Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Understanding Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness"

Emma: Amazing book.. Will change how you feel

United Kingdom on May 20, 2023

Steven H Propp: Michelle Alexander is a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary. She wrote in the Preface to the 10th Anniversary Edition of this book, “[In 2008] I wanted Barack Obama to win. And I feared it. I worried that, if a black man were elected president … our nation would sink further into denial, and no one would listen to the message that I felt desperate to convey: we are not free of our racial history. To the contrary, a new caste system has been born again in America, a system of mass incarceration unlike anything the world has ever seen… I was right to worry.” (Pg. x)

She continues, “I did not, and could not, know when writing this book that our nation would soon awaken violently from its brief colorblind slumber… We now have white nationalist movements operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re … recruiting thousands into their ranks. We have a president who routinely unleashes hostile tirades against black and brown people---calling Mexican migrants ‘murderers,’ ‘rapists,’ and ‘bad people,’ referring to developing African nations as ‘s-ithole countries,’ and smearing the majority-black city of Baltimore as a...

United States on Feb 11, 2021

Me: I think that this is a book to consider carefully before making too many judgments. I found myself as a comfortable white middle class guy from the UK being able to sit back and analyse this from the point of view of someone who simply hasn't got a clue. I found myself saying to myself 'Well then stop carrying and taking drugs and then there will be nothing to worry about' and wondering that surely it can't be that widespread? The book does play a bit too much on the minor offence of drug possession and it certainly was interesting to hear about the difference in treatment between whites and people of colour (such a strange term). Throw in factors like the messed up plea bargain process and the abuse of stop and search that leads to people confessing to crimes just to cut a theoretical sentence short and it starts to get really ugly. I couldn't help but keep saying, surely it can't be that widespread, surely there is a wholesale blindness to the incarceration of non whites, surely they've committed crimes an they know the penalty. I still find myself wondering why anyone would carry drugs in a place where the minimum mandatory sentence is so shocking. This book talks too much...

United Kingdom on Mar 02, 2018

fff: Ich habe dieses Buch für eine Studienarbeit bestellt. Es erklärt die unter dem Deckmantel "colorblindness" herrschende Rassendiskriminierung in den USA.
Absolut lesenswert!

Germany on Jul 27, 2017

J. Baldwin: Alexander argues in 'The New Jim Crow' that the US War on Drugs (launched by Reagan and escalated under Clinton - years in which drug use was actually in decline) has led directly to the mass incarceration of the young adult male African American population in the US. She uses an impressive array of statistical data to support her claim that the rhetoric of the drugs war, though 'racially sanitized', has produced a "new system of racialized social control" and that this development has been facilitated by the courts (including the US Supreme Court) which have turned a blind eye to racial bias in law enforcement by police, prosecutors and judges.

Some of the statistical materials that Alexander provides to support her arguments are scarcely believable. Take, for example, the fact that in major US cities up to 80% of all young African American males now have a criminal record; that in at least 15 US states the rate of imprisonment of blacks on drugs charges is 20 to 50 times higher than that of whites (even though the evidence shows that white youths are more likely to be involved in drug usage), and that over 31 million people have been arrested for drugs offences since the...

United Kingdom on Jul 29, 2016

Kris: This book will change the way you think about criminal and judicial systems in the US. It will shine a light on a new form of segregation based on Race.

After looking at a pamphlet, proclaiming that Drug War is the new Jim Crow, the author ignored it as a theory promoted by a bunch of conspiracy guys. She continues in her job as a civil rights lawyer, but in due course realises that the statement was actually true. Millions of black and brown people in the US are languishing behind bars because of the Drug war that was unleashed during the 80’s when Ronald Regan was the president. The outcome of her quest to expose the truth is this book. And what a fantastic book this is.

Here are the key points raised in the book:

1. The race based segregation never went away, it just changed to a form that was more palatable to the prevalent norms in the society. Started as Slavery, ended with the civil war in 1865. Transformed to Jim crow laws, ended with the civil rights law in 1964. Transformed to War on drugs in the 1980’s, and still going on. It’s like a chameleon changing colours to avoid being detected

2. The criminal and judicial systems act in tandem...

United Kingdom on May 19, 2016

S: The New Jim Crow’s thesis is that US corporate, government and investment elites have for centuries maintained economic hegemony by dividing the lower classes so that they could not form a unified front against their owner’s machinations. The biggest tool used for this purpose has been racial division sown through slavery, Jim Crow and now, the post Jim Crow era (“The New Jim Crow”) system. While other ethnicities were added ad-hoc, the primary targets were and are African Americans.

During each race-system era the architecture of division has been designed to create a permanent black underclass that placate poor whites with feelings of superiority and a scapegoat as. This effective plan has kept the masses from uniting by keeping them occupied struggling amongst themselves along racial lines rather than realize the true causes of their economic and political struggles.

The New Jim Crow framework is comprised of disenfranchising the black community across the spectrum of social and civic life via mass incarceration catalyzed by the War on Drugs guise. She shows how members of the black community (who are disproportionately affected by these laws, including...

United States on May 03, 2016