I believe the lesson KaDerrius and I presented went well. In preparation for the class, we read the introduction along with the first two chapters of “Crook County” by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve. It was extremely interesting to learn more about the criminal justice system; more specifically to learn about about the extreme injustices throughout the system, primarily toward people of color, in Cook County, Chicago, but evidently all over the nation. After we explained the small facts about Cook County to familiarize the class, we showed statistics regarding the demographics in Cook County’s courthouse. The evidence showed that a majority of the judges, attorneys, and public defender’s – people make important decisions about the defendants future – were white, while the defendants were mostly colored, males. No one was surprised by these statistics; unfortunately, this demonstrates that the younger generation is accustomed to the injustice in courthouses. 

       There was a wealth of eye-opening information I learned about different cases, like a white judge screaming at a colored defendant. Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to have my classmates discuss some of their initial reactions to let all their frustrations out. With some pages we gave them to reference, they discussed some of their findings in small groups. It was cool to walk around the small groups, and listen to what the groups were discussing. They each shared something unique – from the ways judges acted, the radicalized separation between the defendants and the professionals, and the system overall- which was great. We showed a slide with numerous images of black and brown men mug shots/faces to illustrate the office mentioned in the first page where they have photos of defendants of color. While at first the class wondered if the images on the slide we actually from Cook County, we received thoughtful responses to why these pictures serve as reminders to who is the target/victim in their minds. 

       We switched gears and showed a video about the Central Park Five which refers to the five colored teenage boys who were wrongfully convicted on raping a female jogger in Harlem. We showed the trailer for the Netflix film, “When They See Us”. Since some of the class was familiar with the series, we were able to discuss about how these boys related to some of the themes of injustice in the book. Additionally, our discussion went toward the lack of repercussions the female attorney who made officials falsify the evidence and how that portrays another form of injustice. 

       In order to relate the lesson to other important topics from previous lessons, we thought it would be great to discuss about how the criminal justice system connects to the idea of inheritance, and specifically the inheritance of the ghetto. However, due to time, we had to skip over that slide; also we briefly went over the next slide about Injustices in Justice that referred to the Us vs. Them mentality, “Dog Whistle Politics, and the “Time is a currency” referenced in the book. Thankfully, Professor Greene gave us time on Wednesday to briefly finish the presentation. 

       The connection between the Jim Crow Era and Cook County seemed clear to most individuals throughout this part of the discussion. I thought it was important to address the implements of a “separate but equal” mentality still encompassed in society today. People shared insightful messages from the book. In the regarding the slide “Negative Connotation”, some students seemed to agree to the question that there can be an ‘Us vs. Them’ between people of the same race. I agree, and thought of the question because some white judges were sometimes against white public defenders who wanted to support their colored defendants. However, my classmates did not believe that white privilege could be stripped away from other white people because white privilege is granted to everyone who is white in America. Since the color of one’s skin can not be taken away, neither can white privilege. 

       The topic, Code Switching, arose questions about what code switching actually means and ebonics. Although we provided definitions about front stage and backstage, people needed more in-depth information about them. Professor Greene had to step in for a little to calm the confusion. I think since KaDerrius and I understood what these terms meant, we mistakenly assumed everyone in the class would understand. I was especially intrigued by the amount of people who viewed code-switching as okay because everyone does it. Many agreed that code-switching did not have to be as drastic as the book described about the professionals because that leads to a moral issue. Some classmates believed that code switching was okay because evidently the person is still the same person as they were before. We ended with lingering questions about what progress needs to be made in the future to improve the justice system.

          I believe that the lesson I did with Saul on the Inheritance of the Ghetto went well. In preparation for the lesson the class was assigned to read chapters 2,4 and 5 in Patrick Sharkey’s “Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Inequality.”The readings were extremely interesting because they focused on different aspects that keep white people in comparison to black people in a certain urban location, and how these urban areas evolved into the current idea of the “ghetto”. 

          We tried to incorporate the history and evolution of the term “ghetto” in the beginning of the presentation because we thought that is especially important in how/why Americans tend to view “ghetto” in correlation to black people. However, we only referenced two specific eras in which this term evolved that was indicated in the reading: Post WWII and Post Civil Rights era. In this presentation, we also wanted to reflect on how media plays a prominent role in how others perceive a “ghetto”. Therefore, we looked up “Ghetto Neighborhood” on google and put the picture that comes up on our first slide, which displays a black man on the side of a dirty street with seemingly destroyed roads. In relation to how media influences our thoughts on this topic, we decided to try to incorporate a word association activity. Three images conveyed on the slide symbolized specific words associated with the image when one would look it up on google. We wanted to get the honest opinion of what initially came into everyone’s mind when they saw these images. Saul and I predicted that it may be difficult to get people to actually say what they were thinking. We did get a lot of responses; however, they were not responses that pointed out the different races and how that connects to the neighborhood illustrated. For instance, with the picture with the two black men, people expressed that they thought the men were in a city and they actually debated which city they were located in, instead of referencing that the image signifies a poor, dirty, ghetto, black populated neighborhood in the perspectives of many Americans and possibly themselves. I think maybe if we phrased the task differently, asking them how the image specifically relates to racist perceptions in America, we would have received different responses. 

          We portrayed how black burglars versus white burglars are portrayed in the media. Everyone seemed to agree that they see how black criminals are illustrated in a negative way than white burglars. We had some technical difficulties in the classroom, so we transitioned to discuss specific questions in small groups. I believe that having them talk in small groups was beneficial because they had time to develop thoughtful answers about one specific question, instead of creating surface-level answers to multiple questions. Everyone was engaged in their group and five minutes seemed to be enough to discuss the question. They had the chance to share their thoughts with the class. The question about whose responsibility it is to change the “ghetto” system led to differing opinions on whether it was white people or black people’s responsibility. I wish we had more time to dive further into their responses to this question and to all of the questions. 

          Saul and I thought it was important to relate Sharkey’s work to some of the other readings we read in the past. We had information about how the inheritance of the ghetto relates to Anderson’s “The Iconic Ghetto” because of how the ghetto is similarly portrayed and how it resembles places that black people predominantly live. We also relate our topic to the Sherman’s “Those who work, those who don’t: Poverty, Morality and Family in Rural America” with a few questions about white privilege and how that privilege may even connect to their finances because of the generational effects portrayed in Sharkey’s work. The connections sparked a good, but short, discussion related to these readings. 

          Due to the technology difficulties and the amount we wanted to share information about the topic, we did not finish everything we wanted to share. We had an activity about statistics regarding upper, middle, lower classes for which the class would have to guess what percentage of Americans are in each category and the difference in the amount of black and white people in the categories. We were going to present the actual statistics after the class guessed, with the help of Professor Greene’s slides. Statistics about economic status are crucial in understanding the inheritance of the ghetto because it conveys how race influences wealth in America, which can lead to interpretations of why people of color are more inclined to stay in impoverished areas. Statistics also relate to the characteristics – like health, education, relationships in community – discussed in Sharkey’s book, that exemplify why black people stay in areas described as the “ghetto” areas over multiple generations. Another aspect of this reading that I found interesting was that it was directly related to only white and black people. I want to learn more about how the “ghetto” affects other races. I enjoyed the process of creating the lessons, formulating ideas/questions to discuss, and leading the class in those discussions. I think the discussions went well and the class participated greatly.