Michelle Alexander:
Locked Out of the
American Dream
After civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander published her book The New Jim Crow in 2010 on our dehumanizing system of incarceration, she ignited a national conversation about justice in America and sparked a movement. In her book, Alexander explores how the war on drugs, “get-tough” sentencing policies and racism has created a caste system similar to that of our segregationist past.
Since then, Alexander has traveled the country to meet advocates and everyday Americans working to end mass incarceration in America — home to 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, despite representing only five percent of the world’s population.
She tells Bill that she has seen a grassroots movement brewing in communities across the country, “There are enormous victories that are being achieved precisely because the people whom we have written off and viewed as disposable are reclaiming their voice, standing up, speaking out, organizing even as they struggle to survive.”
Everything Michelle Alexander is saying is what I have been writing about and talking about for some time. The website I listed is about a man – the black father of one of my grandsons, with my white daughter. My grandson’s are black – not white. It is easy for a white person to say they aren’t racist until they come face to face with it and it affects their own family. It is easy for white people to glance at the situation and turn their face away and go on with their lives because they think it doesn’t affect them. How do I do more than just sit behind my computer and write? This issue affects everyone and it continues to slide the power more and more into a state where wealthy men think they can control and sell people into the system for their own profit. I have studied and researched this issue to the point that if it were possible to have a degree in this issue – I would have one. But what to do with this information? How do I make a difference? I am very concerned for my grandsons, now ages 6 and 8 because I know what is coming – more than their mother. I know she has dealt with racism directed at her from black women when they see she has black children, but she turns a blind eye to the issue and has been fairly negative about my relationship with her son’s father. One grandson has a father who is prison. Jamie Cummings. The blog is about him. After 8 years of letter writing a story emerged that needed to be told.
People have no real idea of the purpose of prisons and think it is only to lock up bad people. I started posting his letters. There are other prison blogs and prison books written by inmates, but they are usually about how bad they were and all the horrible things they do to each other in prison. Several months ago I started to write a book, “Inside the Forbidden Outside”. Google the title and you will find some chapters that are posted. This book is about the person. The mental anguish of loneliness, separation from family, indignities shown, humiliation of being treated as less than a person. I know, when he gets out of prison what is waiting for him. His family has been no help at all. No help financially or emotionally. Maybe they will throw a party when he gets out, but if they can’t spare $10 now or even write a letter he will be on his own. All he wants is to be a father. He was pushed through the school to prison pipeline from the age of 16 and he’s 32 now. My hope is that my writing his story that is also about these conditions will sell to help bring him income. He is a special person. A man with heart and hopes and dreams and i want him to be able to be that man. I see the possibility of lectures, speaking at schools and communities and finding a way to turn a negative into a positive. I see this so clearly in my mind. Without this support he will not know which way to turn or what to do because he doesn’t have the wisdom gained by life experience. He is not a “criminal”. He is, unfortunately black. He is also has epilepsy. He came into my life for a reason and this is the reason of why I do what I do. This is my cause and the reason for my day. It is what i am meant to do.
There is something I have told many people. The only legacy anyone can ever leave behind is the affect they have on other people. It is how they live on. I want to be part of this change. My problem – I don’t know where to take it from here. I don’t know the right people. Where and how do I begin speaking out? I have spoken in different circumstances in front of a hundreds of people. Being able to speak is not an issue. How does one get more involved? You may not have those answers but I have to keep pushing ahead in any way I can. Thanks for reading, Sonni Quick