by Rev. Terry Davis
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation on January 19, 2014
Just four days before he was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his last sermon to 4,000 persons assembled at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. That sermon began with the excerpt that Susan read this morning . . . a reference to the tale of Rip Van Winkle and the consequences of being asleep too long.
And while King reminded those assembled at the National Cathedral that Rip Van Winkle slept through the American Revolution – which we all know was a critical turning point in America’s history – he said something else in his sermon’s opening words that was, perhaps, just as important.
King noted that when Rip Van Winkle awoke from his deep sleep, came down from the mountain and saw the picture of George Washington on the sign, “he was completely lost.” He said that Rip “knew not who he was.” The idea of being lost . . . of losing one’s sense of self and identity . . . is a powerful statement and one that I want to examine with you further today.
I’d like to do so within the context of the subject of the existence of the new Jim Crow, which is the title of Dr. Michelle Alexander’s compelling book . . . a book that was published 42 years after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. In her book, Alexander exposes another deeply disturbing chapter in the struggle for racial equality that is MLK’s legacy. It seems to me that worse than sleeping through a revolution is to be awake and not know that we are in the midst of one.
Of course, this might be the same as saying that we are partially asleep, but I’m not sure that it is.
It’s been my experience that Unitarian Universalists are awake and aware of the many challenges that face our society and world: persistent poverty and violence, the struggles of our public education and healthcare systems, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, our environmental crisis, our political crisis, and so on. We are not living under a rock or asleep on a mountain top, as Rip Van Winkle was.
And, yet, I wonder about the persistence of these failings of the human spirit. I wonder what they say about who I am . . . and who we are. How do these ongoing social, political and environmental issues define me? Define you? Do I really know who I am as I continue to live in a world that bears so much pain and suffering? Where have I yet to discover myself? Where am I still asleep to what the world needs of me?
This morning – and on the first Sunday of the next three months – I’m going to examine Michelle Alexander’s argument that a new Jim Crow is alive and well in our country . . . and that our courts and law enforcement agencies have simply gotten more sophisticated and more cunning in how they perpetuate a society of racial caste and a system of racial control.
My reason for selecting this topic for examination is directly tied into my own journey of spiritual and moral awakening and discovering that I was likely still very lost when it comes to appreciating the insidiousness of racial discrimination in our country.
At this anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday . . . and as we approach in a few weeks the second anniversary of the death of 17-year old Trayvon Martin and all the pain and controversy that the George Zimmerman trial uncovered . . . I believe that the arguments and facts contained in Michelle Alexander’s book offer me – and, perhaps you, too – an important opportunity to awaken from our spiritual slumber. They offer us an opportunity to discover who we really are and where more of our time and energy may be needed in the struggle for racial equality.
To begin, it might help to examine more closely together the specific conclusions Alexander makes in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness . . . conclusions that Alexander herself admits were reached very reluctantly, particularly in light of electing our country’s first black president.
Alexander’s extensive examination of the history racial injustice following the Civil War and her investigative research into the law enforcement and justice systems of today led her to the following observations:[ref]Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, New York: 2010, 2012), 3, 5, 6 – 9.[/ref]
- First, that the periods of advancement for blacks since the Civil War, including the Reconstruction and the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s, have always been immediately followed by strategies to retain control of black power and equality.
- Second, that the “War on Drugs,” which was launched in 1982 by the Reagan administration and at a time when illegal drug use was actually on the decline, is the most aggressive strategy in current times. The War on Drugs, says Alexander, has provided an unprecedented opportunity for aggressive law enforcement tactics and has led to unusually harsh sentencing and prison terms for mostly African American males;
- Third, that the United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, surpassing even the rates in highly repressive regimes like Russia, China, and Iran . . . and that a larger percentage of our country’s black population is in prison than was incarcerated in South Africa at the height of apartheid;
- Fourth, that in major cities where the War on Drugs is its most fierce, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives . . . and that these young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society;
- And, finally, that sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment as a tool of social control and, thus, the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns . . . and that if the United States continues to incarcerate black men at its current levels, it is estimated that soon one in three African American males will serve time in prison.
These observations and their corresponding data were shocking for me to read . . . and perhaps even more unnerving to know that it is all happening in clear view, right under our noses.
As I read Alexander’s book – and I continued to be confronted with her argument that mass incarceration of black men is the new Jim Crow – I felt a lot like Rip Van Winkle . . . like I have been asleep while a war was going on. And, I had to ask myself, “How committed am I to the cause of racial justice?” “Do I still want to be asleep or be a part of the revolution of change?”
When Martin Luther King delivered that last sermon at the National Cathedral in March of 1968, he believed that the disease of racism could not wait on time to be eradicated. Nor could racial inequality and the persistence of poverty among black Americans be overcome if only they worked harder . . . a myth that King called an “over-reliance on the bootstrap philosophy.”
Rather, King suggested that African Americans and their allies must find the will not to yield to a politic of despair. In light of Michelle Alexander’s book, I take this to mean that I must find the will not to yield to a politic that perpetuates the arrest and lock up persons for drug offenses when these crimes nearly always involve persons of color.
King’s words also suggest that I must find the will not to yield to a politic that says that there isn’t enough money to help the poor pay for healthcare or provide our city’s public schools with the resources they need – two social concerns whose demographics include primarily African American people.
And, if I’m to find the will not to yield to a politic of despair, this also means resisting the notion that photo IDs, the elimination of early voting and same-day registration, and other restrictions are necessary to prevent voter fraud – something that is rarely proven and nearly always disenfranchises persons of color.
So, how can I wake up and join in the revolution for change?
Michelle Alexander suggests that it’s important to first recognize that racism is highly adaptable. In the chapter entitled “The Rebirth of Caste,” she writes:
Any candid observer of American racial history must acknowledge that racism is highly adaptable. The rules and reasons the political system employs to enforce status relations of any kind, including racial hierarchy, evolve and change as they are challenged.
The valiant efforts to abolish slavery and Jim Crow and to achieve greater racial equality have brought about significant changes in the legal framework of American society – new “rules of the game,” so to speak.[ref]Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 21.[/ref]
She continues:
These new rules have been justified by new rhetoric, new language, and a new social consensus while producing many of the same results. This dynamic, which legal scholar Reva Siegel has dubbed “preservation through transformation” is the process through which white privilege is maintained, though the rules and rhetoric change.
So, what are the new rhetoric, new language, and new social consensus that keep the results of the old Jim Crow – discrimination and control of African Americans – alive and well?
Alexander argues that rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system, the rhetoric of “law and order” and the label of “felon” to achieve the same end. She writes:
We use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination – employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service – are suddenly legal.[ref]Ibid, 2[/ref]
As a criminal, Alexander says, you have scarcely more rights than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. “We have not ended racial caste in America,” Alexander contends. “We have merely redesigned it.”[ref]Ibid.[/ref]
I believe that it’s the reality of this redesigned system that made the outcome of the George Zimmerman trial last summer so intolerable to so many African Americans and their allies. “Stand Your Ground” – the law that states, among other things, that a person claiming self-defense is not required to retreat from a threat before opening fire – is perfectly legal in Florida, as it is in Georgia.
And, yet, it was hard for me not to wonder that if their races had been different – if George Zimmerman had been an armed black man and Trayvon Martin had a white teenager – that the outcome might have been vastly different as well.
I have no crystal ball, of course, and the jury’s not-guilty verdict of Zimmerman’s second-degree murder conviction was perfectly within the realm of the law. But all of it was disturbing, nevertheless.
It was disturbing to me that five of the six jurors were white, with only one of mixed race.
It was disturbing to me that George Zimmerman, who was acquitted based on an argument of self-defense, was armed and bigger than Trayvon Martin, who was small and unarmed.
It was disturbing that to me that there were no eye witnesses to Zimmerman’s claim that he was viciously attacked and no blood was found at the scene.
It was disturbing that Zimmerman refused to follow the 9-1-1 dispatcher’s suggestion not to follow Martin and that a police officer would be sent to investigate.
These and other facts about the case that made the Zimmerman verdict very, very disturbing for me and prompted me to follow the suggestion of the Unitarian Universalist Association that I read Alexander’s book.
I believe that Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black; it’s because he was automatically and mistakenly suspected of wrongdoing because of the color of skin. I believe the whole tragic affair likely would have never taken place if Martin was a white teenager walking home from 7-Eleven in the rain.
An oft-quoted line written by Dr. King says that “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It is meant to suggest that the struggle for racial justice – for the end of any oppression – is a marathon and requires a willingness to be patient and persistent. King’s quote paraphrases words written by early 19th century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who was fiercely opposed to slavery. Parker predicted the inevitable success of the abolitionist cause this way:
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
If I’m to do my part to help bring our world further along the bend in the arc, it seems that I must first engage in those activities that will further awaken me moral conscience.
I must not sleep through the revolution, as King suggests, but learn about it and engage in it. That’s what Alexander’s book is helping me do. That’s what my participation this past week in the Moral Monday Georgia demonstration on the steps of the state capitol is helping me do. I’m trying to wake up and finding my place and voice in the struggle for racial equality and liberty for all.
As we go from here, I invite you to join me in examining the precepts of Michelle Alexander’s book – which will start immediately after today’s service. I invite you to remain vigilant for ways that our assumptions may be blinding us to insidious forms of discrimination and how the hegemony of our white existence may, like a strong sedative, be lulling our moral alertness into a deep sleep.
May we each find the courage to wake up our hearts and spirits for the change we need . . . so that our African American brothers and sisters . . . and all of us . . . can be truly free. May it be so. Amen.