American Culture Today

The Road to Mass Incarceration

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Why does America imprison so many people? And why are those who lives are all tangled up in our criminal justice system so often people of color? It is a question that drove James Forman, Jr., to write an extraordinarily powerful and important book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. The book has received a great deal of well-deserved attention. Forman, a professor of law at Yale, makes it clear that this issue is central to understanding crime and justice in the US.

Forman, a former public defender, opens the narrative recounting the sentencing of a young black man in a Washington, D.C., all-black courtroom. He is angered, frustrated, upset, and wonders: “How did a majority-black jurisdiction end up incarcerating so many of its own?” The book is a well-researched attempt to answer that question, looking at politics, economics, and social history. Forman readily acknowledges the role of whites to promote mass incarceration, but his focus here is on black leadership and black communities. Doing so, he highlights extremely important issues of class. In 2000, “the lifetime risk of incarceration for black high school dropouts was ten times higher than it was for African Americans who attended college.”

The book is organized into two parts: origins and consequences. Forman’s personal experience as an attorney, a public defender, and community member buttresses his research throughout. He starts with the 1970s and the debate over marijuana laws and their enforcement. Within the Washington, DC community, David Clark, an African-American lawyer, successfully ran for city council with an aim to end prison as a potential penalty for marijuana possession. Then, as now, a drug possession conviction could have negative consequences for someone’s entire life.

Moderate as Clarke’s proposal was, it struggled to gain acceptance. Many political leaders in the black community worried about heroin and believed that any weakening of anti-drug laws would cause further problems. The bill died, foundering on the shores of moral hazard.

At the same time, a growing crime epidemic in DC within the black community outraged law-abiding citizens. With increasing calls for “getting tough on crime,” gun control legislation passed in the District. Dissenters unsuccessfully argued that it would weaken the right to defend one’s self. The result were stiffer penalties for gun possession without systemic efforts to address the causes of crime.

Forman’s chapter on the integration of color into the police is worthy of lengthy analysis on its own. He notes that “the case for black police has always been premised on the unquestioned assumption of racial solidarity between black citizens and black officers.” As it turns out, that assumption was and remains incorrect.

Consequences picks up with changes in sentencing in the 1980s. Forman explains how many in the black community in DC were let down by police and the courts – and how that frustration led to calls for longer and harsher sentences. Drug dealers were excoriated by black leaders. Mandatory sentencing was championed by many who distrusted the system. In 1982, Initiative 9 was overwhelming passed in an District-wide election. It called for a minimum mandatory sentence of five years for committing a violent felony with a gun for the first offense and ten years for all further offenses. Selling heroin netted a four-year minimum sentence, with two years for cocaine and one year for large amounts of marijuana. And again, not much was done to address underlying causes or treatment.

A serious problem that became a media frenzy, the epidemic of crack cocaine in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to greater gang violence and even more dramatic responses. Political leaders – often African American – hyped anti-crime measures and and increased policing presence. Forman rightly calls this the rise of “warrior policing.” In addition to more police sweeps, more violence, assets were seized. The toll on the black community was devastating, both from crack and the response to it.

The book concludes with implementation of “stop and frisk” and an epilogue that summarizes how we got to mass incarceration: “the result of a series of small decisions, made over time, by a disparate group of actors.” It is rare to see so many efforts over so long to address problems with policy choices that have not done what many have hoped. Forman argues that if we are to do something about these issues and the resulting institutional race and class problems, we will have to recognize the failures and start with small steps. In other words, we have take it apart the same way it was built, with securing local political support and greater awareness. While this may not be optimistic conclusion, it is practical – and it makes sense.

This is a very good book.

David Potash

The Road to Mass Incarceration

Lost In The Supermarket

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Michael Ruhlman is a prolific author, writing mostly about food. He does cookbooks, recipes, reviews, books, blogs, articles and more. He is always publishing, always getting prose out, and there is a good chance that you may have come across his work in a newspaper or magazine. It’s easy to understand why. Ruhlman writes as a friend, an informed colleague, and as the man next door (who loves to eat well).

Ruhlman’s recently published book, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of American Food, is a non-fiction account of the supermarket, written with a focus on a small family run chain, Heinen’s, in Cleveland. It is not a comprehensive account of the supermarket industry. Nor is it a business history, or what is all to common in the books about food, a polemic on what we should or should not be eating. Instead, Ruhlman is after information – about the store, they buying and selling of food, about his father, and about himself. To the extent that one can write a personal book about a grocery store, Ruhlman has done it. The book features some very interesting genre-crossing observations.

Ruhlman’s late father figures prominently. He loved to shop, to cook, and to feed people. Prominently among Ruhlman’s childhood memories are shopping with his father at Heinen’s, buying food for a week’s worth of meals, and large get togethers with family, friends and neighbors. The shopping trip represented family, prosperity, choice and optimism. Ruhlman senior was not alone in his love of the supermarket. We learn that for many, particularly of a certain generation, the boomers, fondness for grocery store trips and opulence is all too common.

Over the years, Ruhlman’s parents divorced, ending the shopping trips and the large meals. Ruhlman, too, is writing while experiencing a divorce and traumatic change. He grew up in Cleveland, but the book jacket notes that he now divides his time between New York City and Providence, Rhode Island. One does not have to be much of a detective to appreciate that this is a tangled book. Ruhlman’s interest in Heinen’s grocery is deeply tied to a host of memories, values and meaning. The knot of issues enhance, constrain and complicate the book.

The book is wide-ranging, moving from popular culture to what grocery store owners think and do, then back again. Ruhlman walks us around the supermarket, examining the differences in produce, dairy, delis and processed foods. There is a reason that milk is usually located at the back of a supermarket – and it’s more to do with a place for coolers than a marketing trick. The changes in how groceries operate and what they sell has been tremendous. More changes are anticipated, too. It’s a very complicated business with many moving parts and small profit margins.

The book concludes with the location of a Heinen’s in a restored downtown Cleveland building. It’s an expensive project. It also represents a new direction for the city and people’s expectation for shopping and food. Ruhlman is both elated by the new space and also saddened by loss.

Remember The Clash’s Lost in the Supermarket? Great track on one of the best albums of all time, London Calling, written all the way back in 1979. The song ran repeatedly through my head when reading Michael Ruhlman’s Grocery. Sometimes shopping is not really about shopping.

I’m all lost in the supermarket
I can never shop happily
I came in here for that special offer
A guaranteed personality

David Potash

Lost In The Supermarket

Been Marketed?

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Seth Godin is a very popular marketer, author, businessman and promoter. His latest book, This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See, is a marketer’s delight. It’s lovely to look at, easy to hold in one hand, and a doorway to the larger world of Seth Godin. He’s got a blog, a website, a system and an Amazon landing page featuring his many books. He tweets and is on Facebook. Seth is on Instagram and on LinkedIn. He’s a serial entrepreneur, starting several businesses as well as training. Godin is an influencer, a person riding and trying to direct the electronic wave.

What’s the question I heard from an advertising person decades ago: “How much sizzle and how much steak?” It’s a good to consider because it’s difficult to tell just how effective Seth’s wisdom – usually dispensed in bite-sized nuggets – really is. It’s easy to read and digest, that’s for sure. But would it work for your business, your idea, your brand?

Godin’s big-picture message is straightforward. If you want to connect with an audience, you have to believe in what you’re doing, build trust, and do/offer something that helps the audience. He is a believer in really understanding stories: stories that we tell ourselves and stories that we tell each other. Godin frames marketing as about change – and stories can change behavior. He cautions readers not to try to change everyone but instead to focus on smaller groups. With the right size and the right story, one can build trust and a reliable relationship. Work on a segment, a population, Godin advises, that you can get to know and help. It makes sense.

Missing from the book are studies, data, sources or any of the traditional trappings of a scholarly business book. It is neither monograph nor textbook. This is about enthusiasm, aphorisms, personal stories and accessible wisdom. He’s a marketing cheerleader with refreshingly ethical take on the business and how to market.

It is easy to see how Seth Godin and his message would inspire so many. The challenge, I wager, is in the commitment and the follow through. Perhaps a New Year’s resolution?

David Potash

Been Marketed?

Realistic Democracy From Political Scientists

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My education as an historian carried with it appreciation for – as well as distrust of – political science. When historians congregate, political science often gets short shrift. The complaints are more than just sniffing at the math, too (“Formulas don’t explain history!). Political science often looks at political behavior through a lens that historians have difficulty understanding or appreciating. At the same time, many of us trained in history often cast a covetous glance at the political scientists. They are great at testing the counterfactual, at looking across time and location, and at advancing very useful arguments. Whether we admit it or not, we often borrow from them.

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels is the kind of political science that historians admire. It is clearly written, informative, and a powerful corrective to those in the field that believe that political science has all the answers (not that many do . . . ). Also, Achen and Bartels do an outstanding job with their history. Their examples are well-researched and well written.

The book explains common theories about how democracies work and how voters are supposed to make decisions. Are they making rational choices? Or using heuristics? Or perhaps they engage in retrospective voting, rewarding or punishing candidates and parties for actions? Theorists have been outlining these and other theories for decades. Unfortunately, when Achen and Bartels look at American history and the data, none of these theories hold up. They don’t really explain anything particularly well. It is a problem for political science and for all of us, today, thinking about how our democratic institutions work.

It turns out the social identity and party identity, with all its irrationality, best explains voter behavior. The arguments set out in the book are solid and difficult to refute. Voters actually change their priorities in order to align their thinking with that of their party. When push comes to shove, democracies rest on less than rational, but organized, group behavior. More telling still, when parties are relatively balanced, election results can depend upon lies, distortions and plain bad information. Democracy might be the best worst system of government. Achen and Bartels are very effective in showing just how “worst” it can be.

It’s sobering. The authors are able to cover a great deal of ground, theoretical and historical, quickly and convincingly. The lack of rationality  is also something that most political historians realize when digging deep into American history. It may not be news – but it is  extremely important. And for those of us who are paying close attention to recent politics, Democracy for Realists is a very helpful addition to the bookcase. It explains quite a lot.

David Potash

Realistic Democracy From Political Scientists

In the Belly of a Beast of a Beast

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Greater than day-to-day reporting, outstanding journalism can carry  with it the creativity of literature and the power of the truth. It does not come easily – demanding talent, skill, commitment and courage.

Oscar Martinez is an El Salvadorean journalist who writes for Elfaro.net, an online Latin American newspaper. It is an informative, vibrant site that offers insight and news into a region that is often under-reported and poorly understood. It’s a good place to learn and explore.

Martinez parlayed his reporting into an outstanding book, The Beast. It is a fearless study of the migration of people’s from Latin America to El Norte, the U.S., through a focus on “La Bestia” – the freight train that runs through Latin America. Much of the content was in a series of articles penned by Martinez. The book is more, though, and taken as a whole it portrays a harrowing region and movement of peoples. There is a great heroism, compassion and care here. Also, there is horrific violence, cruelty, greed and indifference. Beautifully written and close to its subjects and their accounts, The Beast is difficult to read. The stories are that tough.

The book came out in Spain in 2010, in Mexico in 2012, and in the US – and English – a few years later. It won awards and praise. Martinez interviewed migrants, families, travelers, the police and gang members. He helps the reader understand the difference between fleeing and migrating – and also the hard choices people must make. Kidnapping, theft, rape and exploitation are rampant. The normal structures of civil society have been bought off or threatened into inactivity. The crimes, desperation and migratory patterns have developed over so many years that they collectively have become something of a “system” – and with their establishment, ever greater resistance to reform or improvement. The system itself is an indifferent beast.

Martinez writes from a perspective that every life has value, that every life matters. The Beast explores a world based on an antithetical view: life is nasty, brutish and short – and no one individual matters all that much. It is an ugly, frightening picture. It’s all the more damning because economic and political actions by the US are active contributors. Governments have been destabilized and the growth of the drug cartels has been fueled in part by American markets. Reading this book gives insight into why so many are fleeing Central American.

The book is driven by outrage, but this is no polemic. The Beast gives voice to the powerless and mostly stereotyped immigrants. Martinez cares about them and their plight – and makes the reader care, too.

David Potash

In the Belly of a Beast of a Beast

Lyrical Wisdom and Loneliness

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The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing is a brilliant and wise book that defies simple categorization. Part memoir, part reflection, part observation, with quite a bit of biography, The Lonely City is an extended conversation with an extremely smart writer. Laing is incisive, and insightful, and both in the book and around it. She’s a novelist, critic, and very well-read writer. The book is an unexpected and thought-provoking journey into what it means to be alone in the big city.

Laing tells us about herself, a Brit who moved to New York City for a marriage that never took place. She remained in New York, considering herself and her environs. Laing had lived alone before but in Gotham, she experienced a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. She saw herself as the woman in the Hopper painting Automat – on display and quite alone. An elegiac tone pervades the narrative, but it is not depressing.

From these beginnings, Laing walks us through her thoughts, ruminations, and interactions in the city. She explores her situation and makes sense of it through art and biographical investigations of four artists: Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger, and Edward Hopper. Each addressed questions of human interaction and connection differently. Each used their talents differently. And each, through their art, creates much-needed intimacy.

Laing’s work captures a mood, a feeling, a sense of aloneness that lurks within everyone who resides in a big city. It does so with great wisdom. It was surprisingly cheering, if only for her smarts and understanding. And perhaps because it connected this reader with the author in unexpected ways. I can’t say in any way that I know Olivia Laing, but I do feel more connected – and just a small bit smarter and more hopeful – for having read her book.

David Potash

Lyrical Wisdom and Loneliness

Latino Migrant Politics, History and Theory

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Making sense of US immigration policy and practice – especially what has happened in the past few decades with America and its neighbors to the south – is an extraordinarily complicated task. There are many moving pieces: local histories, transnational histories, international histories, changing laws, policies, practices and economics, and a complex overlay of perspectives and agendas. No simple narrative that can capture what has happened and why.

Alfonso Gonzales, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, provides a provocative and helpful take on the topic in Reform Without Justice: Latino Migrant Politics and the Homeland Security State. Gonzales’s research rests on a solid review of better-known historical events (public marches, legislation, speeches, etc.), interviews with more than 60 activists and many immigrants personally affected by the issue, and a powerful neo-Gramscian political theoretical lens. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian political theorist, communist, and anti-fascist who spent many years imprisoned by the Mussolini government. Gramsci’s work often revolved around questions of power and hegemony. He looked at ways that groups in power are able to remain in power, even in periods of transition and uprising. His insights – which cross many disciplinary boundaries – give tools to help map out complex issues of power, adjustment, and continuity.

Gonzales harnesses a reading of Gramsci to explore how, during a period of national shifts in political parties and massive street protests advocating for immigrant rights, conditions for so many Latino/a immigrants worsened. The US experienced a period where many thought that ground up change would lead to an opening of opportunities and supports for immigrants. It did not transpire. Governmental controls increased. The political culture worked against comprehensive immigration reform and the extension of immigrant rights. To explain this, Gonzales identifies an anti-immigrant hegemony that cuts across parties, social groups, and other categories. This “structure” has grown in power, too, under the Trump administration. Absolutely central to that effort, Gonzales effectively argues, is the criminalization of the immigrant.

Adding to the power of the narrative is Gonzales’s willingness to occasionally insert his voice as an immigrant. He is judicious but when he does insert himself, it resonates. Gonzales is an activist who cares. His work, as a theorist and as a chronicler of change, is valuable.

Reform Without Justice offers a persuasive lens to help to understand current American political culture and politics when it comes to immigration and Latinos.

David Potash

Latino Migrant Politics, History and Theory

Like A Vision He Appeared

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Back in the day, I grew up in New Jersey. It is easy to stereotype the Garden State, from the “Jersey Shore” to Atlantic City to Frank Sinatra’s Hoboken. But for those who have lived there, we know that the state’s diversity resists easy simplification. It is densely packed with history and people, rich in cultures and distinctive communities. The northern part of the state skews to New York City, the southern part is influenced by Philadelphia. It has great poverty and tremendous wealth, rural farmland and robust cities, all surprisingly close to each other. It is, in no uncertain terms, a complicated place without multiple sites and sources of identity.

Jersey heritage figures prominently in my reading of Bruce Springsteen’s wonderful autobiography, Born to Run. Springsteen has become many things to so many people throughout the world over the years. That kind of impact first took place in Jersey back in the 1970s. Appointed and anointed as perhaps the state’s only unifying force, Springsteen made fantastic music that spoke to northern Jersey, southern Jersey, to rural Jersey and urban Jersey, in the burbs and down the shore. I heard bar bands cover Springsteen, give tribute to Bruce, and do a good job with “Rosalita” just a few years after the album “Born to Run” was released. He is a New Jersey state treasure. How did it do it?

Springsteen has a way with words, in music and on the page. He’s a genius – and it is a beautifully written book. It is frank, candid, dark and optimistic. Springsteen’s focus is, rightly, on his journey – and not the reasons that so many of us see him as ours. His prose is grounded in “how”: how he grew up, how he was loved and rejected, how he developed his career, and how he dealt with his battles, failures, and successes.

We know that Springsteen has tremendous talent and is a great showman. His autobiography highlights that wrapped up in the very core of the man is discipline and an extraordinary work ethic. The artist “Springsteen” is an authentic creation, the outcome of thoughtful choices and boatloads of effort. He worked at his music, his career, his image and, in many ways, his friends and family. He has struggled with depression. He has consistently mined his pains as catalysts of creativity. It has not happened easily. While we may think of it as just the triumph of talent, the book makes clear that it has happened through deliberate hard work.

Born to Run left me with more admiration for Springsteen, more understanding of him, and appreciation for the pain that has haunted him. His father’s mental illness, the challenges of his childhood, and his demons have been real and powerful. It is a testament to the man that he has had the gifts, skill and temperament to use them and much more to make music that the entire world sings. I will re-read Born to Run. It will be worth it, just like revisiting older Springsteen favorites.

David Potash

And a big thanks to my sister for giving me the book!

Like A Vision He Appeared

But For the Grace of . . . .

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Daniel Ellsberg is famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. The papers, classified documents that showed that the US government was aware that the Vietnam War was not going well, redefined the public debate about the conflict and led to the prosecution of Ellsberg. He escaped conviction – the government broke many laws in its attempt to silence him – and he left government work to devote his life to political activism.

It was no accident that Ellsberg, a trusted civilian defense analyst in the 1960s, had access to sensitive material. He was a Marine who attended Harvard for his undergraduate and doctoral degrees. Ellsberg’s dissertation on decision theory raised issues that are still being studied to this day. His work for the RAND Corporation was very well-received. A smart and knowledgeable scholar, Ellsberg’s professional life developed at the intersection of ideas and defense policy.

Ellsberg recently wrote The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. A non-fiction autobiographical account of his work as a nuclear war strategist in the early part of his career, the book explains much of the thinking – or non-thinking – surrounding the development and potential deployment of the US nuclear arsenal. It is a book about organizational decision-making, politics and strategy. It is a sobering read. The Doomsday Machine is not the most up-to-date or comprehensive work about contemporary nuclear arms. It lacks current data, the big picture about how things have and have not changed over the past few decades, and efforts and stabilization. It does bring a personal touch to the madness, though, and make a compelling case for attention. With the recent nuclear false alarm in Hawaii on our screens and in our minds, coupled with the latest plans for loosening the potential use of nuclear weapons, the warnings in The Doomsday Machine seem all the more relevant.

Some of the key points Ellsberg hammers home:

  • There is no one nuclear “button.” In fact, the decision to use nuclear weapons is decentralized and at the discretion of military officials far down the organizational tree.
  • Much US nuclear strategy is based on the assumption that the US would strike first.
  • Much US nuclear strategy assumed that a nuclear conflict could only occur with the USSR and China – never just one of these countries. This was a problem for decades.
  • As US nuclear planning became more sophisticated, anticipated casualties – which numbered in the hundreds of millions – grew to reflect the true consequences of a nuclear war.
  • When Ellsberg first saw Stanley Kubrick’s apocalyptic satire, Dr. Strangelove, he considered it as accurate as a documentary.

Ellsberg’s proposals for a saner, slightly more safe future involve taking apart the doomsday machine (his term for this decentralized nuclear arsenal) include getting rid of the land based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), stop planning for strikes that target other country’s leaders (with no leader, there can be no surrender or de-escalation), and then promise never to use nuclear weapons. He notes that many times US presidents reference the potential use of nuclear weapons.

It is a scary problem to consider. We have more than enough nuclear weapons to make human life an impossibility and seemingly poor controls regarding their potential use. Ellsberg’s analysis of the Cuban Missile crisis highlights just how lucky we have been in avoiding nuclear conflict. Deterrence is poorly considered and something that needs a rethink. In fact, the broad question of nuclear strategy demands attention. Ellsberg’s book is a well-written and cogent warning about the state of the nuclear arsenal: who controls it, who thinks about it, and how it developed.

David Potash

But For the Grace of . . . .

Facing Addiction – Full On

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Charming and deceptive. Honest to a fault and blind to large truths. Lovely and awful. Cat Marnell is a super smart recovering addict who lives these contradictions.

Marnell recently came out with a memoir, How to Murder Your Life. She’s held a number of positions in the beauty/women’s media – with Glamour, Vice, Nylon, xoJane, and Lucky. She’s written about herself – her drug use, career, love life, sex life, family, obsessions and self-harm with humor and honesty. She embodies intelligence and self-destructiveness. The story of her longer journey, captured in this book, is fascinating and terrible to behold. Making it more than bearable is Marnell’s wit, humor and a candor that makes one wince. You want to look away, you want to shake her, and you keep reading.

Marnell’s narrative voice is both agent and witness to success and catastrophe. She knows how to pull it together and she knows how to flame out – and she does both with regularity. The painful repetition of her screw ups can make for less interesting reading. However, it underscores the difficulty of stopping  addictive behaviors. Addicts don’t stop being addicted; it is part of their identity. As much as you may wish for clarity and happiness, there is no complete resolution in any next chapter of Marnell’s book. She lives a life of more highs and more lows.

Marnell’s childhood was marked by wealth, strife, and unhappiness. From an early age, prescriptions and non-prescription drugs were a part of her everyday life. Health care professionals, including her father, a psychiatrist, made sure that she was medicated and re-medicated to deal the stresses of growing up, attention deficit disorder, and teen angst. She moved from a college internship into full-time employment in the New York City media world. Work gave her a sense of importance and agency that was missing from the rest of her life. You can feel the triumph in her voice when she describes those early career advances. But from her teens until now, in her mid-30s, she’s struggled with her addictions, career, relationships, and gaining control of her life. At many times she self-sabotaged to the point of murdering her life. Luckily, there are some rehab services who provide the assistance. Additionally, if you are addicted to ketamine, you may consult an expert on this addiction. On this website, you can find valuable information and resources to help you on your journey to recovery.

And yet – and the yet is important here – Marnell’s immediacy gives a real sense of what it is like to live as an addict and to have hope. My experience is limited. I have known two friends who have lived with serious drug addiction. For both, it fractured their identity, scrambling sense of self and direction. It is more than a conflict between healthy and unhealthy impulses. Addiction reshaped identity through action, adding a lens of meaning that fundamentally altered their person-hood. In such situations, seeking help for addiction becomes crucial, providing a pathway towards recovery, restoration, and the rediscovery of a healthier sense of self. Additionally, there are rehab for celebrities. You can also read this article for more information. That splintered self, aligning actions with impulse, is woven through How to Murder Your Life.

Marnell might sell many copies of this book for the scandals, and the drama. Stick with it, though, and you’ll gain an understanding of the powerful ways that addiction harms. I really wish Cat Marell well. She’s a very talented woman who is lucky to be alive. She’s also fortunate to have the facilities to write such fresh and engaging prose. I do not believe that all of her really wants to murder her life. She’s around to talk about it and she cares. She is clear and direct about behaviors to avoid, particularly for women.

I am optimistic that her honesty strips the appeal from what an Instagram-follower might believe is a glamorous lifestyle. Her story is cautionary. Life can be challenging enough.

David Potash

Facing Addiction – Full On