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Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

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In Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: The Age of Colorblindness, she argues that the debate on the war on drugs unfairly targets those of color; typically young, black men. She states how many African Americans have been in prison due to drug convictions and now carry the title of a felon with them for life. Alexander recognizes that the war on drugs was a policy with an attempt to crack down on drugs in certain communities, however, she still believes these policies target minorities. She supports this with the “stop and frisk” policy, which grants the officers with the ability to search individuals on their own natural “suspicion.” It is most obvious that poor black men are more likely to be stopped over white individuals. Although these …show more content…

A major reason for this is because although there may be more African Americans locked up over whites, it is not for reasons involving drug offenses. In objection to her analogies on the New Jim Crow, I think it is important to acknowledge the stigma that black communities carry with help of the mass media. This stigma could cause such individuals frustration and devastating effects on blacks. She is however persuasive when considering the birdcage example that blacks are trapped in a system of laws and …show more content…

By simply ending the War on Drugs, I do not believe the existing problems of racial structures will be solved. Just as with anything else, education is the first step in reducing racial discrimination. Similarly situated blacks and whites are treated differently in regards to the system, however, those who are knowledgeable about this issue can raise awareness and have a better understanding of the social processes impacting African Americans. Strategies should also address discrimination on both the institutional and individual level. By doing so such racial inequality can be considered in the development of improving strategies rooted in the programs, beliefs, and stereotypes. While education and knowledge is an important key factor, influences on behavior and motivation can influence change as well. Altering one’s own behavior may require individual support of others. Effects of behavior should also include a basis of evaluation on outcomes of the learning

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It is an existing theory that our society is constructed via racial dimensions, and that racial equality is a figment of the imagination. This very principle is highlighted in Michelle Alexander’s novel, “The New Jim Crow.” The specific dimensions covered within the text include the unjust aspects of the federal drug policy, and by connection that of mass incarceration as well. Alexander claims that racism is still very prominent in present day society and is direct and frank about the heavy influence of white supremacy. One of the main arguments pushed by Alexander in this book is that mass incarceration is “ a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar

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The book that I will be reviewing is called The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness by Michelle Alexander. This text was first copyrighted in 2010. The New Jim Crow can be purchased from all major book retail stores as well as popular websites such as Amazon for varying prices between $10-$15. It is possible to purchase this book for cheaper prices if the eBook is available. The ISBN number for this book is 978-59558-643-8.

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African Americans are more likely to be searched than a Caucasia due to racial bias from Caucasian officers. To most officers, a Caucasian does not look as suspicious as an African American which makes them more susceptible to searches. Even if a Caucasian is searched and caught for having illegal drugs, the consequences are usually not as bad for them. In fact, in Chicago alone, “White drug offenders are rarely arrested” and when they are caught and brought to court “they are treated more favorably at every stage of the criminal justice process” (189). All across the nation, African Americans are filling up our county jails at a higher rate than any other race in the United States, which is better known as mass incarceration.

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Michelle Alexander wrote the book called, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, the publication is in New York and the publisher is The New Press, which is the second edition, it was published in the year of 2012 and the book has 312 pages. On October 7, 1967, Michelle Alexander was born. She is a graduate from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. She is a civil rights lawyer, advocate and legal scholar. She is a professor who has taught at a many universities.

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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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She states that the objective of the war on drugs was to incorporate into our society a system of "racial control. " They label people of color as criminals to engage in the practices of discrimination, legally. She argues that it has been a war exclusively in poor black communities that politicians used strategically using racially coded "get tough" appeals, to appeal to the white poor class that was feeling inferior and threatened by the black community. This behavior from the criminal justice system led to the issue of mass incarceration in the African American community. To be a felon in the United States meant that you will have to fight for survival and overcome multiple challenges that in the end may put you in the position of having to go back into prison.

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Alexander argues that the system perpetuates a form of racial control akin to the Jim Crow laws of the past, primarily through the mass incarceration of Black men. She examines how policies such as the War on Drugs disproportionately target and incarcerate Black communities, creating a cycle of poverty and disenfranchisement. Through

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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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On page thirty-two of The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander explicitly states that we transitioned from the death of the "Old Jim Crow" to the birth of "The New One" through: "a criminal justice system that was strategically employed to force African Americans back into a system of extreme repression and control" (32). After the death of slavery / during the Reconstruction Era, African Americans obtained political power and began the long march toward greater social and economic equality. As a result, whites reacted with panic / outrage and conservatives vowed to reverse Reconstruction / "redeem" the South. Through the Ku Klux Klan, resurgent white supremacists fought a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction governments and local leaders.

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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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139 Words | 1 Pages

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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1075 Words | 5 Pages

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

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