New Jim Crow Era
Andy Miller
Professor Farber
HIST 129: 18157
November 30th
The New Jim Crow Era
Following the period of Reconstruction, state and local governments passed laws in the southern United States which enforced racial segregation of Americans. These laws, known as Jim Crow Laws, mandated segregation in all public facilities within the former Confederate States which created a “separate but equal" status for black citizens. The old Jim Crow Laws continued to be enforced until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act outlawed all discrimination based on race. However, Michele Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, argues that through the mass imprisonment of African American in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have created a new era and system
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The government publicized the emergence of crack cocaine as defense strategy to create a favorable public opinion for the drug war: “The media was saturated with images of black crack whores, crack dealers, and crack babies—images that seemed to conform the worst negative racial stereotypes about impoverished inner-city residents” (Alexander, 5). During the war, arrests and convictions for drug offenses saw an amazing increase, especially among African Americans. Because of the drug war, the United States now holds the highest incarceration rate in the world even surpassing more the world’s most suppressive nations. No other country imprisons more of their racial or ethnic minorities than the United States does: “The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid” (Alexander, 6). The War on Drugs fueled mass imprisonment in the United States in which African American were the main victims. Through this, the American justice system emerged as a system of social and economic control over the nation’s black
Social Problems In The African-American Community
1082 Words | 5 PagesNevertheless, millions of African Americans still live mired in poverty, susceptible to poor living conditions in underserved inner cities. The War on Drugs, which began in the 1980s, is a leading cause of the high rate of incarceration among African Americans, especially males. Today, criminal gangs have spread throughout the country and into the prisons. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with over 1.6 million dwelling in prisons. Of this number, a fairly large amount are African Americans.
Summary Of Remembering Jim Crow
699 Words | 3 PagesJim 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
What Does The New Jim Crow Mean
327 Words | 2 Pagespolitan Transition Center Historically known as the Maryland Penitentiary, is a minimum security prison for people who violated parole or just got arrested and are awaiting trial. 2. Compare/ Contrast the field visit with what you have learned reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. Some similarities I saw when going on the tour and reading the book is the minorities almost filled the jail up in D block.
Reconstruction Dbq
1547 Words | 7 PagesAfter the Civil War, the south was left in shambles. Not only were the southern states left with the destruction and damage of the war but the economy was injured and barely stable because of the costs of war. The union began a Reconstruction movement to rebuild the broken nation. The Reconstruction was also meant to repair the broken economy and the damaged society. But the effectiveness of this system is questionable because it both succeeded and failed.
Review Of Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness By Michelle Alexander
983 Words | 4 PagesANNOTATED 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.
Analytical Essay: The Role Of Violence In The Jim Crow
531 Words | 3 PagesLastly, violence against black people was very prominent during the Jim Crow era. The statistics for the amounts of black deaths from violence is outrageous. Fremon wrote, “In 1890 until 1917, on average, two to three blacks in the South were illegally hanged, burned, or otherwise murdered every week” (Fremon 37). Two to three black people were killed every week. The amount of abuse was so much and was for random minor “crimes” and sometimes black were even falsely accused.
The New Jim Crow: A Racial Caste System
187 Words | 1 PagesJust four years after the first juvenile court was established, W.E.B. DuBois, in 1903, wrote that the problem of the 20th century was the color line (DuBois, 2005). More than a century later, in 2012, Michelle Alexander wrote in her book “The New Jim Crow” that she had somewhat reluctantly come to the conclusion that a racial caste system still exists in the United States and is responsible for the disproportionate number of minorities in the criminal justice system (Alexander, 2012). Somewhat more than halfway through the 19th century, Jefferson Davis made a statement that clearly shows the problem in a stark manner. In his book tracing racist ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi recalls what Jefferson Davis, who would go on to become the president
The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration
983 Words | 4 PagesIn 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
Black Codes: The Effects Of Black Discrimination
763 Words | 4 PagesDespite some legal victories, African Americans were yet again met with unprovoked legal retribution. A new set of Black Codes in the 1880s and 1890s refreshed the idea of “Jim Crow”. This led to a nation drunk on the idea of
New World Slavery In America
1000 Words | 4 PagesLike it is mentioned in the movie 13th “The so called war on drugs was a war on communities of color”. So, now black people are being arrested much more than White people even though the drug use is close to the same as Angela F. Chan points out in her article for the Huffington Post. “Even though Black people use drugs at the same rate as White people, they are incarcerated for drug crimes at 20 to 50 times the rate of White people in some states”. A law that was passed during the war on drugs was mandatory sentencing.
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.
The New Jim Crow Essay
421 Words | 2 PagesMaking 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.
African Americans In The 1930's
1045 Words | 5 PagesThe worldwide economic downturn known as The Great Depression took the world by storm. It was during this dilemma that every group of americans were immensely affected. None were affected as much as African Americans and racial status. It was this depression that made the already problematic lives of the African Americans even more challenging. Factors which which influenced racial issues against blacks in the early 1920’s through 1930’s were the Second Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws, the fight for jobs, and the racial riots/lynchings that followed.
Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Summary
1075 Words | 5 PagesIn 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
Annotated Bibliography: The New Jim Crow
1343 Words | 6 PagesAnnotated 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.
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