The Birth of Slavery in the U.S

1. In the 17th century labor for plantations was based on indentured servitude.
2. 1675 Bacon’s Rebellion
3. By 1770 “By the mid-1770s, the system of bond labor had been thoroughly transformed into a racial caste system predicated on slavery.
   “Racial division was a consequence, not a precondition of slavery, but once it was instituted it became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own.” Loïc Wacquant, “America’s New ‘Peculiar Institution’: On the Prison as Surrogate Ghetto,” Theoretical Criminology 4, no. 3 (2000)

The Death of Slavery in the US

1. Emancipation Proclamation 1863
   “Following the Civil War, it was unclear what institutions, laws, or customs would be necessary to maintain white control now that slavery was gone. Nonetheless, as numerous historians have shown, the development of a new racial order became the consuming passion for most white Southerners. Rumors of a great insurrection terrified whites, and blacks increasingly came to be viewed as menacing and dangerous. In fact, the current stereotypes of black men as aggressive, unruly predators can be traced to this period, when whites feared that an angry mass of black men might rise up and attack them or rape their women.” [Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, The New Jim Crow]
2. 14th Amendment 1868
3. 15th Amendment 1870
4. “Black Codes” in South. “As expressed by one Alabama planter: “We have the power to pass stringent police laws to govern the Negroes—this is a blessing—for they must be controlled in some way or white people cannot live among them.” While some of these codes were intended to establish systems of peonage resembling slavery, others foreshadowed Jim Crow laws by prohibiting, among other things, interracial seating in the first-class sections of railroad cars and by segregating schools.” [Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, The New Jim Crow]
5. “Black Codes” overturned under reconstruction.
   “Southern conservatives vowed to reverse Reconstruction and sought the “abolition of the Freedmen’s Bureau and all political instrumentalities designed to secure Negro supremacy.” Their campaign to “redeem” the South was reinforced by a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, which fought a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction governments and local leaders, complete with bombings, lynchings, and mob violence.”, [Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, The New Jim Crow]
6. Reconstruction 1863-1877 (Disputed election of 1876 was given to Republican Hayes, but an agreement to withdraw federal troops from the South and an end to reconstruction left the Democrats in control of the South for more than a century.) The Birth of Jim Crow in the US
7. Plessy v. Ferguson – “separate but equal” standard set – 1896
8. Three philosophies of race during and after reconstruction a. Liberal – paternalistic emphasis on stigma of segregation and hypocrisy of government
   Conservative – blames liberals for pushing blacks too far and warned blacks that things could be worse under the Redeemers
   Radical – populist movement of poor whites and blacks against planters, railroads, and big business
   “The Populists took direct aim at the conservatives, who were known as comprising a party of privilege, and they achieved a stunning series of political victories throughout the region. Alarmed by the success of the Populists and the apparent potency of the alliance between poor and working-class whites and African Americans, the conservatives raised the cry of white supremacy and resorted to the tactics they had employed in their quest for Redemption, including fraud, intimidation, bribery, and terror.” [Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, The New Jim Crow]
9. Segregation laws put a wedge between black and white just as slavery and racial ideology was the response to Bacon’s Rebellion 200 years earlier.

Weakening the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution

“The Fourth Amendment is but one example. Virtually all constitutionally protected civil liberties have been undermined by the drug war. The Court has been busy in recent years approving mandatory drug testing of employees and students, upholding random searches and sweeps of public schools and students, permitting police to obtain search warrants based on an anonymous informant’s tip, expanding the government’s wiretapping authority, legitimating the use of paid, unidentified informants by police and prosecutors, approving the use of helicopter surveillance of homes without a warrant, and allowing the forfeiture of cash, homes, and other property based on unproven allegations of illegal drug activity.”, [Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, The New Jim Crow]

 When is a “search and seizure” voluntary? – Bus and sidewalk sweeps. 20. Pretext stops – traffic violations – “driving while black”

Wacquant’s Conception of Ghetto and Hyperghetto

• Loïc Wacquant. 2002. “From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Rethinking the ‘race question’ in the US.” New Left Review, No. 13 January & February. pp. 41-60
• Folk Conception of the Ghetto
• The notion of soul, which gained wide appeal during the ghetto uprisings of the 1960s, was a folk conception of the lower-class Negro’s own “national character.” Produced from within for in-group consumption, it served as a symbol of solidarity and a badge of personal and group pride. By contrast, ‘underclass’ status is assigned wholly from the outside (and from above); is it forced upon its putative ‘members’ by specialists in symbolic production – journalists, politicians, academics, and government experts – for purposes of control and disciplining.

Peculiar Institution

Economic and Political Roots of the Hyperghetto

1. The transition of American economy from a tightly integrated, factory centered, Fordist system of production catering to a uniform mass market
2. To a more open, decentralized, service intensive system geared to differentiated consumption patterns.
3. Accompanied by dual occupational structure and racial segmentation of the peripheral segments of the labor market

Racial Disproportion in US Imprisonment

• At mid 20th century about 70% of inmates were white (Anglo) • At end of the 20th century about 30% of inmates were white (Anglo) • The mid-point was about 1988, the year of G. W. H. Bush’s “Willie Horton” ads YouTube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTdUQ9SYhUw&feature=youtu.be
• Blacks account for o 29% to 33% of all property crime arrests
  o 44% to 47% of all violent offenses
• But blacks are incarcerated about 8 times more often than whites. • The life long probability of “doing time” is
  o 4% for whites
  o 16% for Latinos
  o 29% for Blacks
• This change in incarceration during the 1980’s and 1990s occurred simultaneously with a large increase in the number of middle and upper middle class blacks and significant numbers of blacks hired in the police, courts, and corrections institutions