From mass incarceration to mass deportation

Professor, lawyer, and scholar Michelle Alexander writes about rising white nationalism that links mass incarceration with the mass deportation of immigrants on the dual occassion of MLK Day and the 10th anniversary edition of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration and in the Age of Colorblindness.” Her op-ed in the NY Times SundayReview and interview in The New Yorker highlight the racism that characterizes our past and present. She considers the optimism of the early years of “post-racial” Obama presidency the aberration and the enduring realities of race and caste to be the defining feature of our nation.

Contrary to what many people would have us believe, what our nation is not experiencing is not an “aberration.” The politics of “Trumpism” and “fake news” are not new; they are as old as the nation itself. 

Alexander names a growing number of scholars and activists who have begun to “connect the dots” between incarceration and deportation in U.S. history.  Kelly Lytle Hernandez, historian and author of “Amnesty or Abolition: Felons, Illegals, and the Case for a New Abolition Movement” chronicles how these systems have emerged as interlocking forms of social control that relegate “aliens” and “felons” to a racialized caste of outsiders. I would add to her list Cesar Garcia Hernandez’s Migrating to Prison and Amy Lerman & Vesla Weaver’s Arresting Citizenship among others.

MHC