Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

It has been over a decade since Michelle Alexander published “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Her book delves into the complex nuances of mass incarceration in the United States, more specifically pertaining to the criminal justice system’s deeply-ingrained racial biases. She argues, as in reference to the title of her work, that mass incarceration effectively serves as a new form of Jim Crow discrimination and calls for large-scale reform. But in the time since the book’s original release, there have been many significant developments in terms of policy, public opinion, and social movements which warrant elaboration on the themes originally discussed by Alexander. In chapter 3 of “The New Jim Crow,” the

Brignoni-Ponce as an example of how the law not only allows police to take race into consideration during stop-and-search, but protects their ability to do so; the case in question pertains to speculating that “a person’s Mexican appearance” could serve as probable cause for suspecting they be an undocumented immigrant (Alexander 2020). In the years since Alexander wrote about this issue, immigration has only become more of a hot-button topic. Especially when looking back on the 2016 presidential election, in which much of Donald Trump’s platform rested on promoting tighter borders and prevention of undocumented immigration. Much of the dialogue around this issue was stirred by Trump’s racially-charged campaign rhetoric, which directly led to a “proliferation of controlling images of Latinos as criminals” in such a way that “serves to perpetuate notions of foreignness” (Canizales & Vallejo 2021). So long as prior assumptions about an individual’s criminality can be made on the basis of something as trivial as physical appearance, our society as a whole will be lacking in true equality and justice. Considering the significance of the dialogue around immigration, as well as its implications on societal racism, I would suggest that Michelle Alexander include more information on this topic if she were to publish another edition of her