Analysis Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a New York Times bestseller that expounds detailed accounts as to how mass incarceration is not simply a criminal justice issue, but a civil rights crisis. The author, Michelle Alexander argues that the New Jim Crow is the creation of a new racial caste system, with the intent to strip away the rights of Black Americans. This system, created by the defenders of the old system, uses unjust drug charges as a mechanism leading to increased incarceration rates and modern day segregation.

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander addresses the way in which this modern system of industrialized racism ties back to the history of “racialized social control in the United States” (p. 16). Alexander

According to Michelle Alexander, the war on drugs, which originated from Reaganomics, was created with the specific intention to incarcerate Black men. Though Black people are less likely to engage in drug use, they make up the majority of Americans convicted under drug charges. It has been statistically proven that white Americans, specifically white youth, are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealings than people of color, and yet, “1 in every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared with 1 in 106 white men” (98). This presents a clear example of hypocrisy and preferential treatment of White people over Black people. Additionally, according to the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, a survey stated that 95% of people picture a drug dealer as being Black. This legalized discrimination and social animus directed towards Black people clearly shows that this is a Black issue. “One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system—in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole—yet mass incarceration tends to be categorized as a criminal justice issue as opposed to a racial justice or civil rights issue (or crisis)” (p.

Though they are no longer trapped in a literal sense, many ex-convicts are held from moving forward and changing their lives for the better. The new level in the social hierarchy, the undercaste, is one that is seemingly inescapable. In the undercaste, the ladder of opportunity is non-existent due to the laws, rules, and regulations that prohibit them from moving past their time incarcerated. The system authorizes discrimination against those released from prisons in voting, employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service. The inability to escape the “undercaste,” the prison label, and the demonization of the Black man has stopped the American dream from being realized for Black Americans. Mass incarceration is just another tool of the white men in power to suppress the lives of Black people in America, by way of the American judicial system, just like the old Jim Crow