The House I Live By Eugene Jarecki 's The New Jim Crow

This targeting led to the incarceration, imprisonment, chain gangs, prison farms and other correctional facilities for tens of thousands of African American men, women, and children.” The idea of mass incarceration being used to systematically oppress black people has traveled to the surface with Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, and Taylor talks about the effect of mass incarceration. In the book, Alexander highlights that the majority of the African American men are either in prison or have some type of criminal record making it unable for them to vote and get jobs. Alexander describes the criminal justice systems as the “New Jim Crow,” a modern type of oppression for African Americans. Mass incarceration rate skyrocketed during the Drug War and many African American were jailed for several years for petty crimes, shown in the documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay. Alexander book shows the oppression of African American and is a statement to change our criminal justice system that is targeted to victimize African Americans. Ultimately, Taylor points out that not only do the police have the power to destroy your body, but by using their power to charge African American men for petty crimes they able to effectively keep African Americans in a lower-class status, supporting the white suprematist view manifested in our police force.

The House That Scratches the Surface With only five percent of the world population, the United States manages to hold twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners, with a majority being incarcerated for drug crimes, with a disproportionate majority of those individuals being African-American. Eugene Jarecki’s 2012 documentary, The House I Live In, attempts to analyze and explain the far reaching causes and consequences of American drug policy on communities, individuals, and the country. This is done through multiple personal stories and the intertwining history and policy that have shaped their lives. The House I Live In is squarely directed at those who are in acceptance of the status quo regarding drug laws and offenders in this country.

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

The third critical book review for this class takes a look at “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander published in 2012 by the New York Press. This book analyzes the problem with the incarceration system in the United States today that unfairly affects the African American community. This incarceration system is continuing to separate families, strip men of their freedom, and effectually make them into second class citizens upon release from prison as “free” men. She even describes that those who are convicted of these crimes are “relegated to a racially segregated and subordinated existence” (Pg. 4). Michelle Alexander is not only a published author but is also an active Civil Rights activist all while currently employed as an associate professor of law at Ohio State University. It is a very interesting read that coincides with where our class discussions have recently been. It argues that we as a country have not ended racial discrimination but just transformed it into a new type of caste system. It is an eye opening book that created an uncomfortable feeling while reading due to my level of ignorance on this topic prior to taking this class. I believe that this book will serve as an important narrative into fixing the race problems in this country because it brings to light what needs to be fixed. If any progress is made it will be because of books like this that expose the problems but starting to fix them will be the next step.

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.

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.

In Ira Katznelson’s book, When Affirmative Action Was White , Katznelson argues for the implementation of affirmative action to decrease the marginalization of African Americans. Although he supports its execution, he’s also the first to address the faults within the system, that are in need of correction in order to see greater results of decreased racism. Katznelson starts off reviewing parts of America’s history, more specifically, times when government programs were instilled to better the lives of supposedly all Americans. These programs such as, the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society, social security, and many others were thought to be aimed at helping all, when in actuality, they were only there to serve white Americans.

The New Beginning was not only a conservative approach to the financial system but it was a tool of destruction of many families. It caused African Americans to lose positions in school, the workplace, and social relations (Franklin 26). Officials and political figure used the catchphrase “color blind society” to influence and promote racial injustice. President Reagan, his Attorney General, and the Assistant Attorney General took advantage of the catchphrase by indicating to the courts that since we are a color blind society, there is no need to create civil right laws or executive orders for racial equality (Franklin 43). Attaining a color blind society during that era of mid to late 1900s would be difficult because students were encourage to intimidate, terrorize and make life uncomfortable to African American students ( Franklin 49). The task of transforming into the color blind society may not ever be attained. Franklin states that we as a society appreciates what constitutes a color blind society; to some it means the camouflage our individual cultures to the point that they are no longer recognizable or identifiable. He also points out that a true color blind society is not profitable, because many politicians benefitted from promoting inequality. A

In her chapter “The New Jim Crow”, Michelle Alexander argues that the Drug War explicitly attacked poor blacks living in urban, ghetto neighborhoods. This form of racism can be visualized as iron wires of a bird cage. As Iris Marion Young stated, if there is only “one wire of the cage…it is difficult to understand how and why the bird is trapped” (184). Using the Drug War as an alibi, many have built near-invincible wires around the cage by utilizing legal forms such as laws, acts, and other legislative documents. From police brutality to misconceptions about incarceration, under the disguise of protecting blacks, the true purpose of the bird cage is to prevent the “bird” from ever escaping.

If I were to travel in time to 1950 and share the news that there would be a black president within the next century, chaos would arise. People then did not seem to realize that there is no white and black, no race: only humans. According to an New York Times article, “Poll Finds Most in U.S. Hold Dim View of Race Relations” by Kevin Sack and Megan Thee-Brenan, the election of a black president has bettered the idea of race relation. An increase of people are beginning realize that capability is not directly affected by the color of skin.

The growth of positive development in the fight for full and total equality for all of America’s citizens has come to a grinding halt and stagnated in the contemporary period. From the time of the writing of the report by Patrick Moynihan for the call to action in making amends to the situation unfolding within the African American community, it can be said that the phenomenon described by Moynihan have not been aggressively addressed and thus have not drastically improved. African Americans, to the time of writing this paper, continue to struggle with the evils of inequality in the United States. Being born African American in the United States almost instantaneously stacks the deck against the individual for their future: their education, employment options, likelihood to become incarcerated, social status, and overall well being are statistically unfavorable to white Americans. This increasingly dire situation can be remedied with the hard work and dedication of the American people to the mission of true equality in step with swift, decisive, and impactful policy from the United States Government parallel to the legislature of the 1930’s and 1960’s. Justice for the African American community, nearly four centuries overdue, must promptly be served to correct the endlessly self-reciprocating cycle of poverty that disproportionately impacts said community.

Roland explains that the true American Dream for blacks should be being completely equivalent to whites, and having the same opportunities without having to overcome all of the obstacles put in place because of their race. Roland also puts light on the subject that although blacks have overcome a major political and social boundary with the election of Barack Obama, the first black president of America, blacks have still not achieved that full equality, or prosperity so many strive for. Black unemployment rate has drastically gone up in the past year, leaving the number of blacks jobless the highest number of any other race. A report in race, ethnicity, and law in the United States brings the blame for racial discrimination on politics and economic conditions. “Dramatic shifts over the past decade in social welfare policies and economic conditions have contributed significantly to the increasing difficulty that people of color face in realizing their civil rights. Growing reliance on policies that redistribute power to the states and localities, combined with a decrease in federal enforcement of anti-discrimination law, has amounted to an abdication of the federal role in ensuring equal opportunity”

The context today has points of great discontinuity and of great similarity to that mid-1960s inflection point. From the viewpoint of 1965, the election of Obama as the first African American president of the United States, as well as the expansion and the cultural prominence and success of the black middle class of which Obama is a member, speak to the enormous and enduring success of the civil rights era. Yet also from the standpoint of 1965, the persistence of deep poverty and joblessness for a large fraction of the black population, slowly changing rates of residential segregation by race, continued evidence of anti-black discrimination in many domains of life, and historically high rates of black incarceration signal a journey toward racial

From reading about Roger Chaffe I learned that Roger was given many job opportunities that required him to move homes. I wonder how Roger's family dealt with moving from place to place so often. I would imagine that his family got used to moving after a while. I know that if I had to move homes even once I would feel very lonely when I got to the new place because I wouldn't know anyone and everything would be new but eventually I would make new friends and adapt to the new place. Some experience I have with moving is when I had to change levels in ballet. I was the only one who moved up and was the youngest person in my new class so I felt lonely and out of place. All of the girls in the class were really nice though and now we are all friends.