Welcome to Litsy!

This is one of those books everyone interested in race in America should read. Alexander makes a compelling argument that the War on Drugs was used systematically to incarcerate Black men and strip their right to vote, work in many professions, and in general to create a lower caste in America. She not only discusses how this affects these men, but also who benefits, how it came about, and why it continues.

I learned a lot in this book: supplementing awareness of white supremacist policies, with the main focus being the extreme imbalance between punishment of Black and White people in the US, with focus on drug crime, and extent to which incarceration is an industry. Lots that made me uncomfortable in a way that I need to be made uncomfortable. Now I want to learn what happens in Canada. #bookspin
#Nonfiction2023 #KillingInTheName first bingo line!

I‘m 💯going to say “police occupation” instead of “over-policing” from now on.

June #Bookspin
1. We Measure the Earth
2. Lesser known Monsters
3. Seeing Ghosts
4. River Sing
5. Bad Girls
6. Dream States
7. Pedagogy of the Oppressed
8. How Much of these Hills
9. The Savage Detectives
10. The Sleeping Car Porter
11. Fresh Banana Leaves
12. A Small Place
13. Night Tiger
14. Rememberings
15. Nasty Brutish
16. What You Have Heard Is True
17. Of Women and Salt
18. Beekeeper of Aleppo
19. Pure Colour
20. Wild Tongues

Five years for five joints. Once released, Drake found he was forbidden by law from voting until he paid his court costs…”I put my life on the line for this country. My son‘s in Iraq. My oldest son fought in the Persian Gulf conflict. This is my baby son over there right now. But I‘m not able to vote. They say I owe $900 in fines. To me, that‘s a poll tax…I was on the 1965 voting rights march from Selma. I was 15. When I was 18, I was in Vietnam.”

Racial bias is most acute at the point of entry into the system for two reasons: discretion and authorization. Although prosecutors, as a group, have the greatest power in the criminal justice system, police have the greatest discretion. Discretion that is amplified in drug law enforcement and unbeknownst to the general public, the Supreme Court has actually authorized racial discrimination in policing, rather than adopting legal rules banning it.

During 2006 NYPD officers stopped an astounding 508,540 people… who were walking down the street, often on their way to the subway, grocery store, or bus stop. Searches frequently required people to lie face down on the pavement or stand spreadeagled against a wall while police officers aggressively groped all over their bodies while bystanders watched or walked by. The vast majority were racial minorities and over half were African-American.

Alexander takes us from the Jim Crow era to today's war on drugs. I did not know a single drug offense leaves people without the right to vote, access to food, housing and other help. I didn't realise two drug offenses regardless of how small those offences are, can leave you in prison for the rest of your life.

The section on the Obama Presidency was also very interesting for me.

I learnt a lot in this book.

#bookspinbingo for November!
Big focus on Non-fiction. Not sure which to read first 🤔

Here's November! #bookspinbingo
@TheAromaofBooks

Mostly non-fiction. Assuming that the rules for #nonfictionnovember are just:

1) Read non-fiction

2) That's it...

Feel free to enlighten me if I've got the wrong end of the stick. (I'll probably stick to Plan A 😋)