The New Jim Crow Summary

In light of my freshman year summer reading assignment of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, I found intergroup theory to be an intriguing solution to Alexander’s assertion. Intergroup theory proposes that both organization groups and identity groups affect one’s intergroup relations and thereby shape one’s cognitive formations (Ott, Parks, Simpson, 2008). Alexander exchanges her views on the correlation between race related issues specific to African American males and mass incarceration in the United States. Further, Alexander goes on to provide statistics to show how African American males are predisposed to mass incarceration. I feel the solutions to the problems Alexander raise in her

The study concluded that White athletes who played on team sports with Black athletes expressed less prejudice than White athletes who competed in individual sports with Black athletes (Brown, Brown, Jackson, Sellers, and Manuel 2003). In a different view, another instance of the theory’s success was a study conducted that assuaged the predisposition directed toward homosexuals. In the application of the Intergroup Contact Theory to heterosexuals and homosexuals, college students who reported amiable exchanges with a homosexual were likely to generalize from that experience and approve of homosexuals as a group (Herek, 1987). Furthermore, a national study of socially interactive contact and heterosexuals' thoughts concerning gay men revealed that increased contact "predicted attitudes toward gay men better than did any other demographic or social psychological variable” (Herek and Glunt's 1993). The variables were sexual orientation, geographic residence, educational background, religious affiliation, marital status, ethnicity, political beliefs, age, and quantity of