Jaclyn Seigel Doctor Morales PHM2121 30 April 2015 “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” By Michelle Alexander; An Evaluation In “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness” by Michelle Alexander, Alexander explains her opinion on mass incarceration and “The War on Drugs.” Even though “The War on Drugs” took few steps forward to eliminating drug abuse, Michelle Alexander’s book explains how this has created more problems rather than solutions. Alexander focuses on how African American communities have become more vulnerable to the arrests. Authorities will target these communities even though this is not where the crime is happening. Lastly, many people are labeled ‘felons’ for life, even …show more content…
The caste system locks people up behind bars, literally and fundamentally, and creates a new life; essentially, for many men and women in low-income black communities. During the Reagan Administration, “The War on Drugs” began. Overall, this lead to mass incarceration and African Americans were targeted even though a majority of the drug abusers were white. Since then, mass incarceration has become a prevalent issue in today’s society. Michelle Alexander does a phenomenal job at presenting her …show more content…
Alexander focuses on how African American communities have become more vulnerable to the arrests. Authorities will target these communities even though this is not where the crime is happening. Lastly, many people are labeled ‘felons’ for life, even though they have only committed one victimless crime. Michelle Alexander summarizes her opinion by saying, “We have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it.” Even though America has taken many small steps to move forward from segregation, black individuals are locked up behind bars and will struggle for the rest of their lives to escape from the ‘felon’ title. “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander has showcased her opinion, and ultimately stretched my opinion. I can confidently say that I agree with Michelle Alexander’s opinion and conclusion of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration of
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
The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness written by Michelle Alexander discusses the old racial caste systems and the system of mass incarceration, and she uses analogies to show different parallels and similarities between them. Alexander states it is creating a modern racial caste system. She asks where have all the good black men gone, and uses examples like Obama's speech on the black stereotype of fathers who are nowhere to be found. She's explaining how many look into this idea but don't reasonably solve the question. Alexander answers the question by saying they are warehoused in prison; locked in cages.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a non fiction book written by Michelle Alexander, a well known civil rights lawyer, is a book that every American citizen should read. Alexander’s book cover is of three metal bars and two strong black hands holding them tightly. The book spent multiple weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list and has a foreword written by Cornel West, he is a well known and respected social activist. The book discuss how the new system of oppression for people of color in the United States is mass incarceration. Jim Crow laws were a systematic way to segregate and discriminate against black people.
Michelle alexander states in her book that “1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men” (61). The idea of incarceration, in this situation, mass incarceration is
Michelle Alexander - The New Jim Crow In “The New Jim Crow”, author Michelle Alexander argues that the war on drugs is just an excuse to target African Americans and keep millions of black people in poverty or in jail. Alexander thinks that racism is still very prevalent in today’s world. She believes that the criminal justice system uses the system of mass incarceration to control black people and exclude them from the political process. Many African American people are not allowed to vote because they have gone to jail and they are labeled felons for life.
After the Civil War, people of color were arrested in mass numbers, as the words, “except as a punishment for crime” allowed them to be enslaved and used for free labor to rebuild the economy (13th, 3:50). The documentary explains how several presidential campaigns, the war on drugs, the 1994 crime bill, the portraying of black people as “super predators” in the media, and the impact of ALEC and its partnership with the CCA have largely affected the rates of people of color being incarcerated on the terms of injustice and the racist system that history has
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).
Alexander’s book introduction addresses some of the injustices that minorities especially African Americans have to endure under the war on drugs. However, Alexander also points out that drug crimes are relatively low compared to other countries meaning that there is no correlation at all between rising efforts on law enforcement funding and declining crime rates. Alexander comes to the conclusion that the current criminal justice system is set up to keep social control over minorities. The New Jim Crow assignment has a total of twenty six questions.
Chapter 2 She wrote “uncultivated barbarian from Africa” could be civilized, that enslaved Africans “may be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train” (Wheatley, 1773). The timeline ends in the 2010’s with “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” by Michelle Alexander. The author wrote” Two years after Obama’s election, Alexander put the entire criminal justice system on trial, exposing racial discrimination from lawmaking to policing to the denial of voting rights to ex-prisoners. This best seller struck the spark that would eventually light the fire of Black Lives Matter(KENDI,2017).” Ibram X Kendi also wrote a booked called “Stamped from the Beginning” which David Olusogo wrote about in his article posted on the Guardian
Another component of the prison-industrial complex are courts. Our court system is overburdened with cases of poor people who cannot pay bail, as well as public defenders whose caseload are so large that it does not allow them to dedicate the proper amount of time to each case. Many times this results in a large number of public defenders pushing for defendants to take plea deals. This infringes on a defendant 's fifth amendment right to trial by jury (see appendix 1). Many of the people targeted by police for surveillance are those who later face time in court fighting for their freedom.
Ultimately, the disparities of dehumanization among African Americans has allowed for inmates to experience increased violence. In the article Women, Girls, and Mass Incarceration, Michele
Aditi Patel Representing race Blockson Project 12/11/17. For the Blockson Project I found really interesting book “The new Jim Crow : mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander. I had this book for my other class and when I was reading it, I found this book boring and I thought that the book is disturbing.
In Invisible Men, Becky Pettit introduces the theory that many Americans are seemingly “invisible” due to the fact that most national surveys, such as the Current Population Survey do not include incarcerated persons which lead to skewed statistics that are misrepresentative of the United States population. Pettit argues that the exclusion of inmates from national surveys creates discrepancies in United States economic, political, and social conditions. Further, Pettit argues that mass incarceration has hidden racial inequalities for many years. Throughout Invisible Men, Pettit develops her argument by presenting numerous examples that show how the rising incarceration rate has lead to the invisibility of African-American men in our current society.
Michelle Alexander argues in her introduction to the New Jim Crow that the racial caste in America has not ended and that it just has been redesigned. She highlights the ways that the justice system of the United States controls blacks through deliberately imposed legal restrictions. The United States has the leading incarceration rates in the world and most of the individuals involved with the country’s correctional system are African-American men. This essay seeks to discuss the author’s overall argument in the book. The essay will also discuss how the topics in the first three chapters of the book help Alexander develop this argument.
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.