The New Jim Crow Book Group: Intro + Week 1

With help from John Helmiere of Valley and Mountain, I organized a book group just to read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. I was inspired after attending a conference called “Stations of Hope,” which focused on how churches can become welcoming communities to folks who have been in prison and families of people still in prison–a lot of attendees mentioned how reading this book changed their perspective on the prison system. At the end of the conference, we had to brainstorm ways to make our communities more welcoming, and since I hadn’t read the book yet, a book group at Valley and Mountain seemed like a good fit. I was working evenings at the time and pregnant–I planned to do it in the fall, when I would be home with my then-future baby.

Fast forward a few months and it’s suddenly November and time to read this book. I brainstormed a structure with John, who suggested that we connect spirituality with our actions at this group. “I think the world will be better if people can connect their [political] beliefs with spirituality,” he told me. I am nervous about doing this on my own–I’m running the actual discussions solo, in my house–but I’m also excited to break out of my formerly strictly academic book discussion groups. My only experience with guiding people in reading a text is being a grad student and TA at the University of New Hampshire.

So, the book group will have met for the first time when this post posts. I thought I’d share the structure of the group along with a brief reflection and discussion questions for each meeting. The plan is to read one chapter a week.

Here goes!

How the meetings run:

Each meeting, we’ll start with a welcome. As the facilitator, I’ll welcome everyone and thank them for coming.

Then, we’ll have a brief moment of silence, which should help center and focus us for the task at hand: discussing the chapter that we’ve read and connecting what we’re learning in some way to our own spiritualities.

Next, we’ll take turns reading a short text (a Bible verse, poem, quote, or short reading) that somehow reflects our spirituality. I’ll take the first week (I share my text below).

I’ll thank the person for sharing and ask that we keep this text in the back of our minds as we read.

Then I’ll read a relevant Bible passage or spiritual reading (for example, by a thinker like Cornel West) and share a short reflection on the text. John is the source for most of this part, though I’ll be doing the reading and reflecting.

We’ll discuss the discussion questions for the week, which I’ve pulled from various sources online.

To close, we’ll have a prayer circle. We’ll do it like this: everyone holds hands and takes a turn praying (I’ll start). We’ll go around by squeezing the hand of the person next to us–so, if you don’t feel like praying, you can just squeeze the next person’s hand and remain silent. To keep the prayers relatively short, I’ll use this prompt: please mention one thing you’re grateful for and one thing you seek.

Week 1:

Activity

The first week, I’m going to have an extra activity to help introduce everyone and set the tone for the book group. John suggested this: since The New Jim Crow is in part about the history of how things came to be the way they are in the prison-industrial complex, let’s write our own personal histories of how we fit into this matrix. Here’s mine for an example:

My race has always been an interesting question to me. I am the daughter of a Cuban immigrant, and Cubans who immigrated to the US often got special privileges extended to them that other immigrants didn’t. It was so easy to become a citizen that my father literally does not remember how he became one as a child.

The only thing my father is not allowed to do is be president. As I was growing up, reading about the difficulties of other Hispanics in the US always made me feel guilty. My education was excellent; I grew up in a beautiful home in a beautiful place.

I have never been discriminated against because I am white and grew up in a relatively affluent town. People make racist jokes and comments around me about Hispanics because they don’t realize that I am one. Being Hispanic has only helped me; my bilingualism has gotten me jobs that others couldn’t get (for example, I was asked to teach ESL over the summer while I was in grad school). So while I know that Hispanics are a minority population that suffers discrimination in housing, education, and the prison system, I feel separate from that population. I’m able to participate in being a Hispanic when I want to.

I’m not writing this to explain away my white guilt, but rather to explain my name and race and how I fit into the prison-industrial complex. I am outside of it, and thus feel complicit in it, even though I share an ethnicity with some of the people who are imprisoned at a much higher rate than non-Hispanic white people. Other things I could talk about are how I went to a hippie liberal arts school (Swarthmore) and am shocked that we didn’t read this book while I was there, and how I feel like this book is opening my eyes to an underworld I didn’t know existed because I don’t know anyone who is in prison.

Hopefully this helps this activity make sense.

Reflection

Next, we’ll read the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37) and talk about how it turns the idea of caste on its head; Samaritans were considered the lowest caste, and yet the hero of the story is a Samaritan. I’m going to read the story again and replace “Samaritan” with “convicted felon” and “criminal” and “prisoner” to help us reflect on the idea of incarcerated people as an undercaste.

Discussion Questions

1. What are your goals for this group? Why are you here, and what do you hope to get out of this book and group at the end?

2. What pieces of information are new to you? What insights have you gained? (From this guide.)

I am also using the questions from The New Jim Crow Study Guide, which you can download for free here. (It’s great!)

Your turn

Have you read The New Jim Crow, or run a book group at your church? I’m nervous about running this one, especially because it deals with such sensitive and difficult topics. Please share your experiences in the comments!