Ramsey County Law Library Blog

CNN’s Don Lemon is now out with his second book, This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. The title pays homage to James Baldwin’s classic work, The Fire Next Time. In the tradition of writers such as Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lemon opens with a letter to his nephew, dated May 25, 2020—the day Minneapolis Police officers killed George Floyd. While Lemon pulls from interviews, conversations, and his childhood, the book is primarily placed in the events of the last year: the COVID-19 pandemic; police killings of Black Americans; and the 2020 presidential election. Through these current events, Lemon presents his stance on issues such as the Defund the Police movement, Confederate monuments, reparations, and what individuals can do about the white supremacist system in which we find ourselves today.

While agreeing that we must change how we think about policing in America, Lemon admits that calls to defund the police have made him “cringe,” arguing that the movement is unrealistic and alienating. He insists that the movement is “for those who are willing to fight for change but can’t stomach the long haul.” However, Lemon equally excoriates those who continue to tell Black people to “go slow” in pushing for police reform, asking, “But how much more slowly could we have gone? And what has been the reward for the virtue of patience?” Furthermore, Lemon points out that while police brutality is a racial issue, it’s not the entire picture. Violence against Black people happens in Congress in the form of legislation disproportionately affecting Black citizens, in CIA operations which purposely put drugs in Black neighborhoods in the 1980s, and in the overincarceration of Black men, women, and children for petty crimes and nonviolent drug offenses. Racial violence happens at all levels and areas of government, and we must fight it in all its forms.

Lemon also finds reparations improbable. After doing some back-of-the-napkin math regarding what economic reparations for slavery would look like (figuring about $655,200 per enslaved person), he concludes that “there is no paying this back,” arguing that we must instead focus on creating greater economic opportunity for Black Americans going forward.

Lemon’s expertise really shines in Chapter 5, the book’s discussion of racism in media and what should be done about it. Lemon clearly knows cinema, a passion that he shares with his mother. He explains that they have a complicated relationship to the representation of Black people in classic films, such as Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen’s performances in Gone with the Wind. However, Lemon staunchly disagrees with efforts to remove films deemed racist, dubbing those efforts “censorship” and “cancel culture,” writing that “if we erase those images…we create gaps in the essential story of how an economic system based on White supremacy developed in the United States and maintained its choke hold on us well into modern times.” He instead praises efforts like that done by HBO Max to place those films in context via introductions by scholars.

Another chapter in the book is devoted to the ways money can be used to influence change, titled “About the Benjamins.” He provides an overview of the economic history of Black people: brought to America for money; excluded from stores and community centers in the Jim Crow era; and suspiciously followed by security in stores today. Lemon shares a story about experiencing discrimination as a customer himself and details his decision to return his purchase. He asks the reader to think carefully about who and what they are supporting when they spend money, assuring readers that the market will respond with more progressive politics.

In one instance, Lemon recounts the story of General Williams Carter Wickham, a “reluctant rebel” in the Confederacy whose statue was erected in Monroe Park in Richmond, Virginia in 1891. Lemon figures into the picture when he interviews two of Wickham’s descendants, a White descendant and a Black descendant. In the interview, both descendants agreed that the statue should be removed, and they petitioned for its removal. However, three years after the petition, what finally resulted in the removal of the statue was the actions of protestors in 2020, who tore it down themselves. The story illustrates the kind of healing that can be done by talking about and acknowledging the past but underscores the fact that at the end of the day, actions speak louder than words.  

One may wonder to whom Don Lemon is speaking when he says this book is what he says to his “friends” about racism. Throughout the book, Lemon specifically addresses either his White or Black audience members with different exhortations. He asks White readers to “pocket that But I’m Not Racist! Card,” insisting that “It doesn’t matter if you are racist or not racist or anti-racist; our society is racist.” When he speaks to his Black audience, it’s to ask them to “swallow our righteous wrath, making it clear that we will do our best to forgive, though we dare not ever forget.” Whoever the audience is, Lemon pushes the reader to do something, using the momentum of the current outrage against racial injustice to propel us forward.

This book is available for check out at the Ramsey County Law Library.

Don Lemon, This is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2021.

Several years ago, Judge Jed Rakoff began writing articles for the New York Review of Books.  The revised essays are the basis for his recent book, Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free, where he concisely shares his views on problems with the current legal system. 

It seems counter intuitive for someone who knows he is innocent to agree to a plea, but Judge Rakoff lays out a pretty clear and compelling reason why this happens so often.  It starts off with good intentions.  Judge Rakoff explains that our desire to crack down on crime and be consistent with sentencing led to the creation of the Sentencing Guidelines, which mandate a specific amount of jail time for a conviction.  However, that change inadvertently led to prosecutors gaining quite a bit of leverage for plea negotiations.  It is common for an unrepresented defendant to feel that the best option is to plead guilty to a lesser crime and receive only a short prison sentence so as to avoid being convicted of a more serious crime, which carries a much longer prison sentence. 

Good intentions seem to play a part in explaining how those responsible for some of the more egregious crimes, such as the people who worked for the banks and perpetuated mortgage fraud in the early 2000s, never got near a courtroom, much less a prison cell.  The DOJ, tasked with investigating and prosecuting this large-scale fraud, decided that it would be too difficult to prove that the high-level executives intended to commit these criminal acts.  Moreover, the DOJ also believed that even if they were successful at prosecuting these large banking institutions, the disruption to the business would have a detrimental effect on the economy, an effect worse than the crimes allegedly done.

The result was that the very largest institutions, banks and corporations, were fined and tasked with self-policing to prevent future criminal acts (rehabilitation as it were), all with the hope that the criminal activity would stop.  The hope was that a better, more ethical culture within the corporation could grow and replace one that was corrupt.  Meanwhile, the individuals responsible for the fraud were never punished.

Other chapters in the books discuss the procedures and processes we have implemented to be better: to rely on scientific methods, even if they might be faulty; to find ways to be more efficient; to focus on catching and prosecuting terrorists.  The unexpected result is that we have slowly eroded away the protections for defendants so carefully laid out in the Constitution. 

The last chapter of the book, ominously titled, “You won’t get your day in court,” outlines the many ways low and middle-income people are frozen out of a fair judicial resolution of their case.  The biggest cause is the expense of a hiring a lawyer. The average person can’t pay for an attorney. Many attorneys won’t take cases on contingency because the payout would be too low to be worthwhile.  Other examples include forced arbitration clauses, or settlement agreements.  The result is that for citizens, “the courts are not an institution to which they can turn for justice, but simply a remote and expensive luxury reserved for the rich and powerful.”

The judge’s frustration is clearly displayed throughout the book, and he concludes that change should come from the legislature. He speculated that might be difficult to do, since most legislators are reluctant to make changes that are seen as “soft on crime.”  Nevertheless, he remains hopeful.  Recently, Congress was pressed by voters to pass the First Step Act, which lowered mandatory minimum sentences on some drug crimes.  He remains cautiously optimistic that American voters will once again rise to the challenge and make other fixes to our legal system.

Jed S. Rakoff, Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free and Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021.

Heather McGhee’s recent book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, dispels the myth that righting the wrongs caused by institutional racism and discrimination is a zero-sum game, that is, what is good for someone else, is bad for me.  Instead, she illustrates many times over how discriminatory policies not only hurt and diminish the target group, but she also writes how these bad policies and practices hurt the community as a whole. 

The book covers many historical and current instances of laws that are aimed at Black people or other minorities.  Each event was followed by how other people, usually poor, White people, are also adversely affected.  For example, just after the Civil War, a critic of slavery named Hinton Rowan Helper wrote a book that asserted that slavery impeded the economic growth of non-slaveholders in the South.  Slavery, which enriched a few, politically powerful landowners, meant that there was little investment in public benefits like schools, libraries, and similar institutions.  His research found that states in the North, such as Maine, had 236 public libraries, while Georgia in the South, had only 38 public libraries.  Similarly, the small state of New Hampshire had over 2300 public schools; Mississippi had only 782.  The net result was that economy in the North was growing, but in the South, the economy was stagnant.  The lack of investment in these public amenities not only hurt the suddenly free but extremely poor ex-slaves but also poor White people as well.

In more recent times, McGhee recalls a case from 1971, Palmer v. Thompson, where the U.S. Supreme Court decided that closing the public swimming pool rather than operating a racially integrated pool did not deprive Black citizens equal protection under the law.  The Court’s reasoning was that Black residents did not suffer any discrimination because they were not singled out by not having access to public pools – White residents were equally deprived.  No pools for anyone. 

There was much resistance in trying to rectify these inequities, because opponents persuaded the public that reforms that gave benefits and resources to one group meant that there were fewer resources for everyone else – that is, they would suffer while others would prosper.  And that did not seem fair.

So how does McGhee propose we move forward?  Her theory is that solidarity is the answer.  In the chapter where she talks about unions, she describes the history of one of the first labor unions, the Knights of Labor.  Their working theory was to include everyone, no matter one’s race, ethnicity, or gender.  All were welcome to join.  They believed that if everyone united behind a single cause, say, an eight-hour workday, or limits on child labor, then management could not use one group of people against the other.  And for a while, that worked.  Many benefits workers receive today are due to the work on unions. 

But as union membership decreased, so did their power.  To illustrate this point, McGhee describes the attempt at starting a union at a Nissan plant in Mississippi that failed.  While many workers wanted the protections from a union, enough people in management, people with longevity with the company, or people who had a chance at upward mobility at the company viewed the start of a union as a threat, and they managed to thwart the creation of the union. 

In the last chapter of the book, she describes the revival of a town in Maine, which was in danger of withering away after the textile industry slowly closed down.  In the late 1990s an influx of Somali immigrants helped revive the economy.  Despite some ugly protesting by White Supremacists, the community, a mixture of long-time White residents and newer immigrants, thrived.  In fact, the combined African immigrant population in the state added over $190 million in state revenue through taxes in 2018.

McGhee concludes her book with these inspirational words:

Since this country’s founding, we have not allowed our diversity to be our superpower, and the result is that the United States is not more than the sum of its disparate parts.  But it could be.  And if it were, all of us would prosper.  In short, we must emerge from this crisis in our republic with a new birth of freedom, rooted in the knowledge that we are so much more when the “We” in the “We the People” is not some of us, but all of us.  We are greater than, and greater for, the sum of us.