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The New Jim Crow Essay

421 Words2 Pages

Even before our nation’s founding, people of color have been discriminated. Decades pass and the criminal justice system is still “racist” labeling people of color as criminal, meaning black equal criminals therefore is fine to discriminate people of color just because they’re criminals. In “The New Jim Crow” the system targets black men because they are associated with crime, meaning crime stands in for race. In the other hand, As Heather Mac Donald writes in her book “The War on Cops”, “The criminal-justice system does treat individual suspects and criminals equally, they concede. But the problem is how society defines crime and criminals” (154). Society is the one who chooses who is criminal. In this case society is stripping off the rights of people of color. As Barack Obama say in “The War on Cops”, “blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates, are …show more content…

Making The War on Drug a top priority meant that other serious crimes like rape and murder would not be considered important as drug crimes. The federalization of drug as crime violated beliefs of states’ rights as street crime is what necessitates law enforcement. In the breathtaking book, “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, “Huge cash grants were made to those law enforcement agencies that were willing to make drug-law enforcement a top priority”(73). Putting money on agencies to go towards a specialized narcotics task force meant that other more serious crimes are not taken as serious as drugs crimes. There are grand theft and violent assaults, which are a greater threat to communities than illegal drug use and abuse. The federal dollar began to flow and agencies were getting equipment and training. Local police forces used their funds to get military equipment. A retired police in New Haven said, “I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted”(74). Obviously, we as a society are not getting what we need from our nation’s police. Justice system

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“She would impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom” (Wright 2). In “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” Richard Wright, speaks of his own experiences growing up in the half century after slavery ended, and how the Jim Crow laws had an effect on them. Wright’s experiences support the idea that a black person could not live a life relatively free of conflict even if they adhered to the ethics of Jim Crow. The first experience that Wright describes came when he was only a young boy living in Arkansas. He and his friends had been throwing cinder blocks and they found themselves in a ‘war’ against a group of white boys.

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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.

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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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In the opening of the introduction of The New Jim Crow the author clearly outlines the power of one race to another for example how the great-great grandfather of Jarvis’s Cotton was denied to vote for being a slave (Alexander 2010). The great grandfather of Jarvis’s beaten to death by the Klan for attempting to vote (Alexander 2010) and Jarvis himself could not vote because he was labeled as a felon. Most offenders today that get out from prison face discrimination in voting, employment, housing and receiving public assistance linking toward the Jim Crow era. Most incarcerated individuals are still racially segregated which racial bias still exist in our criminal justice system today not only in the Southern states. Some people still believe

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We live in a society where ethnic minorities are target for every minimal action and/or crimes, which is a cause to be sentenced up to 50 years in jail. African Americans and Latinos are the ethnic minorities with highest policing crimes. In chapter two of Michelle Alexander’s book, The Lockdown, we are exposed to the different “crimes” that affects African American and Latino minorities. The criminal justice system is a topic discussed in this chapter that argues the inequality that people of color as well as other Americans are exposed to not knowing their rights. Incarceration rates, unreasonable suspicions, and pre-texts used by officers are things that play a huge role in encountering the criminal justice system, which affects the way

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How do you think a modern person would struggle during Jim Crow Laws? During 1865, when Reconstruction started, Black Louisianan's gain their freedom as slavery ended and recied privileges like voting rights. When Reconstruction ended, Black Louisianan's lives struggled more because of Jim Crow Laws ing introduced. Black Louisianan's esisted Jim Crow segregation in multiple ways. Black Louisianians resisted Jim Crow segregation in many ways, including sueing for more freedom, planning protest and a boycott, ignored cartain laws, and making people change laws.

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Slavery is over therefore how can racism still exist? This has been a question posed countlessly in discussions about race. What has proven most difficult is adequately demonstrating how racism continues to thrive and how forms of oppression have manifested. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, argues that slavery has not vanished; it instead has taken new forms that allowed it to flourish in modern society. These forms include mass incarceration and perpetuation of racist policies and societal attitudes that are disguised as color-blindness that ultimately allow the system of oppression to continue.

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