Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, spoke to Lutherans in Texas this past May.
‘
Event tackles The New Jim Crow’
By Ann Hafften B
efore consideration of a crimi- nal justice social statement came before the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, members of the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Mission Area (they don’t call it a synod) were already talking about issues of justice and inequality within criminal justice, immigration and other systems of modern society.
In May an ecumenical audience of more than 200 gathered at King of Glory Lutheran Church, Dallas, to hear legal scholar Michelle Alex- ander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness (New Press, 2010). “It is great to be surrounded by
people who are willing to engage in meaningful dialogue about our sys- tem of mass incarceration, a system that has devastated so many of our communities, destroyed so many families, and literally turned back the clock on racial progress in the U.S.,” Alexander told the group. “A vast new racial under-caste
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now exists in America—in Chicago, in Dallas, in Boston, in Philadel- phia—entire communities where nearly every young black man can expect to spend time in prison. [They are] locked up, permanently locked out, trapped in a permanent second- class status eerily reminiscent of eras we supposedly left behind.” Bishop Kevin Kanouse called Alexander “a prophet in our midst,” add- ing, “There should have been 1,000 more people here tonight.” Earlier
that day, about 100 people took part in a workshop. The entire event, “The New Jim Crow in Texas,” was streamed live as part of the mission area’s Table Talk program. Now the team that set out to address racism through this event has a new challenge. Kanouse asked them to plan the 2014 Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana assembly with a focus on justice. With the title of “Giving Public
Witness,” the team meets monthly in Arlington, Texas. It organized two events in 2010 and 2011 dealing with immigration issues. In 2012 the group turned to racism. Team members got acquainted with the Center for Elimination of Disproportionality and Disparities, a program of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. The center’s mission is to uncover and address systemic racism in Texas education, social services and crimi- nal justice institutions. Together with King of Glory, the center co-sponsored the May event.
Through the center, the team took part in “Undoing Racism” training. There they encountered center offi- cials Joyce James and Maxine Jones- Robinson, who presented “Coura- geous Conversations about Race” for the afternoon portion of “The New Jim Crow in Texas.” Kanouse provided a theological foundation, and a panel of specialists from Texas education, criminal justice and social services sectors engaged par- ticipants in discussion.
Doris Dupree Harris, a Dallas- based ELCA pastor and team mem- ber, said both the bishop’s office and the center “affirmed our work and the necessity for dialogue. This event is a good start. It has publicly confirmed what some folks have been working on for a long time. After a long period of anger and hurt, it was so needed. “We are all part of the ‘institu-
tion’ and the systems of inequality. We need to address crime, but with equality. We all need to be treated the same way for the same crime. Meanwhile, people are making money out of putting black people in jail.” Toward that equality, Alexander called participants to commit to “building a multiracial, multiethnic human rights movement on behalf of all of us.”
She added: “In honor of those who worked to end the old Jim Crow, I hope that we will commit to a spiritually grounded, a spiritually awake human rights movement, a movement for education, not incar- ceration; a movement for jobs, not jails; a movement to end all these forms of discrimination against people released from prison that denies basic human rights to work, to shelter to food.”
Hafften is a writer and editor and a member of Messiah Lutheran Church, Weatherford, Texas.
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