Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow

Michelle Alexander in her eye-opener novel, The New Jim Crow, makes a dauntless premise that the racial caste system that was supposedly ended in America during the Civil Rights Movement still exists today and is completely redesigned in the sense that colored men are the target of an intentional “War on Drugs.” Alexander claims that the criminal justice system is used as a mean to racially control millions of colored people and the same system is used to demote them to a second-class citizen status. Alexander employs a great deal of rhetoric in her novel to appeal to the reader’s emotions and values, so that she is able to alter the ethos of the readers and ultimately reveal the blindness present in the United States Justice System. Alexander

Michelle Alexander writes and speaks about the 3 caste systems slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and mass incarceration. She asserts that racial separation has not gone away but rather morphed into present mass incarceration. Racial segregation has taken a new form and exists in prison systems and in socio-economic ways Caste system locks people up literally virtually. Alexander writes, “Jim Crow and mass incarceration have similar political origins. As described in chapter 1, both caste systems were born, in part, due to a desire among white elites to exploit the resentments, vulnerabilities, and racial biases of poor and working-class whites for political or economic gain. Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate and strategic effort to deflect anger and hostility that had been brewing against the white elite away from them and toward African Americans.” ( Page 191) The largest incarceration rate in the world. 6 to 10 times greater than that of other industrialized nations, and the US has the largest incarceration rates . The war on drugs began at a time when drug use was actually on the decline, but government begins targeting black men through war on drugs as a system of social control.

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

Racism in the United States has not remained the same over time since its creation. Racism has shifted, changed, and shaped into unrecognizable ways that fit into the fabric of the American society to render it nearly invisible to the majority of Americans. Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness shatters this dominantly held belief. The New Jim Crow makes a reader profoundly question whether the high rates of incarceration in the United States is an attempt to maintain blacks as an underclass. Michelle Alexander makes the assertion that “[w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” using the criminal justice system and colorblind rhetoric. (Alexander 2). The result is a population of Black and Latino men who face barriers and deprivation of rights as did Blacks during the Jim Crow era. Therefore, mass incarceration has become the new Jim Crow.

During the Civil Rights Era, many black power movements strived to prevent the New Jim Crow from happening. The black man was being oppressed during segregation and treated like animals. The white supremacy, only visualize African Americans as slaves, people who should not be a part of the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X drove men and women to fight for his or her rights. However, that was not enough to stop the white supremacy from oppressing African Americans. The Civil Rights movement did put an end to public segregation. It did not put not put an end to the laws being made by the government, which is dominated by the white race. In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander discussed how the Civil Rights and black power movements helped African Americans gain their equal rights, but did not help to gain political power. Mass Incarceration is where the African Americans’ lives end because of the social structure created by the government. Blacks are mostly in the lower class because after the Great Depression, Roosevelt only created laws for whites. This allowed the white community to build and move out the cities into better neighborhoods. Leaving the black community behind. The government placed businesses and built big buildings to keep all the blacks in one place. Base on how the black community was viewed as a race and social status, gives this race a higher chance of being behind bars.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander (2010) argues that despite the old Jim Crow is death, does not necessarily means the end of racial caste (p.21). In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes a set of practices and social discourses that serve to maintain African American people controlled by institutions. In this book her analyses is centered in examining the mass incarceration phenomenon in recent years. Comparing Jim Crow with mass incarceration she points out that mass incarceration is

Racism is a thing of the past, or is it? Michelle Alexander’s, “The New Jim Crow,” main focus is on mass incarceration and how it occurs in an era of color blindness. Alexander also focuses on the social oppressions that African Americans have suffered throughout the years, until now. In this essay, I will discuss how the system of control was constructed, Alexander’s compelling historical analysis, and if the current system would be easier to dismantle. I would like to start by delving into how the system of control was constructed.

Upon reading Michelle Alexander’s book, it became very clear the point she was working to get across. To be brutally honest, I was not at all interested in reading this book. I only chose this book because it was cheaper than the only other book the class was given the option to read. The title itself explains it all; The New Jim Crow. Judging from the title alone, I assumed this was just another book on theories of conspiracy. Ways the government or “the man” was trying to keep a “brother” or a “sister” down. Personally, I don’t like to believe that our federal government could or would do something secretive that was against the will or the best interest of the American people no matter their race or gender, which is why I prefer not to give

The book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about the mass incarceration of African Americans in the criminal justice system. It depicts individuals who were arrested on drug crimes. Because these individuals are labeled as criminals, it becomes difficult for them to find work, housing, and public assistance. (Alexander, 2010) The themes in this book include denial and ignorance, racism and violence, and drugs.

In the text “New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander argues her belief of control of African Americans, more specifically males, through a racial caste system. To begin her argument, Michelle starts by speaking of a man named Jarvious Cotton, who, like his ancestors, cannot vote, but not because he is a slave, but because he has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole. She believes that “in each generation, new tactics have been used for achieving the same goals” and that one of the primary goals of the founding fathers was to deny African Americans full U.S. citizenship (1). Michelle believes that this goal has been maintained because today and throughout history, a high percentage black men in the United States have been legally barred

In the introduction to The New Jim Crow, the author acknowledges her own reluctance, because of her biases and assumptions, to accept the harsh realities that her experience and research came to teach her about race, drugs, and criminal justice in the United States. No matter how dedicated to racial and social justice as an African American woman, she failed to see the other America that was hidden from her in plain sight. A new “caste system”

The New Jim Crow is a book that discusses how legal practices and the American justice system are harming the African American community as a whole, and it argues that racism, though hidden, is still alive and well in our society because of these practices. In the book, Michelle Alexander, author and legal scholar, argues that legal policies against offenders have kept and continue to keep black men from becoming first class citizens, and she writes that by labeling them as “criminals,” the justice system and society in general is able to act with prejudice against them and subordinate black Americans who were previously incarcerated, on probation, or on parole, by limiting their access to services as a result of their ‘criminal status’ and therefore, further degrading their quality of life. The New Jim Crow urges readers to acknowledge the injustice and racial disparity of our criminal justice system so that this new, more covert form of racism in society can be stopped.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander expresses how there are more African American adults living today imprisoned through the war on drugs, enslaved behind bars, then released on probation and parole to spend the rest of their lives fighting for the same rights that once were.

Michelle Alexander expresses in The New Jim Crow that blacks are being profiled and thus are being incarcerated or harassed more frequently than any other racial group in the United States. Although this statement is partially true, Alexander misses the fact that in recent years, other racial groups have been affected by the same unjust profiling done by authorities. Recently, overall police brutality and racial profiling has seen an increase in the United States population. Furthermore, unprovoked or inappropriate use of force by authorities has sparked conversation in America racial profiling and incarceration rates in the country. Due to this, claiming that Jim Crow laws or ideals continue to be present towards only one race is not appropriate according current circumstances. Despite vast evidence, Michelle Alexander’s contends racial profiling is specifically targeting young African Americans while data supports a massive increase in police brutality and jail populations in other racial groups as well. It is important to look at current incarceration rates throughout the entire country compared to overall ethnic makeup in order to effectively analyze the new Jim Crow in the United States.

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow presents the reader with damning evidence of structural racism that still exists in United States Institutions. Michelle Alexander is an associate professor at Stanford Law School, directed the Civil Rights Clinic, and served as the director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California. This book was begging to be read. The New Jim Crow? There is a new Jim Crow? The book argues that mass incarceration is “a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.” (2)