Dalliana Banuelos

Dr. Maura M. Tarnoff

LEAD CTW1
22 October 2018
Process Activity for Lens Analysis
Alexander emphasizes that “the arguments and rationalizations that have been trotted out
in support of racial exclusion and discrimination in its various forms have changed and evolved,
but the outcome has remained largely the same” (Alexander 262) because it reiterates the
message that ways of marginalizing people have changed but injustice towards the others has
remained the same. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Alexander’s motive
is to demonstrate how marginalization of the violations of people’s rights being taken away is
continuous with time. Read aside Stevenson’s ​Just Mercy,​ we learn generation after generation,
the people in power have had the​ ​same goal, deny and form the system to be prejudice against
multiple groups. Those groups are usually “broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism… torn
by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger” (Stevenson 288). From the very beginning
the, “goals shared by the Founding Fathers, denying African Americans citizenship (Alexander
262) are the same goals shared now by typically white people in power and by those who keep
others in subservience with their unjust use of authority. In the constitution and the country’s
regulations, oppressing groups was essential to the formation of the country. It was never about
creating an egalitarian democracy for everyone, the Founding Father’s goal was to create a world
that works in their favor along with people like them. Stevenson states that the system is broken
and we have to act on it. He realized this himself by working in a broken system of justice. He
goes on to state the stories of people who were broken by injustices stated earlier. To compel to
the audience he informs us that if we never act we will stay broken. Yet read with Alexander’s
reading, we learn that our life is not simply broken but in ordinance to those who want us
oppressed. Stevenson is a black man living in the same world as his clients and open to the same
injustices and the same oppressors. Our lives are not per say broken but are following what we
are told by those in power. “In (our) broken state, (we) were judged and condemned by people
whose commitment to fairness has been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice”
(Stevenson 288). By reading Stevenson we interpret that this is the way life is and there is bias
against those that then fosters injustice.