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The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander: Chapter Analysis

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Michelle Alexander is a freelance writer, public speaker, and a consultant with advocacy organizations committed to ending mass incarceration. Alexander wrote her NAACP Image Award winning book called The New Jim Crow in 2011. Her book describes in depth details about racial justice and mass incarceration for people of color. “How could the War on Drugs operate in the discriminatory manner…when hardly anyone advocates or engages in explicit race discrimination” (Alexander, 2011, p. 102). Alexander asks this question and answers it as a whole throughout chapter 3. This essay will analyze and evaluate Chapter 3, which is called The Color of Justice, explaining policies, Supreme Court rulings, and everyday practices. The chapter starts off by …show more content…

100). At the same time, however, police officers also target more Africa American communities due to high crime rates. Even though the crime rates in Black communities are not as high as it has been, those communities are still targeted. Mass incarceration, on the other hand, is not due to the fact of these crime rates. According to Alexander’s (2011) studies, “As of September 2009, only 7.9 percent of federal prisoners were convicted of violent crimes” (West & Sobol, 2010, p. 101). So the question is, what is causing mass incarceration if not crime …show more content…

Because of these rules that law enforcement officials have created, mass incarceration rates have sky rocketed. When the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education (1995) released their survey, the noticed that 95 percent of people described an African American person to be a typical drug user and only five percent of people described the typical drug consumer to be of another race. Nonetheless, the people in the 95 percent range showed cognitive bias as a result of only 15 percent of African Americans in 1995 were drug users. Where as, the majority of the White race consisted of drug users. Alexander responds by saying, “There is no reason to believe that the survey results would have been any different if police officers or prosecutors have been the respondents” (2011, p. 106). Alexander, in fact, shows great evidence here by comparing the racial drug survey to our law enforcement officials today. Since the majority of colored people are in our jails today, this evidence and research back up the fact that African Americans and Latinos are targeted by law

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