The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration Essay

Michelle Alexander in her eye-opener novel, The New Jim Crow, makes a dauntless premise that the racial caste system that was supposedly ended in America during the Civil Rights Movement still exists today and is completely redesigned in the sense that colored men are the target of an intentional “War on Drugs.” Alexander claims that the criminal justice system is used as a mean to racially control millions of colored people and the same system is used to demote them to a second-class citizen status. Alexander employs a great deal of rhetoric in her novel to appeal to the reader’s emotions and values, so that she is able to alter the ethos of the readers and ultimately reveal the blindness present in the United States Justice System. Alexander

Racism effects the the high incarceration rates according to Michelle Alexander, the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. This scholar writes about how the civil rights movement has been taken back by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. Alexander also explains how the severe consequences that these black men carry on after being incarcerated, for example not being able to get school grants or housing. The author continues to argues that all it takes is a major social movement to end americas new caste system and that it is inhumane to treat any race less then the other. Agreeing with Alexander, I believe that every race deserves equal opportunity and that high mass incarceration rates are the way they are because of racism by the criminal justice system.

Michelle Alexander begins her story of “The New Jim Crow”, as she provides her thoughts and arguments on Chapter one of “the rebirth of caste”. The Chapter explains the myths provided towards slavery after the civil war, as black people weren’t exactly free. Whites were furious and felt the issue of the law was unnecessary, which led to a continuous fight to revert the law to their only source of income. African Americans were finally given a break; however the actions of white southern began to cause further issues towards the development in the United States. Chapter two “The Lockdown” than proceeded as racism began to grow towards the law enforcement, and the development of Southern whites creating the Ku Klux Klan. Alexander argues about the crackdown of unreasonable searches occurred under law enforcement, and how African Americans are targeted.

The purpose of this study is to expose the process of mass incarceration of poor black males, and females increasingly, within the context of a fabricated war on drugs which really is serving to keep the prison population booming by exploiting traditionally disadvantaged minorities in society. Alexander rightfully calls this a ?redesign? of the old racial caste system in America which was supposed to have been destroyed by the civil rights movement. The war on drugs in the 80s merely became the newest vehicle by which to exploit the black community in this country. The War on Drugs is really the rationale for racial control, which targets black men and women and relegates millions of citizens to what Alexander calls a ?second class status (Alexander, 2012).?

A large reason for the writing of this book is that there is currently not much research concerning or call for a criminal justice reform. According to Alexander, the main goal of the book is to “stimulate a much-needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States” (2012:16). Another premise for this research is that it is no longer socially correct to use race to discriminate against people, so Alexander argues that society as a whole is now

The premise of the ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness’ by Michelle Alexander, is to refute claims that racism is dead and argue that the War on Drugs and the federal drug policy unfairly targets communities of color, keeping a large majority of black men of varying ages in a cycle of poverty and behind bars.

The novel The New Jim Crows by Michelle Alexander is an examination of how the criminal justice system functions as a structure of racial bias. People of color are rendered second-class citizens after imprisonment by a racial caste system that marginalizes citizens of politically, economically, and socially. The novel begins with an explicit history of the black community in America. She depicts the chronological events of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights Movement, and today. Mass incarceration in America functions as a racial caste system, evidently like how the Jim Crow once operated. Once incarcerated citizens leave prison, they are prohibited to basic human rights, because of the systematic discrimination with public benefits like access to education, employment, and housing. The author applied above sufficient research; The New Jim Crow has a lengthy bibliography which supports the author's claims. Also, Michelle Alexander comes from a truly educated background. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt and Stanford. With a professional background in numerous highly prolific places; such as, the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU and a law clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court. Her professional career has been devoted to the seeking of civil rights which The New Jim Crows centers on. The author possibly

The United States has the biggest prison and jail population in the world not only by population, but also by sheer numbers. Many of these offenders are behind bars for nonviolent drug crimes and statistically more of those non-violent offenders are African American. African Americans are 13% of the United States Population but make up over 40% of the current jail and prison population. A black man is five times more likely to be convicted of a crime than a white man in the United States. How far have we really come sinse the Jim Crow laws? During the Jim Crow Era African-Americans in some states were treated as second-class citizens in every aspect of life from how they interact with White Americans to not having the right to vote. Many

The New Jim Crow argues that our country’s federal drug policy unfairly targets people of color, which keeps millions of young, black men behind bars, and in a cycle of poverty. The book starts off by disproving claims about racism being dead. Alexander goes on to state an enormous amount of African Americans are still not allowed to vote because of the rule, felons cannot vote. This is unfair because thousands of African Americans have served time in prison as a result of drug

Americans think they live in a colorblind society and do not discriminate based on race. The fact is Americans have Barack Obama as their president. Some might argue as long as there are exceptional blacks there are no excuses for all blacks to succeed. Although, Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, challenges American’s colorblindness by bringing to light the mass incarceration of African Americans. Jim Crow laws are no longer legal, but there is a new way to segregate: mass incarceration. The mass incarceration of blacks has created a racial underclass; a population with second-class status based on their criminal records (Alexander, 2012).

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012), Michelle Alexander empathizes on the issues of the complex of criminal justice systems which has a significant impact on people of color as The New Jim Crow. She also attaches significant to the racial dimensions of the “War on Drugs” because the convictions for drug offenses are only the most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States. This argues that federal drug policy inequity targets groups of color, keeping millions of young, black men in a vicious cycle behind the bars.

Author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and an associate professor here at Ohio State, wrote an article “Why Hilary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.” This article not only touches on how Hilary Clinton is only using black people as her “winning card (Alexander, 2)” in the 2016 Election, but also her past decisions she made as the wife of the 42nd President of the United States that should be taken into consideration by black voters. Mrs. Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the two Democratic Party presidential candidates. Although Bernie Sanders promises “a political revolution that will bring universal healthcare, a living wage, an end to rampant Wall Street greed, and the dismantling of the vast prison state...(Alexander, 5),” Hilary Clinton seems to be receiving all of the black votes, according to recent polls. Alexander explains that because many African Americans believed (and still believe) that Bill Clinton was the first “black president,” Ms. Clinton will receive several black votes.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book written by Michelle Alexander. This book explains the mass incarceration that African-American males faced in the United States. Alexander uses many examples of discrimination throughout the book, but the most prevailing one to me was how the criminal justice system used to the War on Drugs. Alexander describes a “racial caste system” as a way that African-Americans are kept at a lower social standing then the white people. The way that Alexander presents her arguments allows we the reader to see the true racism that was faced by African- Americans. This book gives many arguments but there are some main arguments that Alexander stresses throughout the book that

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration on the Age Colorblindness written by legal scholar, Michelle Alexander, explores a new caste system that targets black or brown men across improvised communities in the United States. According to Alexander, The New Jim Crow laws were created to hinder the growth of black or brown men by using the criminal justice system to enslave them into a vicious cycle of oppression. The Jim Crow laws that relished our nation’s history so many years earlier has resurfaced and consequently lodged many minority men into second class citizenship and allow law enforcement officers to saturate black communities and discriminate against citizens that fit a certain profile—black or brown. Alexander reveals a

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness goes into great detail on race related issues that were specific to black males, the mass incarceration, and how that lead to the development of institutionalized racism in the United States. She compares the Jim Crow with recent phenomenon of mass incarceration and points out that the mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that have been working together to warrant the subordinating status of black males. In this paper I will go into a brief examination of the range of issues that she mentions in her book that are surrounding the mass incarceration of black male populations.