Feel-good social analysis fails to show how real change happens

the wire hbo image
HBO’s The Wire (Photo courtesy of HBO)
Through analyzing what’s wrong with The Wire, Dave Zirin takes a hard look at what is missing altogether from supposedly progressive TV shows that supposedly delve into the social injustices that are screaming for attention all across the US recently. Interesting read. Dave says:

I always shoved it to the back of my mind when my friends in Baltimore – I live about 45 minutes from the city – almost uniformly would tell me they either did not like or would not watch the show. People were hostile toward The Wire for a multiplicity of reasons. Some felt it was like gangster rap for a more sophisticated audience, glorifying black-on-black hyper-masculine street violence while selling itself as somehow more literate and ennobling to consume. My friend Mark once pissed me off fiercely when he told me that my favorite show was “NWA for people who read The New Yorker.” read more

Book: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Category: Social Justice
"The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander"
Author Michelle Alexander-West is the wife of a United States federal prosecutor and an attorney in her own right. In this book, she does a truly remarkable job of drilling down through levels of strategy, policy and procedure that form the complex web of injustice that has brought the United States to the terrible point of imprisoning over 1% of our adult population and detaining 25% of all prisoners everywhere in the world … many of whom have been jailed for minor offenses, such as carrying a couple of marijuana cigarettes. Over 3200 non-violent offenders have been jailed for life for non-violent offenses like that, or for stealing an item of clothing worth $150. Unjust imprisonment is part of the intentional destruction of the lives of people of color. read more