Mass Incarceration In The Grapes Of Wrath By Michelle Alexander
Alexander addresses mass incarceration through compelling and historical analysis of African Americans. This correlates to the concept of social justice and the One World Initiative theme- Global Perspective on happiness because in the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially acceptable to use race as a justification for discrimination, segregation, and social hatred. Yet, as Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans during the Jim Crow era. This does not symbolize the global perspective on happiness in any way shape or form. Happiness is contentment, satisfaction, cheerfulness, joy, well-being. …show more content…
Alexander uncovers the system of mass incarceration. A system of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control criminals both in prison and out of prison. The book also highlights major themes and issues in society today such as racism, inequality, and social justice. Alexander uses statistics and legal citations to argue that the approach Nixon administered, which was more of a get-tough approach to crime, and Reagan’s declaration of the War on Drugs, has devastated African Americans. The main idea that Alexander tries to make is that beginning with slavery and continuing with Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration places entire groups of people of color into discriminatory positions in society, …show more content…
James Forman Jr., who is a law professor at Yale University, wrote a paper called Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow. In this paper, Forman Jr. identifies Alexander as one of a number of authors who have overstated and misstated their case. He observes that her framework over-emphasizes the War on Drugs and ignores violent crimes, stating that Alexander's analysis is demographically simplistic. He suggests that Alexander does not analyze the way imprisonment is now arranged by class, even among African-Americans, and says that Alexander does not discuss the mass incarceration of other races, including whites. In the section "Overlooking Race" Forman Jr. writes that the Jim Crow analogy "obscures the extent to which whites, too, are mass incarceration’s targets," noting that "Alexander mentions them only in passing; she says that mass imprisonment’s true targets are blacks, and that incarcerated whites are ‘collateral
Brief Summary Of Chapter Four By Alexander
1042 Words | 5 PagesIn chapter three, Alexander argues that the structure of the drug war is designed in such a way, that it guarantees that its victims will consist of people from the society's undercaste. To begin with, Alexander states that there are two primary ways, in which an essentially “colorblind”criminal justice system can operate in such a discriminatory manner. The first way is by giving the police immense amounts of discretion to which they can choose whom to stop, question, frisk, search, and arrest. According to Alexander, African Americans, who became the victim of the media’s “criminalblackman” portrayal were once again victimized by law enforcement personnel that targeted them on due to their bias’ in believing that all African Americans were
Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Color Blindness By Michelle Alexander
1074 Words | 5 PagesThis book discusses social issues such as Mass Incarceration within our society. Michelle Alexander is very qualified to discuss the controversial topics that are mentioned within the text. Alexander is a civil rights lawyer, a legal scholar and advocate. She has held many positions in higher
The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration Summary
1358 Words | 6 PagesThe recommendation calls for civil rights advocates to put mass incarceration on their agenda similar in the ways civil rights advocate’s affirmative action agenda. In my opinion, America is at a turning point where mass incarceration is slowly fading away with state lawmakers trying to cut prison cost. Being labeled as a felon is a stigma that can and will follow individuals for the rest of their lives. However, there is a change in the atmosphere and how society view individuals with felony records. Opportunities are slowly becoming available such as jobs and education, allowing these individuals to reenter society.
Mass Incarceration In The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander
841 Words | 4 PagesOne of the major causes of the mass incarceration epidemic has been the War on Drugs, which was officially declared by President Nixon in the 1970s. Alexander notes that, despite the White House’s aggressive rhetoric, the 1960s and 1970s were a period of relatively low drug-related crime. In the forty years since the War on Drugs began, it is overwhelmingly young black men who have been arrested, convicted, and incarcerated. The racial disparity in the criminal justice system does not correspond to actual rates of drug use between blacks and whites; in reality, it is due to a legal framework that allows law enforcement to target minorities (e.g., racial profiling and stop-and-frisk) and harsh prison sentences for minor drug offenses (e.g., mandatory minimum drug sentences and three-strikes laws). As our criminal justice system offers little to incarcerated individuals in terms of rehabilitation,
Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander
1006 Words | 5 PagesFor this semester, we read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. The book talks about how minorities face, especially black men, being treated like second-class citizens by the criminal justice system and this leading to our modern mass incarceration problem. Alexander goes as far as to say “We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” (2). This is shown by the War on Drugs.
New Jim Crow Thesis
139 Words | 1 PagesIn 2010, author Michelle Alexander wrote the truly insightful book, The New Jim Crow. Throughout the book, Alexander displayed that by targeting African American men through the War on Drugs and racial biases within communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system is still functioning as a modern day system of racial control while hiding behind colorblindness. The New Jim Crow is an eye opening account of how African Americans are still being denied the very rights supposedly won from the Civil Rights Movement and makes one think about the modern day racial stigmas African Americans are facing. Although there has been many reforms to America, stigmatization is a still growing problem within the African American community and the lasting
The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander
720 Words | 3 PagesAlexander uses the statistics of how a black man is more likely to face punishment from law enforcement. By using proven facts Alexander better informs the readers how the racial caste system works in law enforcement. Ultimately, Michelle Alexander persuades the audience with stories of the injustice African Americans face because of the wrongful use of incarceration in the United States of America. She also uses the statistics for her readers to have a full understanding that she is Ray 2 finding the evidence to support her claims that America has the highest incarceration rate in
Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander
983 Words | 4 PagesShe first supports her claim by chronicling America 's history of institutionalized racism and systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans. Then, she discusses America 's War on Drugs that disproportionately targets minorities and finally as she examines the hardship faced by felons she compares and contrasts Jim Crow Laws to mass incarceration. Alexander surmises that mass incarceration is designed to maintain white supremacy and sustain a racial classification system. Alexander 's book is relevant to my research paper because she provides evidence that the criminal justice system is rooted in racism and directly linked to the racist agenda of the white supremacist. Broussard, B. (2015).
Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Analysis
323 Words | 2 PagesThe author found that more people of color, especially black males are under the control our criminal justice system than were enslaved in 1850. The author supports the pervious idea by using specific examples such as the “War on Drugs” to show people of color are targeted more by law enforcement officers and scrutinize harsher by our courts for drug laws but the drug usage is used at the same rate by blacks and whites. With the help of mass-media, the “crack” epidemic in inner cities, the War on Drugs policies, the “Get tough on crime” policies, and the propaganda about people of color all have influenced the way mainstream society thinks about blacks. The author found that mainstream society believes that black people commits more crime and uses more drugs than white people, so therefore blacks deserved to incarcerated. However, Michelle Alexander disproves in “The New Jim Crow” that blacks commit more crimes than whites, the drug usage rates are the same between both races, propaganda has influenced the way mainstream society views blacks and that the “War on Drugs” and the “Get Tough on Crime” was policies targeted towards inner cities and people of color with the intent to enslave them in the criminal justice system by giving them felonies in which people of color are disenfranchise by society.
Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander
1381 Words | 6 PagesRace is one the most sensitive and controversial topics of our time. As kids, we were taught that racism has gotten better as times has passed. However, the author, Michelle Alexander, of The New Jim Crow proposes the argument that racism has not gotten better, but the form of racism that we known in textbooks is not the racism we experience today. Michelle Alexander has countless amounts of plausible arguments, but she has failed to be a credible author, since she doesn’t give enough citations or evidence for her argument to convince people who may not have prior agreement with her agreement.. Alexander’s biggest mistake when it came to being a credible author was starting off the book with a countless number of claims without any evidence in her Introduction.
The New Jim Crow Analysis
1721 Words | 7 PagesMichelle Alexander, similarly, points out the same truth that African American men are targeted substantially by the criminal justice system due to the long history leading to racial bias and mass incarceration within her text “The New Jim Crow”. Both Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Michelle Alexander’s text exhibit the brutality and social injustice that the African American community experiences, which ultimately expedites the mass incarceration of African American men, reflecting the current flawed prison system in the U.S. The American prison system is flawed in numerous ways as both King and Alexander points out. A significant flaw that was identified is the injustice of specifically targeting African American men for crimes due to the racial stereotypes formed as a result of racial formation. Racial formation is the accumulation of racial identities and categories that are formed, reconstructed, and abrogated throughout history.
Tough On Crime Policy Analysis
784 Words | 4 PagesIn addition to greatly affecting the otherwise unlikely citizens of America, Tough on Crime policies have greatly affected minority groups in America; perhaps more so than of any other group of citizens. To begin, from the 1980 on through the year 1995, the incarceration rates among drug offenders increased by more than 1000 percent. Notably, by the year 1995 one out of every four inmates in any given correctional facility was a drug offender. In addition of that 1000 percent increase, drug offenders accounted for more than 80 percent of the total growth in the federal inmate population and 50 percent of the growth of the state prison population from 1985 to 1995 (Stith, web). In addition, once in the system, the probability of receiving harsher
Essay On Mass Incarceration
712 Words | 3 PagesThe amount of mass incarceration in the United States as reached an all time high over the years. Mass Incarceration is the incarceration of a person or race based off of them being different and can be identified as a trend among law enforcements. These tensions have reached a certain extent and has received the attention of American citizens and the nation’s government. The laws of the United States seems fair, however with the enforcement of these laws, specific groups are targeted and abused by them daily.
Annotated Bibliography: The New Jim Crow
1343 Words | 6 PagesHer central thesis is that mass incarceration is “The New Jim Crow,” or the new system of control used by the government to uphold racial class in the U.S. This book will be helpful to my research because it directly discusses the topic of race and the criminal justice system. Amnesty International. (2003). United States of America: Death by discrimination
Argumentative Essay On Incarceration In America
874 Words | 4 PagesOver 2 million people are currently being held in United States prisons, and while the U.S. may only hold 5% of the world’s population, it houses 25% of its prisoners. In the past few years, America’s prison system has fallen under public scrutiny for it’s rising incarceration rate and poor statistics. Many Americans have recently taken notice of the country’s disproportionate prisoner ratio, realized it’s the worst on the planet, and called for the immediate reformation of the failing system. The war on drugs and racial profiling are some of the largest concerns, and many people, some ordinary citizens and others important government figures, are attempting to bring change to one of the country 's lowest aspects.
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