Essay On Mass Incarceration

In the United States, racism is a problem that is rooted in a struggle for power amongst people groups, and as the struggle has progressed, it has permeated almost every aspect of the American life. In the early years of the nation, the presence of slavery made it easy to point out the evils of racism, and even in after emancipation, Jim Crow and segregation laws made it evident that the issue continued to pervade society. However, following the Civil Rights era, inherent acts of racism began to dwindle. Today, racism has been institutionalized and can be seen in issues like mass incarceration, which targets African American populations. Sociologist Max Weber would have believed the issue of racism and mass incarceration to be directly related to the efforts that white Americans took to maintain the power they possessed through their class, status, and parties.
While their struggle for power initially only appeared to have adverse effects on the African American population, studies of mass incarceration show that this form of racism comes at a great economic, social, and political cost to the United States.
In his publication titled “The Distribution of Power Within the Political Community:
Class, Status, Party” Weber discussed how societies are shaped by the power seen in different groups. Power is defined as “the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a social action even against the resistance of others” (Edles and Appelrouth 193). He also delineated the conditions required to consider a group of people to be part of the same class, status, or party. According to Weber, a class is not the same as a community because although people within a class share the same economic life chances through possessions and opportunities for income, they don’t necessarily value the same things (Edles and Appelrouth 194-195). Real communities are based in status groups, which are determined by “a specific positive or negative, social estimation of honor” (Edles and Appelrouth 196). Finally, parties are the groups that are most directly linked to power itself, as they are created when people regardless of class or status, come together to gain the power needed to influence communal action (Edles and Appelrouth 200). Although each type of group is determined by acquiring power in one specific area, each area of power can also compound and result in increased power in another area. Conversely, lack of power in one area can make it difficult to acquire power in other areas. Examples of the perpetuating nature of power can be seen throughout American history in the interactions between white and black communities. During the early colonization of America, power inequality between European and African migrants began with the creation of race-based slavery. By Weber’s definition, slaves did not even qualify to be considered a class as they did not have the ability to create wealth through the market (Edles and Appelrouth 194); however, there were many European migrants whose economic state was hardly better as they worked as they sometimes worked as indentured servants and lived in extreme poverty. Overall there was little rivalry between the lower classes and the slaves, and in 1675, Nathaniel Bacon joined together the three groups in order to rebel against the oppressive white elite. Bacon’s Rebellion resulted in an attack of elite homes and property, the hanging of participants, and most significantly, the realization that the unification of lower classes with slaves threatened the power of white elites (Alexander 24). As a result, elites shifted away from reliance on indentured servants to the importation of slaves and “deliberately and strategically…extended special privileges to poor whites in an effort to drive a wedge between them and the black slaves,” giving poor whites incentives for supporting the existence of slavery (Alexander 25). Consequently, the issue of slavery and freedom transformed from a primarily economic issue to an issue of status as race also began to determine social privilege. As America grew into a nation and subjects received the rights of citizens, the power gap between races continued to grow as slaves had no power as a class, status group, or party. Eventually, the Emancipation Proclamation and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments attempted to bridge the gap in power between the races; however, these laws were largely ignored as white Americans tried to uphold their position in the social hierarchy. After the Civil War, racism prevailed through hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and institutionalized Jim Crow laws and prevented many African Americans from gaining power. For about a hundred years, these oppressive actions continued without much resistance. It was not until the Civil Rights Movement that the inequalities were challenged and declared unconstitutional through cases like Brown v. Board of Education and laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965. While these acts initially appeared to mark a shift away from racism, present day studies of disproportionally high percentages of African American incarceration suggest that racism actually took on a more subtle form that is just as damaging. According to Michelle Alexander, author of the book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” the new, inconspicuous strategy that would be used to carry on the tradition of racism after the Civil Rights Movement actually has its roots in counter tactics seen during the movement.
When Civil Rights activists began to protest and exhibit civil disobedience, conservatives would depict their actions as criminal rather than political and would accuse federal courts of “excessive ‘lenience’ toward lawlessness, thereby contributing to the spread of crime” (Alexander 41). This shift away from explicitly racist rhetoric toward more neutral terms only continued as the Civil Rights Movement passed and as blatant racism became politically
unfavorable.