User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
If you are concerned about criminal justice and policing in America, if you have been enlightened by Michelle Alexander’s
The New Jim Crow, or moved by Ta-Nehisi Coates’
Between the World and Me, then Christopher Hayes’
A Colony in a Nation is a book that may both strengthen your knowledge and widen your perspective.
Chris Hayes, the most compassionate and perceptive of MSNBC hosts—not forgetting my first love, Ms. Maddow—is the ideal author for such a book. He is a white man in his late 30’s who long ago learned to “check his privilege,” who for years—first as a writer and editor for
The Nation, later as the host of
Up and
All In—has listened to what people of color have to say about their experience of America. He spent many nights in Ferguson and Baltimore taking in the atmosphere, talking with people on the streets, but never forgetting the great gulf of history and privilege that separates him from their world. In addition, he has constructed an ingenious metaphor—a “colony within a nation”—to describe the status of urban neighborhoods within the United States, a metaphor which I think will be useful for all Americans, but especially resonant for the privileged and patriotic American who still--in spite of our founders’ flaws—identifies strongly with the revolutionary aims of the early days of the republic.
One of the most effective—and most likable—aspects of Hayes’ book is the way he uses his own experiences to illuminate the plight of black people in America, without ever seeming proprietary or presumptive. For example, he tells about the one time—in his student days—when he was genuinely terrified of the police: he suddenly realized, going through a security check at the
Republican National Convention, that, located in a side pocket of his travel bag, shoved into an eyeglass case, was thirty bucks worth of weed. (Mercifully things worked out alright, but it was a close call.) He contrasts this story with another close call experienced by political activist Dayton Love, who Hayes met on the streets of Baltimore. Love, on his way home from a high school debate tournament, was stopped by police because of a nearby purse-snatching and shown to a hesitant witness for identification, when he suddenly remembered he had an ATM slip in his pocket that provided him with an alibi. Hayes remarks:
Fair to say that Dayton and I, in our ways, both dodged a bullet, but the similarities ended there. I actually did something wrong: I was carrying an illegal drug. I wasn’t quick enough on my feet to defuse the situation, and even if I had been arrested and booked, it almost certainly would have worked out fine in the end. The stakes felt very high, but they were actually pretty low.
Dayton, on the other hand, had done nothing wrong. Unlike me, he was quick enough on his feet to successfully defuse the situation. And while for me the stakes were in reality rather low, for him they weren’t. Everything really could have changed in that moment for the worse. Out of those two brushes with the law, we both ended up with the same outcome: a clean record and a sigh of relief. But it took vastly different degrees of effort and ingenuity to get there.
Chris tells us other stories about himself too: as a student at Brown (where they called the campus police “Four Point Nines” because they really weren’t quite “Five-ohs”), as a journalist with an infra-red 9 millimeter pistol being tested by a police reality simulator, as both a young boy (before “broken windows” policing) being mugged on the street of NYC and as a man in NYC (after “broken windows” policing) benefiting from the new order and the cleanliness yet uneasy with the method that claims to have produced them, to name a few. All his anecdotes are brief and illuminating, used at the service of his arguments, not his ego.
Among the many thoughts about crime and policing advanced in this book—from how “white fear” produces a rage for order, to the militarization of modern policing—perhaps the most original and memorable is Hayes idea of “a colony in a nation.” The plight of black people in America resembles that of the colonists in the days before the revolutionary war, suppressed by an indifferent colonial government that cares more for order than for law, more for revenue than for justice. And what all Americans must not forget is that someday we all may be treated like “the colonists”:
...American criminal justice isn’t one system with racial disparities but two distinct regimes. One (that Nation) is the kind of policing regime you expect in a democracy; the other is the kind you expect in an occupied land...Maintaining the division between the Colony and the Nation is treacherous precisely because the constant threats that the tools honed in the colony will be wielded in the Nation; that tyranny and violence tolerated at the periphery will ultimately infiltrate the core. American police shoot an alarmingly high and disproportionate number of black people. But they also shoot a shockingly high number of white people.
Our American constitution is strong, but democracy itself can be fragile. And the tools of tyranny, once selectively practiced, can always be universally implemented. If we refuse to acknowledge that all Americans are citizens, as worthy of full civil rights as ourselves, then one day—depending upon whom our president may be—we could all wake up to find ourselves "colonists in a nation."
Rating: really liked it
Like Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy (which I recently read and heartily recommend), in A Colony in a Nation, Chris Hayes highlights how the American experience you live depends on which America you live in. Hayes' breaks down the differing experience of whites and blacks with crime and punishment (as well as opportunity) to the paradigm of colony and nation. The analysis of politicians' self-serving rhetoric in their call for law and order is looked at from both a historical and contemporary perspective. This was one of the strengths of the book: comparing the enforcement of laws in colonial America with the enforcement of laws in Ferguson and to other predominately black neighborhoods.
Calls for law and order may seem beneficial to everyone, but these calls need to be looked at in their context (colony and nation); then, you can see how the nation benefits (usually economically) at the expense of the colony. Later sections focus on the shifting boundaries between the colony and the nation (sometimes caused by gentrification of neighborhoods), as well as protected areas of the nation (such as college campuses). This was an engaging study which I recommend.
Rating: really liked it
A cry for social justice and a sobering look at our unfair and unequal criminal justice system. Chris Hayes more than adequently pinpoints exactly where and how our justice system has been anything but just for many. The statistics presented and the individual cases were cause for alarm, the rate at which we incarcerate people in this country, staggering. On the ground in Ferguson, during the protests after the killing of Michael Brown, he describes what happened during a before, things not shown in our nightly news segments. There was much more going on in that town, for many years, then we were told.
He also gives us a view of the insidious circle of fear and poverty in which so many are engulfed. The catch 22 so many police officers find themselves in, having to take on more than one role, without sufficient training. The double standard of institutions, such as universites that are allowed to police themselves. There is so much covered in this book and Hayes presents this information clearly and easy to understand. Found this eye opening, and though I have no concrete answers I do believe that things need to change. Where to begin is the big question, especially since most politicians seem not to know how to tackle this overwhelming problem, or don't care to try. Simply maddening and heartbreaking.
Rating: really liked it
A Colony in a Nation made for excellent reading. As the blurb describes, Chris Hayes contends that the US “is fractured in two: the Colony and the Nation. In the Nation, we venerate the law. In the Colony, we obsess over order; fear trumps civil rights; and aggressive policing resembles occupation.” Hayes, who is white, draws from his own experience growing up in New York, from many interviews and his experiences as a journalist, and from historical and political sources. His argument is compelling, and without suggesting a practical solution he does end his book with an alternate positive vision for policing and the criminal justice system. My main issue with Hayes’ book is not what he has to say, but that it has been said in so many different ways already and, yet, as I watch the current state of US politics, I see no progress towards addressing the issues Hayes deals with. On the contrary, it looks like things are backsliding – before the election, there was an apparent slight move away from mass incarceration and prison privatization. But now, including with the approach to immigration, aggressive policing in disadvantaged communities seems to be going full steam ahead. And it’s being justified with the very type of populist fear mongering Hayes decries in his book. Hopefully, in the long run, what Hayes has to contribute to the discussion is more than “spitting in the wind”, but it sure doesn’t look like it right now. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
Rating: really liked it
"One of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” James Baldwin
I thought of this quote as I finished Hayes, and that the problem probably gets down to pain. However, I’m still confused if it’s mostly through hateful anger (or “White Rage”, as Carol Anderson reminds us of who’s anger is mostly the problem) or paranoid fear (“White fear”, as Hayes emphasizes). White fear is part of the overall “fear of the other” as Hayes experienced in urban NYC. With all its multicultural cosmopolitan veneer, fear is a driver of both personal and interpersonal paranoia and suspicion as well as social policy in NYC, as it is elsewhere. White fear, more than any other force, determine U.S. politics. Last month, Trump told a group of cops not to hold the heads down to protect suspects from banging them as they were put into backs of patrol cars. Many will envision largely dark-haired people so abused without the assumption of innocence, and they’d be right. Law enforcement and criminal justice organizations admit some institutional racism but still deny the organizations are dysfunctional – by nature and design, Hayes does argue.
As news junkies we watch a bunch of television news as background as we read but more often our daughter switches us to BBC World, PBS, and C-SPANs rather than MSNBC. I do confess to a late night guilty pleasure with Rachel Maddow since the election, but not for long as my patience with her redundancy has collapsed. An OWG in my home watches another OWG - Chris Matthews - with some devotation. I don’t watch Chris Hayes as I find it's more of a frenetic search for the best sound bite instead of focused, in-depth dialogue. (I can’t say it’s “just” his youth, as I feel the same about Lawrence O’Donnell – who always wears a smirk.) I do know, however, that Hayes had a clear bead on White racism post-election, and did a stunningly powerful interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates on racism in the U.S. as a legacy of Obama’s presidency that triggered a coalescence of White fear and rage that also gave us Trump (http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/ta-...). I did like Hayes work here better than his last one that was also “good” but obsessed with proving a true meritocracy (or an America itself?) that never quite existed, so more tortured logic. Hayes does get, like many spanning the political spectrums from core Trump supporters to the hard-left, that we have “two Americas” now in the US. Hughes, in Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America, and other progressive social critics and educators asked us long ago to “teach to the conflict” (philosophically between the “patriotically correct” and “politically correct”) so perhaps teachers should offer interdisciplinary courses using literature, social science, and hard science (e.g., climate change disparity) with the “Two Americas” metaphor.
Hayes uses the historical processes of colonization including of the US as England’s colony, but also the entire history of European colonization including that of India and much of the entire continent of Africa as a frame for understanding African-Americans as a colony. Scrappy Colonial America had to fight off the British Crown like we make Blacks fight against their colonizers, us Whites. About a third of White people in the US choose the blissful ignorance about slavery, the failure of Reconstruction, the harsh racism in the North after the Great Migration, and many decades of institutionalized racism. We rejected the Crown not so much over taxes, but over social control tactics with the obligatory policing arm of the Nation, much as any Nation-State does (defined by an old historian I knew as a geographic area with a standing army). The French and Indian War impoverished England but the King’s attempt to collect more taxes from the colonists had tax collectors using strong-arm tactics like the “stop and frisk” now used in communities of color. The Blacks that revolt under such policing tactics are simply doing what the colonists did against the British, Hayes argues, and the he rebels and smugglers (like John Hancock and others) who were bucking the order expected by the British Crown are like drug-dealing in low socio-economic status neighborhoods and parts of the US today. He specifically mentions Northern Maine, largely White poor with also a Native American population that I know is damaged economically thus socially, but also many of the largely urban communities of color.
The “colony” of much of African American life is controlled from without its neighborhood boundaries. Blauner had a similar theory decades ago, with his notion of “internal colonialism” – that what was similar across low socio-economic communities, of race but also White poor, including urban Blacks, barrio Hispanics, Indian reservations, the schools, stores, and social-cultural institutions were virtually all controlled by those from without those communities. So, disproportionately Whites come in to teach, run the stores, and staff the offices in those “internal colonized” communities, then too often leave. Many reviews think Hayes’ argument of how colonialization in the US experience is linked to all of Black-White relations is a few argument, but it is one of those times when I remember one of my own professors who insisted we don’t recognize that none of our thoughts are original until we’re at least 30 (or have moved beyond young adulthood.)
“Law and order” is the ethos of the “White Man’s (sic?) Burden” of the entire history of the U.S. for both the colonizer (Nation – with democratic ideals) and the colonized, the Colony that the system keeps in place. Trump has said he’s a “law and order” president, signaling both the largely unfounded fear of POC in his White supporters and the largely founded and logical fear that many Black Americas (and other POC) have of the White police state. I’ve read over the past few decades various post-colonial theorists and historians that suggest that post-colonialization is hallmarked by similar processes to colonialization itself, or a perpetual re-colonialization. Nation-States are “free” but are largely robbed of natural resources, and are made dysfunctional by the colonialist remnants in their culture, psyche, and behavior. (I was in Antigua and saw Black kids made to stand still in the hot sun or they’d get a switch on their legs, and parents mocked by principal for not all showing up at the PTA meeting, and assured by the principal that even though the “government” has an initiative to stop corporal punishment in the schools, “we will be paddling your children!” to both cheers and silence from both parents and teachers.) Colonization is over, but the authoritarian, “law and order” was evoked by Nixon when he claimed that Black America wanted the pride of what it meant to be an America instead of more “government programs” that kept them in a subjugated colony in an otherwise free Nation-State. Hayes sees this as highly ironic, as it’s true that Blacks and other people of color disproportionately live in a segregated (or resegregated) world within the US that doesn’t produce or get it’s share of the American Pie, but it’s the increasingly militarized police state the “government” provides to many Blacks, in lieu of or contradicting humanitarian social programs. Keeping Blacks in order and check is normalized as a simple part of a Conservative impulse to try to keep overall social order, and Hayes is spot-on there.
Hayes gives a number of examples from Northeast college towns and his own urban experiences of what I’d call more commonly “town and gown” issues (that are always about class, but often also about race – also gender) in how “rowdy” behavior by White college students would get Black “townies” with similar behavior thrown into jail. How do the post-colonizers treat those more explicitly colonized that are still in their orbit? It’s a Faustian bargain where Whites accept that communities of color need to have strong-armed policing to keep our society as safe and “free” (for us, at least) as possible. I remember a New York philosophy professor who said how it was “at least good that we don’t’ have to be afraid to walk around Manhattan anymore!” after Pataki had instituted his “broken window”-like policy and punitive measures and billyclubbed and gave bus tickets to rid many areas of NYC of poor Blacks and others that didn’t fit a sanitized version of Manhattan. First, Becker taught us that it’s society, not any text, person, or entity, that defines the deviant, and which deviance is patrolled for and how punished. The entire systems of law enforcement and the criminal justice that are ostensibly about rehabilitation and the return to the citizen to the full rights of his or her society, but in actuality it’s the warehousing of the poor for retribution.
The arbitrary nature of our criminal justice system has in virtually every way and around every corner punished (and often ruined) the lives of Blacks. Black on Black gun violence, long the darling of Whites who cannot face even an iota of the rage and fear of their own White racism (“they do it to themselves!”) can be viewed as an aspect of lingering colonialization – of informal, if deadly, social control. Is post-colonial just neo-colonial education, institutions, social structure, and psychology? We have, by far, the largest percentage of our citizens currently incarcerated in the world, and most of them are low, socio-economic Black and Hispanic men. We’ve created this system of segregation out of our system of democracy, so as a good liberal perhaps Hayes has no choice but stopping short of telling us what’s wrong with our version of democracy that allowed such a grotesque consequence.
Hayes notes, “White fear is both a social fact and something burned into our individual neural pathways.” White fear of crime by POC is high, and I’ve seen psychological tests that Whites fear Black urban male the most. I’d also suggest this is compounded by “stranger danger” paranoia when close to 100% of kidnappings and physical and sexual abuse of children is from adults within and near to the home or family, but we’re socialized regularly with “missing kid de jour” on social media that also keeps us fearful and distrustful, especially of dark-skinned people. I was working with Haymarket and Community Change out of Boston when I think we put on the first two conferences on “whiteness”, in ’93 and ’94. The movement was coopted (as they generally are) and made more academic than activist, but it sure still doesn’t hurt to teach White people about Whiteness, what it means to be White in the U.S., about White privilege, and why some Whites would consider a concept such as “White privilege” bogus and part of the problem of liberal elites.
Hayes reviews the Ferguson disaster of Michael Brown’s killing. White privilege is something a native New Yorker, immersed in multiculturalism, finds hard to understand completely. He mentions the young girl in South Carolina being body-slammed to the ground, and a major point is that the colonized need to be quiet, compliant, and just do as they’re told. Police “had” to tear-gas Ferguson Black families after they resisting going back into their homes instead of out in their own yards. The most painful horrors of the deaths of Sandra Bland in Texas and Freddy Gray in Baltimore cause us cognitive dissonance, as it’s clear skin color is a major factor. We shouldn’t be surprised that “deep North”, largely White New England colleges and universities Blacks from four to eight times as likely to get arrested for marijuana as are Whites. We know the race disparity of sentencing based on Whites use of cocaine and Blacks use of crack were noted in criminology literature for 30 years.
Carol Anderson in White Rage let us know that Brown’s school was on probation for 15 years, and the shameful, near criminal descriptions of a low socio-economic school for Blacks in East St. Louis is only five miles away from Ferguson, as Kozol described in Savage Inequalities 20 years ago. School segregation has relentlessly, tragically, increased along race and class lines for the last 40 years. I realized when the Office of Civil Rights wasn’t going to withhold it’s scant federal dollars to Oakland after years of “violations” we were never going to do so (whether to “force” local-level accountability) even if we agree withholding funds for poor community schools for being poor probably wasn’t a productive strategy (as the state “take over” of schools has largely not been successful, either).
Hayes does discuss how chronically the education of Black communities is of often considerably poorer quality as measured by many indicators. I was in civil rights in he 90s when, after the disastrous experiment of school busing was ending, schools began to resegregate and the Department of Education administrators over the Office of Civil Rights panicked and decided to move the (token) funding for school desegregation to yet another experiment, that of the magnet school. Magnet schools could “cream” the top-achieving kids of color out of their communities (where they should be serving as role models in high-quality neighborhood schools) and make it look like that was fixing the system of racist educational inequity. The metaphor of “choice” in schools has brainwashed parents to think that as a prize in itself, even if there is little and laughable actual choice.
Those colonial conquests Hayes discusses I know from my own study are sometimes subtitled euphemistically in our elementary social studies textbooks as “voyages of discovery” – rugged individualism and the exploration ethos rather than greed, power, and control of others under the banner of a flag and standing Army – one definition of a Nation-State. We’ve presided over a 30+ year collapse of tenets, enforcements, training, and education for both the ’64 Civil Rights Act and ’65 VRA in the US. The legacy of colonialization means that laws are passed to placate agitating groups, and letting those laws falter shows we likely were never committed to equality but the illusion of fairness and token, individual successes.
White people paying attention know that Hayes is right that something is shifting more quickly than ever before with Black parents, especially those of Black males. Even in academia, I know Black women that are desperate to raise their Black children outside of the danger that awaits them from racist police. The racist AG Sessions boldly announced he was directing the DOJ to halt investigations of racist police actions and collusion. Hayes was optimistic, but I think only a few had the hope that Obama’s presidency indicated and predicted betterment of race relations in the US. For over half a century social science on race and ethnic relations has shown in dozens of qualitative and quantitative studies that Blacks and Whites had markedly different views about race equality in the U.S. As with Myrdal of 70 years ago, Whites are often concerned with personal interactions, and Blacks are often concerned with equal access to opportunities, including the educational and economic.
Hayes stops short of a truly radical critique, and expresses the modern angst of the classical liberal living in a neoliberal reality. He’s not Joan Baez, saying to “raze the prisons down”, that is a logical reaction if you pull the lens far enough back from the morass of the US prison system, especially in terms of the Holy Trinity of race, class, and gender. Our society tells Black men that it’s a fair society, a “race blind” meritocracy even if you need luck on top of all your hard work and any talent or proclivities you happen to have. (There was a recent Atlantic article about how damaged children of color become when we lie to them through all our institutions that we have a fair society.) Drug courts are one answer I don’t think Hayes mentioned that shows promise in addressing hard drug addiction where essentially the person agrees to go right to treatment instead of to prison – at least initially. This would immediately reduce incarceration, as State governments gear up for more privatization of both prisons and soldiers under Trump and criminal justice is a “growth industry”. I’ve had more than one student who has said drug court saved their lives as it gave them a chance (and with supports) to kick the habit.
All sources of authority are increasingly questionable and questioned across the political spectrum. We’re in a full-scale “legitimation crisis” that Habermas told us about. The nation-state flexes it’s power because it can through the law, but most nation-states don’t believe in putting its sovereign citizens to death, considered, by most measures, an abuse of the power of the nation-state. Criminologist buddies have shown me data for decades about racism and classism on death row (“there aren’t any rich people there” – none). I asked the head of prison education besides class what was the common denominator of prison inmates and he immediately said undiagnosed learning disability. (Let that sink in.) Such children, especially Black boys realizing the deck is literally stacked against them, even though they’re taught the opposite, and start to have difficulties reconciling their truth of racism and failed expectations (and in middle school often start to experience significant difficulties (as per Atlantic article) and also with a learning difference would more likely fall through the cracks in the underfunded schools for children of color.
In an all-White, bucolic coastal community of Damariscotta, Maine, the police chief is gleeful about their new riot-type uniforms, gear, black “stealth” patrol cars including big SUVs, and other Homeland Security hand-me-downs. An Illinois police chief defended the militarialization of a largely White, upper-middle class neighborhood west of Chicago noting “it’s a jungle out there!” The military and police have distinct functions that got blurred when in ’64 Gates in LA asked the military to help civilian law enforcement – the military is to go after a target, while law enforcement is to keep people and property safe.
I find Hayes’ metaphor mostly works, but I don’t intend to use it. While it’s historically and philosophically interesting, for sure, I don’t think I’ll add yet another sound bite in my theoretical analysis of race and racism in the U.S. Even as an academic, I have to say (gasp) the concept is largely only academic. It doesn’t expand my teaching of anti-racism and history of racism for White students. It pains me that Hayes gives no proscriptions. I wonder if my standards are lowering, as I’m increasingly content to think a book is worthy and even feel some gratitude for it if written by a White male about U.S. Black-White racism. Will some Trump White voters read it solely because a White guy wrote it and have an epiphany?
Rating: really liked it
A COLONY IN A NATION BY CHRISTOPHER L HAYES
I am so glad I read this book. It is relevant and an important to the current events happening today in our Democracy. I feel like the author raises important issues. I think it makes and illuminates how there is still racial inequalities in certain states. I feel like every police officer and cruiser should be mandated by federal law to have a camera on their body and on their cars. They should be made to have dashboard cameras. Police brutality is on the rise and there have been too many instances where their is an abuse of power. I have read about and seen corruption in the way the laws are enforced with people of different ethnicity other then white. I also think that people that live at the poverty level do not have the resources to a fair trial. Many innocent people are sent to prison because they lack the ability to pay thousands of dollars for attorneys fees. Ask yourself this question: Who do you think a judge is going to believe when it comes to being wrongly accused of committing a crime?. You or the police officer?
This book was on my wishlist. Many huge thanks to the Publisher for granting me my wish. It was an honor to read an early copy and review this book. Many huge thanks to Christopher L. Hayes for writing such a timely important book and for granting me my wish. Thank you to Net Galley for my digital copy for a fair and honest review.
Rating: really liked it
Hayes focuses directly on a subject about which I am likewise vitally interested: the ‘colony within a nation’ (the way blacks are treated in our majority white nation). Nixon spoke of this colony in his 1968 convention speech: “To those who say law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply: Our goal is justice for every American.” The present administration also made an eerie call for law and order during DJT's inauguration, though since Bannon was sidelined, there is less of it.
Hayes reminds me of a bright college student, bursting with new learning and excited to share what he’s read. That’s what I like about him, but it is also what I distrust about him. He’ll bring up something genuinely interesting and important, like incarceration in the United States, cite a couple authors who have recently written about the phenomenon, and then proceed to opinion without a full back-and-forth on the issue. His argument is relatively complete and points to unformed solutions…I mean, I agree with the guy mostly, but somehow it feels disingenuous, like a middle-of-the-night hearing. Let’s get it all out there. This book feels like an hors d’oeuvre.
It makes a difference, I think, that Hayes is the son of a Jesuit-turned activist and grew up living his father’s principles in the Bronx. He saw some things and live-learned how to be ethical and examine the roots of one’s own behaviors. It shows now. He’s willing to wade into some gnarly social issues like policing and look closely at them, taking a look at himself, his class, his color, his cohort at the same time. The times he was caught with marijuana are illustrative. These incidents play a part in his surprise conclusions: that maybe basically benign campus policing is the kind of policing we should look at: more focus on safety and less on order.
When discussing the spike in the incident of crime in NYC in the 1980s to early 1990s he doesn’t credit its turnaround to anything the government did. He talks about the beginning of community policing based on the “broken windows” theory posited originally by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson in the 1982
Atlantic essay “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” but argues that the decrease in crime rates are inexplicable, and
not due to increasing rates of incarceration. “In 2016 Gallup found American’s fears of crime hit a fifteen year high, even as crime itself was near historic lows.” The present administration is not allaying fears of crime, but stoking white fear.
“White fear emanates from knowing that white privilege exists and the anxiety that it might end. No matter how many white people tell pollsters that ‘today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks’ (60 percent of the white working class in one poll). we know that this story of anti white bias is not true. But we do know that having it ‘better’ isn’t permanent, that it could collapse. We know equality might someday come, and it might mean giving up one’s birthright or, more terrifyingly, having it taken away. That perhaps our destiny is indeed a more equal society, but one where equality means equal misery, a social order where all the plagues of the ‘ghetto’ escape past its borders and infect the population at large.”
What the f is a birthright? Don't we
all have one? Things are going to change, but no one is going to take anything away from you. When you stop demonizing a race of people, you take away the source of fear—for them, and for you. You
gain something. Black people in your neighborhood doesn’t necessarily mean more crime comes with them. Conversely, it may mean less crime all ‘round. The stressors may disappear with the move.
Hayes takes a page directly from Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative, and author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption) when he argues that we cannot focus on the criminality of what people do if we hope to make rehabilitation a goal. “Human beings are not defined by the worst thing they ever did” is a statement both men use.
“What kind of justice system would exist in a setting in which each member of society were actually valued as a full human with tremendous potential, even if he or she committed a crime, or hurt someone, or broke the community’s norms were held accountable?…What would a criminal justice system for the elite look like?”
Hayes answers this with an anecdote about getting caught smoking weed at Brown. He goes on to say “the cause of our current state of affairs lies in tasking police with preserving order rather than with ensuring safety.” Perhaps if the police took care of safety, community members could take care of order? Hayes ends saying he doesn’t want to feel afraid like he did as a kid in NYC, but thinks injustice towards some in our society is a wrong that cannot stand. I’m with him on that.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 Stars
I've had this book since the week it came out but I was afraid to read it. I knew it would piss me off and ruin my mood. All week this book had been on my mind.
On Monday May 25 George Floyd was murdered in cold blood by 4 Minneapolis police officers. I would like to say that watching this man be slowly murdered by people who claim to "Serve and Protect" was shocking but I can't. I wasn't shocked or surprised. Saddest of all I wasn't even mad.
I was exhausted.
I was tired down to my bones.
Black and Brown people are second class citizens in America.
Our lives don't matter.
That's not a slogan its a fact.
A Colony In A Nation is smart and deeply researched look at the 2 Americas. In one America "The Nation" the police are the people you call for help. In "The Colony" the police bring fear and aggressive "order". White lives are far more likely to receive justice because they simply matter more. That's not political that's just real life.
Chris Hayes is one of my favorite tv hosts(his podcast is great too!)I find him to be thoughtful and sincere. I just think he's cool and brilliant.
The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is because it wasn't long enough. If you take out the index, bibliography, acknowledgements and notes this book is only 220 pages. I need more!
A Must Read!
Rating: really liked it
This is a short book, and it sports some plaudits on its back cover from some serious heavyweights. So I guess I was expecting to be wowed a bit. I'm not sure it got me there, but there were some interesting points, however briefly they were explored.
The book uses the heuristic of The Colony (inhabited by racial minorities, most of whom are Black, and the poor, most of whom are minorities) and The Nation (where the rest of us live) to expose the "Two Americas" that we inhabit. The Colony receives order (submitting to the police state or risking death, even absent Constitutional authority) in return for giving profit (in Fergusson-type scenarios where fines for petty crimes subsidize the rich and white) to the Nation. None of this is a particularly fresh take, nor is this topic much enhanced by being interlarded with stories of Hayes' white-boy privilege, the only thing that really sets this book apart from the works of other, earlier (mostly Black) authors and social critics.
So for most of the book, my assessment was "So what?" But Hayes redeems himself slightly toward the end. He explores some interesting ideas about American's love for retribution (compared with our European counterparts' more humane approaches) being rooted in our election of prosecutors and (ironically) our lesser tolerance for aristocracy (the idea being that Europeans began to think that more clement "aristocratic justice" should eventually be extended to all, while we in the colonies started with a perhaps admirable tradition of treating all malefactors to the stocks, even if the days of throwing the book at the rich with equal frequency are long past us). He also touches on the role of guns in maintaining racial hierarchies, and highlights America's incarceration mania by mentioning that if America were all white, we'd still have the 16th highest incarceration rate in the world, a simply staggering statistic given how suffused our society is with the doctrine of white supremacy.
The problem is that he never really explores these interesting points! And why not? He only made it to 220 pages! Did he need to make a deadline or something?
Rating: really liked it
To say that America is divided is nothing new, but Chris Hayes brings such a fresh new perspective to this reality. In this aptly titled book he suggests that there are actually two entirely distinct Americas: the Colony and the Nation. As he explains it:
"If you live in the Nation, the criminal justice system functions like your laptop’s operating system, quietly humming in the background, doing what it needs to do to allow you to be your most efficient, functional self. In the Colony, the system functions like a computer virus: it intrudes constantly, interrupts your life at the most inconvenient times, and it does this as a matter of course. The disruption itself is normal.
In the Nation, there is law; in the Colony, there is only a concern with order. In the Nation, citizens call the police to protect them. In the Colony, subjects flee the police, who offer the opposite of protection. In the Nation, you have rights; in the Colony, you have commands. In the Nation, you are innocent until proven guilty; in the Colony, you are born guilty."
Hayes is an extremely engaging writer, and I was hooked by his conversational style and keen insights within the first couple pages. As someone who was already deeply familiar with the racial disparities in the American criminal justice system going into this, I found myself most fascinated by the different ways that he connected the present-day Colony and Nation to the American Colonies once occupied by Britain.
He also has a chapter at the end on America's obsession with punitive justice that perfectly conveys so many thoughts I've had but couldn't properly articulate.
Never self-righteous, always plainly and uncomfortably aware that he himself is a member of the Nation and benefits from it every day, Hayes challenges us to think about what it would mean if we all lived in the same America.
Rating: really liked it
I know of Chris Hayes through his television show, and had high hopes for his new book. Hope quickly morphed into disappointment as I plowed through his rambling narrative on racism and the justice system. He randomly touches on hot-button issues - police as warriors, incarceration rates, policing as a profit center, American clusters of self-perpetuating poverty, racial profiling, etc. - but never really makes a point. A 200-page book that tackles such a complex subject must be written like a haiku, where every word counts. Hayes' new work is more like a shapeless blob, bloated by personal reminiscences: A disorganized rant in search of an overarching conclusion.
Rating: really liked it
A Colony in a Nation by Christopher L. Hayes is a 2017 W.W. Norton Company publication.
This is a very thought provoking book which blends politics, sociology, race relations, and history to explain how America ended up having a ‘Colony in a Nation’.
This book delves into the justice system's flaws, the police mentality, profiling, violence, and ‘for profit’ policing, among other things.
‘Depending on who you are, the sight of an officer can produce either a warm sense of safety and contentment or a plummeting feeling of terror.”
I will be the first to admit I’m no sociology major, nor do I have any first -hand experience with the situations outlined here, but the problems the author tackles has a bearing on our entire nation, making it a problem we must all address, remained informed about, and in these current times, remain diligent, no matter where you live, or your personal circumstances.
I found the author’s insights were quite interesting as he drew parallels from history to show similarities in the way policing is approached in modern times.
“Presented with a challenge to its power, an illegitimate regime will often overreact, driven by the knowledge that all they have is force.”
I should mention, I don’t have cable, and so I don’t get to watch Christopher L. Hayes’ show on MSNBC, but do follow him on social media, but perhaps I am not as familiar with his style as many of you may be.
I think he makes some interesting points, and I loved how he offered very personal testimony about his own life, which seemed to give the book a much more intimate feel. I felt this topic was very important to the author and he came off as being genuine.
I was a little disappointed with the brevity of the book, which is much shorter than I realized, and became a little frustrated with the writing style. Hayes is a journalist who can command attention, resonates with his viewers, and is evidently quite popular, but the book was not always coherent, or cohesive, and could be disjointed at times.
The polarization, the division, the ‘Nation’ and the ‘Colony’ is all laid out, and exposed, but then it just abruptly came to an end. I guess I was hoping for something a little more in depth, but overall, I did enjoy his thoughts, and musings, the way he incorporated history and his personal background into the narrative, and the valid, and very relevant points he makes along the way.
While I haven't read any other books on this subject, the author did suggest a few, as reference, which do seem to offer up a more comprehensive approach, and so, I may have to look into those suggestions sometime in the near future.
Overall, despite a few minor disappointments with the book, it still found that it was a compelling read, is easy to work into your reading schedule and is a must for fans of this author.
3.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
Still processing this one, and will be for sometime. I'm amazed by Hayes' deft analysis of situations, both modern and historical.
Some ponderings and take-aways:
- Law AND order as two separate entities in policing practice. These words are said together and thus rendered the same in many minds, my own included. Hayes makes a clear distinction and why that matters.
- This model of colony and nation was so "on", once painted in the historical context of the American Revolution.
- Humiliation and shame as fear tactic
Highly recommended - perhaps one of the most important books I'll read this year.
Rating: really liked it
In a
Christian Science Monitor book review Nick Romeo, notes:
The title comes from a phrase that Richard Nixon used in a 1968 speech at the Republican National Convention. “Black Americans,” he said, “do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.” Hayes argues that in the half-century since Nixon’s speech, white America has subjugated a colony of the unfree within its own borders.
The idea that the criminal justice system is divided into two systems, one for whites and one for black has come to the forefront of American political discourse. Hayes does a good job of providing us with overwhelming evidence that there still is a large amount of racial bias. Police departments have become more militarized since 9/11 and that has become very evident when you see protest marches on the television. Hayes describes how "white fear" has led to politicians and the police to institute in some areas of the country a warfare mentality. We need as a nation become aware of our tribal instincts and the need to rise above those.
Hayes is an excellent writer, very readable, sometimes I feel his writing is better than his interviewing as seen on All in with Chris Hayes. This was an audiobook and it was read by the author. I am a fan of Chris Hayes and look forward to hearing and reading more from him.
This review was originally posted on The Pfaeffle Journal
Rating: really liked it
This was an amazing read. It's horrifying and depressing, but also enlightening and necessary. I know this will stick with me for a long time (I finished it late last night, and this morning, I've woken up thinking about it), and the questions it raises are so apt for a Chicagoan. Any American, of course, but as a Chicagoan it really hits home.
I almost feel like I need to read this again, just to really take it all in.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
