The New Jim Crow Research Paper

Mass incarceration is known as a net of laws, policies, and rules that equates to the American criminal justice system. This series of principles of our legal system works as an entrance to a lifelong position of lower status, with no hope of advancement. Mass incarceration follows those who are released from prison through exclusion and legalized discrimination, hidden within America. The New Jim Crow is a modernized version of the original Jim Crow Laws. It is a modern racial caste system designed to keep American black men and minorities oppressed with laws and regulations by incarceration. The system of mass incarceration is the “new Jim Crow” due to the way the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as the main means of allowing discrimination and repression. America currently holds the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and even more African American men imprisoned, although white men are more likely to commit drug crimes but not get arrested. The primary targets of the criminal justice system are men of color. Mass incarceration is a rigid, complex system of racial control that resembles Jim Crow.

The permanence of one’s social exile is often the hardest to swallow. For many it seems unconceivable that for a minor offense, you can be subjected to discrimination, scorn, and exclusion for the rest of your life. When someone is convicted of crime today, their debt to society is never paid. The cruel hand that Frederick Douglas spoke of more than 150 years ago has appeared once again. In every state across our nation, African Americans, particularly in the poorest neighborhoods, are subjected to tactics and practices that would result in public outrage and scandal if committed in middle-class white neighborhoods. When the War on Drugs gained full steam in the mid-1980’s, prison admissions for African Americans skyrocketed , nearly quadrupling

In the book The New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander argues that a racial caste system still exists in the United States. Furthermore, this caste system is set up by the social control that is created by the discriminatory practices of the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs and mass incarcerations create a racial “undercaste” of African-Americans, by marginalizing ex-offenders in America. Within her arguments she describes the racist practices of, and policies surrounding, the War on Drugs. These extend from the police force on the ground, who are apprehending the criminals or, in many cases, innocent people, all the way to the practices of prosecuting and sentencing of these people. There are many instances where the injustices extend all the way to the Supreme Court. However, that may not be surprising given the fact that the War on Drugs is a federal government institution. This racism, while inherent, is not always apparent. In this paper I will assess the broken practices that the War on Drugs implements, including mass incarceration, and how racism is the basis for these practices. However, while it does show that racism does exist in these practices, Alexander doesn’t necessarily show that racism is the reason behind the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, but rather a by-product.

C. Vann Woodward’s most famous work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, was written in 1955. It chronicles the birth, formation, and end of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states. Often, the Jim Crow laws are portrayed as having been instituted directly after the Civil War’s end, and having been solely a Southern brainchild. However, as Woodward, a native of Arkansas points out, the segregationist Jim Crow laws and policies were not fully a part of the culture until almost 1900. Because of the years of lag between the Civil War/Reconstruction eras and the integration and popularity of the Jim Crow laws, Woodward advances that these policies were not a normal reaction to the loss of the war

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

Chapter eight of Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone is about the numbers and how they are involved in the criminal justice system. Chapter three of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about the racism that the War on Drugs has created. The main components of Policy Paradox include numbers being used as metaphors, numbers being used as norms and symbols, numbers being used in the polis, and the stories within numbers. The main components of The New Jim Crow is the McCleskey v. Kemp court case, the Purkett v. Elm court case, the Armstrong v. United States court case, discriminatory sentencing due to the war on drugs, and how race is a factor in policing. Chapter eight of Policy Paradox is about numbers and how they are involved in the criminal justice system.

Some say that nothing is ever truly brought to an end and that everything that once was will be again. That seems to be the case when discussing Michelle Alexander 's "The New Jim Crow", a nonfiction book that argues that Jim Crow has reemerged in the mass incarceration of black people in America. Originally, the name for this era we know as "Jim Crow" was inspired by a racist character played by Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice. During the 1800s, Rice would dress in blackface and perform a song titled "Jump Jim Crow". (Bart-Planged) A decade or so after slavery was abolished in 1865, the name of this belligerent character was used to label a new set of laws that plagued African Americans in pursuit of universal freedom in the United States from the 1870s to the 1960s. Alexander 's reasoning for rebranding this historical era of torment towards African Americans is to show two things. Firstly, America has not come as far as it likes to think it has as a country socially. The argument of racism being a something left in the past and that it does not marinate through America today is a poorly told myth. The only difference between now and a century ago is that racism is more institutionalized and internalized than blatant. Secondly, in the different section within the chapters she examines the racism in the form that it is more commonly seen in today: systematic and institutional. Recognizing the connection between Alexander 's theory and the

Members of the immigrant and juvenile population also find themselves being classified in this group, but this section focuses on how the incarceration rates disproportionately affect members of the African American community. Many Americans are serving time in prison on non-violent offense charges. As the rates of incarceration rise, so too has the number of private prisons increased from holding 7000 inmates in 1990 to holding 126,000 in 2010 (Brickner and Diaz). African Americans make up half of the state and federal prison population, “There are currently more black people under correctional control–either in prison or jail or on probation or parole–than were in slavery in 1850” (Jackson et al.). Because of the aforementioned war on drugs, blacks are targeted, arrested, and incarcerated on drug possession charges at higher rates than any other demographic “… there were 193 white American prison inmates per 100,000 whites, 688 Hispanic prison inmates per 100,000 Hispanic, and 1,571 African American prison inmates per 100,000 African American” (Irwin, Schiraldi and Ziedenberg 137). The ones who benefited from this disproportion were the private prison industries who took advantage of the influx of prisoners being supplied to the public sector prison because of the war on drugs. The members of the black community become the

Alexander provides an example in the book of a young single mother who is arrested with a group during a sweep. While being held, she has no one to care for her children, and she is not working. After several weeks she pleads guilty simply because waiting for justice to be served has meant a great deal of difficulty for her children, who are being kept in foster care. For the others in the group that were arrested, they are eventually found to be innocent of any wrongdoing. In the meantime, the young woman has become, at least on paper, a convict, and can no longer remain in federal public housing. The problem with justice is not a simple case of higher crime rates or criminality, it is how the criminal justice system interacts with factors in the community to create outcomes that are definitely not just. This seems like a subtle form of discrimination until the scale is understood. This systematic challenge to the black community impacts equality and equity, as criminal incarceration reduces access to economic opportunities and social mobility (Hagan and Foster, 259). Criminalization of black Americans results in the same outcomes as Jim Crow laws, in that black Americans are segregated and left without the power to vote or control their own lives. The discriminatory effects are also broader than just the criminal justice system. Social justice cannot be achieved while there are significant health disparities between black and non-black Americans which goes further than genetic and lifestyle issues (Boulware, 358). Black Americans are more likely to be betrayed by institutions such as health care, and this is reflected in high levels of distrust of authorities that, in addition to law enforcement, include nurses, physicians, school principals and

Loïc Wacquant, in describing the current prison regime, defined the current state of Black life as existing within a carceral continuum in which the ghetto is simply an extrajudicial prison and the prison is a judicial ghetto. Frank B. Wilderson would write that the carceral continuum is not an experience of Black life, but rather a condition of Black existence in which the paradigm of the slave ship is remade over and over again in the image of the plantation, Jim Crow, the ghetto and now the prison-industrial complex. Building off this, Michelle Alexander, in her article “The New Jim Crow, explores how this this timeless paradigm manifest currently, explaining that the manifestation of the prison system is the new Jim Crow. She explains that this occurs through the over-representation of minorities in prison and then their subjection to laws which effectively replicate Jim Crow. In short, the system never died, it just changed.

When starting this project I expected it to be no different than the research papers that I have written for my political science class, but this did not turn out to be the case. The history paper had much more depth and research that I had to do to complete the paper successfully. I accelerate in papers that are of interest to me, which is why I chose my topic. Jim Crow laws are something that we learn about during our whole time in school and I have always wanted to learn more.

Imagine being locked up in a cramped prison along side thousands of other inmates just for committing a minor crime. When you are finally liberated from the strict institution that’s been barricading you from society, you find that you’re stripped of basic rights to education, welfare, and so on. Scary is it not? Well, that’s the harsh reality behind mass incarceration. Mass incarceration has been an issue ever since the dawn of the “drug wars” back in the 80’s and 90’s. Millions of people were locked up for minor crimes, mostly nonviolent drug crimes, which resulted in lengthy prison sentences due to mandatory sentencing laws such as the Crime Bill that Bill Clinton enacted in 1994. As a result, the prison population nearly quintupled and many men went missing from society. What could fuel such motivation to lock away millions of people? In “The New Jim Crow”, Michelle Alexander holds a firm belief that the racist fictional character “Jim Crow” is secretly being kept alive and that many black men are being wrongfully locked away due to racial prejudice. Although she has some compelling arguments on the topic of mass incarceration, they’re simply not the case in today’s society. Only a small percentage of the prison population is made up of inmates serving mandatory sentences and the truth behind mass incarcerations ultimately comes down to the prevention of drug-related violence as well as improper prosecutors.

One form of the new Jim Crow takes is through the war on drugs. Alexander talks about the war on drugs primarily in Chicago. According to alexander 90 percent of the people arrested for drug related crimes in the state of Illinois are African American. The white drug offenders are rarely arrested compared to the blacks. Also, the whites

Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws endorsed between 1870 to the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was the name of the racial standing which operated mostly in southern and border states. Jim Crow was a way of life that consisted of an inflexible anti-black laws. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were demoted to the rank of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the sanction of anti-black racism. Jim Crow laws affected every area of the African American life.

A central theme in the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010) is The War