ipl-logo

Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Summary

1075 Words5 Pages

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Era of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, she begins by points out the underlying problem in our Criminal Justice system. The problem being prioritizing the control of those in this racial caste rather than focusing on reasonable punishment and efforts to deter crime. Alexander begins by speaking of her experience as a civil rights lawyer and what soon became her priority after seeing a poster that mentioned how the war on drugs is the new jim crow when it comes to the application and outcome of it. As Alexander points out the correlation between the war on drugs and it being the new jim crow, she discusses the mass incarceration that is prevalent in our society and the number of African American …show more content…

The racial disparity can be accounted for through the mass incarceration of black offenders in terms of sentencing with mention of a racial caste in place, not allowing those of color to move from their position. As such, mass incarceration has led to prisons being filled with an overpopulation of those who are black than any other race. Interesting enough, it has been proven through surveys that those who are white are more likely to engage in drug crime rather than those who are black. I found this to be an interesting point to discuss as it raises the question as to just why are more people of color incarcerated at a growing rate than …show more content…

Even more when she explains how slavery, although no longer in the form it was before, has been masked into a different form being the mass incarceration of people of color when she mentions society’s colorblindness. With this in mind, one of the main reasons Alexander compares mass incarceration and Jim Crow South is due to many of those who are incarcerated being stripped of their rights, the very rights given to them by the Civil Rights Act. Once those who are incarcerated are let back out into society they are denied legally their rights. Rights such as voting, obtaining employment, housing, welfare, and are stigmatized as being the forefront that all who are black are offenders. This notion has led many to believe how similar the after effects of mass incarceration and Jim Crow South are. As before the Civil Rights Act, African Americans didn’t have the right to do anything and were instead subjected to segregation that involved the same legality and treatment. For this reason, it’s important to demonstrate how Jim Crow South and segregation has appeared to still be prevalent in our society in the form of mass

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    1127 Words  | 5 Pages

    The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a book outlining and analysing the social constructs of the United States of America through the context of mechanics of the judicial system. It compares and contrasts the slavery, old Jim Crow law and post Jim Crow law eras in the means to highlight the racial discrimination against the Black and Brown community by the White elite. The author explores the court cases and legislation passed by the government to implement a national system geared to favor the White community and its effects on the imagery that has developed in the American mind set. Michelle Alexander is among many things an African-American woman. She is lawyer who represented in the Civil Rights era.

    Read More

  • Book Summary: The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    1597 Words  | 7 Pages

    The New Jim Crow When looking for a book about racial perception I wanted to find a book that looks at racial perception from a different perspective that I had not thought of. This information would need to be new and fresh and be able to open me up to new questions on racial perception. The first stop I made was to Ygnacio Valley Library. Looking around was not very difficult since racism and world conflicts have a shelf dedicated to themselves. I searched through the first couple pages of different books and took a glance at the table of contents.

    Read More

  • The New Jim Crow Book Summary

    548 Words  | 3 Pages

    Alexander arguments were about equality. As stated in the book, “The backlash against the gains of African Americans in the Reconstruction Era was swift and serve. As African Americans obtained political power and began the long march toward greater social and economic equality, whites reacted with panic and outrage” (30). Many whites didn’t appreciate that African American were gaining power. I believe that racism is a very cruel and brutal topic.

    Read More

  • The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander: Chapter Analysis

    930 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Strange Career Of Jim Crow

    2015 Words  | 9 Pages

    Segregation in the American South has not always been as easy as determining black and white. In C. Vann Woodward’s book, “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” post-civil war in Southern America has truly brought the “Jim Crow” laws into light and the ultimate formation of segregation in the south. The book determines that there is no solid segregation in the south for years rather than several decades following the end of the American Civil War in 1865 where the South achieved a better stand on segregation and equality as compared to the North at this time. Racial segregation in the form of Jim Crow laws that divided the White Americans from the African Americans in almost every sense of daily life did not appear with the end of slavery but towards

    Read More

  • Summary Of Remembering Jim Crow

    699 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Analysis

    639 Words  | 3 Pages

    The politics of responsibility hold each person responsible for his or her actions and choices; and therefore they have to accept the results of their actions. It means that people have duties and responsibilities towards themselves and others, and that they have to make the right choices and do the right actions in order to have a better life. However, Michelle Alexander disagrees with this strategy in her critique “The New Jim Crow,” arguing that the strategy of responsibility would fail to address the issue of mass incarceration. She argues that the politics of responsibility is insufficient because it cannot just blame people on their own actions and choices without considering their circumstances and the society they are living in, which could sometimes force them to behave in a certain way. She insists that

    Read More

  • Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander

    983 Words  | 4 Pages

    ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" argues that law enforcement officials routinely racially profile minorities to deny them socially, politically, and economically as was accustomed in the Jim Crow era.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

    1381 Words  | 6 Pages

    Race 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.

    Read More

  • The New Jim Crow Analysis

    1721 Words  | 7 Pages

    Michelle 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.

    Read More

  • Essay On Martin Luther King Jr

    803 Words  | 4 Pages

    Score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free.” ( King, para.

    Read More

  • The New Jim Crow Essay

    421 Words  | 2 Pages

    Making The War on Drug a top priority meant that other serious crimes like rape and murder would not be considered important as drug crimes. The federalization of drug as crime violated beliefs of states’ rights as street crime is what necessitates law enforcement. In the breathtaking book, “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, “Huge cash grants were made to those law enforcement agencies that were willing to make drug-law enforcement a top priority”(73). Putting money on agencies to go towards a specialized narcotics task force meant that other more serious crimes are not taken as serious as drugs crimes. There are grand theft and violent assaults, which are a greater threat to communities than illegal drug use and abuse.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Richard Wright's The Ethics Of Living Jim Crow

    650 Words  | 3 Pages

    Imagine living in a society where the tone of one’s skin subjected them to unfair treatment and rules. This was the reality to African-Americans in the South from the end of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century. Richard Wright describes the experiences of living with Jim Crow laws in his essay “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” African-Americans were oppressed, especially the women, and forced to follow absurd rules. Many times, the police only encouraged these unlawful rules and targeted Blacks.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay: The American Dream

    908 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Huffington Post says, “The U.S. incarcerates nearly seven times as many people, measured as a share of population, as Canada does. People of color are disproportionately represented in the American prison population and are typically punished more severely than white peers for the same crimes” (Daniel Marans). Racism against people of color has caused them to be represented poorly in society as potential criminals, especially black. MIT informs its viewers that “according to the United States census Bureau, blacks are twice as likely to be poor compared to other races, and eight times as likely to be imprisoned. Blacks are also three times more likely to be convicted of drug violations than whites.

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography: The New Jim Crow

    1343 Words  | 6 Pages

    Annotated Bibliography Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Alexander opens up on the history of the criminal justice system, disciplinary crime policy and race in the U.S. detailing the ways in which crime policy and mass incarceration have worked together to continue the reduction and defeat of black Americans.

    Read More

More about Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Summary

Open Document