What Shall We Remember?

Abstract

This issue of the Journal is dedicated to remembering the conference proceedings of the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society for Pastoral Theology, which was held in the historic city of Montgomery, Alabama. The theme of the meeting was Looking Back and Moving Forward: What Shall We Remember, What Shall We Forget? What made this conference unforgettable for those who attended was the immersion experience of visiting the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Built by Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative, these museums portray and memorialize the horrific history of the enslavement and lynching of Black people in the US, and further demonstrate the present-day legacy of this history in the practice of mass incarceration. The US currently incarcerates just under 2 million people in federal, state, or privately operated prisons or jails. This is the highest rate of incarceration in the world, representing a 500% increase over the last 40 years. Unlike in countries such as Norway, where the penal system seeks to rehabilitate and return prisoners to common life, in the US, prisons are heavily armed places where punishment, more than rehabilitation, appears to be the goal. Over 60 percent of prisoners in the US have black or brown skin. Economic status factors heavily into the equation between race and incarceration, as drug arrests are more frequently made in segregated, poorer neighborhoods, as opposed to on college campuses, where illegal drugs abound, but students are predominantly white. People who cannot afford bail or private legal representation are more likely to accept plea deals. The proliferation of plea deals results in increased felony convictions, convictions that cannot be erased from one’s record, and therefore impact one’s lifelong chances for employment, housing, education, and voting. Additionally, the collateral damage to children and families of incarcerated persons involves severe emotional and financial stress. Currently 2.7 million children have at least one parent in prison. The suffering that redounds to children and families of incarcerated persons is plainly unjust: they have not committed any crimes, but their lives are altered and their chances for survival and wellbeing are diminished when their loved ones and breadwinners are incarcerated. Historian Douglas Blackmon shows how the practice of mass incarceration is historically related to the institution of slavery and in fact is a new form of enslavement that functions to preserve racial and class divisions in this country. Michelle Alexander has made a similar case, calling mass incarceration ‘the new Jim Crow,’ and describing the ways it unfairly subjects Black and Brown people to bondage, creating a permanently disenfranchised caste of people whose chances of thriving once they get out of prison are