words

I just started reading Michelle Alexander's new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, this morning and wish I could spend the whole day with it because it's already so interesting! The author is careful in presenting her ideas because it's always difficult to discuss race in America and especially to express the idea that our institutions and laws are racist, but there is so much evidence that the facts are really hard to ignore or dispute. A lot of the things the book will discuss, like black exceptionalism and the shift from overt racism to more subtle or institutionalized racism, are things that I have been thinking about for awhile now but much less eloquently, so I am excited to have all of this information right in front of me. If you are at all interested in race in America then I definitely recommend the book and so does Tavis Smiley, and at least one of us is a reliable source (it's Tavis Smiley...)

What is completely missed in the rare public debates today about the plight of African Americans is that a huge percentage of them are not free to move up at all. It is not just that they lack opportunity, attend poor schools, or are plagued by poverty. They are barred by law from doing so. And the major institutions with which they come into contact are designed to prevent their mobility. To put the matter starkly: The current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy. The system operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control. Viewed from this perspective, the so-called underclass is better understood as an undercaste—a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains racial hierarchy much as earlier systems of control did. Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.

From Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

as seen on tv

Not a lot of cute outfits on New Girl this week, but Jess did run a marathon in style:

 And, as usual, successfully mixed two colors I wouldn't have though of mixing.

We were treated to some milk maid braids in a flashback:

And some mixed patterns:

eat

 Sweetmeal Digestive Biscuits & Black Tea

Tea time all the time!