The New Jim Crow : Summer Assignment

The police have had a major role in how the effects of the drug war have been mostly concentrated in the black community. A major reason for this is because of the very nature of drug law enforcement. Normal crime involves an injured party or witness that reports it and asks for police action. In drug crime, both the buyer and seller have no interest in reporting the criminal activity and it is the responsibility of the police to actively search for violators. This allows police the discretionary power to decide in which communities they will search for drug activity and who they will apprehend. Even though the rates of drug abuse are similar in both the black and white communities, police have targeted black communities almost exclusively in their drug control efforts.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 is a book written by Michelle Alexander that discusses the rebirth of a caste-like system and race-related issues in the United States specific to African-American males and mass incarceration. Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow, is a scholarly article that examines and critiques mass incarceration as well as the analogy of the Criminal Justice system being the “new Jim Crow.”

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander tries to advance intellectual dialogue regarding mass incarceration in the United States. Alexander does this by carrying out a historical analysis of the process in which the correctional system controls African Americans through intentionally selected, and systematically sanctioned legal limits. In fact, the United States incarceration rate is not at peak by coincidence. Moreover, it is not coincidental that Black men and women make up the majority of this number. According to Alexander, this problem is a consequence of the “New Jim Crow” rules, which use racial stratification to eliminate black individuals in the legal sense. Black people and a small number of the Hispanic community face racial stratified laws when they face the justice system. This paper will support the claims that race is a major factor in the incarceration of black men in the United States, which includes the Jim Crow system, the slave system and the drag war. This process will also involve analyzing of some of the arguments presented within the book.

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.

Following through the process of the criminal justice system, after being stopped by police officers, many individuals remain innocent of committing any crime and walk away from the situation without further questions asked. However, at this point, silence is not the answer. Alexander notes regarding the unreasonable searches, “Hardly anyone files a complaint, because the last thing most people want to do after experiencing a frightening and intrusive encounter with the police is show up at the police station where the officer works and attract more attention to themselves” (Alexander 69). Therefore, these countless searches remain unheard of by many because the innocent are too scared to come forward and tell their stories. Perhaps if the silence is broken, word of mouth would prevent others from being unlawfully searched and arrested based on no suspicion. This is not the case though; nevertheless, it is known that “the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) trains police to conduct utterly unreasonable and discriminatory stops and searches” (Alexander 70). The use of such searches and methods to determine whom

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.

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.

The criminal justice system and the prison system serves as a control. Policies, laws and legislature is put in place to work against African Americans. It works as a guarantee that they will be admitted into the criminal system which will castigate them and hold them captive for the rest of their lives, preventing them from becoming upwardly mobile. It is hard to believe that “about 90 percent of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense in Illinois are African American. (Alexander, 2010). Yet the crime rate in Chicago cannot be contained. Many are still dying by guns which has become an epidemic, a public health issue, and ma and many remain as they were then abusing drugs or involved in the trafficking of. Money that should be spent on treating addiction and counselling is directed towards the war.