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Analysis Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

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The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is an eye opening book, drawing parallels between modern day America and some of the darkest times in American history. There are underlying themes that highlight and give evidence towards issues, throughout this entire book, that many Americans are unaware of are Institutionalized Racism, War on Drugs, and the Mass Incarceration of American minorities. Certain sections of this book really stood out to me and fascinated me. How could this be happening under so many people’s noses without being brought up? Towards the end of legal segregation focus started to shift to reasoning for poverty and crime. This shift was both in the public discussion as well as rhetoric among lawmakers. Focus to crime was coined …show more content…

The conservatives believed that certain communities contained detrimental cultures, specifically aimed at black culture, and the racist idea that blacks had a certain pathology that led them to poverty. They highlighted it as even more of a race issue by running with the idea of poverty-stricken whites being the result of racial equalities. Conservatives argued poverty and crime was an issue bleeding over from the poverty-stricken black communities to the nearby poverty-stricken white communities because their schools were more likely to be integrated and they had a much higher job competition. The liberals on the other hand argued that poverty and the crime that seemingly accompanied it was a result of societal problems, an issue that could be resolved through social reform and programs. The conservative argument helped pit the lower class whites against both the blacks as well as the liberal party. This was a political move not far off from political moves during the shift from indentured servitude to African slaves as well as the end of legally named …show more content…

On the state level the statistic isn’t nearly as high but still shocking to read as drug crimes alone are the cause for half of the rise in the states jail systems. There has been a 1,100 percent increase in the population of inmates at either a state or federal level serving time for drug charges. Alexander points out that 31 million people have been arrested for drug crimes since the beginning of the War on Drugs. I do wonder if this number is individual people as opposed to repeat offenders but either way, this large of a number clearly signifies another issue in the United States besides the massively disproportional population arrest rates, a drug problem that clearly has not been fixed. Instead of helping people in communities through community service or keeping tabs on them with probation we have been locking them into prisons at four times the rate we used

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Chapter 1 of “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, that is also a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, wrote this chapter to inform us the history of racism in America, and if African Americans really treated equally. When the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, many whites were scared that the slaves are now free because they might want revenge, so the whites made a stereo type that all black men are criminals. When the Reconstruction ended, the south had a redemption. The convicts had no legal rights, so they became the “slaves” to help rebuild after the civil war. Then the prison population of blacks rose so the whites can use them as free labor.

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The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is known as one of the most important books of out time. This is a book that makes the reader appreciate the magnitude of the crisis faced by communities of color as a result of mass incarceration. As noted, this book is not for everyone. It’s for people who are interested in seeing the injustice that many people of color have to face in the United States. In this book, we will see many similarities about our criminal justice system and something that looks and feels like the era of Jim Crow, an era we supposedly left behind.

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Civil rights lawyer, advocate, and associate professor of law at Ohio State University, Michelle Alexander, introduce us the term "The New Jim Crow" and the impact it has on the black community. Taking into consideration the arguments in the lecture, we will be discussing themes such as gun violence, the war on drugs and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander describes the social and economic factors that affect gun violence in the United States as a debate that pays little attention to the reasons why some communities are more susceptible to be what she calls "war zones". She argues that it is not the numbers of guns that deliberate the degree of safety of the neighborhood, but the number of good schools, jobs, and opportunities

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Recently, I read an article that discussed a New Jim Crow that has already begun to develop. After reading the article, I noticed that there were theories and concepts that could be drawn out from the reading. Using the system theory, it helps to describe how organisms exist in a particular order in the world. How the theory function is through systems and how the structure of these systems relies on the relationship between the parts. When it comes to the injustices towards African Americans, every system of control has been a cyclical process where those who reside on the top of the racial hierarchy, find new ways to maintain their status when a new form of racial control begins.

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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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For this semester, we read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. The book talks about how minorities face, especially black men, being treated like second-class citizens by the criminal justice system and this leading to our modern mass incarceration problem. Alexander goes as far as to say “We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” (2). This is shown by the War on Drugs.

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Her central thesis is that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow,” or the new system of control used by the government to uphold racial class in the U.S. This book will be helpful to my research because it directly discusses the topic of race and the criminal justice system. Amnesty International. (2003). United States of America: Death by discrimination

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The politics of responsibility hold each person responsible for his or her actions and choices; and therefore they have to accept the results of their actions. It means that people have duties and responsibilities towards themselves and others, and that they have to make the right choices and do the right actions in order to have a better life. However, Michelle Alexander disagrees with this strategy in her critique “The New Jim Crow,” arguing that the strategy of responsibility would fail to address the issue of mass incarceration. She argues that the politics of responsibility is insufficient because it cannot just blame people on their own actions and choices without considering their circumstances and the society they are living in, which could sometimes force them to behave in a certain way. She insists that

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AP ENGLISH Per-7 Rajdeep SIngh The New Jim Crow By, Michelle Alexander Publisher-The New Press The book I have chosen is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. This novel is basically telling us (the readers) that racism back then and the racism now has not changed much but it is improving.

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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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The New Jim Crow give me a new perspective to look at the racism in the United States. Before reading it, I knew that black people are being mistreated in the United States, but I don’t know that government uses its power to control that black people’s life. I thought the election of President Obama means the end of racism in the United States, and apparently I am wrong. By reading this book, I realized the segregation changed its form to appear in today’s society and this new form of segregation turn most people into colorblindness. We don’t see the segregation is happened in United States because we don’t experience what black people have experienced.

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During the time when racism was an ongoing crisis, African Americans had no choice to put their pride aside, ignore their differences and show fear in order to survive. Surviving in those times consisted of being treated like nothing, crucial things being done to you or a member of your family while your instinct tells you to fight back to stand up for yourself but your pride and the thought of living kicks in, bringing you back to reality. In Nurturing Anger by Jacqueline Ellis, she examines anger and considers its complications for black young girls who were adopted by white women. In this passage she states “Repressing anger is a means of survival”.

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Slavery is over therefore how can racism still exist? This has been a question posed countlessly in discussions about race. What has proven most difficult is adequately demonstrating how racism continues to thrive and how forms of oppression have manifested. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, argues that slavery has not vanished; it instead has taken new forms that allowed it to flourish in modern society. These forms include mass incarceration and perpetuation of racist policies and societal attitudes that are disguised as color-blindness that ultimately allow the system of oppression to continue.

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Jim Crow form of racism has been replaced with the new racism. The question asked in this chapter is where did the old racism go. The old racism blacks were seen as inferior in every aspects of life. In the new racism inequality is justified by the dominant group which is discussed through the central frame works. Central frame is a set of paths for interpreting information.

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Imagine living in a society where the tone of one’s skin subjected them to unfair treatment and rules. This was the reality to African-Americans in the South from the end of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century. Richard Wright describes the experiences of living with Jim Crow laws in his essay “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” African-Americans were oppressed, especially the women, and forced to follow absurd rules. Many times, the police only encouraged these unlawful rules and targeted Blacks.

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