Most recent public comments by Alison Lenert https://nowcomment.com/users/5690 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505956 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505956 In my opinion, this has a lot to do with the fact that acknowledging mass incarceration as a problem requires the white majority to also acknowledge that it is our own power structures that are responsible for creating such a debilitating system. This paragraph mostly talks about affirmative action as something that we are, overall, fighting to keep instated in higher education. In this regard, our actions are moral and good; we are, in our eyes, giving opportunity to minority students who may not otherwise have it. So, media focus on this issue does not demonize the dominant social group - it, in a way, puts it on a pedestal. However, like I said, to bring mass incarceration to center stage would require the white majority to face its role in locking up and locking out of mainstream society a growing undercaste of young African Americans (7). Honestly, I feel like the media would be afraid to report heavily on something of this nature. Mon, 04 Apr 2016 23:38:43 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505952 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505952 A theme throughout this chapter is the exploitation of poor and working-class whites in America. It seems that in present day, the conflict between lower class whites and lower class blacks, so strategically preserved by white supremacists and politicians, still exists. The dissolution of the Populist Party relied upon lower class whites viewing themselves ever so slightly above blacks in the socioeconomic hierarchy, simply due to their skin color. In our discussion of the dissolution of jobs in unskilled communities in class, we recognized the very fact that working-class white men feel slighted and angry in a way that the black man does not. Unlike the black man, the white man has been told repeatedly, throughout history, that he is inherently deserves more than the lowest tier of society (namely the black lower class). It's startling to see how these two groups of people have been turned against each other by those in power, considering their comparable situations. They should be allies, yet since the end of slavery, they've been no more than pawns in the game of the middle class and the elite who choose to exploit their circumstances for their own benefit. Mon, 04 Apr 2016 23:12:38 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505946 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505946 I think this record of federal funding is significant evidence for the argument that the motives for the War on Drugs had little to do with drug abuse itself and its effect on the nation's public health. In particular, the fact that funding for agencies responsible for treatment, prevention, and education were "dramatically" reduced, indicates how little the government cared about how drugs were affecting those who were suffering from addiction and about preventing others from getting involved in such activities. It's hard to believe how decisions like these, which seem so transparent and ineffectual now, are made and passed by our government of so many people. Mon, 04 Apr 2016 22:52:30 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505926 https://nowcomment.com/documents/52798?scroll_to=505926 Alexander expands on the consequences of the idea of a "colorblind" society later in this chapter. On page 53, she says, "The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism." And on page 48, in discussing liberal critiques of Reagan's appeal to states' rights, she says his rhetoric put liberals into a now familiar position of "arguing that something is racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist language." These passages really struck me in the clarity with which they distinguish the issue of "colorblindness" in the US. The ways in which race-neutral language have made it so easy for people to deny their racist motivations and to defend their actions is horrifically amazing. I think it's scary that the idea of being "colorblind" has actually deepened the pervasiveness of racism in our society. I think much of the trouble we face in becoming an egalitarian society - one that is functionally colorblind - is that in order to do so, we have to be willing to acknowledge the disadvantages that certain racial and minority groups face by hand of our government and society at large. We have to be willing to implicate ourselves in the plight that these minorities face in order to overcome them. Mon, 04 Apr 2016 22:34:12 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49882?scroll_to=490401 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49882?scroll_to=490401 This section makes me think particularly of Michael. I think it's a question we could ask about all of the kids in season four, but I think Michael's home experience is closest to the situation Kozol describes here. I would say Michael's situation is even more damaging to his trust in adults, because he is the one who is sexually abused and his mother is the one who is around while it happens. We see in his interactions with Cutty, especially, his struggle to believe that authority figures have his best interests at heart. He says the social workers are "too friendly." Even as part of Marlo's crew, though a different type of authority, he has trouble accepting their way as the right or best way - he's always asking why, and pushing back against their authority. Sun, 06 Mar 2016 23:11:07 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481730 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481730 I thought the same thing reading this section. I'm not completely finished viewing, so maybe I don't know the complete arc of female characters in the show, but it was weird to read this section and feel like there weren't many characters to observe through the lens of Anderson's chapter. Like you said, very few women are directly involved in the game in the show. Maybe it's true that females are most often affected in other ways, being associated with the game through male partners, for example, but we can't really know if that's just what we're shown on TV or if it's reality. It's also interesting that the two main female characters I can think of, Snoop - who is in the game - and Kima, are not traditionally "feminine" characters. We've briefly discussed how Kima's sexuality allows showrunners to avoid addressing issues of sexuality in the workplace, etc. In reference to the game, though, with Snoop, she is presented as a pretty masculine character. It seems that to be in the game, you do need to emulate a certain masculinity - which is no doubt associated with power and control. Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:09:37 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481716 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481716 I agree - it seems that death is such a common occurrence for these kids and these communities that, instead of what Anderson suggests the normal process of mourning after a young life is cut short, there is barely any reaction at all. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that we're watching a television series, given that it wouldn't really assist the plot to show everyone mourning every death. Still, when death seems such a part of the game from the perspective we're shown, I can't imagine such reaction coming from these communities upon every death. I also wonder at what point someone is no longer viewed as a "young life." Would this just be school children? Would dealers, who are actually quite young - like Marlo or even D'Angelo, be mourned in such a way? Mon, 29 Feb 2016 13:00:21 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481680 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481680 This paragraph reminds me of Michael, particularly when Anderson says that "These boys make a whole set of choices and decisions based in part on what they are able to do successfully," and that one doesn't become a drug dealer "all at once." Michael starts out in the drug trade temporarily, so that he could buy school supplies for himself and Bug. He's good at it, though, and the dealers take notice. Bodie wants him to stay on, and Marlo Stansfield wants to recruit Michael. Ultimately, Michael understood the code of the street, and it became a form of capital for him. He was able to be successful, and it became harder for him to resist the lure of the game. Mon, 29 Feb 2016 12:26:43 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481602 https://nowcomment.com/documents/49884?scroll_to=481602 Some other people have mentioned how Namond's mother essentially forces him to start dealing in the middle of season four. While I'd agree there are other factors that play into him entering "the game," his mother pushes him to get involved in order to support their family. Anderson talks about how often times, young boys get involved in the drug trade as a way to support their families - to be the breadwinner. I wonder whether it's more common for a boy to decide to support his family and have a mother who "just accepts that the money is there somehow," or for him to be more explicitly pressured to take care of family by the family. In this case, Namond's mother isn't really struggling to make ends meet - she just wants to live the relatively lavish life she's been able to live off the Barksdale money. This seems to be in contrast to the lives of many mothers, families, and children in the inner-city system, who struggle to get by and depend on drug money to support their basic needs. Tue, 01 Mar 2016 10:17:58 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453153 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453153 Although I haven't viewed the "Hamsterdam" storyline in The Wire, Bowden points out that the "experiment isn't presented as a cure-all." According to his description, the experiment solves certain problems, while exacerbating others. To me, it seems that one of Simon's primary goals is to demonstrate the impossibility of binary categorization in the world. Be it people, and whether they are good or bad, or solutions to problems we just can't seem to solve, there is rarely a clear and simple "right" way to be or way to act. With this example in particular, the fact that the experiment makes some improvements and some regressions as far as addressing the problems associated with the drug trade acknowledges the reality that the institutional and systemic problems we face in society are never as simple to solve as we like to believe. Everything is linked, and any changes to the system may cause effects we never considered. Wed, 03 Feb 2016 01:55:27 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453149 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453149 This, especially as a parenthetical, stuck out to me as well, given its real world implications. In a show like this, is there a danger in such a seemingly accurate representation of how the justice and legal systems work crimes? Of course there are a million and one cop and crime shows on TV, and there's always the possibility a criminal could learn something from one of these shows. But, when a show depicts these systems and institutions in a way that *appears* to expose a more realistic depiction of the way things work and the problems we face, are we revealing too much to the wrong people? Or does the realistic exposure do more good than bad by informing people of what goes on in the world around them? Wed, 03 Feb 2016 01:39:09 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453147 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453147 In the above paragraph, Bowden says "Being surprised is the essence of good reporting," but this surprise is what leads a writer to veer from the truth and invent fiction. It's interesting how negatively he words this description, particularly by describing Simon's deliberate choice to avoid "risking the coherence of his vision" by observing the real world and, inevitably, asking more questions that may change his views and explanations of the world. It is important to acknowledge the fundamental influence of a creator's worldview on any fictionally constructed world. We are often too quick to take what we see as reality. However, this article goes beyond acknowledgment and creates its own (seemingly) personally-motivated narrative of Simon, depicting him as a scorned journalist who is uninterested in depicting the city and its institutions as anything good, simply because of his own bad experience. This is as if to say he is ignoring reality, because it doesn't fit with his own narrative. Though this may be true, it seems Bowden's own act of constructing a narrative around the truth, twisting and presenting the facts in a way that may ignore other realities involved. Wed, 03 Feb 2016 01:29:31 -0500 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453144 https://nowcomment.com/documents/46407?scroll_to=453144 I agree with your belief that there is not a complete absence of decent people in the show. I, too, would use Wallace and D'Angelo as examples of this. Both of them seem to have this desire to get out - a degree of morality that tells them that what they are involved in is wrong, even if they're just a cog in the machine. Further than that, though, when we viewed Wallace's murder in class, Professor Williams pointed out the importance of the scene being that all three kids were left somewhat wounded in the end. It may be so that no character is entirely "decent," though I think a distinction is difficult to make regarding what qualifies as "decency," but even characters that do horrible things are afforded a motive or a glimpse into what justifies their actions, given the lives they lead (like Bodie and Poot's understanding of why they must shoot Wallace). There are also so many realms of life in which a person could be decent or indecent, but at what point are they an indecent person? For instance, McNulty, who's cheated on his wife, is surely not a decent person in that regard, and he does certain things on the job that are questionable. But, is he wholly an indecent person? I think the distinctions are really hard to make, which is the point - there can be a little good in a "bad" person, and bad in a "good" person. I think the point is that these binaries typically don't exist. Wed, 03 Feb 2016 01:08:19 -0500