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Jim Crow Laws Essay

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In many large urban areas in the United States, the majority of working-age African American men have criminal records. It was reported in 2002 that, in the Chicago area, if you take into account prisoners, the figure is nearly 80%” (Alexander, page nuber?). The Jim Crow Law was a set of state and local laws enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States between 1876 and 1965. The laws mandated the segregation of public facilities and services, such as schools, public transportation, restrooms, and drinking fountains, based on race, in order to maintain white supremacy and racial segregation in the South. The Jim Crow era was a period of widespread racial segregation and discrimination, and the Jim Crow Law was its legal framework. …show more content…

Both systems have been used to target disproportionately and oppress people of color and deny them their civil liberties. The United States criminal justice has been criticized for its high rate of incarceration, racial disparities in sentencing, and police brutality. All these echo “They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era” (Alexander, page 10). Voting rights have been a central issue in the Jim Crow era and remain significant today. Today, voting rights are also under attack, with states passing laws that require photo ID to vote, limiting early voting, and purging voter rolls. These laws disproportionately affect people of color and have been found to be unconstitutional in many cases. According to Professor Michelle Alexander, “Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia deny prisoners the right to vote. That, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. Even after the term of punishment expires, states are free to deny people who have been labeled felons the right to vote for a period of years or their entire lives” (Alexander, page 20). These issues are particularly pronounced in the criminal justice system, where African Americans are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. This inequality is a direct result of the legacy of Jim Crow laws and continues to perpetuate racial inequities in the United States

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The justice system sentences black people to harsh punishments for minor offenses, where white people would walk away free for the same crime. Our color blindness prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions in society, such as the unequal schools, the isolated jobless ghettos, and the segregated society the justice system has built by locking up African American men for up to half their lives and missing out on their

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Jim Crow was not a person, it was a series of laws that imposed legal segregation between white Americans and African Americans in the American South. It promoting the status “Separate but Equal”, but for the African American community that was not the case. African Americans were continuously ridiculed, and were treated as inferiors. Although slavery was abolished in 1865, the legal segregation of white Americans and African Americans was still a continuing controversial subject and was extended for almost a hundred years (abolished in 1964). Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South is a series of primary accounts of real people who experienced this era first-hand and was edited by William H.Chafe, Raymond

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ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.

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In the article, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, she explores a subject that most people ignore; that is a racial caste system exists in America. Specifically, she asserts that mass incarceration is a new racial caste system which provides context for the political, social and economic problems, represents the New Jim Crow. In post Jim Crow society, Alexander empathizes, we have adopted to the colorblind perspective, which states that race is not being justified for discrimination or social contempt. Instead of relying on race, we use our criminal justice system to label colored people as criminals. Once we labeled them as criminals, all forms of discrimination will be legal against people of color.

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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 2010, author Michelle Alexander wrote the truly insightful book, The New Jim Crow. Throughout the book, Alexander displayed that by targeting African American men through the War on Drugs and racial biases within communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system is still functioning as a modern day system of racial control while hiding behind colorblindness. The New Jim Crow is an eye opening account of how African Americans are still being denied the very rights supposedly won from the Civil Rights Movement and makes one think about the modern day racial stigmas African Americans are facing. Although there has been many reforms to America, stigmatization is a still growing problem within the African American community and the lasting

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During segregation, facilities for Blacks were significantly inferior to those for Whites, highlighting systemic racism. The continued existence of these disparities highlights the ongoing struggle for racial equality in the US. Jim Crow laws were a system of state and local laws that institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans in the United States, affecting almost every aspect of their daily lives and imposing strict social codes that reinforced white dominance and superiority. The legacy of these laws continues to impact the ongoing struggle for racial justice and equality in the United States. The Jim Crow system of racial segregation was prevalent in the United States from the late 1800s until the mid-1960s.

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Jim Crow laws were laws in the Southern United States that were state and local laws. These laws enforced racial segregation typically towards the blacks starting late in the 19th century. This was after the Reconstruction period, and were forced all the way until 1965. All public facilities were forced to be segregated in the states of the former Confederate States of America, which started back in 1896 with blacks having a “separate but equal” status. Segregation in public school was a thing all the way back to when it first established in most south after the Civil War.

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Student Name The illustration of the US current state based on the differences of Jim Crow, and mass incarceration Jim crow is defined as a term that explains the racial case system that operated primarily, and not exclusively in the southern borders of the United States between 1877 up to until mid 1960’s. The activities that took place during this time period were more than a series of rigid anti-black laws as most of those who carried the activities considered it to be a way of life for them. On the other hand, mass incarceration is a term that is used to refer to a unique way that the administration of the United States of America has locked up a large number of populations in both federal and state prisons.

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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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The book argues that the criminal justice system is a modern-day manifestation of Jim Crow laws and policies that were used to maintain white supremacy and control Black bodies. Black Americans are disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration and the criminal justice system, which limit their opportunities and stigmatize them as "criminals" and "deviants." However, the book also highlights the various ways in which Black Americans are resisting these systems of oppression and building their own communities and networks of

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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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One of the main areas where African Americans are facing discrimination is in the United States legal system, more specifically the bail system. African Americans constantly deal with the social injustice of racial discrimination within the bail system in the United States. A significant

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Legalized Discrimination is Contributing to Mass Incarceration Mass incarceration has been an issue for decades, with no clear solution in sight. One major turning point in the development of mass incarceration, based on reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, is the idea of legalized discrimination. Alexander said, “What is painfully obvious when one steps back from individual cases and specific policies is that the system of mass incarceration operated with stunning efficiency to sweep people of color off the streets, lock them in cages, and then release them into an inferior second-class status” (pg. 100). This idea of legalized discrimination allows police officers to intentionally target black individuals because of prejudices

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Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation and discrimination in the United States from the late 1800s until the mid-1960s. These laws affected almost every aspect of life for Black Americans and people of color, including education, voting rights, public accommodations, transportation, housing, and employment. The policies perpetuated racism and racist attitudes towards minorities, shaping the country's approach toward race relations in the following decades. One fundamental impact of Jim Crow laws was the institutionalization of racial discrimination, which obscured the problem of racism in America. These laws reinforced daily racial segregation in the southern states, fostering a culture of intolerance towards

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