Synopsis In the introduction, Michelle Alexander (2010) introduces herself and expresses her passion about the topic of how the criminal justice system accomplishes racial hierarchy here in the United States. In chapter 1 of The New Jim Crow, Alexander (2010) suggests that the federal government can no longer be trusted to make any effort to enforce black civil rights legislation, especially when the Drug War is aimed at racial and ethnic minorities. In response to revolts formed between black slaves and white indentured servants, rich whites extended special privileges to their indentured servants that drove a wedge between them and the slaves that successfully stopped the revolts.
In her article “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander powerfully argues that the American prison system has become a redesigned form of disenfranchisement of poor people of color and compares it to the racially motivated Jim Crow laws. She supports her assertions through her experiences as a civil rights lawyer, statistical facts about mass incarceration, and by comparing the continued existence of racial discrimination in America today to the segregation and discrimination during the Jim Crow laws. Alexander’s purpose is to reveal the similarities of the discriminatory and segregating Jim Crow laws to the massive influx of incarceration of poor people of color in order to expose that racism evolves to exist in disguised, yet acceptable forms
Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Criminal Justice Stevenson through his book has provided various examples that show that people of color and low-income individuals are more likely to be presumed fully prior to presenting their cases. The author has stated that executions are a good example of how norms and policies are used for the purposes of punishing and controlling the people of color For instance, he argues that one in three black people are expected to be sent to jail in their lifetime. Further on, eighty percent of people on death row are black while 65 percent of homicide victims are black.
Another component of the prison-industrial complex are courts. Our court system is overburdened with cases of poor people who cannot pay bail, as well as public defenders whose caseload are so large that it does not allow them to dedicate the proper amount of time to each case. Many times this results in a large number of public defenders pushing for defendants to take plea deals. This infringes on a defendant 's fifth amendment right to trial by jury (see appendix 1). Many of the people targeted by police for surveillance are those who later face time in court fighting for their freedom.
In her book, The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander who was a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar, reveals many of America’s harsh truths regarding race within the criminal justice system. Though the Jim Crow laws have long been abolished, a new form has surfaced, a contemporary system of racial control through mass incarceration. In this book, mass incarceration not only refers to the criminal justice system, but also a bigger picture, which controls criminals both in and out of prison through laws, rules, policies and customs. The New Jim Crow that Alexander speaks of has redesigned the racial caste system, by putting millions of mainly blacks, as well as Hispanics and some whites, behind bars
This piece of work is mainly about the social analysts position to the issue of racism and mass incarceration and also how the various principles of distributive justice can be applied to different positions in our issue of focus. It is quite evident that the main work of the social policy analysts is to identify current problems, evaluating them and coming up with solutions regarding to it. Once they discover the problem they try to check for the causes that may leading to that problem and also other problems that may be related to it. However, different social policy analysis’s have differing views regarding a certain problem and also
It is an existing theory that our society is constructed via racial dimensions, and that racial equality is a figment of the imagination. This very principle is highlighted in Michelle Alexander’s novel, “The New Jim Crow.” The specific dimensions covered within the text include the unjust aspects of the federal drug policy, and by connection that of mass incarceration as well. Alexander claims that racism is still very prominent in present day society and is direct and frank about the heavy influence of white supremacy. One of the main arguments pushed by Alexander in this book is that mass incarceration is “ a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar
Jim Crow Law Jim Crow laws are about power. Power of one race over another. These laws that had happened showed the weakness and over power that each different race had. In this essay it will highlight the beneficial of the importance to how jim crow law shows unfairness between both race.
Frederick Douglass, a historic civil rights activist, was born into slavery and fortunately lived long enough to see it end. He may have outlived the enslavement however, equality and direct freedom was not a result of Americanized slavery’s extinction. Douglass lived his post slavery life during the time of Jim Crow laws, enforced segregation laws. He wrote a letter to an unknown recipient, briefing describing the negative impact these laws had on blacks. Although slavery was abolished, it was believed that the act on dominance still played a big part on how whites treated blacks and still does today.
Slavery, Jim Crow, the ghetto, and the carceral apparatus are all structural institutions that share a mutual beneficial relationship where each has supplemented and historically progressed into more advanced subtle forms of oppression and racism. Past and current regimes served as social functions with the objective of encompassing African Americans in a permanent subordinate position. In each generation, newer developments of a racial caste emerge with the same objective of repudiating African Americans citizenship. The only thing that has changed since Jim Crow is the language we use to justify racial exclusion (Alexander, 2). These four regimes are genealogically linked because they all advanced and developed from one another.