Michelle Alexander Responds to Firestarter (Sort of)
I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Commitment to Community Keynote Address yesterday featuring Professor Michelle Alexander. I enjoyed her speech thoroughly. I think she was well spoken and well researched. Even after her speech, she was able to give valuable information in her answers to the questions asked during the Q&A time.
I found her argument to be compelling and thought-provoking. It made me question myself and the factuality of the stereotypes I may be guilty of holding.
Her argument which I found to be the most interesting and persuasive, I saw as a perfect response to the Amazon reviewer, Firestarter, whom we discussed in class on Thursday. It was that according to Michelle Alexander, the greatest myth about mass incarceration is that it is driven by crime and crime rates. Basically that people, meaning black men, are committing more crimes then ever before. But she argued that the facts do not back this myth up. Crime rates have been fluctuating over the time that incarceration rates have sky rocketed. In fact, currently, crime rates our at an all time low.
I found this to be incredibly relevant to our discussion on Thursday and that this may have changed my own feelings about this topic as well from how I felt on only a few hours before.
How do you all respond to this argument or any others she made?
And in response to some students feeling as if this speech wasn't relatable to all of us, I'm not sure that it was meant to be. If we were all inner-city, African American teenagers, I have a feeling that we would feel incredibly close to this issue. It is not something that affects most of us, so therefore we don't have very strong feelings about it. I think that with issues like this and others that directly effect only one group, it is simply a matter of empathy in order to feel its relevance and importance.
I would be interested to hear other opinions about this as well.
posted by Anonymous @ 10:45 AM
2 Comments:
It would be interesting to me to put up the facts of the white men incarceration rate compared to the black men. Her speech made it seem as if only black men were being affected, but is that really the case? I am curious about the comparison between the white man and the black man incarceration rate. I think this would tell a lot abou the validity of her argument.
I believe that she did mention that low income people of all races are affected.
This article is from 2008, but it has statistics concerning racial incarceration rates. Look at the section titled "Race." These statistics completely validate her argument, in my opinion.
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5009270&page=1#.UGyTLUL3DoA
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home