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New Jim Crow analysis
Essay Samples Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander
New Jim Crow analysis
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The New Jim Crow was written by Michelle Alexander and was created to educate people on the new “caste system” that is being ignored by those it has no effect on. It is a serious discussion that has been avoided for far too long. Michelle Alexander did a great job getting the ball rolling on this topic in her book. To touch on some of the points made I will be looking at the foreword, introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 6.
Mass incarceration is the greatest civil rights injustice of our time. People behind bars are disproportionately black and Hispanic. The criminal justice system drives and reinforces deep-seated racial
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).
In todays’ society does race matter? Who in society thinks that race matters and who thinks it no longer matters? In our daily living we experience different types of racism. Some of us experience racism because of the color of our skin, the country we migrated from or just because we speak a different language. Additionally, people can be judged by the way they dress, or the food they eat.
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.
The politics of responsibility hold each person responsible for his or her actions and choices; and therefore they have to accept the results of their actions. It means that people have duties and responsibilities towards themselves and others, and that they have to make the right choices and do the right actions in order to have a better life. However, Michelle Alexander disagrees with this strategy in her critique “The New Jim Crow,” arguing that the strategy of responsibility would fail to address the issue of mass incarceration. She argues that the politics of responsibility is insufficient because it cannot just blame people on their own actions and choices without considering their circumstances and the society they are living in, which could sometimes force them to behave in a certain way. She insists that
Abstract: This paper provides an introduction to the social impact of the collateral consequences (the families left behind) of mass incarceration. The reading will include thoughts from sociological perspectives and empirical studies that focus on the consequences incarceration and re-entry have on the striving family left behind. Partners and families of felons suffer from the system in place that punishes, rather than “corrects,” criminal behavior. Collateral Consequences Patience Kabwasa Prof. Laura Howe Soc 231-C21 May 1, 2014 Collateral Consequences
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.
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.
Since incarceration leads to political and civil disenfranchisement in the United States, the mass incarceration of black and brown men and the consequent loss of rights to participate in the civil society and its processes are especially concerning. The authors argue that the interplay of racial residential segregation, low-quality schooling, and exposure and vulnerabilities to crime and violence so prevalent in these segregated neighborhoods have established a “public school to prison”
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
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.
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
Soon after slavery was abolished in the south, as a form of retaliation, southern states utilized “criminal justice for racial control”(Eji). All in all, by using criminal justice for racial control, the south effectively executed the mass incarceration of African Americans, which had become so deeply ingrained in American society that it is still present in today’s world. Not only are black people in disadvantaged communities, but they are constantly criminalized, and because of this, represent a high percentage of the prison population. The effects of slavery are still present in the current criminal justice system and it is important to acknowledge that even though efforts are being made to reduce its presence, it will likely take decades to fully eradicate the racial bias that African Americans face in the criminal justice system. Furthermore, slavery contributed to the racial bias in the criminal justice system by forming a gap
As we can see, African Americans have endured racial inequality, physical abuse, stripped of their legal rights, and are still at educational, economic, and social disadvantages in society. Despite slavery, and the racial segregation (Jim Crow), African American men are more likely to be in prison than any other race in America. “The growth of the American penal system since the mid-1970s has been concentrated from among African Americans and the poor. During the period of the prison boom, African Americans were about six to seven times more likely than whites to be incarcerated” (3). Unfortunately, race and social class play a significant role in African Americans for imprisonment.