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Essay On Mass Incarceration

509 Words3 Pages

Formerly, poll taxes, literacy test and felon disenfranchisement laws were employed in order to exclude African Americans from the participation in society. They were considered second class citizens because of their title of slaves. Today, they are still considered second class citizens, but because of their title as criminals (Alexander 198-199). The racial dimension of mass incarceration is the most outstanding feature controlling the lives of so many African Americans today. Alexander estimated in that three out of four-young black men can expect to serve time in prison at point in their lives. The mass incarceration of black men serves to define the meaning and significance of race in America today. Previously, race (black) was defined as slaves; today, race (black) is defined as criminals. Thus, mass incarceration perpetuates and deepens a pre-existing pattern of racial segregation and isolation. African Americans are being sold to private prisons and are warehoused in prisons for long time and once they get out of prison, they are labeled and destined to carry a stigma that extends to the family members, friends and even to their …show more content…

Alexander argues that by creating laws and policies politicians have been successful at making black slavery legal. Ex-convicts, because of the having a criminal record, are not being allowed to enroll in Universities, are not eligible for public aid, housing and denied the ability to obtain employment (social mobility in the fields of cultural and economic capital). Mass incarceration marginalizes large segments of the African American community, segregates them physically, and then legalizes discrimination against them in voting, employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury services. They are not allowed to participate in such a crucial process of democracy (Alexander

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Alexander argues that the system perpetuates a form of racial control akin to the Jim Crow laws of the past, primarily through the mass incarceration of Black men. She examines how policies such as the War on Drugs disproportionately target and incarcerate Black communities, creating a cycle of poverty and disenfranchisement. Through

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The New Jim Crow Book Summary

1422 Words | 6 Pages

The book was written by Michelle Alexander, who is a civil rights litigator as well as a legal scholar and the book talks about discrimination against other minorities. The principal premise of the book is that the current mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow. The author tries to show that the perception among Americans that discrimination mostly ended with the civil rights reforms of the 1960s is wrong. She points to the criminal justice system as the new Jim Crow, using the War on Drugs as the primary tool to enforce old and new forms of repression and discrimination. The new kind of racism has led the country to have the highest rate of incarceration in the world and most of those imprisoned are Black Americans.

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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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881 Words | 4 Pages

It highlights the system's persistent racial biases and systemic inadequacies, suggesting that racial superiority was maintained by discriminatory laws and practices even after slavery was legally abolished. Mass incarceration is shown in the movie as a modern form of racialized social control that promotes poverty, disenfranchisement, and institutional racism. Through interviews, it analyzes the catastrophic impact on individuals and communities, challenging viewers to critically evaluate the relationship between race, politics, and criminal justice, and arguing for serious reform and a reevaluation of cultural

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The term also refers to the process of the administrations locking its population in local jails and according to Jim Crow, mass incarceration in the United States is made to control the blacks (Alexander 201). Additionally, during this time, a large pool of African Americans were denied their voting rights through literacy tests, poll taxes, felon disenfranchisement laws, and grandfather clauses. On looking at the two systems, it is easy to note that, they all originated from different political ideologies with the exclusion of African Americans from juries being a common

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Although slavery has been abolished and the civil rights movement has made some progress, a racial caste system remains. This caste system is perpetuated through mass incarceration, which disproportionately targets blacks, portraying them as nothing more than “criminals” and relegating them to a permanent underclass, even after they have served their sentences. Week 7 pp. day 2 slide 11. During slavery, blacks were not seen as equal to whites, but instead were at the bottom of the caste system, viewed as a labor source.

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In her book, The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander who was a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar, reveals many of America’s harsh truths regarding race within the criminal justice system. Though the Jim Crow laws have long been abolished, a new form has surfaced, a contemporary system of racial control through mass incarceration. In this book, mass incarceration not only refers to the criminal justice system, but also a bigger picture, which controls criminals both in and out of prison through laws, rules, policies and customs. The New Jim Crow that Alexander speaks of has redesigned the racial caste system, by putting millions of mainly blacks, as well as Hispanics and some whites, behind bars

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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 United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world with about 2.3 million people in prison. According to Vitanna.org’s statistics, an estimated one million of these prisoners are African American. 12.3 percent of the population is black, yet over 43 percent of America’s prisoners are black. This disparity is certainly unnatural, seeing as how African Americans are no more likely to be criminals than whites. Black men are overrepresented in prisons because of the unfortunately common stereotype that they are all remorseless criminals.

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Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.

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