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Mass Incarceration In The Grapes Of Wrath By Michelle Alexander

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Alexander addresses mass incarceration through compelling and historical analysis of African Americans. This correlates to the concept of social justice and the One World Initiative theme- Global Perspective on happiness because in the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially acceptable to use race as a justification for discrimination, segregation, and social hatred. Yet, as Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans during the Jim Crow era. This does not symbolize the global perspective on happiness in any way shape or form. Happiness is contentment, satisfaction, cheerfulness, joy, well-being. …show more content…

Alexander uncovers the system of mass incarceration. A system of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control criminals both in prison and out of prison. The book also highlights major themes and issues in society today such as racism, inequality, and social justice. Alexander uses statistics and legal citations to argue that the approach Nixon administered, which was more of a get-tough approach to crime, and Reagan’s declaration of the War on Drugs, has devastated African Americans. The main idea that Alexander tries to make is that beginning with slavery and continuing with Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration places entire groups of people of color into discriminatory positions in society, …show more content…

James Forman Jr., who is a law professor at Yale University, wrote a paper called Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow. In this paper, Forman Jr. identifies Alexander as one of a number of authors who have overstated and misstated their case. He observes that her framework over-emphasizes the War on Drugs and ignores violent crimes, stating that Alexander's analysis is demographically simplistic. He suggests that Alexander does not analyze the way imprisonment is now arranged by class, even among African-Americans, and says that Alexander does not discuss the mass incarceration of other races, including whites. In the section "Overlooking Race" Forman Jr. writes that the Jim Crow analogy "obscures the extent to which whites, too, are mass incarceration’s targets," noting that "Alexander mentions them only in passing; she says that mass imprisonment’s true targets are blacks, and that incarcerated whites are ‘collateral

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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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This book discusses social issues such as Mass Incarceration within our society. Michelle Alexander is very qualified to discuss the controversial topics that are mentioned within the text. Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, a legal scholar and advocate. She has held many positions in higher

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In chapter “Are Prisons Obsolete?” Angela Davis strictly points out factors in results of the elites methods to be in total control. African Americans are highly accounted for in incarceration as an addition to the prison industrial complex. Mental health conditions are then vulnerable in the prison community which helps the cycle. This Cycle as she describes, is a great catalyst towards business and global economics.

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The recommendation calls for civil rights advocates to put mass incarceration on their agenda similar in the ways civil rights advocate’s affirmative action agenda. In my opinion, America is at a turning point where mass incarceration is slowly fading away with state lawmakers trying to cut prison cost. Being labeled as a felon is a stigma that can and will follow individuals for the rest of their lives. However, there is a change in the atmosphere and how society view individuals with felony records. Opportunities are slowly becoming available such as jobs and education, allowing these individuals to reenter society.

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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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Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow and has led to the oppression and disenfranchisement of whole generations of young black men. Between 1980 and 2000, the inmate population in the United States skyrocketed from 300,000 to well over

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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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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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1381 Words | 6 Pages

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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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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643 Words | 3 Pages

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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In addition to greatly affecting the otherwise unlikely citizens of America, Tough on Crime policies have greatly affected minority groups in America; perhaps more so than of any other group of citizens. To begin, from the 1980 on through the year 1995, the incarceration rates among drug offenders increased by more than 1000 percent. Notably, by the year 1995 one out of every four inmates in any given correctional facility was a drug offender. In addition of that 1000 percent increase, drug offenders accounted for more than 80 percent of the total growth in the federal inmate population and 50 percent of the growth of the state prison population from 1985 to 1995 (Stith, web). In addition, once in the system, the probability of receiving harsher

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The amount of mass incarceration in the United States as reached an all time high over the years. Mass Incarceration is the incarceration of a person or race based off of them being different and can be identified as a trend among law enforcements. These tensions have reached a certain extent and has received the attention of American citizens and the nation’s government. The laws of the United States seems fair, however with the enforcement of these laws, specific groups are targeted and abused by them daily.

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Over 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.

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