Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow examines America’s latest racial system. The newest racial system to Alexander is mass incarceration. In the third chapter, entitled The Color of Justice, the main focus is the criminal justice system and the War on Drugs. Chapter four, The Cruel Hand, explains once how a criminal is treated as a second class citizen once they receive the label felon. This paper will take a critical look at these two chapters and discuss key points in Alexander's argument. I will explain how these two chapters have affected my opinion. Finally, I will explain how chapter three and four relates to the theme of our class.
Chapter three, The Color of Justice, starts off by explaining how the War on Drugs is the leading cause of mass incarceration in America. Alexander goes on to explain while the majority of the illegal drug users and dealers are white Americans, however, Latino and African Americans are incarcerated at a higher rate than whites (Alexander 98). Alexander accuses the police of using unlawful tactics and practices in poor neighborhoods which are predominantly black and Latin which helps incarcerate these two minority groups at a higher rate. Alexander raised some very interesting points with these two facts listed about, however, she may not be taking all factors into
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Everything we have talked about in class has prepared us for this book. We have spent a great deal of the class talking about racism, inequality, the makeup of US government systems, and if the US has changed. Our class is almost divided on how we feel about each of those topics, but this book just us more evidence for both sides of the argument. Part of the class can say this book helps to prove that racism is still big in American and the other part can use this book to say not it is not racism, but inequality is to blame. Both sides of the argument are important and one is not greater than the