Schuessler notes that the book has galvanized both black and white readers, some of whom view the work as giving voice to deep feelings that the criminal justice system is stacked against blacks, while others might question its portrayal of anti-crime policies as primarily motivated by racial animus.

[12] While studies show that quantitatively Americans of different races consume illegal drugs at similar rates,[13][verification needed] in some states black men have been sent to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times those of white men. Its emergence, she believes, is a direct response to the Civil Rights Movement. According to her, mass incarceration is "the most damaging manifestation of the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement", and those who feel that the election of Barack Obama represents the ultimate "triumph over race", and that race no longer matters, are dangerously misguided. The new Jim Crow : mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness / Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race. [15][16], Alexander maintains that this undercaste is hidden from view, invisible within a maze of rationalizations, with mass incarceration its most serious manifestation. [25], The book received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, saying that Alexander "offers an acute analysis of the effect of mass incarceration upon former inmates" who will be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives, and described the book as "carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable". By casting them as "savages," it excused the moral problem of terrorizing and killing other human beings and even became a justification. .

She contends that the system does not require overt racial hostility or bigotry on the part of another racial group or groups. [28] The Brookings Institution reconciles the differences between Alexander and Pfaff by explaining two ways to look at the prison population as it relates to drug crimes, concluding "The picture is clear: Drug crimes have been the predominant reason for new admissions into state and federal prisons in recent decades" and "rolling back the war on drugs would not, as Pfaff and Urban Institute scholars maintain, totally solve the problem of mass incarceration, but it could help a great deal, by reducing exposure to prison."[29]. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. [citation needed], Alexander believes that the existence of the New Jim Crow system is not disproved by the election of Barack Obama and other examples of exceptional achievement among African Americans, but on the contrary the New Jim Crow system depends on such exceptionalism. Stuck? "The New Jim Crow Study Guide." Save an extra 10% on almost everything & enjoy free shipping every day. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar.

It has the same tone of repetition, and provides little new information. Native Americans also became racialized as a way for European settlers to rationalize invading their territories. Once released from prison, new members of this undercaste face a “hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social exclusion”. In the capital city of Washington, D.C. three out of four young African American males are expected to serve time in prison. Alexander points out that a large percentage of African Americans are hindered by the discriminatory practices of an ostensibly colorblind criminal justice system, which end up creating an undercaste where upward mobility is severely constrained. In the War on Drugs, African Americans are subject to tactics and practices that would elicit public outrage if they hap... Alexander argues that a recently freed criminal today has few more rights than a freed black person in Mississippi at th... Presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a speech (2008) imploring black men to be better fathers.

Download a PDF to print or study offline. The following ISBNs are associated with this title: Sign up to get exclusive offers, the best in books & more.Plus, enjoy 10% off your next online purchase over $50.†. Schuessler also notes that Alexander's book goes further, by asserting that the increase in incarceration was a deliberate effort to roll back civil rights gains, rather than a true response to increased rates of violent crime. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarcerationin the United States, but Alexander noted that the discrimination faced by African-American males is prevalent among other minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged populations. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. Plantation owners then began to view Africans as "the ideal slaves," given their p… The US incarceration rate is eight times that of Germany, a comparatively developed large democracy.

Alexander argues that the system reflects an underlying racial ideology and will not be significantly disturbed by half-measures such as laws mandating shorter prison sentences. Course Hero. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have been involved in legal action, and grassroots campaigns have been organized, however Alexander feels that generally there is a lack of appreciation of the enormity of the crisis. The current rate of incarceration in the US is six to ten times greater than in other industrialized nations, and Alexander maintains that this disparity is not correlated to the fluctuation of crime rates, but can be traced mostly to the artificially invoked War on Drugs and its associated discriminatory policies. Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. [21], Alexander writes that Americans are ashamed of their racial history, and therefore avoid talking about race, or even class, so the terms used in her book may seem unfamiliar to many. In America, it emerged as a way of rationalizing slavery. She argues that when people of color are disproportionately labeled as “criminals”, this allows the unleashing of a whole range of legal discrimination measures in employment, housing, education, public benefits, voting rights, jury duty, and so on. [23], Jennifer Schuessler, writing in the New York Times, notes that Alexander presents voluminous evidence in the form of both statistics and legal cases to argue that the tough-on-crime policies begun under the Nixon administration and amplified under Reagan's war on drugs have devastated black America, where nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison during their lifetimes, and where many of these men will be second-class citizens afterwards. The New Jim Crow Summary & Study Guide Michelle Alexander and Michelle McCool This Study Guide consists of approximately 27 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The New Jim Crow. Course Hero. [27], John Pfaff, in his book Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, criticizes Alexander's assertion that the Drug War is responsible for mass incarceration. Americans want to believe that everybody is capable of upward mobility, given enough effort on his or her part; this assumption forms a part of the national collective self-image. [7] The government's successful media campaign made possible an unprecedented expansion of law enforcement activities in America's urban neighborhoods, and this aggressive approach fueled widespread belief in conspiracy theories that posited government plans to destroy the black population. If large numbers of the accused could be persuaded to opt out of plea bargaining and demand a full trial by jury, to which they are constitutionally entitled, the criminal justice system in its present form would be unable to continue because of lack of resources (it would "crash").

[4] The culmination of this social control is what Alexander calls a “racial caste system”, a type of stratification wherein people of color are kept in an inferior position. 1 Oct. 2020. Your review has been submitted and will appear here shortly. Criminal justice was not listed as a top priority of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in 2007 and 2008, or of the Congressional Black Caucus in 2009. [26], James Forman, Jr argues that though the book has value in focusing scholars (and society as a whole) on the failures of the criminal justice system, it obscures African-American support for tougher crime laws and downplays the role of violent crime in the story of incarceration. Copyright © 2016. Disparate sentencing policies (the crack cocaine v. powdered cocaine penalty disparity was 100-1 by weight and remains 18-1 even after recent reform efforts) meant that a disproportionate number of inner city residents were charged with felonies and sentenced to long prison terms, because they tended to purchase the more affordable crack version of cocaine, rather than the powdered version commonly consumed in the suburbs. In Course Hero. "The New Jim Crow Study Guide." Have study documents to share about The New Jim Crow?