This book has open has opened my eyes to many things that I didn’t know. The New Jim Crow is a book that looks back on the event that happened thousands of years ago. The book deals with racisms, laws, ad imprisonment. This book allowed one to have different views about African Americans. Everyone has a voice being an Africa American it took a while for their voice to be heard. Upon reading this book, I have not heard Michelle Alexander. My expectation for the book was not high. When a person hasn’t heard of a previous author, there an expectation is really not that good. However, that has changed when I stared to read it. My thoughts on reading the book it portrayed African Americans as not having a voice in society. I believe that the …show more content…
There are a lot of African American males without jobs due to their criminal background. Receiving government assistance can be beneficial for a family. However, disastrous if someone found out that an individual with a felony is living with them they can lose everything. It’s very hard for a criminal to find a job, a place to live knowing if they don’t have family that is willing to take them in. Everywhere that these individual turned they couldn’t get away from it. Only because, it was on School application, Housing applications, Welfare applications. The question always remains the same “Have you ever been convicted of a felony or crime”. Jobs did go out on limp and gives these individual a job or a trial period, it’s only a few that …show more content…
There were white people that was slaves, they was just take cheaper wages, and overseeing African American in the cotton field. My reaction to reading this book was not very good. I didn’t go in reading this book with a clear mindset. If I had did some research prior to reading this book? My reactions would have been different. Even though, I heard of the name Jim Crow in a previous history and social work class. I really never thought it would go into that much detail. However, after reading the book and understanding the book my actins now are totally different. I actually had to read the book twice for me to actually really get the full understanding. Even though, African American did endure hardship, we stuck through it and made it work. My personal reactions are why society always portrays Africana American as the black
What surprised me the most was that African Americans were treated with tremendous disrespect just because they were hired for low pay. They were treated like stray dogs, and that they were the lowest of the low. Even in the book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,
There weren't as many slave’s working in the small farms. The slave’s had to do the same amount of work as the slave’s in plantation, if not then more. In the book it asserts, “You are a slave, not a person”(41). This demonstrates how the owners looked at the slaves. They treated them very badly and acted as if they were any different then
I could better understand how life really was for African Americans after slavery, after hundred years of being free. It is interesting that after the slavery was abolished still existed that kind of treatment for black people. I acquire knowledge about life in Atlanta for African Americans is was different from other states in the south, the author said, “ But Atlanta changed my mind. Atlanta has gone far in proving that “the problem” can be solve and in showing us they way to do it” (139). Despite segregation and discrimination in Atlanta, African Americans were working together to fights for their rights.
The novel is a conversation between Alexander and the United States Criminal Justice system, white people, people of color; she uses the passion of an activist to talk to the people and inform them that if they care about the future, humanity, and equality, America needs to start paying attention to the lesser-known injustices and microaggressions to make a change in to end the “racial caste system” in which Americans have been living in for far too long. Alexander enhanced a complex topic by effortlessly recounting it without any elementary language or speech. Her work, while easy to comprehend, may still be hard to read for all of the driven language and the truths that she reveals about America’s past, as well as its present. While the book points out that the similarities of our current Justice system to the old Jim Crow Laws are not as stark, Alexander never points out the differences, which makes her analogy incomplete in its full comparison. This may be done for the effect to take the reader’s attention away from the dissimilarities as the United States commonly only focuses on the differences of how people of color were treated then versus now because it is certainly less extreme.
The New Jim Crow was written by Michelle Alexander and was created to educate people on the new “caste system” that is being ignored by those it has no effect on. It is a serious discussion that has been avoided for far too long. Michelle Alexander did a great job getting the ball rolling on this topic in her book. To touch on some of the points made I will be looking at the foreword, introduction, chapter 1, and chapter 6.
What was never presented was the point of view from the African Americans because it was seemingly dismissed. It was eye-opening to read about the experience from an African’s perspective because it brought a whole new light to my understanding of what it meant to be a slave and the struggles black Americans face here in the US, even
Additionally, agony was dealt with and misery happened behind the scenes of the slave’s lives, similar to Tom Robinson and the “Scottsboro Boys” in which both were African-American and how
Jim Crow was not a person, it was a series of laws that imposed legal segregation between white Americans and African Americans in the American South. It promoting the status “Separate but Equal”, but for the African American community that was not the case. African Americans were continuously ridiculed, and were treated as inferiors. Although slavery was abolished in 1865, the legal segregation of white Americans and African Americans was still a continuing controversial subject and was extended for almost a hundred years (abolished in 1964). Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South is a series of primary accounts of real people who experienced this era first-hand and was edited by William H.Chafe, Raymond
I feel like there were more problems than the book mentioned but the main problems were still there. They did not want the slaves to be free and they did not want black men to gain equal rights as white men because the white men in the South believed that black men should not be considered equal to white men. The book did a good job of showing the view of the South and that is important because you need to look at both sides of the argument before you make a
“She would impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom” (Wright 2). In “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” Richard Wright, speaks of his own experiences growing up in the half century after slavery ended, and how the Jim Crow laws had an effect on them. Wright’s experiences support the idea that a black person could not live a life relatively free of conflict even if they adhered to the ethics of Jim Crow. The first experience that Wright describes came when he was only a young boy living in Arkansas. He and his friends had been throwing cinder blocks and they found themselves in a ‘war’ against a group of white boys.
Boyd-Franklin's book was an enjoyable read; I learned vitals viewpoints from his book. It was truly an enjoyable experience learning more about the African-American culture as a whole. Throughout the United States history, African-Americans have endured many hardships amongst their entire family dynamic. From being taken away from our country, becoming oppressed, enduring slavery and being separated from our families. Even after slavery and visible segregation, African-Americans still struggled here in the United States.
Even before our nation’s founding, people of color have been discriminated. Decades pass and the criminal justice system is still “racist” labeling people of color as criminal, meaning black equal criminals therefore is fine to discriminate people of color just because they’re criminals. In “The New Jim Crow” the system targets black men because they are associated with crime, meaning crime stands in for race. In the other hand, As Heather Mac Donald writes in her book “The War on Cops”, “The criminal-justice system does treat individual suspects and criminals equally, they concede. But the problem is how society defines crime and criminals” (154).
However, this sexually related conviction did not have to be the reason for one’s current
In listening to the lecture it is evident that there was unfair treatment with fatal outcome at times of African Americans. Throughout history I have seen the changes made by society and government. African Americans have been heard and continue to be heard as issues occur. I find it hard to describe in words how I feel about the treatment of African Americans in years past.