In chapter 8, “the Jim crow car” written by karen schwabach.myrtle was forced to ride in the jim crow car the jim crow car was ...old and dark myrtle was forced to ride in it cause she was african american. Riding in the jim crow car affected myrtle in many different ways. One way it affected her is by making her feel relieved she was feeling satisfied on pg.92 it stated that “ she was satisfied with her apple.”another way it affected her was that it made her feel annoyed she felt this way when the Conductor said “your in the wrong car and grabbed her by the arm.”most importantly, riding in the jim crow car made her feel Relieved i know she was feeling relieved since on page .92 it said “she was relieved that know one was staring at her.”
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander develops a compelling analogy on how mass incarceration is similar to the Jim Crow era, and is a “race-making institution.” She begins her work with the question, “Where have all the black men gone?” (Alexander, 178) She demonstrates how the media and Obama have failed to give an honest answer to this question, that the large majority of them or in prison. She argues that in order to address this problem, we must be honest about the fact that this is happening, and the discrimination with the African American communities that is putting them there.
If states are the laboratories of democracy, then sports are the arena in which it is tested. This book serves as a review of racial integration and the changing dynamics in sports from 1890 - 1980. Charles Martin aims for the reader to understand why it was common place for white southerners to compete against “non-black” ethnic minorities (E.G. Native Americans, Chinese), but an issue when even a single African American was on an opposing team. Benching Jim Crow explains to the reader that the persistence of segregation lay with overarching cultural mentalities left over from the Civil War, but shifts in position came from external (financial), and internal (students and players). Though offering little insight into the legal and political impacts of Jim Crow itself, Martin paints a detailed, but redundant, narrative of the rise and fall of Jim Crow in athletics.
The book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward is an enormously influential book in history. Woodward was born in 1908 in a small town in Arkansas named Vanndale and he died at the age of 91 in December 1999. The most interesting thing about this book is not just the particular events in history, or the misconceptions and myths that Woodward discusses, but rather how badly the problem of race is in America. Since the United States introduced the slaves into their country there has always been a problems or struggles among whites and blacks trying to figure out how to comprehend each other and themselves, on how to share the same place without conflict. This history is very strange and to be able to have a better understanding of why race is still an issue today, because of this book it helps to know how racism, segregation, and civil rights changed over time.
Prior to the 1950s, very little research had been done on the history and nature of the United States’ policies toward and relationships with African Americans, particularly in the South. To most historians, white domination and unequal treatment of Negroes were assumed to be constants of the political and social landscapes since the nation’s conception. Prominent Southern historian C. Vann Woodward, however, permanently changed history’s naïve understanding of race in America through his book entitled The Strange Career of Jim Crow. His provocative thesis explored evidence that had previously been overlooked by historians and gave a fresh foundation for more research on the topic of
Baldus study was based on more than two thousand murder cases in Georgia, and “the study found that defendants charged with killing white victims received the death penalty eleven times more often than defendants charged with killing black victims.” (Alexander p.110) Baldus Study was significant to this chapter because it shows patterns of discrimination and how the government and police enforcement use race to harass African Americans.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward explains the development of Jim Crow Laws starting in the period of Reconstruction until its legal demise in 1965. The book puts an argument against the question whether or not segregation had been around before the civil war, and argues that segregation had not always been that way. Before the Civil War, a close proximity was crucial between the societies in the South to maintain white supremacy above blacks. After the Civil War, a period known as Reconstruction began the physical separation of the blacks and whites to maintain white supremacy by keeping blacks and whites separated in physical facilities like schools, bathrooms, and all types of transportation. Although there was a physical separation between blacks and whites, there was not any kind of social strife between the races until the Compromise of 1877 and the forcible integration of the races. The period after Reconstruction began the push to set in laws known as Jim Crow Laws to legally separate the races, but because of the certain laws poor whites were also affected by things like literacy tests and poll taxes. The total effect of the Jim Crow Laws only benefited white elites like before the Civil War. Woodward breaks up his book between the different phases Jim Crow went through and explains the different reactions people took towards the growing segregation.
C. Vann Woodward’s book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, has been hailed as a book which shaped our views of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and of the American South. Martin Luther King, Jr. described the book as “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The argument presented in The Strange Career of Jim Crow is that the Jim Crow laws were relatively new introductions to the South that occurred towards the turn of the century rather than immediately after the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Woodward examines personal accounts, opinions, and editorials from the eras as well as the laws in place at the times. He examines the political history behind the emergence of
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2010.
Michelle Alexander begins her story of “The New Jim Crow”, as she provides her thoughts and arguments on Chapter one of “the rebirth of caste”. The Chapter explains the myths provided towards slavery after the civil war, as black people weren’t exactly free. Whites were furious and felt the issue of the law was unnecessary, which led to a continuous fight to revert the law to their only source of income. African Americans were finally given a break; however the actions of white southern began to cause further issues towards the development in the United States. Chapter two “The Lockdown” than proceeded as racism began to grow towards the law enforcement, and the development of Southern whites creating the Ku Klux Klan. Alexander argues about the crackdown of unreasonable searches occurred under law enforcement, and how African Americans are targeted.
This “war on drugs,” which all subsequent presidents have embraced, has created a behemoth of courts, jails, and prisons that have done little to decrease the use of drugs while doing much to create confusion and hardship in families of color and urban communities.1,2Since 1972, the number of people incarcerated has increased 5-fold without a comparable decrease in crime or drug use.1,3 In fact, the decreased costs of opiates and stimulants and the increased potency of cannabis might lead one to an opposing conclusion.4 Given the politics of the war on drugs, skyrocketing incarceration rates are deemed a sign of success, not failure. I don’t totally agree with the book (I think linking crime and black struggle is even older than she does, for instance) but I think The New Jim Crow pursues the right line of questioning. “The prison boom is not the main cause of inequality between blacks and whites in America, but it did foreclose upward mobility
Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness goes into great detail on race related issues that were specific to black males, the mass incarceration, and how that lead to the development of institutionalized racism in the United States. She compares the Jim Crow with recent phenomenon of mass incarceration and points out that the mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that have been working together to warrant the subordinating status of black males. In this paper I will go into a brief examination of the range of issues that she mentions in her book that are surrounding the mass incarceration of black male populations.
A central theme in the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010) is The War
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.
I agree with Michelle Alexander on her view of mass incarceration, as well as the new racial caste system that has evolved in the United States. She states that, “we have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it”. After reading her book The New Jim Crow, her point of view on the age of colorblindness is extremely bold. Over time, it has developed into many forms. The racial systems have evolved from exploitation, to subordination, to marginalization. As a nation, we have remained in deep denial about the racial systems. Even though it may look like America is an egalitarian society, there is too much occurring “behind closed doors”, that is often overlooked.
Even though her mother was a light skin black woman, she did not want to live her life as a lie, by living as a white woman. Her mother embraced her blackness, which forced her to find work as a maid; her employers did not treat her with the same dignity as a white woman would receive. After seeing what her mother went through for accepting her blackness and living her life as a black woman, she knew that was not the life she wanted to live.