Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

In chapter three, Alexander argues that the structure of the drug war is designed in such a way, that it guarantees that its victims will consist of people from the society's undercaste. To begin with, Alexander states that there are two primary ways, in which an essentially “colorblind”criminal justice system can operate in such a discriminatory manner. The first way is by giving the police immense amounts of discretion to which they can choose whom to stop, question, frisk, search, and arrest. According to Alexander, African Americans, who became the victim of the media’s “criminalblackman” portrayal were once again victimized by law enforcement personnel that targeted them on due to their bias’ in believing that all African Americans were

First, I want to examine a particularly critical review of Alexander’s text by Joseph D. Osel. According to Joseph D. Osel’s, “while Alexander’s book claims to be concerned with exposing and describing the history and mechanisms of mass incarceration of the American ‘caste system,’ which affect the poor and people of color systematically and disproportionately, her work systematically, strangely, and empathically excludes these voices” (OSEL Whitewash). Osel goes on to contend that Alexander’s work provides the history of criminal justice and imprisonment with a “vast rhetorical and historical facelift where the most relevant and affected voices on the topic at hand are safely expunged from the discussion, from relevance, from history” (OSEL

Michelle Alexander is a writer and an advocate for civil rights. In her book she writes about the advantages of the civil rights movement, which has been the foundation by the mass imprisonment of African Americans during the war on drugs. She talks about the history of how race evolved from slavery to the civil war and from civil war to the civil rights movement. This definitely attracted unwanted attention from conservative politicians. Mass imprisonment was the portal to Michelle Alexander’s “New Jim Crow”.

The Behind the Veil project primary focused on recording and preserving the memory of African American life during the period of legal segregation in the south. The Behind the Veil Oral History Project by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies is the largest collection of oral history of the Jim Crow Era. From 1993 to 1995 researchers organized more than one thousand aged black southerners’ oral history interviews on their memories of the era of legal segregation. The accounts of the 1,260 interviews in this selection express the authentic personalities and moving personal stories that give the experience of the book a genuine feel of the South during the late-19th to mid-20th

In her article “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander powerfully argues that the American prison system has become a redesigned form of disenfranchisement of poor people of color and compares it to the racially motivated Jim Crow laws. She supports her assertions through her experiences as a civil rights lawyer, statistical facts about mass incarceration, and by comparing the continued existence of racial discrimination in America today to the segregation and discrimination during the Jim Crow laws. Alexander’s purpose is to reveal the similarities of the discriminatory and segregating Jim Crow laws to the massive influx of incarceration of poor people of color in order to expose that racism evolves to exist in disguised, yet acceptable forms

In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, she depicts the mass incarceration rate in American and recalls cases of people going to prison that personally affected here. The majority of the African-American men are either in prison or have some type of criminal record making it unable for them to vote and get jobs. Alexander describes the criminal justice systems as the “New Jim Crow,” a modern type of oppression for African Americans. Not only does FreeQuency talk about mass incarceration rate she also touches on police brutality in her poem. FreeQuency says, “criminal before child,” (FreeQuency, 59) and “I will not take it for Oscar Granted/that they will not come/and kill my son” (FreeQuency, 67-69).

21). America first saw the growth of the idea of race when slavery had come along, as well as, the extermination of the Native Americans after Columbus found the now United States; but before that, race was not important or similarly used in most societies (Alexander, 2012, p. 23). It is noted in the book that the racial caste system became concrete by the Mid 1770’s, and subsequently, minorities were consistently looked down upon while being viewed as inferior due to older beliefs from decades before. Slaves and minority workers were considered a lesser group, lacking intelligence and overall the ability to be similar to a white person (Alexander, 2012, p. 25). Even more concerning, is that Alexander discusses that the Constitution was perceived as colorblind because it never used the words like negro, yet it was made to keep blacks and whites separate (Alexander, 2012,

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

She first supports her claim by chronicling America 's history of institutionalized racism and systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans. Then, she discusses America 's War on Drugs that disproportionately targets minorities and finally as she examines the hardship faced by felons she compares and contrasts Jim Crow Laws to mass incarceration. Alexander surmises that mass incarceration is designed to maintain white supremacy and sustain a racial classification system. Alexander 's book is relevant to my research paper because she provides evidence that the criminal justice system is rooted in racism and directly linked to the racist agenda of the white supremacist. Broussard, B. (2015).

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.

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.

Separate but equal was allowed and was a law, yet as I read A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, set in 1959, there a distinct change In the book as well as the actual time period. the african American community where looking for equality, the mix that they despised decades earlier. Walter says “Mama – sometimes when I’m downtown and I pass them cool-quiet-looking restaurants where them white boys are sitting back and talking ‘bout things…sitting there turning deals worth millions of dollars…sometimes I see guys don’t look much older than me”. As I read*, I could newly feel his longing for an equal shot at life, for him to have the same opportunities as his white counterparts.

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.

Over the decades, mass incarceration has become an important topic that people want to discuss due to the increasing number of mass incarceration. However, most of the people who are incarceration are people of color. This eventually leads to scholars concluding that there is a relationship between mass incarceration and the legacy of slavery. The reason is that people of color are the individuals who are overrepresented in prison compared to whites. If you think about it, slavery is over and African Americans are no longer mistreated; however, that is not the case as African Americans continue to face oppression from the government and police force.

For example, open Black support of harsh punishment and law enforcement may seem hypocritical because in reality these policies and practices contribute to mass incarceration of Blacks. Alexander clarifies that Black support is more complex than it appears and can be attributed to a combination of complicity and wanting better safety for their communities and families (Alexander, 2012, p.210). Alexander also offers a unique perspective throughout the entire book by explaining how the systems of slavery and oppression have affected White individuals and not merely in the form of privilege or the dismissal of White people as simply as racist individuals. I resonated with one particular section discussing the "White victims of racial caste" (Alexander, 2012, p.204); the author 's anecdote of a white woman falling in love with a Black man and due to miscegenation laws could not have children. I could relate to this story on a deeply personal level in that my own parents experienced extreme and countless hurdles due to their interracial relationship and having biracial