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Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

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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. Michelle, also played an influential …show more content…

The original settlers were europeans, indentured servants, Black and White, and free Africans. Through the time and the establishment of the slavery in America, there has also been the establishment of a caste system that effects us to this day. The Black and Brown communities have been victims of the White supremacist agenda keeping them from social and economic advancement through an evolving legal system controlled by the “elite planters of the day.” The White supremacist agenda has evolved with a growing consensus of White superiority and the inferiority of everyone of color. The author uses the social climate and court hearings to validate her …show more content…

The Jim Crow laws were regressive imposing rules close to the slave laws. It reneged upon its promises made in the constitution furthering the caste system that had been in place. Michelle tells a story about Nathaniel Bacon who gathered slaves, poor whites, and indentured servants in an attempt for a land grab that had been owned by Native Americans. The elite planters held the monopoly on the grants given to in cases such as these. The denial of such grants forced the protest and attacks by Bacon against the elite planters. Instances like this caused the elite to generate propaganda against the cooperation between the lower class Whites and Blacks. Amongst other things it gave a “atleast I’m not Black” mentality adding to the negative projection of the Black man and

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235 Words | 1 Pages

Chapter 1 of “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, that is also a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, wrote this chapter to inform us the history of racism in America, and if African Americans really treated equally. When the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, many whites were scared that the slaves are now free because they might want revenge, so the whites made a stereo type that all black men are criminals. When the Reconstruction ended, the south had a redemption. The convicts had no legal rights, so they became the “slaves” to help rebuild after the civil war. Then the prison population of blacks rose so the whites can use them as free labor.

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990 Words | 4 Pages

Michelle Alexander in the first chapter, reviews the history of racial social control in the United States. She describes the different forms and patterns of the racial caste system. The author maintains that the racial prejudice and hierarchy has been sustained as a result of the insecurities of the lower-class whites. Her main point was that "racial segregation would soon evolve into a new caste system" (p. 40). Alexander explains that even though slavery ended after the Civil War, it left a big impact on the American community.

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302 Words | 2 Pages

Due to unfortunate circumstances, the great injustice of slavery makes up a significant portion of America’s History. In addition following the Civil War,that legacy was expressed through the Jim Crow Laws,which promoted segregation. These new laws

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The Jail and The New Jim Crow both describe how our justice system is generally based on people’s conceptions of things, and how our own justice system is creating a new way of discriminating people by labeling, incarcerating the same disreputables and lower class that have come to be labeled as the rabble class. In chapter two, of The New Jim Crow, supporting the claim that our justice system has created a new way of segregating people; Michelle Alexander describes how the process of mass incarceration actually works and how at the end the people that we usually find being arrested, sent to jail, and later on sent to prison, are the same low class persons’ with no knowledge and resources. These people commit petty crimes that cost them their

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In 1857 the court case of Dread Scott v. Stanford and in 1896 the case Plessy v. Ferguson were introduced into the Supreme Court. They showed people of color were not considered to be anything other than property; the whole majority had no regard for the feelings of another person. The notion of slavery was just coming to light in the United States. As time grew on, the slaves and former slaves were rightly becoming increasingly outraged. Through evaluating language of exclusion throughout both Dread Scott v. Stanford and Plessy v. Ferguson concurrently, anyone can recognize the effects of dehumanization negatively impacting members of the black community.

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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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Moreover, the aftermath of incarceration for convicted African-American felons entails that they are unable to vote. The constitution implements this idea that anybody can vote regardless of race or gender, but criminals are unable to vote. Criminals occupy the lower caste in society meaning that nobody wants to be like them ,stereotypes are associated with them, and nobody wants to advocate for them or their rights. Michelle Alexander explicitly describes the ongoing oppression by stating that “ Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy” ( Alexander). Alexander is talking about the black man when she says “he” because majority of the

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After Bacon’s Rebellion, indentured servitude was no longer an option given to black people. Due to a new set of laws called slave codes, freedom and equity became almost

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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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Jim Crow laws were laws in the United States between 1877 and the 1950’s that held back African Americans from reaching their full potential and limited their rights. Jim crow laws were found in almost every State in that time. Jim Crow Laws caused the African Americans in the United States to live a horrendous life. African Americans in this time period were limited to all of the amenities the Whites had. In this essay I will describe some laws and situations where African Americans were stripped of their power and rights that they earned from the United States.

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The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a non-fiction introduction in the novel “They say, I say” by Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. The New Jim Crow is written to educate society on the discrimination and exclusion that African Americans are facing in the United States; the same discrimination and exclusion they faced when the Jim Crow laws took place. Michelle Alexander forms her evidence from her own experience fighting for the civil rights of others and she also uses people of colors experiences with losing their civil rights from being labeled a “felon” and she uses statistics to help her readers better visualize the extent of African American incarceration, these techniques provide the readers with accurate

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406 Words | 2 Pages

Jim Crow Laws The Jim Crow Laws authorized legal punishment for interacting with the opposite race. This led to treatment and areas that were almost always inferior to the whites. “Jim Crow” originally referred to a popular dance from the 1820s, and referred to a black man in an old song. Theologians and Christian ministers taught that whites were the “Chosen people”, God support racial segregation and blacks were cursed to be servants (Hansen 1). Jim Crow Laws legalized segregation between blacks and whites to create “separate but equal”, but this had a more negative than positive outcome.

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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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