New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander's the New Essay

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New Jim Crow

Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness offers a scathing and disturbing portrait of institutionalized racism in the United States. In an article written for the Huffington Post that supplements her book, Alexander states plainly: "There are more African-Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began." Beginning with this central fact, Alexander discusses the use of incarceration as a new form of slavery and segregation. African-Americans have been systematically excluded from access to social and cultural capital, excluded from access to economic and political empowerment. The election of Barak Obama has not changed much for the majority of African-Americans who contend with institutionalized racism and systematic poverty and disenfranchisement. "As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified," (Alexander, "The New Jim Crow"). Alexander places the incarceration problem within a framework of racism, showing that the oppression of blacks is endemic and systematic.

Reducing the problem to the belief that blacks commit more crimes and therefore a disproportionate number of blacks are in prison reflects ignorance of the systematic problems plaguing the American criminal justice system. In fact, these problems are sociological in nature and stem back to the depths of the nation's history. Slavery led to Jim Crow, which led to the outright disenfranchisement of communities and the dismantling of families due to impoverishment.

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White supremacy flourished throughout much of the twentieth century and continues to do so today, especially in Texas. Alexander shows that the incarceration rates and demographics in the United States are a symptom of a wider problem. Coming from a law background, Alexander's perspective lacks a complete sociological analysis, but the author makes up for that by framing the issue as a matter of simple law.

The author's facts are correct, too. According to a Justice Policy Institute Report," "the fact that the expanding use of incarceration in Texas disproportionately affects the state's non-White citizens remains undeniable." Alexander's The New Jim Crow is divided into six chapters, each of which shows how the criminal justice system is failing millions of Americans. As Alexander states, "the way the system actually works bears little resemblance to what happens on television or in movies," (58). At every level of its operation, the criminal justice system is skewed against those who have no social, economic, or political power. From the definition of what constitutes a crime, to the methods by which police apprehend suspects, to the process of arrest, trial, and conviction -- each of these stages is weighted in favor of whites against non-whites. Alexander focuses firmly on the War on Drugs as the prime example of where the United States has gone wrong. "With only a few exceptions," states the author, "the Supreme Court has seized every opportunity to facilitate the drug war, primarily….....

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