rmblr’s thoughts after watching 13th

Crimes are defined as the violation of laws enacted by society. The ‘society’ that defines these laws, as the documentary “13th” defined, showed the startling fact that of the elected prosecutors in the United States, 95% of them are white. From here, we need to understand how discrimination against the African American population developed into what sociology considers social deviance, and from here how the US criminal justice system was portrayed in society. To start, we need to understand what social deviance is. As defined by our textbook, social deviance is the transgression of virtually any socially established norms. Seeing as these norms are fluid and “subject to change” the definition of deviance often fluctuates across different contexts, which is why it is important to define what a crime is. Returning to the startling statistic that 95% of elected prosecutors are white, this gives better understanding to the fact that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration worldwide. With the sky rocket of prison populations from 300,000 in 1972 to the even more shocking prison population of 2.3 million, this leads us to the question - what does this high rate of incarceration look like?

One quote that stood out to me was, “(...) The African Americans in those communities did not go there as immigrants looking for new economic opportunities. They went there as refugees from terror.” This quote was said in reference to African American populations being across several cities in the US, and how the purpose of them settling in different cities carried the weight of an individual being displaced due to terror or violence (here associated with the Ku Klux Klan). Particularly in reference to African American communities, Marc Mauer referenced the rise of the “war on drugs” in the mid-1980s. I believe that this is a prime example of how deviance was associated with the African American population in the US, and thus allowed for the social construction of the US criminal justice system to continually manifest racism.

Crack cocaine appeared in small doses and was relatively inexpensive, thus its appeal to various communities - the African American community in particular. Once this notion of crack cocaine being associated with this community, it seemed that Congress was quick to sentence mandatory penalties for crack, that were far harsher than the penalties surrounding powder cocaine. With this, Shaka Senghor’s quote sums up the association of the African American community to this new drug, “You’re black with crack cocaine, you’re going to prison for basically the rest of your life.” She goes on to show the difference with the type of incarceration and penalties held against the white population involved with drugs, “And if you’re white, you pretty much get a slap on the wrist. This simply summarises the stark contrast of treatment between two races within the US criminal justice system, further symbolising that this “war on drugs” could also be considered a “war on communities of color” against black or latino communities. Similarly, another appalling statistic to come out of the documentary was, for the ratio of lifetime likelihood of imprisonment, white men are at a 1 in 17 ratio as opposed to black men being at a 1 in 3 ratio.

In addition to this discrimination already integrated into law and order, racism against the black and latino communities were spread through pop culture, particularly, through TV programs. I think that the association between deviance and the African American population can be linked to classical conditioning theory. From local news to the storylines on TV shows, the rate to which the greater American population associated black individuals to the crimes shown on TV, only increased the extent to which crimes, and overall deviance was associated with the African American population.

“Create a context where people are afraid, and when you make people afraid, you can always justify putting people in the garbage can.” Cory Greene’s quote allows for us to develop a large picture of how racism was socially constructed into the foundation of the US criminal justice system, and for the most part how the African American population is the ‘face’ of deviance as a result of this system.