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Brief Summary Of Chapter Four By Alexander

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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 …show more content…

According to Alexander, the punishment that a convict suffers within prison is nothing compared to the punishments that await the convict on the outside. The first obstacle that convicts face directly following their release is whether or not they will find a place to sleep. Once labeled a felon, an ex-convict faces various forms of discrimination in housing, employment, and other necessary resources. Under Jim Crow, housing discrimination was legal on the basis of race while under mass incarceration, housing discrimination is legal against labeled felons on the basis of their prior criminal convictions (Alexander, pg 142-145). In his “get tough on crime” policies, President Clinton passed the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, which permitted public housing agencies to evict drug offenders, convicts, as well as deny housing to any person that was believed to be involved with illegal drugs. Additionally, the Housing and Urban Development Department developed the “One Strike and You’re out” policy, which authorized public housing agencies to evict any and all members of households that contained any individual who was associated with any type of criminal activity including drug related offenses. As a result, many ex-convicts were not only denied access to public housing but also denied housing from their family members and relatives, who were unwilling to take the risk of being evicted by housing an ex-convict, and therefore as stated by Alexander many ex-convicts soon became homeless (Alexander, pg

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Author Elizabeth Hinton makes a major point in chapter 4. She makes a point that Nixon and Johnson’s presidency initially began the process of imprisoning people of color. In discussing both Nixon and Johnson’s policies and describing how there programs functioned in efforts to improve the violence that occurred in urban communities, it was emphasized that Black low-income communities became a target. The shift between Nixon and Johnson altered the great society and the new frontier by expanding it. Social programs and reforms that were created, influencing the way policing is structured.

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In the book written by James W. Loewen, Loewen studies the biases of an ordinary history class, beginning each chapter with quotes from various historical figures. Loewen indicates that the root of the problems Loewen discusses comes from the history textbook itself. This being said the textbook gives a dull, culturally biased description of the past, often alienating readers such as Latinos, Native Americans, and African Americans. Throughout Loewen’s chapter four, there are many ways in which Loewen discusses the Native Americans to be talked about more highly than the Natives should be. The Native Americans were talked about in many negative ways, and the Natives are said to have been “lied about” more often than any other portion of the

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First, I want to examine a particularly critical review of Alexander’s text by Joseph D. Osel. According to Joseph D. Osel’s, “while Alexander’s book claims to be concerned with exposing and describing the history and mechanisms of mass incarceration of the American ‘caste system,’ which affect the poor and people of color systematically and disproportionately, her work systematically, strangely, and empathically excludes these voices” (OSEL Whitewash). Osel goes on to contend that Alexander’s work provides the history of criminal justice and imprisonment with a “vast rhetorical and historical facelift where the most relevant and affected voices on the topic at hand are safely expunged from the discussion, from relevance, from history” (OSEL

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Alexander’s morning starts off terribly when he wakes up with gum in his hair. Since waking up, his day only get’s progressively worse. His morning consists of a terrible breakfast and a terrible ride to school. Once he got to school his interactions with his friends and teacher did not go as planned. Unfortunately, his day didn’t get any better when he got picked up from school.

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In Chapter 4, David Thomasa speaks about truth telling and how it becomes an important key factor in a clinical setting. “In each of the three main reasons why the truth must be told, as a right, an utility, and a kindness, lurk values that may from time to time become important than the truth.” (Vaughn 155,2017). By saying telling the truth is a right, he implies that it is a way of showing respect to another person. If the physician and patient experiences reversed roles, I would expect them to want the physician to be honest with them as well.

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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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In the “Cruel Hand,” Alexander addresses the impact of the legal and police system on race. The impacts of these institutions have clear impacts, like incarceration, but the unclear impacts occur after the incarceration ends. A person convicted of a crime “may be ineligible for many federally-funded health and welfare benefits, food stamps, public housing, and federal educational assistance. His driver’s license may be automatically suspended, and he may no longer qualify for certain employment and professional licenses. If he is convicted of another crime he may be subject to imprisonment as a repeat offender.

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We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way

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Race is one the most sensitive and controversial topics of our time. As kids, we were taught that racism has gotten better as times has passed. However, the author, Michelle Alexander, of The New Jim Crow proposes the argument that racism has not gotten better, but the form of racism that we known in textbooks is not the racism we experience today. Michelle Alexander has countless amounts of plausible arguments, but she has failed to be a credible author, since she doesn’t give enough citations or evidence for her argument to convince people who may not have prior agreement with her agreement.. Alexander’s biggest mistake when it came to being a credible author was starting off the book with a countless number of claims without any evidence in her Introduction.

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Andy Miller Professor Farber HIST 129: 18157 November 30th The New Jim Crow Era Following the period of Reconstruction, state and local governments passed laws in the southern United States which enforced racial segregation of Americans. These laws, known as Jim Crow Laws, mandated segregation in all public facilities within the former Confederate States which created a “separate but equal" status for black citizens. The old Jim Crow Laws continued to be enforced until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act outlawed all discrimination based on race. However, Michele Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, argues that through the mass imprisonment of African American in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have created a new era and system

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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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For example, open Black support of harsh punishment and law enforcement may seem hypocritical because in reality these policies and practices contribute to mass incarceration of Blacks. Alexander clarifies that Black support is more complex than it appears and can be attributed to a combination of complicity and wanting better safety for their communities and families (Alexander, 2012, p.210). Alexander also offers a unique perspective throughout the entire book by explaining how the systems of slavery and oppression have affected White individuals and not merely in the form of privilege or the dismissal of White people as simply as racist individuals. I resonated with one particular section discussing the "White victims of racial caste" (Alexander, 2012, p.204); the author 's anecdote of a white woman falling in love with a Black man and due to miscegenation laws could not have children. I could relate to this story on a deeply personal level in that my own parents experienced extreme and countless hurdles due to their interracial relationship and having biracial

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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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There have been many controversial discussions concerning the disfranchisement of felons, especially in African-American community. African-Americans are twice as likely to be convicted of a felony higher than any other race in the American population. African-Americans felons are also twice as likely to return to prison higher than any other race. The discussion about the recidivist’s rate of African-Americans often place blame on the individual’s behavior and/or being a product of one’s own environmental. Although this may be true but taking deeper into cause of African-Americans recidivism, would reveal the main factor being laws that have been put into place to keep convicted felon at a disadvantage, hence felony disenfranchisement.

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