duogour

An orderly society, according to Foucault, is made through either purification or containment. For-profit prisons and debtors prisons fix the ills of society through just that: they put a bandaid on the issue and then cut off the limb.

For-profit prisons create a huge market for incarceration. Beyond the obvious conflicts-of-interest that private prisons are plagued with due to their profit-orientated approach to imprisonment, private prisons maintain order in society through arbitrary exercises in the law (well the prisons themselves don’t, but they don’t help). On the surface, private prisons as well as debtors prisons help society by giving the government more opportunity to do more justice. Ignoring the injustices that brought many of the prisoners to those institutions, the prisons themselves turn innocent into malicious. Most of those who support mass incarceration ironically also support the ways family values shape people. While one may argue that adults have already formed minds and agencies, no one will argue that living with dangerous will do anyone good.

Adapting Foucault’s example, the jails and prisons essentially evoke depraved order. One takes the sick and arbitrary crowds of the healthy; then, one culls discipline, even gratitude, from the unchosen, whether that be based on their “protection” from the factitiously ill or their gratitude for being one of the unchosen. If that sounds fun, then for-profit prisons and debtors prisons should be legal.

The article, from its title to its final (but certainly not last) account of anti-black racism has a tacit message: wealth built on stolen goods is not a deserved wealth. Lou Fushanis’ practices were undoubtedly unjust. Not only exploiting the exploited, Fushanis and the many others like him exasperated and perpetuated the governmental and wide-spread anti-blackness by forced fulfillment of prophecy. In any case, Coates, I, as well as everyone else should agree on one central conclusion based on his account of black history: wealth built from the work of others isn’t deserved.

When did the first Asian (who weren’t Native Americans) come to America? All the way from 1600s. Perhaps even further back. And as what? Slaves. So, I think the history of my people gives me the grounds in order to write something this critical about something this critical. Not by number, perhaps. But I don’t think a systematic rejection of Asians on grounds of adulteration is a really good consolation prize either.

And I get it. So many people, unqualified by any adjective or status, were subjected to cruelty in pursuit of American ideals or even just safety. But what can be done?

As an Asian-American, I will not put on a façade. I–not a “one” or “one might be” but I–am angry, not at the world but at myself. Angry that so many people placate Japanese internment through holocaust-juxtaposition. Do you know what else is lessened when the systematic slaughter of a race is juxtaposed against it? A mere systematic discrimination. I feel the burden of all the census says I am a part of. I feel it, and I need to let people know.

Using statistic after statistic, vignette of injustice after another, Coates uses the very nebulous definition of affirmative action of “anything that you have to do to get results” to destroy the arguments of “diversity” and replace that with the very real argument for reparations, like remedying the pervasive inequality in real-estate that destroyed the black middle class.

That’s dangerous ground. Eugenics was also one such anything people did to get results. My parents used to and I now suffer from terrible acne; my maternal grandfather suffers from physical disability that made him ineligible for the armed forces; my paternal grandmother has dementia. To get results means that I wouldn’t be born. Something I cannot tolerate on a moral ground, on an altruistic ground, maybe on a philanthropic one. Why? Because that would hurt me. That would literally mean I wouldn’t be able to use “me” because there would be no me. It’s sick. It’s disgusting. Not just eugenics. Anything that people do to just “get results.”

And yes, I compared the two. Why? Because anything someone does that could affect me and my community negatively is, to me at least, bad. Because looking at the world from a lens inscribed into my eyes isn’t something that I do for any party. So, I think they’re ripe for comparison. I don’t know what you mean by reparations, Coates. Is it enough just to pay the homeowners off like America did to the thousands of East Asians (not just Japanese) who lost their homes and sacrificed years of their lives? If not, then what do you want, Coates? Can I have some too? Thanks.

And I’m not trying to be mean here. I feel powerless, and this is my way of gaining some back. I’m tired of being ignored (by Justice Sotomayor especially) and tired of being some token minority people point to as a model of success. To look at Asians critically is dangerous. It makes everything murky. What about the immigrants who immigrated about the same time the Asian turnaround happened? Do the Nigerians (an example of recent immigrants) who make up approximately 25% of Harvard Business School’s black population really have a stake in the “black reparations”? Do the Asians, especially the Chinese and Japanese, by virtue of both population and history of discrimination and abuse, since that’s what really matters, get something, something else? WHO GETS WHAT?

I am uncomfortable with reparations. This is not some game of tug-of-war. I know too many “halfies” who open only one eye in the mirror, ignoring their “Asian” for the sake of something better because it is better. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to a disability? Would you shoot your leg on purpose? I wouldn’t! There’s a place for people like that: a treatment facility. Don’t make Asian the new leprosy. A mottled tree does not become white nor brown by declaration. There’s two ways one can fix the problem: kill the brown or embrace the mottle. To me, the former just sounds too attractive.

My final thoughts? I’m skeptical. I want to exist in a world where I didn’t have to choose between my zoned high school where the ex-principal was arrested drug dealing and my current high school (Stuyvesant) where, despite some issues, I’m happy and proud to go to. I don’t want to live in a world where students’ educational prospects are almost set by birthplace. But I don’t think I can. Reparations occur within a zero-sum world, and I haven’t seen anything but inequality. Sure the pot can grow, but the world is finite. If it isn’t, then the Republicans are right. Global warming cannot exist for what is a ton of carbon compared with an infinity of atmosphere? A stretch, I know, but it’s true. I want to hold on to my cup from the pot, but others think that’s racist. To balance out a power dynamic by taking from my people, a historically disenfranchised one, is something hardly justifiable (yet done), something despicable (yet done), something against every sense of logic I have (yet done). Disparaging victims for attempting to fix a problem they didn’t create, treating kids (intentional word choice) as pawns, some communities feel that my community has too much. Or maybe I’m missing something greater, something so fundamental that the entire concept of reparations will change. Something about the state of America that previous generations were on to: Asians don’t have a place in America. Sorry for existing.

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Michael Brown’s case isn’t exactly a perfect case for Coates. In part because overt racism wasn’t exactly (or at least I think it wasn’t) at play and in part because of the large role of the police mentality of the situation, which is all too familiar and concerning.

The idea of the police as a “brotherhood,” trumping civil obligations for faux-familial ones is something seen across communities. Staten Island has the highest conviction rate of any of our 5 boroughs. Why? Our court system relies on negotiating through the minds of others. For a person charged with something in the borough with the most police residencies, the case is all but determined.

That said, Brown’s journalistic coverage concerns me a lot. I read the New Yorker a lot, and my favorite pieces are its long-form profiles of murderers. I don’t think I have ever read a piece about a victim.

In the face of a tragedy, people find a need to reason. If they didn’t, nothing could be forecasted but daily hail. To reason with oneself means one has already lost; thus, one must reason with the world.

I am always a fan of journalism. The NYTimes, as a for-profit news source, is primarily bound not to its journalistic integrity but to its profit-making ability, which is fine for me because the constant fear of shutdown leads to better (albeit biased) goods. However, in the face of a killing, the demand for rationalization naturally lies with the killer. The world does not demand explanation for those who speak through existence. However, the NYTimes chose to cover both.

Click here for Michael Brown’s profile
Click here for Darren Wilson’s

At first, I didn’t think anything was wrong with the profiles. Information isn’t something that should be censored for the sake of political correctness. But I realized the NYTimes wasn’t an arbitrary peddler of information. Before I read anything about the Trayvon Martin case, I had a pretty strong gut feeling about what the NYTimes would say about the situation. The NYTimes lives for and because of its predominantly liberal audience. The NYTimes thought that its audience would wonder about the troubled history of a man who died with his hands up as much as it would care about the man who pulled the trigger. “No angel” or not, this wasn’t NPR.

The journalistic coverage of Brown often takes the path of least resistance, something I know too clearly as a fellow member of the journalistic scapegoats. In this case, it was reinforcing the black narrative of violence.

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As a policy, I usually don’t like to read news about things until after they happened. Pages upon pages of real-time journalism are laudable but not useful for me. I much prefer to read a long-form piece after someone takes the time to go over and tell me everything that’s happened. As a result, I can’t really comment on what’s happening on Ferguson. To speak in ignorance perpetuates it and fails to actualize the acreage of a situation. Therefore, I only offer a single word: troubling.