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Analysis Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

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Analysis: Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" aims to bring attention to the racial caste system that exists within the American justice system, particularly in the context of mass incarceration of African Americans. Alexander argues that although America has moved past Jim Crow segregation laws, it has not moved past the racist system of oppression that existed during that era. Instead, a new caste system has emerged, with the American justice system serving as its primary mechanism for the maintenance of racial hierarchy. To support this thesis, Alexander details how the War on Drugs, initiated during the Reagan era, has resulted in an explosion of the prison population in America, particularly among people of color. She argues that the …show more content…

For instance, the criminal justice system, with its focus on punishment and exclusion rather than rehabilitation, hinders the ability of those affected to participate fully in the economic and political life of the country. This, in turn, has significant implications for other social institutions, such as families, schools, and communities. Alexander argues that the new caste system operates by taking advantage of the public's fear of crime and the media's portrayal of people of color as inherently criminal. By perpetuating this false narrative, the criminal justice system is able to maintain its status quo, with people of color as the primary victims. In examining the book's theses, it is important to consider the historical context in which the criminal justice system has been shaped. For example, the War on Drugs was initiated at a time when the country was struggling with issues related to urbanization, job loss, and increased poverty. This provided an opportunity for politicians to create a scapegoat out of people of color, who were disproportionately affected by these

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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a non fiction book written by Michelle Alexander, a well known civil rights lawyer, is a book that every American citizen should read. Alexander’s book cover is of three metal bars and two strong black hands holding them tightly. The book spent multiple weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list and has a foreword written by Cornel West, he is a well known and respected social activist. The book discuss how the new system of oppression for people of color in the United States is mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws were a systematic way to segregate and discriminate against black people.

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In the book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, readers are given a look at the long and extensive history of racism towards African-Americans. From there, the reader is shown how racism towards African-Americans has not gone away and is still very much common in modern society. Throughout the novel, Alexander argues and discusses how African-Americans are being discriminated against in the form of mass incarceration. “Mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison” (Alexander 14). The War On Drugs can largely be put to blame for the increase in incarcerations.

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It has been over a decade since Michelle Alexander published “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Her book delves into the complex nuances of mass incarceration in the United States, more specifically pertaining to the criminal justice system’s deeply-ingrained racial biases. She argues, as in reference to the title of her work, that mass incarceration effectively serves as a new form of Jim Crow discrimination and calls for large-scale reform. But in the time since the book’s original release, there have been many significant developments in terms of policy, public opinion, and social movements which warrant elaboration on the themes originally discussed by Alexander. In chapter 3 of “The New Jim Crow,” the

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In chapter three, Alexander argues that the structure of the drug war is designed in such a way, that it guarantees that its victims will consist of people from the society's undercaste. To begin with, Alexander states that there are two primary ways, in which an essentially “colorblind”criminal justice system can operate in such a discriminatory manner. The first way is by giving the police immense amounts of discretion to which they can choose whom to stop, question, frisk, search, and arrest. According to Alexander, African Americans, who became the victim of the media’s “criminalblackman” portrayal were once again victimized by law enforcement personnel that targeted them on due to their bias’ in believing that all African Americans were

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The first chapter looks at how the racial caste system came to be in the United States as a way of controlling labor. The second chapter looks at how the system has slowly evolved throughout history and the impact that the civil rights movement has had in affecting that evolution. It also looks at how supreme court decisions in the past hundred years have changed the way officers have been allowed to act. The third chapter looks at the idea that the justice system has become a means for class control. In particularly in the form of the “War on Drugs” creating a disproportionate amount of people of color incarcerated for nonviolent offenses and how police departments are financially incentivized to prioritize their efforts towards drug offenses.

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If, as Alexander suggests, the prison system will always be racist and designed to harm people of color, the end goal for repairing these injustices must be the abolition of prison — even a reformed version of prison would have the same racism at its core. Alexander’s account of the Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs serves as chilling evidence to support the claim that the carceral system is inherently racist. Incontrovertibly, White resentment toward Black Americans did not dissipate after Jim Crow. Identifying the (obvious) vitriol that remained among White as an effective way to motivate a voting Bloc, Presidential candidates such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan began campaigning for a so-called War on Drugs. Outwardly, this surge in rhetoric about drug crime was a call to protect people in cities from the dangers of drugs.

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She first supports her claim by chronicling America 's history of institutionalized racism and systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans. Then, she discusses America 's War on Drugs that disproportionately targets minorities and finally as she examines the hardship faced by felons she compares and contrasts Jim Crow Laws to mass incarceration. Alexander surmises that mass incarceration is designed to maintain white supremacy and sustain a racial classification system. Alexander 's book is relevant to my research paper because she provides evidence that the criminal justice system is rooted in racism and directly linked to the racist agenda of the white supremacist. Broussard, B. (2015).

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Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.

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Although race is a social construct that categorizes people based on physical traits, sociologists argue that it is a social idea rather than a biological one. Social construction of race refers to the process through which society creates and maintains racial categories, meanings, and hierarchies. Sociologists investigate how race influences people's experiences, opportunities, and life chances, and they fight to end racial injustice and promote social justice. Understanding race is important in the criminal justice system because it exposes structural imbalances and injustices that disproportionately affect marginalized populations. "The criminal justice system, in targeting black men through the war on drugs and other policies, has created

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Alexander then argues that mass incarceration is the new norm precisely resembles the racist system: Jim Crow because black males in the current society are equally as trapped as black individuals during the Jim Crow era. Black males are therefore trapped in the mass incarceration system, “competing on an unequal level towards success,” in order to keep white males on the top of our society. Alexander creates connections between the two caste systems and describing it as a “symbolic production of race,” the most important parallel. She argues that the production of race was created to stereotype black men as criminals and makes society believe so by generating propaganda, giving the government an excuse to criminalize black men more than white men, although they’re more likely to professionally sell drugs and not get criminalized for it, and making society support mass incarceration (p.

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Introduction: The criminal justice system's belief in fairness is called into question when critical criminological viewpoints are applied to different components. Rather than maintaining objectivity, these viewpoints suggest that institutional processes actually serve to reinforce social inequality. We may gain a better understanding of how systemic biases appear and contribute to injustices within these institutions by critically analyzing important components like public policy, policing, courts, and corrections through lenses like Critical Race Theory, Social Conflict Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Feminist Theory, and Queer Theory. Institutions in the criminal justice system are frequently viewed in today's society as impartial arbiters of law and order. Critical criminological viewpoints, however, highlight the fundamental prejudices and disparities built in these structures.

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Michelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.

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1075 Words | 5 Pages

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Era of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, she begins by points out the underlying problem in our Criminal Justice system. The problem being prioritizing the control of those in this racial caste rather than focusing on reasonable punishment and efforts to deter crime. Alexander begins by speaking of her experience as a civil rights lawyer and what soon became her priority after seeing a poster that mentioned how the war on drugs is the new jim crow when it comes to the application and outcome of it. As Alexander points out the correlation between the war on drugs and it being the new jim crow, she discusses the mass incarceration that is prevalent in our society and the number of African American

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Racial inequality in the criminal justice system can be found on many different levels, from policies, to policing, down to the study of crime itself. This can be seen with the policies that are passes into law especially in regards to punitive measures. Non-Hispanic Whites are more likely to be in favor of punitive measures which will affect the overwhelmingly black prison population (Drakulich). The inequality within the polices becomes greater when one looks at the civil restrictions placed on ex-convicts, without the ability to vote on said polices the whites have a greater say in what will happen to the blacks that are imprisoned, exacerbating the racial inequality (Wheelock).

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Much of the twentieth century, crime and punishment has provided some of the most powerful signs of the racial split in America (Rosich,2007). For example, African Americans accounted for 89 percent of the prison population executed for rape between the years of 1930 and 1972 (U.S. Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000). The question that has been raised is not who, what, when but is why? Could the answer possibly be that, though criminal activity has no face, no gender, race, or ethnic background that people are always looking for a scapegoat of some sort to make sure someone pays the dues of the crime that has been committed?

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