A Colony in a Nation

Chris Hayes, the MSNBC news host and commentator, has written a book about racism, policing and imprisonment in America. His title, A Colony in a Nation, is a quote from Richard Nixon. In his 1968 convention speech in which he acknowledged black demands for equality, Nixon said, “They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.”

Hayes wrote, “Nixon was correct that black Americans ‘don’t want to be a colony in a nation.’ And yet he helped bring about that very thing. Over the half-century since he delivered those words, we have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves. A territory that isn’t actually free…. This book makes a simple argument: that American criminal justice isn’t one system with massive racial disparities but two distinct regimes. One (the Nation) is that kind of policing regime you expect in a democracy; the other (the Colony) is the kind you expect in an occupied land. Policing is a uniquely important and uniquely dangerous function of the state.”

Hayes analogized the United States as a British colony to the status of blacks in America today, and he described how “white fear” has been used to reinforce the strength of those in power, “the Nation.” He explained that calls for law and order are often just code words for continuing colonial subjects in control: “White fear emanates from knowing that white privilege exists and the anxiety that it might end.”

In addressing the fact that the US is the most incarcerated developed nation in the world, he contrasted the situation in Europe. In the US, the trend has been to protest against favorable treatment by the justice system to those in the upper classes, to find fair justice by punishing the crimes of elite whites just as harshly as poor blacks have been treated. “In Europe, as it democratized over time, the move was to push everyone into the category once reserved for the nobles: the sphere of humane treatment was widened until in included everyone.” That sentence does not describe the current justice climate in the US.

In his last chapter, Hayes made a pitch for a reversal of such a harsh criminal justice system: “Imagine a person commits a crime, perhaps even a violent crime, against you. Is this person a human being? A neighbor, a fellow citizen? What do we as a society owe that person? Could he be someone you know and love in the throes of addiction? Or is he a member of a group you’ll never encounter again? What dignity is due the perpetrator and the potential perpetrator? Do you and the perpetrator belong to the same country? This is the question before us. The question we’ve answered wrongly for too long.” He ends his book with a vision of the benefits that would be had by all if the borders between this Colony and Nation could be erased.

I have been impressed with Hayes as a social and political commentator, and this book provide deeper look into his own history and the forces that led him to the conclusions he describes in this book. The book is a worthy social commentary and regardless of your political affiliation, a thorough reading will add to your own thoughts about these topics. The book is well written and thoroughly well researched. I give it a very solid and strong endorsement.