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.
The politicians of America like to hide or mask this new form of racism and control by a way that we
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We approximately have 5 percent of the nation’s population, but we have over ¼ of the world’s prisoners. This number is still increasing at an alarming rate. Since the 1980’s the prison population has increased to 2.2 million men and women. In all of the world, we are the leaders in incarceration. Most of the people being arrested and charged are for drug related offenses. This significant increase in prisoners is due to the War on Drugs started by Ronald Regan. Alexander claims that the sole reason that the war on drugs was started was to maintain the racist nature that faces America. Alexander realizes that even though the Jim Crow Laws were eradicated, we have just reshaped the ways in which we decide to ruin lives. As the old adage says, “The more things change, the more they remain the same”. I think to a certain point Americans need to have reassurance that things really are changing and here’s where Jim Crow ends, but in the background the powerful people in this country had to come up with a new plan to feed their racist nature. One politician after another want to show how tough they can be on drugs. Each wanting to be stronger than the other. They didn’t care who they were hurting on the bottom, as long as they looked extra tough. The main race being incarcerated and targeted is African Americans. For years, poor neighborhoods have been targeted by police, whose main purpose was to find drugs by any means
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.
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.
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
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 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.
Alexander’s main argument in the New Jim Crow is that the War on Drugs is offering whites who are opposed to racial reform an exclusive opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and their progress without being exposed to the charge of racism. She mentions this several times throughout the whole reading. The basis of her argument are these: the questionable purpose of the drug war and the dramatic increase in mass incarceration rate in the United States with racially disproportionate prisoners.
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.
After rejecting conservatives’ idea that criminal behaviors are caused by black culture, Alexander said that poverty and inequality are the “root causes” of crimes. She then includes a quote from Lyndon Johnson, “there is something mighty wrong when a candidate for the highest office bemoans violence in the streets but votes against the war on poverty, votes against the civil rights act and votes against major educational bills that come before him as a legislator” (45). Alexander uses this quote to criticize politicians who purport that they want to reinstall “law and order” but vote against bills that fight the antecedents of crimes. This may spark a series of questions in the reader, such as “if their motive is really to reinstall “law and order,” why aren’t trying to eliminate the origin of crimes? Why are they ignoring them instead? Alexander is insinuating that these politicians want minorities in prison, where they can control them, supporting her argument that the government always tries to control minorities. This also supports her argument that the “war on drug” and “law and order” movements represent the new form control system in the United States.
on Drugs, hidden racism and how it plays out with African Americans. The book details the Struggles of the black population during and after slavery and even before Ronald Reagan wrote into policy “The War on Drugs” which he officially announced October 1982.
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.
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.
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.
Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, explained how our treatment of criminals has created a new racial caste system, and the only way to make change is by massive social change and Civil Rights movement. The criminal laws often focus on psychoactive drugs used by the minority populations. Minorities are disproportionately targeted, arrested, and punished for drug offenses. For instance, Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian were portrayed as violent, traffickers of drugs and a danger to society. Surveillance was focused on communities of color, also immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, and the homeless, who continue to be the main targets of law enforcement efforts to fight the war on drugs. Although African Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses causing critics to call the war on drugs the “New Jim Crow”(drug policy). The drug
The U.S prison population rose by 700% from 1970 to 2005. A rate far outpacing that of general population growth and crime rates.
After getting the public support for his campaign, America saw an unprecedented rise in its incarceration rate, particularly among African Americans. The “ War on Drugs ” has had a disparate impact on the black community even though blacks and whites use drugs at approximately the same levels. This is achieved through a myriad of formal and informal practices. African-Americans are targeted and prosecuted at a much higher rate even though they are not statistically any likelier to abuse or sell drugs than the white population.