Seeking to recover the inmates’ humanity and share it with the world, acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers led a creative team in filming the documentary Rikers: An American Jail. The documentary, along with the conditions at and the future of the prison complex, were the topics discussed during an event at Fordham Law on Feb. 20.

The event, which followed New York City officials’ public considerations of the prison’s fate and the possibility of its closure in advance of an originally planned ten-year timetable, came at an opportune moment in city politics.

“We are beginning to see glimmers of light near the end of this dark tunnel,” said Matthew Diller, dean of Fordham Law, during his welcome address. “We here at Fordham Law are dedicated to shedding additional light on all of these issues.”

Bill Moyers delivered an introductory speech at the event, which was co-sponsored by the National Center for Access to Justice; the Center on Race, Law & Justice; the Urban Law Center; and the Fordham Urban Law Journal.

“I wanted to put a human face on the culture of human cruelty that flourished at Rikers,” said Moyers, who served as executive editor of the film. “There is no more powerful production value than the human face.”

The documentary gives former inmates a platform to share their personal experiences at Rikers and to inform the world that the institution is inhumane and antithetical to the democratic ethos of the country.

“Our city’s largest jail is a microcosm of so much that is wrong with mass incarceration today,” said Moyers, who before his journalism career worked as press secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson. “Mass incarceration is the sharpest edge of American racism today.”

A panel discussion followed Moyer’s introductory remarks. The panelists’ conversation, which was interspersed with clips from the documentary, was moderated by Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes.

“The event could hardly be more timely with the mayor’s press conference last week, identifying four new jail sites in four of the boroughs to replace Rikers Island, and then the state coming in on the same day saying that the mayor’s plan to do this in ten years was woefully inadequate,” said Pelley.

Jonathan Lippman, former chief judge of New York and chair of the Independent Commission on NYC Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform, lauded the documentary.

“It’s a haunting film, and it tells us all what we should know by now: that Rikers is an accelerator of human misery,” said Lippman, who stressed the importance of reducing the prison population and who recommended, after the prison’s eventual closure, building a monument on the island to remind our nation what the criminal justice system should not be.

Eric Gonzalez, district attorney for Kings County, addressed his office’s initiatives on bail reform—a critical task, considering that 75 percent of New York City inmates are imprisoned because they cannot afford bail.

“We are working in my office very carefully and daily on bail reform,” said Gonzalez. “When a prosecutor asks for bail, they must write to me and my executives the cases they’ve asked for bail on and they must justify why they’re asking for bail.”

Lippman and Gonzalez were joined by panelists Elizabeth Crowley, former New York City council member for the 30th district; Michael P. Jacobson, executive director of the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance; Tracey L. Meares, Walton Hale Professor of Law and founding director of The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School and Bacon-Kilkenny Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Fordham Law; and Stanley Richards, senior vice president of The Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization committed to assisting previously incarcerated individuals readjust to society.

Formerly incarcerated himself, Richards shared his experience of the dismal prison conditions.

“The way you survive is through violence, and you learn that from day one,” he said. He added that, if not given proper assistance immediately after their release, former inmates often end up back in prison.

“It’s deforming for everybody,” said Meares, noting a collective tolerance for aggressive treatment. “It’s deforming to our democracy.”

The culture of violence at Rikers affects both detainees and correction officers, who are ten times more likely to experience assault at Rikers than any other facility. The panelists discussed how, going forward, the city must work to reduce population size, to create healthier facilities, to rethink the definition of a correction officer, and to address mental health issues.

The city is currently working to open smaller jails in each borough, with the exception of Staten Island. The initiative would reduce inmate population size and allow inmates to be closer to their families.

“I believe that we could achieve borough-based jails within five years,” Crowley, adding that Staten Island, too, should host a jail.

Above all, panelists agreed on the need for a cultural shift, stressing that citizens of this country need to think of prison not as a place of punishment but as a locus for reform.

“The overwhelming goal of these systems, especially jail systems, should be to treat people in them with the sanctity and respect of human dignity,” said Jacobson.

The event is part of the Law School’s A2J Initiative, which focuses the collective public service energy of the School to ensure greater access to justice through teaching; direct service; and scholarship, research, and advocacy.

—Lindsey Pelucacci

For Lise Schreier, Ph.D., there is much to be learned from an especially heinous practice that thrived in Europe from the mid-15th century to the early 19th century: child-gifting, the act of bringing dark-skinned children from Ghana, Senegal, and India to Europe, and offering them as presents to high society women.

In “Toying with Blackness,” a talk she presented on Jan. 19 at Fordham Law’s Center on Race, Law & Justice, Schreier, an associate professor of French, shared some of the research that she’s been conducting as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant toward publication of a book, Playthings of Empire: Child-Gifting and the Politics of French Femininity.

In the story, a black girl named Raïssa is “rescued” from a black abuser and given to a white French girl named Mady. Raïssa is portrayed as grateful for being rescued from her abuser, and Mady is thrilled to have a new “toy.”

“But the story doesn’t end here, because as you know, there is no such thing as a free gift. In exchange for her new plaything, the French girl is expected to behave in very specific ways. More to the point, the black ‘toy’ is what turns her into a proper, obedient French citizen,” Schreier said.

One of the things Schreier finds interesting here is the fact that Mady was not the only little girl to get a gift. Her young readers also got a gift: the magazine itself.

“We all know how it works: if you behave, you get a toy. If you don’t, no present for you. It’s important to realize that the story of the black child being gifted to the white child was itself a present to good little French girls.”

One baffling aspect of Blanche et Noire was that it was ostensibly set in the 1920s, even though slavery was abolished in France by then, said Schreier. And Saint-Domingue, where Raïssa was supposed to come from, had become independent and was already renamed Haiti by then. Schreier said this deliberate amnesia about the past is further proof that blacks’ lives didn’t really matter in France—even in the early 20th century.

“The idea that you can have a fictional character [in the 1920s]and decide that she’s a slave, and then have another character buy her and offer her as a toy, is depicted as completely normal,” she said.

“Add the fact that the black character is not only an object but is also ahistorical. That tells us a lot about the ways in which blacks were objectified at various levels and for a very specific purpose, which is educating French girls.”

Little of this history is known in the United States, Schreier said. The conversation among attendees following her Jan. 19 presentation therefore focused on the different ways in which slavery was practiced on the two continents. As such, the images from Lisette are often unsettling to American audiences.

“When you talk about children’s literature—which is connected with tenderness, presents, family, and domesticity—you don’t necessarily think about racial subjection.

“And yet these are very powerful hidden mechanisms,” she said, “so it’s even more important to understand them.”

Why establish the center at Fordham?
We thought it was important not only for a law school but for Fordham Law, which has a history of working on social justice issues, to try to create solutions for the race-related problems we’re seeing in our society. We have some of the most respected and well-published scholars on race in the country, and we wanted to bring our faculty to the table to advance the national conversation we’re having about race and inequality.

What is the role of the center?
The center focuses on the ways in which law not only can be a solution for racial inequality and discrimination but can also work to structure that very inequality. We get at that through scholarship, discourse, policy, and collaborations that look domestically but also globally at issues of race and inequality. We’re also trying to improve legal pedagogy, how we’re preparing students for the diverse society in which they live. And we’re interested in partnering with law firms, institutions, and leaders to address issues of access and opportunity within our profession.

How does the law contribute to discrimination?
We think of the law as something that resolves problems of discrimination. But it has historically worked to structure inequality as well. Think about anti-miscegenation laws, which served to create and reinforce racial categories and prohibited African Americans from marrying whites. Or think about housing and mass incarceration. The law has worked to structure inequality in ways that we often don’t appreciate.

How would you respond to the idea that we live in a post-racial society?
Many people take the fact that we’ve had an African-American president as evidence that race and racial inequality are artifacts of the past. But you need only look at our communities to see that race still matters. We remain heavily segregated as a nation. Indeed, many schools are as segregated as they were before Brown v. Board of Education.

What’s the focus of your scholarship?
I focus on issues of belonging, family, and inequality, and try to understand how race operates across multiple contexts and affects opportunities we experience within them.

You’ve also written about the value of race audits. What are they?
The race audit is an opportunity to involve community members and localities, in particular, in trying to identify and address the sources of racial inequality. We usually think about communities as the canary in the mine, like Flint and Ferguson, protesting and signaling that there’s a problem. But too often we don’t see them as problem solvers. The race audit tries to change that, to create communities of inquiry that involve everyday people working together in a common enterprise focused on racial change and understanding.

Are your students interested in the issues the center raises?
Fordham students are amazing. In my courses, that really comes across in their commitment to the materials and their openness to talking about race. I have students from all walks of life and all ideologies who deeply want to engage with what are some of the hardest issues of our time. I love that and admire them for it.

Edited and condensed from an interview with Stephen Eichinger