Most people think the left’s obsession with “racial justice” in policing started with George Floyd. It didn’t. That was just the match thrown on an already blazing bonfire that really started to take shape many years ago.
The groundwork for dismantling America’s criminal justice system was laid over a decade earlier, back in 2010, with a book that quietly reprogrammed an entire generation of very liberal progressives: “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” by Michelle Alexander, the black writer, attorney, and civil rights activist.
In it, Ms. Alexander passionately argued that America had replaced segregation with a new system of racial control and mass incarceration. Her theory claimed that after the civil rights movement ended, the justice system itself became the tool to keep racial hierarchies intact. “Felon” was the new “N-word.” Laws were just another disguise for discrimination.
Never mind that if we look at the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, Table 43, for 2019, blacks represented 26.6% of total arrests, including 51.2% of murder arrests, 52.7% of robbery arrests, 28.8% of burglary arrests, 28.6% of motor vehicle theft arrests, 42.2% of prostitution arrests, and 26.1% of drug arrests when they were 12.2% of the total U.S. population in 2019 (U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey).
That book did quite a number on our country, and most of you have probably never even heard of it. The book’s narrative is straight out of the Marxist 101 handbook. In Stalin’s own words: “To make an omelette you got to break a few eggs.” His metaphor for “to remake America you have to break it’s society.” And what better way than through the politics of division? Create a permanent victim – minorities, and a permanent oppressor – white majority, and the subsequent chaos will destroy the cultural glue that binds them together.
But Ms. Alexander made it all sound so deep and profound. Like all things “radical,” the book was packaged as compassion. But in reality, it was the intellectual trigger that unleashed a wave of “soft-on-crime” insanity that’s still wrecking left-wing blue cities today. Professors taught it. Judges quoted it. Activists built entire platforms on it. And suddenly, criminal behavior wasn’t criminal anymore; it was the result of “systemic oppression” of poor black and brown minorities at the hands of the evil, racist, patriarchal white majority.
That’s how we ended up with Soros-backed “woke” DAs and judges dismissing charges, violent offenders getting released without bail, and career Democrat politicians openly calling to “reimagine” policing. The entire “Defund the Police” movement started in the pages of that book. It is quite literally the manifesto that convinced the left that crime is never a choice, only a symptom of something racist. A symptom of the perpetual oppression of people of color by the white majority.
And here we are today. Trapped in a time of lawlessness, disrespect and outright hatred for police and the rule of law. Either we start getting really tough on crime or we lose what’s left of our country. The choice is ours. I know what side I’m on. Do you?
Authors’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers.
Got Something to Say, We Want to Hear It. Comment or submit Op-Eds to steve@granitegrok.com
