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Chapter Summary: The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

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Recommended: Institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system

Synopsis In the introduction, Michelle Alexander (2010) introduces herself and expresses her passion about the topic of how the criminal justice system accomplishes racial hierarchy here in the United States. In chapter 1 of The New Jim Crow, Alexander (2010) suggests that the federal government can no longer be trusted to make any effort to enforce black civil rights legislation, especially when the Drug War is aimed at racial and ethnic minorities. In response to revolts formed between black slaves and white indentured servants, rich whites extended special privileges to their indentured servants that drove a wedge between them and the slaves that successfully stopped the revolts. The rich whites found success in giving some human rights to the indentured servants to stop them plotting with the slaves. Chapter 2 follows the corrupt justice system. Many people are brought into the justice system because of the War on Drugs without much thought of their guilt or innocence, police just so happened to “randomly” pull them over for a traffic stop because of their skin color. Convictions for drug offenses is the biggest cause of the explosion of incarnation rates in the United States. The reader learns in chapter 3 that the police pull people over for a traffic stop because their race, and that is often what justifies the polices reasonings. …show more content…

The justice system sentences black people to harsh punishments for minor offenses, where white people would walk away free for the same crime. Our color blindness prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions in society, such as the unequal schools, the isolated jobless ghettos, and the segregated society the justice system has built by locking up African American men for up to half their lives and missing out on their

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