Walled Women

Here's the passage from the Adrienne Rich poem that I mentioned (and mis-quoted!) @ the end of our discussion today, about the "permanence" of our taking a stand (in barometer) or in writing (especially on-line). It's from "North American Time," and seems (to me) to have resonances for voice, silence and vision:

"Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill

We move but our words stand
become responsible
and this is verbal privilege...."

I'm only part way through the reading for "The New Jim Crow" but I really wish this had been the texts for one of my American history classes in high school (for some reason, we did 1 year of world history, 2 years of American, and the last year was government).   It's ironic that even though I was exposed to two years of US History, a lot of the flaws of Americas past were left out; slavery was talked about in a very distant, unemotional way and to refer to something like the Trail of Tears as genocide would have been outrageous.  I went to a very racially diverse high school (although we were greatly segregated by AP and honors tracking), but when slavery was discussed a lot of white people complained: "What does this have to do with us? I hate when people say I'm racist just because I'm white, it's not my fault my great great grandfather owned slaves" and so on.  If you accused anyone of saying something racist, they thought you were being overly sensitive.  For example, in New England/Massachusetts, brown ice cream sprinkles are refered to as "jimmies".  My brother told me that this refered back to the Jim Crow laws and given it's racist origin, it was not something I should say.  I remember telling some of my whtie friends about it and their reaction was something like "when are people going to GET OVER slavery?".  I would like to think that had we read a book the The New Jim Crow, my peers and I would have been much more aware of how the history of slavery and racism still impacts us today.

"More African American Adults are under correctional control today-- in prison or jail, or on probation parole --than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began" (180).

I'm definitely feeling a lot of things reading The New Jim Crow. The War on Drugs seems like such a rhetorical farse to keep black American's enslaved. When I was living in North Carolina, I went to this Anarchist conference, and in a lecture on harm reduction, we were told that there are more prescriptions for high potency painkillers (such as oxycodone or percocet) than there are number of people living in the state. So -- the drug usage has changed -- in a way that allows white middle class people to avoid being seen as drug users.

The "Prisoner's of a Hardlife" comic mentioned the sentencing distinction between Crack and Cocaine as reflecting class and racial oppression. Who do we think of when we hear the terms drug-user or addict? I imagine there are hundreds "high functioning" and legally sanctioned drug addicts and users who work on wallstreet or as Ibankers, who just fill their prescriptions of morphine and thus are considered upstanding, contributing members of society. Obviously the system is targeting certain people. 

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if everyone already knows about this event but wanted to let you know about a film screening tomorrow night that seems to connect quite nicely to what we've been discussing in class and also just looks rather interesting.  Description of it is below...

After our discussion in class last week about what a female offender looks like, and our reading of "The Real Cost of Prison Project" graphic strip, I see many of the intersections between what we wrote on the board, like "overpolicing" and the overcriminalization of drugs, leading so many of the women pictured in the graphic to prison and all the other consequences that came with their arrest (losing children, not being able to get a job, etc). Reading Alexander's book, however, has gotten me really upset about how hard people fought to criminalize drugs, especially in the 1980s, especially in the war on crack cocaine (used largely by African Americans), and how that vendetta is still so prevalent in our public consciousness today that drug rehabilitation is hard to come by, when offenders are shipped off to prison instead. 

Reading (the DEA officer) Stutman's quote from Alexander's book, on page 52, about how he had to lobby to make drugs an issue that Washington (as a symbol for the government as a whole) would care about and work to combat. I was kind of appalled by the idea of the media lapping at the DEA's story, since "crack was the hottest combat reporting story to come along since the Vietnam War". Making a great, sensationalized story for the masses is not reason enough to create harsh laws and punishment that will impact offenders, too many of whom like the women from "The Real Cost of Prison Project", will be hurt in such a negative and unforgiving way. 

I am not exactly sure how to express myself in this post and I am a little worried because the following thoughts will expose my judgemental side--but I suppose everyone is guilty of passing judgement at some point in their life. I stopped reading Colored Amazons mid-way through the 4th chapter because I got really uncomfortable and really angry. The chapter told the story of two black women who killed a white male farmer during the negotiation stage of sexual services. In the media, the women were portrayed as savages who ruthlessly killed a white man who was seemingly drunk and unknowing. However, the media failed to reveal a reality and hidden agenda of the parties invovled. To be blunt, the white man came to the women for sex and they were going to provide that service because, as Gross explained in an earlier chapter, black females were not protected by the law; therefore, their bodies were subjected to sexual exploitation and exoticism. I have never known this history in great detail but I, as a black female, have seen how the ripple affects of this history continue to haunt black communities, black females in my life and myself--my first boyfriend was a white boy. Therefore, reading this chapter reminded me of how uncomfortable and upset I get when I see interracial couples between a white man and black female (bring on the "love is color-blind, love has no limits"..blah blah, I have heard it all).

During last class discussion, many of my peers mentioned the similarities and correlations between school and prison. I was surprised and had to admit that there are indeed many overlapping philosophies of two seemly irrelevant facilities, a confined space with many people, some levels of administrative stuff, spend some time to achieve certain purpose and etc.

However, after reading the two articles about higher education in prison, I realize the topic of higher education in prison has evolved to such a complicated one after 200 hundred years.  The fundamental paradox arises from the “tension between competing vision of what prisoners themselves are and accordingly, what prisoners should or ought to be?” ( Jones, d’Errico, 1)

Religion plays an important role in starting the education program in prison. (Interestingly, religious authority also initiated the original reform of educational system by starting charity school). However, prisons are after all institutions built for corrections purpose. This ongoing conflict between administrators and educators become the forces shape development t of higher education in prison.  Pennsylvania is one of the earliest state to start the program led by Quakers.

I am really struggling with the idea of distance learning, brought up in Jones and Errico’s discussion about Prison education. In a practical sense, learning through technology seems more cost effective and as though it would allow for a much wider range of what inmates could be learning about. I definitely like the idea of prisoners having more available to them to learn from. Especially when considering what we have been discussing in class about the implicit ways in which we are taught in classrooms, a distance style learning seems as though it would be more likely to encourage independence and freedom of thought. Jones and Errico cite another author when talking about this: “Concepts such as “University without walls” and “Open University,” for example (Robinson 1977), bespeak the desire to decentralize learning in order to reach special populations and emphasize self-directed and prior learning at the expense of traditional instruction.” I definitely understand the value in being able to learn in way that is least likely to be biased by the language used in a traditional classroom. However, I can’t shake the feeling that this type of distance learning can also be limited, and that there is something desirable about being able to learn from another human being. I especially cannot help but to feel that not having classmates could be a terribly isolating experience. Maybe it is different in the sense that prisoners are already very isolated ?