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New Jim Crow Thesis

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Slavery is over therefore how can racism still exist? This has been a question posed countlessly in discussions about race. What has proven most difficult is adequately demonstrating how racism continues to thrive and how forms of oppression have manifested. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, argues that slavery has not vanished; it instead has taken new forms that allowed it to flourish in modern society. These forms include mass incarceration and perpetuation of racist policies and societal attitudes that are disguised as color-blindness that ultimately allow the system of oppression to continue. Popular opinion in the United States is that race is no longer an issue (Pew Research Center, 2014) (Gallup, 2014) and point to examples …show more content…

For example, open Black support of harsh punishment and law enforcement may seem hypocritical because in reality these policies and practices contribute to mass incarceration of Blacks. Alexander clarifies that Black support is more complex than it appears and can be attributed to a combination of complicity and wanting better safety for their communities and families (Alexander, 2012, p.210). Alexander also offers a unique perspective throughout the entire book by explaining how the systems of slavery and oppression have affected White individuals and not merely in the form of privilege or the dismissal of White people as simply as racist individuals. I resonated with one particular section discussing the "White victims of racial caste" (Alexander, 2012, p.204); the author 's anecdote of a white woman falling in love with a Black man and due to miscegenation laws could not have children. I could relate to this story on a deeply personal level in that my own parents experienced extreme and countless hurdles due to their interracial relationship and having biracial

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The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a book outlining and analysing the social constructs of the United States of America through the context of mechanics of the judicial system. It compares and contrasts the slavery, old Jim Crow law and post Jim Crow law eras in the means to highlight the racial discrimination against the Black and Brown community by the White elite. The author explores the court cases and legislation passed by the government to implement a national system geared to favor the White community and its effects on the imagery that has developed in the American mind set. Michelle Alexander is among many things an African-American woman. She is lawyer who represented in the Civil Rights era.

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Throughout chapters four, five and six of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, I gained a better understanding of the legacy of the war on drugs era policy and the function of the forms of oppression in the criminal justice system. In chapter four, Alexander focuses on the roles and legacy of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. She conveys the fact that although newly freed incarcerated people may have more rights overall, they still arguably have less respect than newly freed enslaved people who were living ‘freely’ in Mississippi at the peak of the Jim Crow Era (Alexander 2010). She goes on to say that although Jim Crow may have been outlawed, new signs have gone up targeting society’s new legal form of second class citizens

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“The New Jim Crow” Summary “The New Jim Crow” was written by Michelle Alexander based off of her experience working for the ACLU of Oakland in which she saw racial bias in the justice system that constituted people of color second-class citizens; Which is why the comparison had been made to the Jim Crow laws that existed in the nineteenth century. Alexander notes comparisons in white resentment, colorblind language, segregation in neighborhoods, legal discrimination, etc., while the difference are the lack of activism that is shown in response to these injustices. Goes over the entire history of slavery; Documenting the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws, and then the civil rights movement to the War on Drugs that Reagan, in 1980, began in order

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In this essay, I will explain the three major racial castes that Alexander discussed and how both Republicans and Democratic are responsible for this caste system, how the new Jim Crow impacted the Black community and how it is like the “old” Jim Crow, the relations between the New Jim Crow and #BlackLivesMatter, and finally famous figures fight against police brutality and support Black Lives Matter. The three major caste systems that Alexander explained in her book are enslavement, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration. In this quote, “The notion of white supremacy rationalized

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According to Alexander, “Today, most American know and don’t know the truth about mass incarceration” (p. 182). Before reading this book I did know of the inequality towards people of color in the criminal justice. book has made me realized how easily we as humans, jump into conclusion without thinking twice and judging a person by their look or race without trying to get who they are. Although most people know better and know how wrong it is to judge a book or person on their cover we often find ourselves doing just that when we first come into contact with a different culture. This book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander has made me realized how the United State has one of the largest population in prison.

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Author’s argument #1 In her book The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander uses a large-scale historical analysis to conceptualize the intractable failures of the American incarceration system. Central to her overall argument is the claim that the prison system was intentionally designed to perpetuate the discrimination and social death of Black people in an era where laws permit outright anti-Black legislation. In order to support her historical analysis of the motivation behind the carceral system, Alexander traces the fall of formally racist institutions to modern legislation that, she argues, accomplishes the same goal without using explicitly racist language. Alexander engages in a three-step investigation into the process that transformed

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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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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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