The New Jim Crow Book Group: Week 2

Last updated on: November 24, 2015 at 6:00 am by Alicia de los Reyes

The New Jim Crow Book Group: Week 2 2015-11-22T10:45:45-08:00 Alicia de los Reyes

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As I wrote last week, I’m running a book group through my church, Valley and Mountain, to read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

Week 1 went great; everyone was comfortable sharing their own personal histories related to incarceration, race, and discrimination. It was a great way to introduce ourselves–in fact, it took up almost all of the meeting!

People were also willing to share a short text to reflect their spirituality. I’m looking forward to hearing what other folks share this week.

How the meetings run:

A quick recap:

Each meeting, we’ll start with a welcome. Then, we’ll have a brief moment of silence.

Next, we’ll take turns reading a short text (a Bible verse, poem, quote, or short reading) that somehow reflects our spirituality.

Then I’ll read a relevant Bible passage or spiritual reading (for example, by a thinker like Cornel West) and share a short reflection on the text.

We’ll discuss the discussion questions for the week, which I’ve pulled from various sources online.

To close, we’ll have a prayer circle.

Week 2:

Intro

We’ll have a few new faces this week, so I’m going to have everyone go around and introduce themselves, and to get us more quickly into discussion, I’ll ask everyone to share what they hope to get from this group.

Reflection

Next, we’ll read a short spiritual text. Courtesy of John Helmiere, this is a paraphrase of a Biblical story (1 Kings 21:1-19) by two Biblical scholars, Ellen Friesen and John K. Stoner:

Naboth owned a vineyard beside the palace grounds;
the king asked to buy it.
Naboth refused, saying, “This land is my ancestral inheritance;
YHWH would not want me to sell my heritage.”
This angered the king.
Not only had Naboth refused to sell, he had invoked his god as his reason.
The king’s wife told him to cheer up.
“You’re king of Israel,” she said. “I’ll get you Naboth’s vineyard.”
The queen approached the leaders of Naboth’s town.
“The nation is under threat,” she confided;
“the king’s security staff suspect Naboth.
He must be killed without involving the king.”
The town’s leaders convened an official inquiry
and summoned Naboth to appear.
Two witnesses accused him of disloyalty to god-and-the-king.
So the townspeople killed Naboth with stones.
When the queen heard Naboth was dead, she said to the king:
“Remember that guy who wouldn’t sell his vineyard?
Apparently he died and his property is available.”
So the king took possession of Naboth’s vineyard.
Then Elijah the Tishbite heard the word of YHWH, saying:
“Go to Naboth’s vineyard;
there you will find the king, who has taken it for himself.
Confront him about his violence and his greed.”

The group found lots of echoes of this and last weeks’ chapters in this story, even though it is from a totally different place and time. A few things we noticed: the king has all the power and yet he wants more; the queen simply takes the thing that the king wants; Naboth is totally screwed; God is on the side of the oppressed; there’s a massive imbalance of power between the haves and the have-nots.

Discussion Questions

I am using the questions from The New Jim Crow Study Guide, which you can download for free here. They are excellent. We actually didn’t get to start with any from last week, so I’m going to use a few from chapter one and chapter two.

Your turn

Have you read this book? Would you like to? Join in by sharing your progress in the comments–I’ll keep updating how the group goes on here, and you can learn from my mistakes : )

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The New Jim Crow Book Group: Intro + Week 1

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