Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

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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. The new systematic way to oppress black people is prison. Alexander clearly states that her book was not written for everyone and that it has a “specific audience in mind-people who care deeply about racial justice but who, for any number of reasons, do not appreciate the magnitude of the crisis faced by communities of color as a result of mass …show more content…

A good example, of how she demonstrated this was on the very first page. Alexander gives an example of one man’s family, where no men for generations have been able to vote. First because of slavery, then Jim Crow, fear of the K.K.K., and now because he has been labeled a felon (1). She also successfully shows demonstrates how America’s drug war, poverty, and jail all go hand in hand.
I think that one of the main points was that “the Age of Colorblindness”. This current time period is supposed to be post racial and the new generations much more accepting. The book proves that racism is not over, and it is just now carried out in a new way. Black men are the group that are most affected by the prison system and are more likely to be stopped by the police than any other group of

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