Six Steps Of Nonviolent Social Change Summary

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander published in 2012, is a 261 page book detailing how mass incarceration has become the new form of legalized discrimination.

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.

The history of Jim Crow is a story of white power, but it is also a story of black survival and resilience. The Jim Crow era lasted nearly a century because of the federal government and there is still work to be done today. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander, is a book about the discrimination of African Americans in today 's society. One of Alexander 's main points is the War on Drugs and how young African American males are targeted and arrested due to racial profiling. Racial profiling, discrimination, and segregation is not as popular as it used to be during the Civil War, however, Michelle Alexander digs deeper, revealing the truth about our government and the racial scandal in the prison systems. The term mass incarceration refers to not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control the labeled criminals both in and out of prison today. The future of the black community itself may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.

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

Jim Crow laws are regarded as part of the racial caste system that operated in the Southern and Border States in the years between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Under the series of the anti-black laws, African Americans were treated as inferior and second class citizens. The laws have been argued to have represented the legitimization of the anti-black racism in the US. The book The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is written by Michelle Alexander and originally published by The New Press in 2010. The present paper reviews the above book with the intention of identifying the author’s main argument and the essence of the writer’s message to the readers.

Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, examines mass incarceration in the United States, why the criminal justice system works the way it does towards minorities, the detriments associated with mass incarceration as it relates to offenders, and much more. In the introduction of her book, Alexander immediately paints the harsh reality of mass incarceration with the story of Jarvious Cotton who is denied the right to vote among other rights because he, “has been labeled as a felon and is currently on parole” (1). Other information Alexander presents in her introduction are her qualifications as an author of the book, and gives a brief summary of each chapter and how each one is laid out. Her qualifications are she is African-American civil rights attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and is also an Associate Professor at the University of Stanford Law School. From a critical standpoint, Alexander seems very qualified to write on the topic, being part of the marginalized group and also being an expert in the legal field of which the topic covers, enhances her ethos to where one could consider her an expert in mass incarceration topics, as they relate to African-Americans. Overall, the introduction of her book does a great job starting out giving a stark reality of topic at hand, giving brief statistical references about mass incarceration in the United States, and giving an outline for her book.

In the new proactive book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander dives into the not so complicated racial issues that plague this country that we tend to ignore. In all of history, African Americans have had to constantly fight for their freedoms and the right to be considered a human being in this society. It’s very troubling looking back and seeing where we have failed people in this country. At the turn of the century, when people began to think that we had left our old ways behind, this book reminds us that we are wrong. Racism is still alive today in every way, just in different forms.

There are large racial disparities in incarceration and related detainments for African Americans. They are more likely to be under the supervision of the Department of Corrections than any other racial or ethnic group (H.West, Sabol, & Greenman, 2010). Institutional racism is believed to be the reason why African Americans, especially males, are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. On balance, the public believes that discrimination against black people is based on the prejudice of the individual person, correlates to the discrimination built into the nation’s laws and institutions (Pew’s Research Center, 2017). This belief is actually supported through several experimental studies that provide evidence that African Americans are to be seen as more criminal and threatening than others thus more likely to be arrested or even shot (Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003). Racism within the criminal justice system very much exists and is still relevant.

To offer evidence to the reader of the racial motivations behind mass incarceration, Alexander follows the history of the racial caste system. The history begins with slavery, which was the original form of African American oppression. With slavery, according to Alexander, barriers were created between lower class whites and blacks, which led to decades of racism later (Alexander, 2010). After the death of slavery, the racism lived on and Jim Crow laws were created after Reconstruction to

Martin Luther King Jr. discusses the advantages and purposes for his theory of nonviolent direct action in his Letter From Birmingham City Jail. He shows four basic steps that must be taken to achieve nonviolent action. They include 1) collection of facts to determine whether injustices are alive; 2) negotiation; 3) self-purification; and 4) direct action. Each of these steps will be explained as part of King's argument later in this essay. The main purpose of a nonviolent campaign is to force any community to confront a problem rather than refuse to negotiate or face a specific issue. In the letter, King discusses his group's reasons for coming to Birmingham.

Many African-American are caught in a cycle unable to achieve the amenities of first-class citizenship, which is the exact same amenities that African-Americans have fought to achieve post slavery. Alexander proclaimed that the colorblindness to the mass incarceration of African-American are overshadow with the labeling of being a felon. And it’s because of the labeling of that society look at felon as if they were less than human the same way African-Americans was looked at during slavery. Alexander Asserts that mass incarceration is allowed to go on because of the eerie silence of the African-American community. According

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.

Policing and punishment in America is hardly colorblind. It is not a coincidence that minorities serve longer sentences, have higher arrest and conviction rates, face higher bail amounts, and are more often the victims of police use of deadly force than white citizens. When it comes to criminals, many people have a preconception of what a criminal is. Usually when people think of a criminal they picture a Black or Latino face. The thought of an Asian criminal is often related to Asian gangs. Interestingly enough, White people as a group are rarely associated with the thought of crime, even though they account for 70% of arrests and 40% of the prison population each year (Russel xiv). This seems to be

Racism has a huge impact on society to this day. The greatest wrong doing in the U.S criminal justice system is that it is a race based organization where African Americans are specifically focused on and rebuffed in a considerably more forceful route than white individuals. Saying the Us criminal justice system is racist might be politically disputable in different ways. In any case, the actualities are debatable. Underneath I explain many cases of these issues. Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system – from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting off on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole, and freedom.

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Modern Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, the author argues the legal system doing its job “perfectly” well—the United States has simply replaced one caste system, the Jim Crow laws instituted in the 1880s and designed to oppress recently freed black slaves, for another—a system which uses the War on Drugs, which was instituted in the 1970s, to imprison, parole, and detain people of color, keeping the majority of minorities in the United States in a permanent state of incarceration. This an important issue because it affects the everyday lives of people around the nation. Alexander looks in detail at what economists normally miss—the entire legal structure of the courts, parole, probation and laws that effectively turn a person who may have done the crime into a person who is unworthy or “incapable” of rehabilitation. Alexander does a wonderful job of telling the truth, and blaming the right people, who can be liberal or conservative, white or black, who inflict this injustice on others. Alexander’s writing, however, does lack a structure that the reader can follow, which ultimately weakens her overall case.