Arrests and Hierarchies by Leah Manacop

Is anybody else horribly terrified that everything we’ve been raised to believe is a lie? Every institution that regiments our time and forces us to adhere to a specific set of procedures—all those years in school, every time you wait in line for medication at the hospital, every single second of dead space sitting in “Time out”— was set up to make us all more docile and easily manipulated cogs in this hierarchy enforced by abstract concepts and 300-year-old contracts.

I never paid much thought to the prison system but in reference to Michelle Alexandra’s “The New Jim Crow,” the whole prison system is jacked up—extrapolating minor crimes as an intolerable offense just to maintain the hierarchies already pre-established as the status quo.

And guess who suffers? As of 2010, State and Federal prisons held 1,446,000 sentenced male prisoners and of these, 451,600 (31.9%) were White, 561,400 (38.8%) were Black, and 327,200 (22.6%) were Hispanic. This is a substantial amount of the adult population that are being carted off and processed into systems that already strip them of their right to vote, their identities, and their freedom of choice.

While you may not think it affects the unincarcerated, the fact that the United States has the Highest incarceration rates in the world means that we also expend the most capital on prisoners in the world.  We pay $24,000 per inmate per year, $5.1 billion in new prison construction, which then consumes $60 billion in budget expenditures.

Think about tuition hikes, all the money that could be used for the betterment of our country  used to discipline people for petty misdemeanor that just happen to be the latest of three strikes. What are we living in and how can we change it?

“Hey did you hear? Club Incarceration be poppin’ on Sundays!”

Will any black boy do? Brenton Butler was 15 years old when he was accused of shooting a caucasian woman in the face in front of her husband and stealing her purse.  Investigating officers drove Brenton to the woods and beat him until he signed a pre-written (by the officers) confession.  These officers had done no further investigating besides picking up Brenton two hours after the shooting while he was on his way to get a job application from Blockbuster.  The local protectors of this community were willing to watch this young man lose the rest of his life for a crime he did not commit and sleep soundly at night. Sad to say, prison is the inevitable future for a large amount of our African-American youth. Statistics from the Children’s Defense Fund state that in Baltimore today 80% of the African american population between the ages of 18-27 have been arrested, on probation, or on parole.

According to reports from 2007 of The Sentencing Project, 900,000 of the 2.2 million people incarcerated are African-Americans.  That is almost 50%, considering African-Americans only make up about 1/8 of the US population, somebody has some serious exploiting to do. I mean explaining. It is sad how a certain group can be chosen and for some reason this group attracts so much negativity at such disproportionate levels and yet it is not portrayed as one of the larger issues we as a society question. Rather, we except it, maybe state our two cents, then watch the new episodes of first 48.  Michelle Alexander talks about a study made on the racial biases that bear huge weight on the criminal justice system.  The studys revealed juvenile sentencing reports where prosecutors routinely described black and white offenders differently. It elaborated, blacks committed crimes because of internal personality flaws such as just being disrespectful, while whites committed crimes because of external conditions such as family conflict.  Additionally, amongst youth who had never been sent to prison before, African-Americans were six times as likely than whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes.  We live in a racist society, hate to break it to you, but it’s true.  I’m not claiming everybody is this way but unfortunately, you see this a lot of this unspoken racism within then members of society who are supposed to help you and are “sworn in ” to serve and protect you, and defend you to the best of their ability, yea, fantasize much?

We’re living in an environment set up to create a cycle of racism and discrimination.  African-American youth are incarcerated and felony labeled and for the rest of their lives get to have a “Free to Discriminate Against” sign on their backs.  Leaving them with not many employment, education, or even welfare options.  Leading them right back to where they came from. These huge prison business, obviously need clients to keep them running so things like drug conspiracy and the street sweep of this crazy amount of Blacks takes place. Now the world is a better place. Taking into consideration that annually, it costs about 7 times the amount to incarcerate someone than it does to educate, I would say, the government invested a lot of money in the wrong war! What if they would have spent millions building schools and health centers and had forced education and health care on everyone. The War on Sick and Uneducated. If they wanted to they could have, but who really believes in all that equality, land of the free bullshit?

-Yasmin Goodarziborojeni

The New Jim Crow: The New Summer Read for Schools Across America

 Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” makes a bold statement about the state of race relations in American society today. Not only is her argument strong and backed by substantial evidence, it’s completely sensical. The War on Drugs has created a legalized form of segregation in America by keeping the marginalized oppressed and unable to turn their lives around. 

Since finishing this book, there has been something nagging me. I feel like there are so many things I think Americans could do to change this mess of a penal system. And like most other things, I’ve realized it all lies within the hands of education. 

The education system in America is our most precious gift. It is the most effective way to make change and continue teaching change. Another one of my class mates, when blogging about the their thoughts on “The New Jim Crow,” mentioned and showed a clip from a TV show on the air called “Scared Straight.” It’s about teens who go to visit prisons, state and federal, to see first hand what life would be like living behind bars. The show primarily picks kids who are going through legal or familial troubles, and are taking out their aggressions by participating in criminal behaviors. 

On the whole, I think this program would be effective in the hopes of reducing the rate of kids and teenagers getting put into the legal system. However, I think programs like this for marginalized teens could absolutely be benefited when supplemented by Alexander’s book.

Assigning this book as reading materials in inner city schools across the country would have a pronounced effect on the rate of incarceration among young Blacks and Hispanics, and thus their entrapment in the legal system via the “War on Drugs.”

Getting students angry about things is the best way to teach them about systems in place that need to change. 

Trying to instill fear in students is a reversed way of getting them to be more curious about socially unacceptable behaviors. Only exposing them to the negative side of things like crime and drugs makes them curious about these activities. They want to know what all the fuss is about. 

If kids were to get a comprehensive education about the so-called War on Drugs and learn some real facts about it, I think it would be the best way to get the message across that people are being sucked into this invisible war because they don’t know even know they’re the “enemy.” When the young American population thinks about the War on Drugs, they think of it as being an international crusade against all the countries that try and corrupt America by unloading their drug supply on us; the truth is, the War on Drugs is happening in their back yards. They just don’t realize it.

Teaching “The New Jim Crow” in high schools across the country could tremendously help not only the education system, but help the students who read it and are able to make changes in their lives to better themselves and avoid getting trapped in the penal system. Rather than getting to a point where their parents or teachers feel like they need to go visit a prison to see what life’s like inside, they can learn to avoid behavior that will get them there in the first place. 

Racist Law Enforcement

After reading the New Jim Crow and going over it class I feel that The United States is a really racist country. I have now realized that there is a lot of racial profiling that goes on in our country. The laws that are set up to protect our community is just a new way of being racist but in disguised. This has really opened my eyes to what cops do out in the streets “protecting” us. After finding out the truth it really disgust me to see all the racism that is actually going on today.

I have seen on television all those cops beating up men of color out in the street like if they were really dangerous men. I would always believe that those colored men deserved it and saw them as criminals. Now I have realized that I was wrong and not all of those men are criminals. I now feel that the law enforcement like to pick on those of color and makes them look like criminals. I have a strong dislike towards law enforcement now that I have seen how racist they really are sometimes.

In this following video a Hispanic man gets shot for raising his hand at an officer. He did however, break the windows of the Carl’s Jr. restaurant but he was not armed with a weapon when he was outside with the officers. I know that what he did was wrong and he could of hurt someone but he was not armed. The cops did have a dog and could have used a different type of force to stop this man instead of shooting him to death.

When I saw this video I was speechless because it’s a local community college that I attended before. I have also gone to the Carl’s Jr. for lunch with some friends. What they did to that man was not necessary. That type of force was not needed and thus I feel that if it was a white man he would still be alive. However, that was not the case in this story. I wish there was something to be done but I know that there really isn’t since we do not really live in a country that treat people equally.

Racist Law Enforcement

Jeannette Cazares

Older Men?

Lolita had to be the most challenging book I have ever read. Reading the story through Humbert’s perspective was hard to read. The feelings he had for the twelve year old nymphet Lolita was disturbing. Also reading that Lolita was the first one to push their relationship towards a sexual level really disturbed me as well. What young twelve year old girls would want to sleep with an older man? I remember when I was twelve or thirteen years old my friends and I would dream about holding hands with the hottest guy at school that was around our age. We were not fantasizing about an old man that could be our step dad. I feel that Humbert did make it seem like Lolita wanted to have sex. He may have added that to make it look like it was consensual sex and not rape. However, Humbert is not a reliable source due to the fact that he was once in a mental institution. This makes the readers question how well his judgement is and how much does he make up in his mind. We are not sure if Lolita was toying with him during the first half of the novel or was he making it all up in his head. Also we all know that he was in fact raping her and keeping her captive during the second part of the book in just the way he describe the relationship he had at that point with Lolita.

After Lolita escaped away from Humbert we find out that she is pregnant and she was always in love with Quilty an old sick perverted man that likes to have sex with different partners at the same time. This part of the story that Humbert writes about I do believe it is true because we can see that he gets heart broken and goes off to kills Quilty for taking his Lolita away. Lolita flirting with Humbert and her being in love with Quilty is kind of gross and we can  say that Lolita might have some issues. Learning about Lolita’s relationship with her mother, we learn that it  was not the best relationship a mother and daughter can have.  We can argue that Lolita might have needed a more loving mother that gave her the attention she needed. However, Lolita’s mother could not stand her and wanted to send her off to boarding school after she had married Humbert. What mother would want to send her child off to school because they don’t want her to be apart of their new marriage? I just feel that Lolita’s mother could have been more caring especially since Lolita did not have a father figure in her life while growing up.

There are a lot of cases that young women are attracted to older men which is kind of weird if you ask me. However, I can understand why young women are attracted to older men. Women want men that are ready to be serious about a relationship to settle down and start a family. Young men these days like to date and just see what’s out there and that is not what women want. I feel that every women wants the fairy tale fantasy of having a husband that is mature that is able to support his family. I feel that in a sense this is understandable because I would hate to be in a relationship with a man that is an immature man that is just in it for the kicks. Point is that men that are older are sexier than younger men because they have their shit together and they also know what they want in life. So men the sooner you get your shit together the more faster you get the girl that wants to go all the way with you.

I guess Lolita’s attraction to older men is not as weird if we block out the age difference. Lolita seemed really mature for her age knowing how and what sex was. Lolita was an interesting character because she became promiscuous at such a young age. She developed faster than an average girls does and I feel that is also the reason why she was attracted to older men.

Jeannette Cazares

So this 51-year-old and His 16-year-old Wife Walk Into a Bar…

  Super sexy, yes? Personally, from the neck up she appears a little “nip tuckish” to me which isn’t my style, and just to confirm it is the make up, an ABC Nightline special indicated doctors proved she is plastic surgery free, but generally speaking this is considered a modern day “Blonde Bombshell”.  Big blonde hair, big boobs, petite frame, somewhere between Victoria’s Secret and Penthouse, this is where it’s at right? Well her husband sure seems to think so! 51-year-old Doug Hutchison and 16-year-old Courtney Alexis Stodden (above) married a little over a year ago. Perversion senses tingling yet? Assuming the “Blonde Bombshell” is your kind of girl, how sexy you thought she was before didn’t magically disappear because you found out how old she was, yet “societal norms” would deem it inappropriate for you to still be thinking those lusty thoughts for this busty teen.

What is most disturbing to you? Is it that the sexual “precociousness” of the photo somewhat tugs at your pediphilic perversions and for a quick second you can empathize with any man’s or woman’s attraction? I mean goodness forbid amongst everything else you know about our little Lolita that aditionally, she looked like this, we would have to be a little less harsh on Humbert Humbert. Maybe it’s what images flashed through your head when you heard 51-year-old, considering that her husband may look more attractive and “younger for his age” and obviously, she looks older than your standard 9th grader, would this set the societal “inappropriateness” at ease? You say taboo I say tomato. Evidently, Courtney isn’t your average Nymphette, but knowing Humbert is an attractive man calms the gag reflex.

Regardless of how beautiful or disgusting the old man, Nevada is one, amongst the 39 states that has legalized underage marriage as long as there is parental consent from at least one parent. So who’s up for some statutory rape, with parental consent? Afterall, these two are deeply in love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXElU2k7OkY&feature=player_detailpage

What age is it accepted to be in love, furthermore, what age do you understand what love is? A doctor from the interview above (follow link) says a 16-year-old hasn’t fully developed their frontal lobe and an adolescent brain lacks in the judgement area and evaluations of consequence.  But doesn’t evrybody sometimes have that issue? Moreover, if that is the big issue, what about the “mature for their age notion”.  Life experiences teach us aspects of life a lot quicker than reading them in books don’ tyou agree? Lolita had a lot more experience than those other Nymphettes she had been around and indeed was married and pregnant by the age of 17.

Teenagers have sex all the time, and that is assumed and acceptable as long as they stay within the age guidlines, or even further, gender guidelines.  If the gender roles were switched, the social stigma wouldn’t be so heavy.  There’ s a whole show dedicated to these much older handsome ladies that seem to be on the prowl for these younger men, as if they were “Cougars” ready to pounce on their prey. Everything seems so predatory, but could there actually be any love involved, and if so, will that change ones perception from an episode of Law & Order, SVU to some sort of modernized Romeo’s Old Enough to be Your Dad and Juliet?

Courtney and her husband Doug.

-Yasmin Goodarziborojeni

The perks of being attractive

Great things happen to many good people. But many great things happen to good looking people.

This is a subject that has intrigued me since I was first able to acknowledge its undeniable presence in life. I’ve been contemplating this phenomenon a lot after reading Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” It is one of the most critically acclaimed books of all time for a multitude of reasons and is a literary wonder that touches the darkest parts of the psyche with depictions of graphic and unapologetically controversial perversions from the novel’s narrator, Humbert Humbert (HH).

But there is one specific detail about HH that makes his character more complex yet more obvious: He is attractive. Of course everyone has a personalized, differing image of HH when they read the novel, though I will admit before I go any further: I had a very clear mental image of HH in my head as I read “Lolita.” I watched Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film version of Lolita before I read the book (I had made several pathetic attempts at reading “Lolita” for leisure and never made it past page 30). I knew it was going to be a bit of a lingual challenge so I cheated and watched the movie before I read the book, just to get a general synopsis of this classic work of literary genius.

And let me tell you—James Mason was a hottie! He was so handsome. Now, after having read the book, it’s interesting to look back and see how much more critical one would be of HH if he/she didn’t have a clear image of his character in their heads (at least not James Mason!). Being an unbiased “jury member” in the movie was slightly harder than being a completely objective one when reading the book. It was a strange feeling- finding myself attracted to a deviant pedophiliac monster.

And it’s all because he’s attractive.

I have witnessed people have more sympathy for, pay more attention to, play favorites to, and allow beautiful people to get away with all sorts of things in the familial, societal, cultural, and communal realms. To use modern example: All teenagers, young, and mid adults who have gone out to bars, clubs, concerts—you’ve watched that hot, fit, well dressed, good-to-know group of girls or guys, who breeze past everyone to the front of the line unflinching and go right through, while the group of Plain Janes or Awkward Nerds wait an extra hour in line and have to pay $10 a head when they get to the door.

The fact that Nabokov plays this age-old trick on the reader and audience trying to make HH seductive is so fitting for his character in a sense, but it also seems to be an artistically placed cliché that exposes this immutable fact of life. Just like Nabokov connects with the reader by making HH honest and responsible for his actions, he identifies with the reader by pointing out this extremely obvious and perilous bias that has always been embedded in our minds. He knows HH’s agreeable looks will tend to counteract our comprehension of the perverse, ugly pedophiliac things he narrates about.

Even immensely influential writers and artists like Vladimir Nabokov can appreciate the obvious and accept it. Nabokov himself doesn’t look like the most handsome of his class, quite the opposite of the narrative’s main character. For all we know he might have been one of the Awkward Nerds, standing in line for a show, watching the Humbert Humberts of life enter before him.

I am the youn…

I am the youngest of two girls. My mom was also the younger of her and her sister-Aunt Eileen- who lived with us from age five to age eleven. It was a house of women. Sometimes my dad would shoot out the door to go on a long walk because he used to get so fed up with “all the estrogen” (took me a while to grasp what that meant). Needless to say I was always curious about friends of mine with brothers. A brother?! What the hell would I do if I had a brother I used to wonder. Little boys are so different from little girls. I always had lots of girlfriends and didn’t really start forming true friendships with boys until after they had gone through puberty thankfully, so the life of a little boy was something I couldn’t conceptualize.

Anyway! I was thrilled when I found out a couple years ago that I was going to be an aunt- I was having a little nephew!! Kaiden came to us in November of 2007. And I’ve gotta say- I didn’t care he was a boy. He was so damn cute. Still is, always will be.

A few years prior to his birth, I took my first psychology class- Human Psych 101- at the city college. It was the first time I’d ever heard of Freud. I just thought I was cool because I was a 17 year old freshman who was taking psychology (so deep, dude) while my friends were still in pleated skirts and penny loafers. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing in that class let alone what I was doing in college, but one day I started paying attention. I started learning. It was the first class I’d taken that really made me do some self-reflection. I dove into my own life history when reading about his Stages. I started thinking about the inner workings of my mind, my sexuality, and my psychosocialization.

I got a C in that class but hey. It tickled my pickle, so to speak. So I took another psychology class, this time on women’s psychology. But then, about 6 months before I found out Terry was pregnant, I took a children’s psychology class. That was all too engrossing. The further I delved into Freud’s theories on infant sexuality, the possibilities of developing complexes towards your parents, the more I agreed with them; the more they made sense to me. And now? With all this knowledge fresh in my mind and Kaiden in the Phallic Stage, it’s like having access to a real live textbook! I feel as though I have a sneak peek into the past of every male friend and family member I know thanks to my little nephew. Terry still tells me “stop psychoanalyzing my four year old.”

The truth is- I’m sure one day sooner than I’d like to admit, Kaiden will be doing the psychoanalyzing!

Productive and Acceptable Sexuality

My two little boys, both under the age of 3 love to hug and kiss me, is this sexual attraction? Are my sons and I just exchanging “normal” affection and love for one another, or am I being used to fulfill some perverse act of evolving sexuality. Freud says infants have sexuality. Thumb sucking gives infants this gratification and pleasure from their own bodily connection. From then on, a constant evolution of sexuality takes place, until my sons will soon think its gross to kiss mommy. Or at least in front of their friends right?

I had my own theory of evolving child sexuality, I figured it was just the time they walked in on mommy and daddy during that afternoon quickie when the boys should have been napping. Kids minds are like a sponge, so they absorbed a few visuals and now we catch them butt-naked humping the carpet and rubbing their penis’ on almost anything they see fit. Mommy’s boobs seem to be fair game in this Evolving. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, smile and squeeze. I don’t recollect ever having that happen in front of them so I assume they saw it on the television. One day they felt what it was like to touch their own penis and now that’s an everyday norm. They go about shamelessly and with no remorse pleasuring themselves with smiles and toddler innocence on their faces. All of these instances weren’t planted from the start, it was more of a trial an error: discovered a part of their bodies (and two of mommies) and tested out what to do with it.

This behavior will more than likely be frowned upon within the next year, maybe two. “They’re too old to be doing that” should be the prompt. Or is it okay as long as nobody sees them? I mean, what is considered an exceptional, social way of sexuality? Additionally is there one for each age group? Right now my kids get naked and touch themselves, a few months ago it was reported on the radio that a 16-year-old masturbated somewhere close to over 60 times in a row and died. Is society sad that a young man lost his life or are they frowning upon him because they are not sexually comfortable with masturbation. I think the people who get most bothered by certain sexual expression like masturbation or flashbacks of infant sexual desire, or anything out of the “societal norm” is because they are experiencing it themselves or in some way can relate. Either way, any thoughts of masturbation being a form of healthy and constructive sexuality may have to be reevaluated.

Healthy and constructive sexuality can have an abundance of definitions, based on culture, gender, sexual preference, laws, a number of things. This article on sexual fetishes and obsessions on lovepanky.com reads that over a century ago Chinese men would get sexually aroused by disfigured feet. Would society see that as acceptable or healthy? I do, it’s not my style but assuming that we all agree on “healthy’ being for pleasure purposes without violating laws, then who are we to judge? Now the visual of how this sexual experience would take place is far more disturbing to me than a naked 5-year-old. My boys have a little more time to sexually evolve as freely as they please before I need to more actively assist in their social normalization. Hopefully nobody will have to stab their eyes out as some form of drastic repression for steps taken along the way. Really Oedipus? So dramatic.