The North Country’s ‘Blind Side’

I’m always a little queasy about books and movies that portray white people ‘saving’ people of color.

That’s the narrative in Sandra Bullock’s weeper ‘The Blind Side’ — up for an Oscar this weekend.

The movie tells the story of a Southern mom who adopts a big, sweethearted African American boy.

“I think what you’re doing is so great,” croons one of the other privileged moms. “You’re changing that boy’s life.”

“No,” Sandra sighs (lumping humility on top of her generosity), “he’s changing mine.”

One problem here is that the black kid, Big Mike, is portrayed as essentially silent, a blank slate.

Through the movie, white people talk at him, around him, about him, to him, but he hardly speaks. (Even little kids give him advice.)

Another problem is that this isn’t an accurate reflection of how whites generally think about or act toward people of color, or of how we think about race in general.

The movie is a fantasy, a comforting fable in the tradition of what Rudyard Kipling called the ‘white man’s burden.’

Why is there a North Country connection?

The last few months, we’ve been reporting constantly on the future of our region’s prison ‘industry.’

We have more than a dozen state and federal lock-ups in our region, along with a parallel system of county jails.

For generations, corrections has been a kind of tradition in our small towns.

It’s a trade just like carpentry or plumbing that gets handed down from father to son, mother to daughter.

But really, incarcerating people isn’t like carpentry at all. It’s far more morally complicated.

Especially when the jailers are mostly white and the people behind bars are mostly black and Hispanic.

I worry that as we talk about this thing we do, we’re telling ourselves similar fables and half-truths to the ones in that movie.

Sometimes, I hear people in the corrections trade describing inmates as the scum of the earth, beyond salvaging. I sense a real loathing.

Other times I hear advocates for the industry claiming that we are in the business of reforming and educating people.

Sometimes I hear people celebrating the fact that we separate inmates from the corrupting influences of their home communities and families.

It’s for their own good, we say.

Other times I hear people claiming that inmates don’t deserve to see their families. They’ve committed a crime and should do hard time.

In the same breath, I hear folks up here lay claim to a healing spirit, while decrying new laws that emphasize drug treatment and job training.

I also hear local people mingling concerns about their own livelihoods and financial interest with their anger and resentment toward inmates and their urban culture.

Frankly, I think this confusion is hurting us, both morally and economically.

If the North Country wants to remain a place where mostly white people incarcerate men who are mostly not white, we need to think about what that means.

What need to talk honestly about our motives, our responsibilities, and our methods.

This is especially important now, when in practical terms most of New York state’s political power lies in New York City.

We need to have a real, substantive conversation with urban leaders — black, Hispanic, and white — about our prisons.

Why now?

In the movie, Big Mike is silent, powerless. He’s comfortingly passive. Sandra Bullock gets to call the shots.

Heck, she even teaches him how to play football.

That’s not the reality in New York state. People of color aren’t silent or powerless or passive.

They control much of the political power in Albany. They hold the purse strings, in the Governor’s mansion and the state Senate.

In a way that makes us deeply uncomfortable, we are dependent on them.

And they have made it increasingly clear that the current arrangement is no longer acceptable.