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Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

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Jaclyn Seigel Doctor Morales PHM2121 30 April 2015 “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” By Michelle Alexander; An Evaluation In “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness” by Michelle Alexander, Alexander explains her opinion on mass incarceration and “The War on Drugs.” Even though “The War on Drugs” took few steps forward to eliminating drug abuse, Michelle Alexander’s book explains how this has created more problems rather than solutions. Alexander focuses on how African American communities have become more vulnerable to the arrests. Authorities will target these communities even though this is not where the crime is happening. Lastly, many people are labeled ‘felons’ for life, even …show more content…

The caste system locks people up behind bars, literally and fundamentally, and creates a new life; essentially, for many men and women in low-income black communities. During the Reagan Administration, “The War on Drugs” began. Overall, this lead to mass incarceration and African Americans were targeted even though a majority of the drug abusers were white. Since then, mass incarceration has become a prevalent issue in today’s society. Michelle Alexander does a phenomenal job at presenting her …show more content…

Alexander focuses on how African American communities have become more vulnerable to the arrests. Authorities will target these communities even though this is not where the crime is happening. Lastly, many people are labeled ‘felons’ for life, even though they have only committed one victimless crime. Michelle Alexander summarizes her opinion by saying, “We have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it.” Even though America has taken many small steps to move forward from segregation, black individuals are locked up behind bars and will struggle for the rest of their lives to escape from the ‘felon’ title. “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander has showcased her opinion, and ultimately stretched my opinion. I can confidently say that I agree with Michelle Alexander’s opinion and conclusion of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration of

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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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Michelle Alexander argues in her introduction to the New Jim Crow that the racial caste in America has not ended and that it just has been redesigned. She highlights the ways that the justice system of the United States controls blacks through deliberately imposed legal restrictions. The United States has the leading incarceration rates in the world and most of the individuals involved with the country’s correctional system are African-American men. This essay seeks to discuss the author’s overall argument in the book. The essay will also discuss how the topics in the first three chapters of the book help Alexander develop this argument.

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Michelle alexander states in her book that “1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men” (61). The idea of incarceration, in this situation, mass incarceration is

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Michelle Alexander - The New Jim Crow In “The New Jim Crow”, author Michelle Alexander argues that the war on drugs is just an excuse to target African Americans and keep millions of black people in poverty or in jail. Alexander thinks that racism is still very prevalent in today’s world. She believes that the criminal justice system uses the system of mass incarceration to control black people and exclude them from the political process. Many African American people are not allowed to vote because they have gone to jail and they are labeled felons for life.

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Ultimately, the disparities of dehumanization among African Americans has allowed for inmates to experience increased violence. In the article Women, Girls, and Mass Incarceration, Michele

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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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Alexander’s book introduction addresses some of the injustices that minorities especially African Americans have to endure under the war on drugs. However, Alexander also points out that drug crimes are relatively low compared to other countries meaning that there is no correlation at all between rising efforts on law enforcement funding and declining crime rates. Alexander comes to the conclusion that the current criminal justice system is set up to keep social control over minorities. The New Jim Crow assignment has a total of twenty six questions.

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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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Another component of the prison-industrial complex are courts. Our court system is overburdened with cases of poor people who cannot pay bail, as well as public defenders whose caseload are so large that it does not allow them to dedicate the proper amount of time to each case. Many times this results in a large number of public defenders pushing for defendants to take plea deals. This infringes on a defendant 's fifth amendment right to trial by jury (see appendix 1). Many of the people targeted by police for surveillance are those who later face time in court fighting for their freedom.

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Aditi Patel Representing race Blockson Project 12/11/17. For the Blockson Project I found really interesting book “The new Jim Crow : mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander. I had this book for my other class and when I was reading it, I found this book boring and I thought that the book is disturbing.

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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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So when public discourse dwells on offenders, what usually comes to mind are racially charged subtexts. For instance, while poor and black women became targets of the criminal justice system, middle- and upper-class women escaped scrutiny (). In other words, “crime” is more than the violation of a legalized social norm, and “justice” is more than the equal application of laws.

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