A New Type of Slavery

            So many of our fellow human beings are victims of the drug culture, but also the War on Drugs. The problem is worse now than it has been ever before. I recently watched a video called The House I Live In, which is about the War on Drugs and how police profile specific types of people. After seeing the film, I agree with the director, Eugene Jarecki, that a targeted person is usually a poor, black male. Jarecki includes ideas from Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, who argues that incarceration is a new form of slavery. According to Alexander, slavery never died; first it was reborn with the Jim Crow Laws, and now with incarceration. Many people (including myself - prior to watching the video) wrongly believe that racial inequality is nowhere near as bad as it was during slavery. However, drug profiling has perpetuated dramatic inequality in America.

Jarecki’s argument that minorities are targeted by the War on Drugs reminded me of a Zine composed by Billy Dee. One of the slides had a drawing (shown above) of a few black people walking through the streets with a police car following them. The caption read “the Prison Industrial Complex targets people from certain neighborhoods, especially poor people, people of color, young people, and lgbtq people.”

According to an article in the Herald Sun, while blacks represent only about 11 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 53 percent of people serving time for drugs in North Carolina. Whites, the obvious majority in America, only accounted for 28 percent. These percentages remain relatively constant throughout the U.S. Because blacks make up the majority of people incarcerated for drug offenses, it seems logical to assume that the majority of drug dealers around the U.S. would also be black, right? WRONG! According to the 2004 Survey on Drug Use and Health, blacks only accounted for 15 percent of drug dealers (the great majority are white). In addition, the drug usage rates in blacks and whites were about equal. Given this data, there should be far more whites incarcerated than blacks because there are so many more whites in America. Also, the percentage of the black population incarcerated for drug offenses should be equal to that of whites since their drug usage rates are about the same. These statistics clearly show just how much racial inequality we still have today.

According to the New York Times, Michelle Alexander said that a “vast new system of racial and social control has emerged.” By locking up minorities, we are ensuring that they struggle with poverty and have minimal opportunities when they are released from jail. Even on parole, these people still will not have access to many of the benefits designed to help American citizens (such as financial aid and food stamps). They will often have trouble finding work because they have a criminal background. This systematic bias results in a permanent second-class citizenship for millions of Americans, much like the false sense of citizenship that the cruelty of slavery created for African Americans.

A New Holiday; Shopping Day

This past Thursday, Thanksgiving, I was checking my phone in between our family’s turkey dinner and apple pie dessert when I received a snapchat from my friend. It was a picture of her in an extremely long line of people waiting to be let into Macy’s. I was taken aback by the fact that she would wait in line at a store on Thanksgiving night. But after asking a few family members, I realized that this wasn’t that uncommon. In fact, many Americans actually did use Thanksgiving night as a time to begin their Black Friday shopping this year.

           

In an article I found from the Huffington Post titled “Black Friday Marred by Violence in Several States,” the author talks about acts of violence that occurred on Friday (and even Thursday night) because of shopping disputes. In one incident in Las Vegas, shoppers got in a fight over a TV. The attacker shot one of the other shoppers before driving off. The author also reported that in Virginia, a man was slashed because he and the perpetrator were arguing over a parking spot.

It is ridiculous that these acts of violence happened over unimportant shopping-related activities. The fact that someone would hurt another person over a TV or a good parking spot is absolutely absurd to me. It shows me just how important shopping and material goods are to us nowadays; being the first one in line (most likely the reason the shoppers were fighting over the parking spot – they wanted to get inside the store sooner) and getting as many shopping items as possible while they are on sale.

I’m not trying to throw my friend under the bus here, but it is really a shame that shoppers have started sacrificing their Thanksgiving night – a precious time that is supposed to be spent with family – in order to arrive at stores sooner and assure that all their desired goods will still be there. Below is a picture that shows shoppers on Thanksgiving night waiting to be let into Best Buy. They are waiting outside in the cold, content to be spending the holiday evening doing nothing but staring at a parking lot. Some have even brought chairs and blankets, prepared to stay for however long it takes until they can enter.

Now, clearly the attackers mentioned in the article do not represent the average consumer, but their actions still show the really misplaced values of some of these people. The fact that many Americans are willing to sacrifice their Thanksgiving for shopping shows just how addicted we are as a nation to buying things, and how much we are letting our craving for goods control our lives.