying to justify or exonerate myself; just dispatching one note from one field...)

 

So there we were, back in say the early 1980s, perched on this tipping point, with this slightly threatening cohort of young men who'd grown up with limited opportunities for good education, facing a slack labor market with ever-fewer opportunities for steady employment...

 

... and it was a Game Theory kind of moment... (Oh, Nan, thank you for this image!!)

 

 

 

 

So, like Nan, I can theoretically see it going either way, Evil Empire Cackling with Explicit Intent or Accrued Little Half-Thought-Out Things by a Decentralized Bunch of Oblivious Sorts...

 

... but ultimately, I vote for the theory that enables most people to continue to believe in their own righteousness.

 

I can visualize how the earliest mass incarceration structure-shaping arose from Big Picture changing labor market conditions combined with (possibly acknowledged, but not necessarily) racially based fear.  The thing about tipping points is, it doesn't take all that much to tip; and it's all downhill from there.  From there, the pressures of raising revenue (on the LEO and municipal government levels) and profit-making (once the really rather astounding concept of privatizing prisons and probation and surveillance/monitoring took off) will operate on their own.

 

All of which is to say, no, I don't think there does need to be a goal.  I don't think there ever was a person, or a conspiracy of people, who ever sat around a conference room table and said, Eureka!  I've got it!  Check this out -- I know just what to do with all these young black men that the economy doesn't any longer have jobs for!  Let's put them all in jail!  Except that might get expensive... hmmm... OK, I got a #Genius idea!  Let's charge them for their jail time!  And, get this -- how about even after they are released from jail, we'll continue to charge them for every day on probation!  And -- hey -- while we're at it, let's make sure they are never eligible to vote ever again, so we never again have to deal with political pressure!

 

I mean, who could say that, even to themselves, let alone to fellow conspirators?  I truly don't think most human beings are capable of holding that kind of monstrous narrative; it collides too frontally with our deep desire to think well of ourselves.  We push such thoughts away long before they arise to the level of explicit intention.

 

Yet that is pretty much where we've tipped to.  I don't really believe we got here "on purpose," but that really makes no differences; nonetheless here we are.

 

I am not writing all this out to defend the good intentions of white voters and legislators in the early War on Drugs days in which the groundwork for today's mass incarceration structures was laid. God knows there's already enough out there already on white defensiveness and fragility and blah blah blah.  I'm actually not ultimately that interested in intentions, personally, except to the extent that public opinion, electoral outcomes and evolving legislation have to be based on something, and it's hard to work out how to move forward without going there.

  

 

 

 

It is with some hesitation that I'm hitting Post here.  Off to count to 10.  No, maybe 20 is better.

 

 

 

18, 19, 20... (deep breath) okayyyyyyyyyy....

 

 

In the scenario you are suggesting with excess labour, I think you could actually do away with anyone making some kind of decision to put those people in prison.  If the labour market begins to shed young male low-wage workers, that could very easily, maybe even inevitably, create the conditions that would lead to having many incarcerated or being on some kind of public assistance.  Where the larger community is economically vulnerable, that would be even more likely to lead to high crime and drug related problems, either as escapism, or to provide income.  A young male population without much to do will have energy to burn off (unless I suppose you anesthitize them with video games.)

 

People naturally when they see these problems will react to them by asking government to take action.  Any kind of action that seems tough is likely to appeal to voters, especially if they aren't able to have a personal look at individual instances.  Government is going to have a much easier time proposing those solutions than changing the economic structures, especially if the voters are also convinced they want the economy a certain way.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Bluegoat

[Nan in Mass]

Dp

I got an error msg. Maybe you discussing stuff that is too heavy for the boards to handle grin.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Nan in Mass

[Nan in Mass]

Sticking my neck out here, but one thing has become apparent to me as I gain experience - that often there is more than one chain of arguments that can be made to lead to the same place. This might be one of those places.

 

How do the migrant agricultural workers fit into this? When did they become such a large part illegal immigrants?

 

Nan

[Ali in OR]

Homeward Bound: THe Rise of the New Domesticity - I am enjoying this, it is an easy read, but I am also finding it a little frustrating.  I feel a bit like she is just a little held back somehow, like she is almost getting to the really interesting things and then doesn't go there.

 

 

I just picked this up at the library after you mentioned it yesterday. Not like I didn't have enough books going already! But I did get it started last night and I think I'll enjoy reading it. I have no deep thoughts on it yet.

[aggieamy]

This place has taken a serious turn this month.  Um.  I'm holed up in Flufferton Abbey.  I'll currently have three books going.  When I've finished one I'll come back and report on what silliness I've been up to. 

[JennW in SoCal]

I finished Wendy Jones' Wilford Price book last nighthttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18114398-the-thoughts-and-happenings-of-wilfred-price-purveyor-of-superior-funer?ref=ru_lihp_up_rs_0_mclk-up2863763574and have to admit I found it pretty upsetting. It just was not the book for me at this time, I think. If you are planning to read the book which others here liked you should stop reading now!

 

I am so upset by the Grace portion of the storyline. I doubt that her real fate would have been anywhere near as kind as it was painted in the book, she most likely would have been institutionalized. I know her father was in a position to prevent it but..... Too many historical lectures for me with a woman's group I belong to. Woman were frequently institutionalized for life in her circumstances, frequently with the child. That did not change until the 70's.

 

I disliked Wilford greatly, pretty much all the way through, spineless wimp. I am not saying he shouldn't have followed his heart just that he needed to do it sooner.

 

I think my feelings come more out of the fact that I know the funeral practices part culturally so that wasn't so interesting. I think if I had found that portion interesting I wouldn't have looked at the book as a whole so harshly, instead I just found his funerals lacking too! Descriptions of things like semi professional pallbearers are the norm here but amazed me years ago would have distracted me. They have a military precision that I had never seen in a none miltary funeral before moving here. Very dignified and quite moving. They always come with the funeral director, part of the package you might say. He messed up some proper customs that wouldn't happen normally....wet earth at the graveside for the family, no kept dry in the box. The box is done in a ceremonial manor always. It has rained buckets at many of the funerals I have attended but people don't get muddy sprinkling dirt in the grave. His lack of respect bothered me greatly. I can't believe I am critiquing his funerals! Btw, some of the practices are obviously gone from custom. Did not like Wilfred at all and don't care that he was generous financially.

 

Last night I gave it a 3* in a fit of kindness but may downgrade it upon reflection. I also discovered that there is a second book in the series. I thought about reading it to learn about Grace's fate but no library has it, probably fortunately! Sorry for the vent but this one frustrated me.

 

I really appreciate your thoughtful comments on this book. I wasn't bothered by Wilfred, didn't particularly like him or root for him, but just enjoyed his story as it unfolded. I totally understand the problems you had with the book. There have been books with characters that rubbed me the wrong way, and books where the details were so wrong that it jarred me out of the story as it this one did for you. The book wasn't particularly Welsh, was it?  It is supposed to be set in Wales, but it could have been rural Nebraska, well, except for the beach scenes! 

 

I spent yesterday in a haze of painkillers and ice packs after some oral surgery. Read for a bit, but mostly zoned out on Netflix and have a movie recommendation for you all that ties in tangentially on this week's India theme.  It is Meet the Patels, a documentary of a year in the life of actor Ravi Patel as he agrees to let his parents help arrange a marriage for him. It is filmed by his sister, so all the family scenes are open and honest, and more often than not, very funny. It captures the challenges of a first generation Indian/American torn between American and Indian culture.