“Martin Luther King Jr. called for us to be lovestruck with each other, not colorblind toward each other. To be lovestruck is to care, to have deep compassion, and to be concerned for each and every individual, including the poor and vulnerable” (x).

Paulo Freire coins the term "conscientization" in his book titled Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The term itself, which is translated from the original Portuguese as “consciousness raising” or “critical consciousness.” Freire writes that the term is about “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality.” In a similar manner, “This book is not for everyone,” Michelle Alexander writes in the preface. "I have a specific audience in mind--people who care deeply about racial justice but who, for any number of reasons, do not yet magnitude of the crisis faced by communities of color as a result of mass incarceration.” As Alexander tells her own story, she readily confesses that as recently as ten years ago, she would have been deeply skeptical about the claims she herself is making in her book. And she freely admits that she was “beyond thrilled” at the election of our first black President (2). But the more she learned about our criminal justice system the more she became convinced that the result was a de facto New Jim Crow that “permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out of the mainstream society and economy” (13). The reason I mention Alexander’s own initial skepticism about a revitalized racial caste system in the U.S. as well as her celebration of President Obama’s election is because I don’t want any sense of overreaching, any sense that Alexander may be overstating the case for a New Jim Crow, to cause anyone to dismiss this work without wrestling with it seriously. I began by noting the sharply increased rates of mass incarceration because perhaps large segments of our society can at least agree that such high rates of incarceration are a trend that needs to be reversed, although the troubling privatization of prisons complicates any proposed reversals. One response to this dire situation could be despair. My own response when reading Alexander’s book oscillated somewhere between deep sadness and righteous anger. However, I believe the first step in transforming our Prison-Industrial Complex is raising awareness that there is even a problem, that the situation is much more complex than “getting tough on crime,” and that colorblindness may be more a part of the problem than the solution. To again quote Cornel West from the Foreword of Alexander’s book, the lesson West takes from MLK’s dream is that we are not called to be “colorblind toward each other” rather, we are called to be “lovestruck with each other” (x). The bottom line remains that the higher percentage of black males in the prison system and the practice of the justice system in forever labeling them, even after their sentence is served, as a new form of segregation (58). Thus, we relatedly need to do a much better job about teaching, promoting, and protecting our Fourth Amendment rights. Disturbingly, the trend in recent years has been many court rulings that seem to many to undermine the Fourth Amendment and encourage unreasonable search - including rampant racial profiling, contributing to a disproportionately high rate of incarceration for racial minorities. It should be our task not only to end mass incarceration but to permanently dismantle all oppressive systems that plague our society. This indubitably cannot be accomplished without implementing conscientization in our lives and being lovestruck with one another.

 Partaking in a thorough review of the United States as a nation founded (in part) on racist principles is necessary. We tend to underestimate the impact of systemic white racism, rationalizing it as an individual affair rather than a system of oppression involving 246 years of slavery and 90 years of Jim Crow for roughly 85 percent of our existence as a nation. Recently I watched a movie titled, Traces of the Trade, where the producer/director tells the story of her forefathers, the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. The film follows the producer/director and nine fellow family members on a remarkable journey which brings them face-to-face with the history and legacy of New England’s hidden enterprise. The narrator states, “In Ghana, we attended a ceremony that was for people from throughout the African Diaspora who'd come back to their homeland. We were a conspicuous minority. The ritual was at a river in a town called Assin Manso. It's where captives, after being marched from inland, were brought for a last bath. They were washed and oiled, primed for sale at the coast. An African-American leader was performing a ritual to help people heal from the past. My cousin Dain asked if he could perform the ritual for us DeWolf descendants. The healer smiled and said he could do that, but he thought we should ask our own elders to play that role. I think he was basically saying go home. Look no further than your own backyard. Do the healing there, with each other. So I've come full circle, back to my community, back to the church that my family has attended for generations. And I don't know exactly what the ritual or the healing process would look like. But I do know that it should be grounded in the spirit of love for all. And I do know that we'll figure it out once we face the history...together.” I believe at the core of this statement is fundamentally Wise’s argument, “…if people such as that can be redeemed, then perhaps anything is possible – even justice and the end of white supremacy altogether” (156). Neither shame nor guilt are ineffective and are unnecessary in attempting to decipher: what is our responsibility? It takes bravery, empathy, and the effort of being cognizant to not simply tolerate but to accept and love individuals who are not similar to you, which is not an easy undertaking. We as a society need to heal together and forgive each other. However, along with this forgiveness there needs to be an awareness and commitment to bring about change within yourself and others.  Bell hooks states, “The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” In congruence with Wise, I am not willing to simply give up on the fight because “what is required that we be prepared to die for our principles if need be, but even more so, to live them. So let us begin” (271).