Reference no: EM133366400

Instructions

As you are reading and discussing your book throughout the quarter, you should also be engaging with the book on a deeper level individually. 

For this assignment, please keep a journal in OneNote where you "dialogue" with your book. Each journal entry should contain:

• A quote or excerpt from your book that resonates with you in some way--did it surprise you, spark emotion, or otherwise leave an impression?
  • Please include the page # of the quote or excerpt in your entry!
• An explanation of why you chose to highlight that quote or excerpt.
• Your reaction to the quote or excerpt--do you agree/disagree with what was said? Do you have questions after reading it? Does it connect in a meaningful way to what you're learning in the course?

Parameters

Your journal should have a minimum of ten (10) entries; each entry should be at least 200 words in length excluding the quote/excerpt.

"THREE
We Have to Talk about Systemic Change
Interview by Frank Barat in Paris (December 10, 2014)
The last time we spoke about Ferguson, the crime had happened, but the grand jury had not given its verdict yet. Following the death of another Black man, Eric Garner, at the hands of police, I'd like to talk about it again. Two Black men died and the cops are walking free. What needs to change?
First, I would point out that police killings of Black men and women are not unusual. Robin D. G. Kelley wrote an article recently, which you might find interesting. You can find it on the Portside website. The name of the article is "Why We Won't Wait." The article lists all of the Black people who had been killed by police, while we were waiting to hear the results of the Ferguson verdict.
These killings all took place in a couple of months?
Exactly-during the time the grand jury was in session listening to evidence. I think that we often treat these cases as if they were exceptions, as if they were aberrations. Whereas in actuality they happen all the time. And we"assume that if we are only able to punish the perpetrator, then justice will have been done. But as a matter of fact, as horrendous as it was that the grand jury refused to indict two police officers for the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, had they indicted the officers, I don't know whether anything would have changed. I'm making this point in order to emphasize that even when police are indicted, we cannot be certain that change is on the agenda.
There is a case in North Carolina, I believe, involving a young man by the name of Jonathan Ferrell, who was killed by the police after he had an accident with his automobile and attempted to get help by knocking on someone's door. The person apparently claimed that he might have been a burglar and called the police, who immediately killed him. Now in that case the policeman was not initially indicted; however, the prosecutor persisted and eventually the grand jury did indict him. I guess the point I'm making is, we have to talk about systemic change. We can't be content with individual actions.
And so that means a whole range of things. That[...]"

"A whole number of white people wrote in and described crimes they had committed for which they were never suspected, and one person pointed out that he and a Black friend were arrested by the police for stealing a candy bar. The cop gave the white person the candy bar, and the Black person was eventually sentenced to prison.
This is true everywhere in a way. There is profiling in Paris, too. If you talk to someone who is of Moroccan or Algerian descent in Paris, they face pretty much the same stereotypes and fabrications as African Americans in the USA. Why do you think those stereotypes are fabricated? Is it a case of "divide and rule" strategy?
You know, racism is a very complex phenomenon. There are very important structural elements of racism and it's often those structural elements that aren't taken into consideration when there is discussion about ending racism or challenging racism. There's also the impact on the psyche, and this is where the persistence of stereotypes comes in. The ways in which over a period of decades and centuries Black people have been dehumanized, that is to say represented as less than human, and so[...]" "You mentioned that one person will not change the whole system, so how is Obama constrained by the system that actually got him elected?
Well of course, there is a whole apparatus that controls the presidency that is absolutely resistant to change. Which isn't to excuse Obama from taking bolder steps. I think that there are steps that he could have taken had he insisted. But if one looks at the history of struggles against racism in the US, no change has ever happened simply because the president chose to move in a more progressive direction.
Every change that has happened has come as a result of mass movements-from the era of slavery, the Civil War, and the involvement of Black people in the Civil War, which really determined the outcome. Many people are under the impression that it was Abraham Lincoln who played the major role, and he did as a matter of fact help to accelerate the move toward abolition, but it was the decision on the part of slaves to emancipate themselves and to join the Union Army-both women and men-that was primarily responsible for the victory over slavery. It was the slaves[...]"