The New Jim Crow Summary

Michelle Alexander begins chapter one with what amounts to a critical race summary of how African American were put into slavery by the political elites that made a separation of black and lower class whites after the Bacon Rebellion. After the Bacon rebellion plantation owners decided to ship in slaves from Africa instead of slaves or indentured servants from Europe because they thought that the African slaves would be less likely to form an alliance with the poor whites and the white indentured servants. She

The word “disgraced” (Alexander 15) emphasizes the discrimination and struggle that African Americans experience. Through her brief description of the current justice system, Michelle Alexander believed that the Jim Crow and slavery were both caste systems and relates it back to the American system of mass incarceration. This claim is very surprising considering the fact that the United States of America is considered by many to be the land of the “free” and equal rights. She also believed that the system of mass incarceration and

C. Vann Woodward illuminates one of the “ugliest” aspects of American societal history in his book The Strange Career of Jim Crow. His book is an overview of the development of the Jim Crow system, a set of racist laws put in place around the turn of the nineteenth century. Interestingly his book tracks the evolution of racism throughout American history. He not only shows where and when racism is developing but the different ways that the racism manifested itself in the North and South.

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.

In making the case that mass incarceration is the new version of Jim Crow, Alexander moves through a history of racial caste systems from slavery to Jim Crow. Alexander demonstrates this history by explaining that it was during these racially periods of American history that the platform was set for maintaining a black underclass through the use of race-neutral language. Slavery was an obvious racial caste system in which the laws, including the U.S. Constitution, were used to ensure that blacks would live and be treated as a distinct group. When

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.

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

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

As Elie Wiesel once stated, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (“Elie Wiesel Quote”). Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which discusses criminal justice and its role in mass incarceration, promotes a similar idea regarding silence when America’s racial caste system needs to be ended; however, Alexander promotes times when silence would actually be better for “the tormented.” The role of silence and lack of silence in the criminal justice system both contribute to wrongly accused individuals and growing populations behind bars.

Moreover, the facts that Alexander present in The New Jim Crow clashed with my view of the world in that although I appreciated the facts presented as the reality of what goes on in the world, it showed me that the through the laws enacted and through institutions, the society plays a role in creating and perpetuating the new caste system. This is evident when Alexander (2012) explains that the social racial control not only manifests itself through the justice system but also in the structure of the society, which is seen when those incarcerated have served their time and have been released from prison. She refers to Iron Marion’s “birdcage” metaphor to explain the lives of returning citizens and those on parole. The “birdcage metaphor

The rise of Jim Crow, a system of sustainable racial inequality, had a significant scope on racial relations for subsequent years to come. Jim Crow laws and its prescribed etiquette operated and represented the legitimization of anti blackness primarily but not exclusively in southern states of the United States. Scholarship has justifiably surveyed these codes of conduct with stressing African American disenfranchisement. However, violence has been presumed as a byproduct of the Jim Crow system, rather than a mechanism that was used to undergird Jim Crow’s place in America’s society.

In the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, gives the reader a look at the history of racism. She begins her work by talking about her working experience at ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union) in northern California. Once she started working there, she realized how the criminal justice systems had problems of racial bias. As a lawyer who disputed numerous cases on discrimination, she understood that there are many ways in which racial stereotyping can change the subject decision making process at any level of organization. Moreover she decided to shift her focus from employment discrimination to working with others and finding out how to eliminate racial bias.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander examines different experiences she had while working for the American Civil Liberties Union in Oakland, California. While working at the ACLU, she saw numerous accounts of racial discrimination throughout the criminal justice system. Race and the criminal justice system play a big part in the ideology of the racial caste system, as well as gender and class.

The book displays the struggle within the circus and the “Jim Crow South”, the switching back and forth between the two locations allow the reader to determine which location were George and Willie Muse, better off in, which is the argument and purpose of the book. The circus, people were paid highly, with the cost of being exploited for your abnormalities and being on the road constantly, sometimes, without a choice to leave because you could have been kidnapped into the circus, but everyone in the circus (except the staff/customers) was equal. In the Jim Crow south, if you were black, you were likely to be a slave, lynched, killed/insulted/discriminated against severely, or a sharecropper. The book’s meaning shows that no matter where you could be, who you are, or what your circumstances are, you can rise to the top.

In Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, she covers many issues with the U.S criminal justice system. The criminal justice system purposely targets people of color with the same laws as the Jim Crow. Racial-Profiling for African Americans relates to today legal system on discrimination and exclusion. Mass incarceration is one form of racial discrimination to gain social control. Many African Americans have been kept in prison while taking away their freedom for opportunities. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects personal privacy, and every citizen's right to be free from unreasonable government intrusion into their persons, homes, businesses, and property whether through police stops of citizens on the street, arrests, or searches of homes and businesses. The abuse used by police officers is a serious offense that violates a persons human and civil rights. In the beginning there was slavery, and thereafter came an era of racism which directly impacted millions of minorities lives. This period called Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system up in till mid 1960s. Alexander argues that many black communities have a high rate of people going to prison by a decision made by police officers, these issues should change by having search warrants only by the persons consent, no police brutality, and an end to mass incarceration.