The New Jim Crow Book Group: Week 3

As I wrote two weeks ago, I’m running a book group through my church, Valley and Mountain, to read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. (Find all the posts for this book group here. Feel free to use this guide in your church/community!)

Last week, we really started to get into discussion about the book. And though it was exciting to talk about things that had been weighing on our minds after reading this chapter, it was also depressing. Many of us are confronting our own complicity in a terrible system that we are shocked to discover we know nothing about.

How the meetings run:

A quick recap:

Each meeting, we’ll start with a welcome. Then, we’ll have a brief moment of silence.

Next, we’ll take turns reading a short text (a Bible verse, poem, quote, or short reading) that somehow reflects our spirituality.

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.

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.

Week 3:

Intro

Our usual moment of silence, followed by sharing our spiritual texts. I’m going to try to give each person (there are three going this week) a minute after sharing their text so that folks can reflect on what we’ve shared.

Reflection

Next, we’ll read a short spiritual text. Again, c/o John Helmiere, pastor at Valley and Mountain, here are two:

From “Freedom’s Plow” by Langston Hughes, poet of the Harlem Renaissance:

A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom
Made up a song:
Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.
KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!

And thoughts on Hope from “Credo” by Reverend William Sloane Coffin, a Christian minister and comrade in many liberation struggles:

“It’s hope that helps us keep the faith, despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing…

Hope has nothing to do with optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism but despair. And if Jesus never allowed his soul to be cornered into despair, clearly we Christians shouldn’t either…

Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts.”

Discussion Questions

I am using the questions from The New Jim Crow Study Guide, which you can download for free here.

In addition, I’d like to ask…

1. What are your reactions to this week’s text?

2. What has been coming up for you, personally, as you read this?

3. What are some ways we can connect our spirituality to this situation? In what ways can we find spiritual meaning from what we’re reading?

4. What questions do you have as you read this text?

Your turn

Have you read this book? Would you like to? Join in by sharing your progress in the comments–I’ll keep updating how the group goes on here, and you can learn from my mistakes : )