Short Stuff: Tarring and Feathering

In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, author Jon Ronson discusses the psychology of humiliation, the use of shame as punishment, and what happens to the targets of public shaming after the crusade is over and everyone forgets about them.

Initially, Ronson thought that public shaming was a force for good. Underdogs and average citizens can hold powerful people and corporations accountable and put enough pressure on them that they’re forced to change for the better. However, as Ronson learned more, he discovered that public shaming can also be a destructive force that ruins people’s lives, even if those people haven’t actually done anything wrong.

In this New York Times bestseller, Michelle Alexander argues that the war on drugs has created a new racial caste system, disproportionately punishing black people. A powerfully interlocking system of laws and policies targets black people for drug crime, punishes them more severely than white criminals, and makes life as an ex-felon extremely difficult. The result is effectively racial subjugation and disenfranchisement.

In this summary, you’ll learn how the war on drugs followed a pattern of implementation consistent with slavery and Jim Crow, how financial incentives and legal protection allow selective targeting of black males for drug crimes, and why it’s so difficult for drug convicts to reintegrate into society.

Orange Is the New Black is Piper Kerman’s memoir of her year at a federal women’s prison. Convicted on drug charges, the privileged, well-educated, white, upper-middle-class Piper is sent to prison in Danbury, Connecticut. There, she finds herself part of a community of women whose backgrounds and life experiences seem vastly different from her own. During her sentence, however, Piper comes to recognize the biases of her privilege; find community and family with her fellow inmates; and discover the systemic failures, gross power disparities, and overall injustices of the prison system.

In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, author Jon Ronson discusses the psychology of humiliation, the use of shame as punishment, and what happens to the targets of public shaming after the crusade is over and everyone forgets about them.

Initially, Ronson thought that public shaming was a force for good. Underdogs and average citizens can hold powerful people and corporations accountable and put enough pressure on them that they’re forced to change for the better. However, as Ronson learned more, he discovered that public shaming can also be a destructive force that ruins people’s lives, even if those people haven’t actually done anything wrong.

Over a half-century after the civil rights movement sought justice for African Americans, prominent movements such as Black Lives Matter continue fighting to expose and resist injustice. In this social landscape, Bryan Stevenson’s message is timely: The US justice system consistently denies justice to society’s most vulnerable members.

In his 2014 book, Just Mercy, Stevenson examines the justice system’s pervasive failures toward marginalized populations, especially Black Americans. To illustrate these failures, Stevenson discusses numerous criminal cases, most prominently the 1989 case of Walter McMillian, a Black man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama.

In this guide, we’ll discuss Stevenson’s analysis of the McMillian case and his evidence of extreme punishments doled out more broadly by the justice system. Moreover, we’ll consider Stevenson’s diagnosis of the root problems with the American conception of justice and his suggestions for repairing it. We’ll also examine arguments from other sources about how to improve the justice system and provide further context for the cases that Stevenson cites.

The 1619 Project is an anthology of essays edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones and co-created with the New York Times that seeks to reframe American history with the institution of slavery at its core. The book asserts that American history began in 1619 with the arrival of the first ship of enslaved Africans, one year before the Mayflower arrived. It also argues that, American democracy and the prosperous nation we know today were largely built by enslaved Black Americans but that this demographic is almost entirely excluded from America’s founding stories and remains suppressed today due to racist institutions that persist from slavery.

This guide will reframe America’s founding story by exploring how the institution of slavery has impacted our economy, laws, society, and the livelihoods of Black Americans. We’ll conclude by discussing Hannah-Jones’s recommendations for how the government can make reparations for these injustices. Throughout the guide, we’ll provide a broader perspective by discussing accounts from other historians, economists, and researchers.

The 1619 Project is an anthology of essays edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones and co-created with the New York Times that seeks to reframe American history with the institution of slavery at its core. The book asserts that American history began in 1619 with the arrival of the first ship of enslaved Africans, one year before the Mayflower arrived. It also argues that, American democracy and the prosperous nation we know today were largely built by enslaved Black Americans but that this demographic is almost entirely excluded from America’s founding stories and remains suppressed today due to racist institutions that persist from slavery.

This guide will reframe America’s founding story by exploring how the institution of slavery has impacted our economy, laws, society, and the livelihoods of Black Americans. We’ll conclude by discussing Hannah-Jones’s recommendations for how the government can make reparations for these injustices. Throughout the guide, we’ll provide a broader perspective by discussing accounts from other historians, economists, and researchers.

In this New York Times bestseller, Michelle Alexander argues that the war on drugs has created a new racial caste system, disproportionately punishing black people. A powerfully interlocking system of laws and policies targets black people for drug crime, punishes them more severely than white criminals, and makes life as an ex-felon extremely difficult. The result is effectively racial subjugation and disenfranchisement.

In this summary, you’ll learn how the war on drugs followed a pattern of implementation consistent with slavery and Jim Crow, how financial incentives and legal protection allow selective targeting of black males for drug crimes, and why it’s so difficult for drug convicts to reintegrate into society.

Think back to your US history classes—how much time did you spend studying Native American perspectives? According to some experts, it probably wasn’t much. History professor and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz fills that knowledge gap with An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Published in 2014, this book is a retelling of US history that makes two major arguments: First, the US’s global success can be traced directly to its genocide of Native Americans. Second, indigenous resistance holds the key to a more peaceful future.

In this guide, we’ll discuss life in precolonial America and explain what led Europe to colonize the Americas. Then, we’ll explain how patterns of genocide and resistance have played out over the course of US history. Our commentary will provide additional information and alternative ideas about the historical events Dunbar-Ortiz covers. We’ll also explore social issues related to colonization, explain how Native American resistance efforts intersect with other movements, and provide an update on US-indigenous relations in the 21st century.