ipl-logo

Book Analysis: The New Jim Crow

770 Words4 Pages

Zach Bova
Professor Leguizamo
Core LLC: Human Behavior in Perspective
20 October 2015
Summary of “The New Jim Crow” In Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow” she analyzes how there is a pattern of young black men getting incarcerated because of the war on drugs, and how the policies that have been set by the federal government are discriminatory. She is suggesting that law enforcement is abusing their power in black communities and that the war on drugs is actually giving them the right to do so. With these policies set in place police are allowed to stop and search a person if they believe that they look suspicious in any way. Throughout the book the author presents the readers with a point of view showing the discrimination that still exists in America today. The original Jim Crow Laws enforced segregation in America; she is interpreting the war on drugs as “The New Jim Crow.” The author begins by explaining how she thinks that although as a country …show more content…

The section is opened by a quote from Frederick Douglass, a famous abolitionist, stating that white citizens of America don’t truly understand what it is like to be an African American in that time period and how they are “ignorant.” The author’s message is that she understands that these criminals are doing something wrong in the first place, but she realizes that these people are already struggling to begin with. These individuals are selling drugs to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. By doing this they are digging themselves in a hole that that can not get out of. Once convicted for dealing drugs it is nearly impossible to return a good life after you are released. This creates a pattern that can’t be altered. The war on drugs creates no second chances for African American

Show More
Related

The New Jim Crow Book Summary

548 Words | 3 Pages

She was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics at the Stanford Law School. Her award with a Soros Justice Fellowship supported her book, The New Jim Crow. The main discussion in this book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is about racism. Racism is defined as the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

Read More

The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander: Chapter Analysis

930 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

Rhetorical Analysis Of The New Jim Crow

223 Words | 1 Pages

The piece of writing which I felt was unsuccessful for me was the Rhetorical Analysis of an article relating to a topic from our course book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. This piece of writing was difficult for me to organize my ideas around. The article that I decided to use for my rhetorical analysis highlighted mass incarceration among African American and the effect of civil liberties being are taken away from these individuals. I had a lot of repetition because many of the examples I used demonstrated more than one type of appeal. I found myself repeating what the purpose of the example was and how it demonstrated proper use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

Read More

The House I Live In Documentary Analysis

516 Words | 3 Pages

Keywords that are most important to the documentary are, War on Drugs, incarceration, drug involvement/abuse, and racism. All of these words are loosely or heavily connected to each other. The words drug involvement/abuse highlight the purpose of the film, and the reasons for the War on Drugs and numerous laws created to fight drug abuse that cause death and destroy abiding citizens of communities. Furthermore, the War on Drugs simply labels the struggle against drug use and the governmental involvement to enforce anti-drug laws. The word incarceration and racism also link together to explain how as a result of the War on Drugs, the U.S. is one of the top countries with the highest imprisonment rate and more African-Americans or low-class minorities are convicted of drug crimes than any other ethnicity or social class.

Read More

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

983 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

In The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander Analysis

2360 Words | 10 Pages

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

Read More

Annotated Bibliography: The New Jim Crow

1343 Words | 6 Pages

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.

Read More

The Never Ending Racism: The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

600 Words | 3 Pages

Their desperation leads them back to their criminal ways. In addition, criminals influence their children negatively because they are more likely to follow their fathers steps. The cycle creates a racial hierarchy because black men are continuously put in prison and therefore when they are out they are seen as criminals which puts them in the under class. As a result in the introduction of “The New Jim Crow,” Alexander states “Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied to participate in our electoral democracy.”

Read More

Police Brutality Synthesis Essay

1491 Words | 6 Pages

Synthesis Research Paper Everyday growing up as a young black male we have a target on our back. Society was set out for black males not to succeed in life. I would always hear my dad talk about how police in his younger days would roam around the town looking for people to arrest or get into an altercation with. As a young boy growing up I couldn’t believe some of the things he said was happening. However as I got older I would frequently hear about someone getting killed by the police force.

Read More

Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

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.

Read More

The New Jim Crow Analysis

1721 Words | 7 Pages

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.

Read More

Black Men Stereotypes

1714 Words | 7 Pages

Using several examples, my intention is to first bring attention to the fact that black men are feared in public spaces and then demonstrate how the United States government uses fear as a form of social control of black males. Through the use of unjust laws and policies – namely the government’s role in the creation of poor black neighborhoods and their targeting black men during the war on drugs – the U.S. has been implementing racial inequality and creating stereotypes. As stereotypes about black men are created and perpetuated, innocent men are viewed as a threat and treated as

Read More

Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Summary

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

Read More

Richard Nixon's Drug Crisis In The United States

1458 Words | 6 Pages

The drug trade is sometimes the only company or business to work for in extremely impoverished communities and the U.S government is punishing people for working for the only business in their area, and their only way to acquire a stable income. If drugs like marijuana were not so relentlessly hunted by the local police and DEA, the U.S could see a lot of people in these communities turn their illegal drug hustles into legitimate businesses leading to less violence in these communities and less people falling victim to a system meant to protect them like Dennis. Michelle Alexander further proves the disproportionate effect the War on Drugs has had on black communities when she compares numbers between pre-slavery America and the current America she sees when she looks around. Michelle has a Law degree from Stanford and has served for several years as director of the Racial Justice Project. She proves her prowess and knowledge in the subject of racial disparity in the United states when she states “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before

Read More

Mammies, Matriarchs, And Other Controlling Images

809 Words | 4 Pages

These manner of racism have led to the mass incarceration of African American in the world. Were present trends to continue, Alexander writes, the United States will imprison one-third of its African American population. When combined with the fact that whites are more likely to commit drug crimes than people of color, the issue becomes clear for Alexander. The Jim Crow law were to enforce the racial segregation with a belief of “separate but equal.” The war on drugs is a new strategy of segregating the African Americans from the mainstream ideology. 2.

Read More

More about Book Analysis: The New Jim Crow

Related Topics

Open Document