New Jim Crow Thesis

Alexander’s main premises focuses on the large majority of African American men imprisoned today, as she reflects on the direct result of it that “young black men today may be just as likely to suffer discrimination in employment, housing, public benefits. And jury service as a black man in the Jim Crow era- discrimination that is perfectly legal, because it is based on one’s criminal record.” (Alexander, 181) Alexander points out not only how a significant portion of black men are ending up in prison, but how when released they face discrimination because of their criminal record making them unable to rehabilitate their lives and putting them back into the ghetto. Discrimination is a main factor which puts people of color in the penal system, and a main factor which when getting out keeps them from changing their lifestyle for the better.

In The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about a shocking statistic. That more African American men are in correctional facilities or on probation than were enslaved in the mid 1800s before the Civil war started. She offers her perspective on the mass incarceration of African American men in the US. Taking shots at all she holds responsible for the issues. She explores the social and systematic influence of racial stereotypes and policies that support incarceration of minorities. She explains that minorities are discriminated against legally for their whole  lives. By being denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to overcome said obstacles most will

After a solid first read through Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow you are presented with an incredibly troubling issue that is plaguing America. Mass incarceration of minorities has become, as Alexander puts it “…metaphorically, the new Jim Crow”(11). The way in which Alexander presents her argument immediately in the first few pages of the book, may almost appear to be a sensationalist headline from a radical civil rights movement. However this is an intelligent move that acts as a hook for the reader, who is now interested and allows Alexander to develop her argument. By using the rhetorical strategies of a strong attention getter, followed by a concrete explanation on the development of mass incarceration, she creates the perfect lure

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

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness was written by Michelle Alexander to expose the truth of racial injustice in the system of mass incarceration through the comparison of the racial control during the Jim Crow Era. She reveals how race plays an important role in the American Justice System. Alexander argues about the racial bias, particularly towards African-Americans, immanent in the war on drugs as a result of their lack of political power and how the Supreme Court tolerates this injustice.

The amount of men that are jailed only from specific areas raise alarms. If a high percentage of the people imprisoned come from impoverished areas, then where are the middle-class and high-class prisoners? Surely, race does not matter when it comes to drug use. In fact, Alexander states that “whites, particularly white youth, are more likely to engage in drug crime than people of color” (page 70). Then why is that the prison system preys on black and brown people? The stereotype that poor neighbourhoods harbour drug activity steer police into these areas in the first place. If police attempt drug raids in an white upper-class neighbourhood, an outrage would occur. Like Alexander says, “Tactics that would be political suicide in an upscale white suburb are not even newsworthy in poor black and brown communities… So long as mass drug arrests are concentrated in impoverished urban areas, police chiefs have little reason to fear a political backlash, no matter how aggressive and warlike the efforts may be” (page 124). In short, the country does not care about what happens to black and brown drug users. The black drug stereotype has been so overused that it has become the norm for black people to portrayed as drug dealers and users, causing the nation to not even bat an eye and see the incarceration problem stirring in front of them.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration on the Age Colorblindness written by legal scholar, Michelle Alexander, explores a new caste system that targets black or brown men across improvised communities in the United States. According to Alexander, The New Jim Crow laws were created to hinder the growth of black or brown men by using the criminal justice system to enslave them into a vicious cycle of oppression. The Jim Crow laws that relished our nation’s history so many years earlier has resurfaced and consequently lodged many minority men into second class citizenship and allow law enforcement officers to saturate black communities and discriminate against citizens that fit a certain profile—black or brown. Alexander reveals a

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book written by Michelle Alexander. This book explains the mass incarceration that African-American males faced in the United States. Alexander uses many examples of discrimination throughout the book, but the most prevailing one to me was how the criminal justice system used to the War on Drugs. Alexander describes a “racial caste system” as a way that African-Americans are kept at a lower social standing then the white people. The way that Alexander presents her arguments allows we the reader to see the true racism that was faced by African- Americans. This book gives many arguments but there are some main arguments that Alexander stresses throughout the book that

The novel The New Jim Crows by Michelle Alexander is an examination of how the criminal justice system functions as a structure of racial bias. People of color are rendered second-class citizens after imprisonment by a racial caste system that marginalizes citizens of politically, economically, and socially. The novel begins with an explicit history of the black community in America. She depicts the chronological events of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and today. Mass incarceration in America functions as a racial caste system, evidently like how the Jim Crow once operated. Once incarcerated citizens leave prison, they are prohibited to basic human rights, because of the systematic discrimination with public benefits like access to education, employment, and housing. The author applied above sufficient research; The New Jim Crow has a lengthy bibliography which supports the author's claims. Also, Michelle Alexander comes from a truly educated background. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt and Stanford. With a professional background in numerous highly prolific places; such as, the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU and a law clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court. Her professional career has been devoted to the seeking of civil rights which The New Jim Crows centers on. The author possibly

In the book The New Jim Crow: “Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” is written by Michelle Alexander talks about issues the racial caste and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander argues that even Jim crow is over, but there’s still injustices in people of color communities. In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes many social problems make African American people controlled by institutions. The author compares Jim Crow with mass incarceration is a form of controlling black Americans as Jim Crow law. Through Michelle Alexander's book, we can understand her argument that mass incarceration is a new form of legal discrimination just like Jim Crow law. The criminal justice system is biased toward the powers of privileges. Mass incarceration in America is “the new Jim Crow”, a new form of social control because the racial caste system segregates people away from mainstream society.

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012), Michelle Alexander empathizes on the issues of the complex of criminal justice systems which has a significant impact on people of color as The New Jim Crow. She also attaches significant to the racial dimensions of the “War on Drugs” because the convictions for drug offenses are only the most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. This argues that federal drug policy inequity targets groups of color, keeping millions of young, black men in a vicious cycle behind the bars.

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.

Though most citizens in the United States would agree that the prison system in the U.S. needs to be amended, do they see the prison system as a way to enforce the racial caste system? At first Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, did not see the prison systems as racially motivated until doing further research. After researching the issue, Alexander found the prison system was a way to oppress African Americans and wrote the novel The New Jim Crow. The New Jim Crow follows the history of the racial caste system and in the novel Alexander comes to the conclusion that the mass incarceration of African American is the New Jim Crow, or in other words a new system of black oppression. Though some might try to refute the idea of mass incarceration of African Americans, Alexander offers a well thought out argument with substantial evidence and data to compellingly link Jim Crow and mass incarceration and proves that it is an issue that should be on the radar of all U.S. citizens.

A young black kid arrested a couple of times for possession of marijuana is no more a criminal or repeat offender, than a young frat kid that smokes pot in his dorm room that has never been arrested. Drug activity requires a more proactive approach by law enforcement than street crimes require. It is impossible for law enforcement to identify and arrest every drug criminal. Choices were made about who to target and what tactics to use. The choice was not hard. Black crack users and dealers became the central target aided by media campaigns. Drug use was then reframed from a private matter to a grave threat to the national order through political rhetoric and media imagery. Cocaine use went from being associated with a problem with recreational use by whites that needed the attention of rehab and treatment, to the attitude of a problem needed address by law and order, as it was used by the poor and nonwhite. An attitude of “us” against “them” developed. There are certain code words that allow you never to have to say ‘race,’ but everybody knows that’s what you mean and ‘crime’ is one of those. Some when it is talked about locking up more people, it means locking up more

In today’s modern world, many people would be surprised to find out that there is still a racial caste system in America. After witnessing the election of a black president, people have started believing that America has entered a post-racial society. This is both a patently false and dangerous mindset. The segregation and stigma of race is still very much alive in our society. Instead of a formalized institution such as slavery or Jim Crow, America has found a new way to continue the marginalization of blacks by using the criminal justice system. In Michelle Alexander’s book “ The New Jim Crow”, she shows how America’s “ War on Drugs “ has become a tool of racial segregation and how the discretionary enforcement of drug laws has