The New Jim Crow – Chapter 1: The Rebirth of Caste

“Initially, blacks brought to this country were not all enslaved; many were treated as indentured servants. As plantation farming expanded, particularly tobacco and cotton farming, demand increased greatly for both labor and land.

The demand for land was met by invading and conquering larger and larger swaths of territory. American Indians became a growing impediment to white European ‘progress’, and during this period, the images of American Indians promoted in books, newspapers, and magazines became increasingly negative. As sociologists Keith Kilty and Eric Swank have observed, eliminating “savages” is less of a moral problem than eliminating human beings, and therefore American Indians came to be understood as a lesser race- uncivilized savages – thus providing a justification for the extermination of native peoples.”

-Excerpt from The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Does this sound familiar at all? It should. European Imperialism has used this same tactic of degrading and dehumanizing the people that they need societies’ approval of, for the infliction of abuse upon and removal of them from society, quite often through genocidal means. They use mass media to paint the targeted people out to be dangerous, a threat to us all and our civil liberties. Truth is, these people are only seen as obstacles standing in the way of their greed – their ability to secure what they already have and to acquire more. Once this false image is seated in the conscious minds of society, a war against the targeted people is initiated.

This tactic has been deployed many times throughout modern history as a tool for capitalistic expansion reaching from the West – to name a few; the Jews in Nazi Germany, the Japanese, Africans via the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Black Americans and Jim Crow, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Hawaiians, and many other Pacific and Caribbean islanders. The consistent theme here is that people, who appear to be – by their standards of civilization – savage and uncivilized. The fact of the matter is, they simply live their lives differently; they have different values, traditions, religious and spiritual beliefs – they are not wrong, just different. Most recently added to this list of misfits are – gays and Muslims in the middle east. The elite also used this very same tactic with its self-inflicted 9/11 assault on N.Y.’s twin towers and innocent American citizens. This was a plot intended to mount up American indignation toward Osama bin Laden (a former C.I.A. tactician) and the entire Nation of Islam, in order to garner American support of the “war on terror” creation and the eventual bombing of millions of innocent Afghani people and their surrounding regions.

We must stop falling for this same old trick; we must better educate ourselves on what is truth, and demand that all people are treated equally and fairly, as we are all creations streaming from the same Source. Regardless of what our beliefs, racial, and cultural differences are, don’t allow yourself to believe that you are better than anyone else – that is only in your mind. We are all great in our own unique way. No one has the formula on who is better than, and I do mean NO ONE! Nope, not even you.

Love,

20 BradfordSpoke 14

Bradford Speaks is a Life Architect, Coach & Youth Speaker, who desires to wake up the world to see one that it could exist in if only it could employ more love and less hate and war. He seeks to speak to and inspire our youth to live at a higher level of consciousness, to see themselves as their brother’s keeper. He is also an author and self proclaimed philosopher. You may visit his company’s site, Bradford Speaks Life Management, LLC to learn more about his work, and to schedule individual sessions or book him to speak to your youth organization.