The Jim Crow laws were unfair and unjust to all African-Americans by making them unequal. The Jim Crow laws are laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. It used the term separate but equal, even though conditions for African Americans were always worst than their white counterparts. They could not eat at the same restaurant as white people, they could not used the same restrooms, and they couldn't even use the same drinking fountain. Their schools and buildings were severely underfunded and not properly maintained. Blacks could not socialize with white people in public or they risked being arrested. “A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it
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
According to Alexander, “Today, most American know and don’t know the truth about mass incarceration” (p. 182). Before reading this book I did know of the inequality towards people of color in the criminal justice. book has made me realized how easily we as humans, jump into conclusion without thinking twice and judging a person by their look or race without trying to get who they are. Although most people know better and know how wrong it is to judge a book or person on their cover we often find ourselves doing just that when we first come into contact with a different culture. This book “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander has made me realized how the United State has one of the largest population in prison. I was surprised that the largest
Even before our nation’s founding, people of color have been discriminated. Decades pass and the criminal justice system is still “racist” labeling people of color as criminal, meaning black equal criminals therefore is fine to discriminate people of color just because they’re criminals. In “The New Jim Crow” the system targets black men because they are associated with crime, meaning crime stands in for race. In the other hand, As Heather Mac Donald writes in her book “The War on Cops”, “The criminal-justice system does treat individual suspects and criminals equally, they concede. But the problem is how society defines crime and criminals” (154). Society is the one who chooses who is criminal. In this case society is stripping off the rights of people of color. As Barack Obama say in “The War on Cops”, “blacks and whites are arrested at very different rates, are
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
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New
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..
The author seeks to bring to light the unfair treatment of the Negros by the whites in the places they live in. He also seeks to show that leaders only make empty promises to their people. Brutal cases are most among the Negros as they are attacked and their cases go unnoticed or ignored. Moreover the author wishes to show that the Negros are not treated equally as other residents of Birmingham.
Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: The New Press.
The piece of writing which I felt was unsuccessful for me was the Rhetorical Analysis of an article relating to a topic from our course book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. This piece of writing was difficult for me to organize my ideas around. The article that I decided to use for my rhetorical analysis highlighted mass incarceration among African American and the effect of civil liberties being are taken away from these individuals. I had a lot of repetition because many of the examples I used demonstrated more than one type of appeal. I found myself repeating what the purpose of the example was and how it demonstrated proper use of ethos, pathos, and logos. This also made it difficult
In the eyes of Martin Luther King Jr., Justice within a society is achieved through the implementation of just laws. Furthermore, “just laws are regulations that have been created by man that follow the laws of God for man” (“Clergymen’s Letter”). Any law that does not correspond with the ideals of God and morality are considered to be unjust or a form of injustice. King identifies that injustice is clearly evident within the justice system. This injustice can truly be seen through the misconduct imposed toward the African American community. 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.
“She would impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom” (Wright 2). In “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” Richard Wright, speaks of his own experiences growing up in the half century after slavery ended, and how the Jim Crow laws had an effect on them. Wright’s experiences support the idea that a black person could not live a life relatively free of conflict even if they adhered to the ethics of Jim Crow.
This book describes the explorations of the Spanish explorer, Hernando DeSoto in North America. DeSoto's exploration was the first major interaction of Native Americans in North America. DeSoto and other explorers spent four years roaming the eastern half of the United States. The DeSoto Chronicles provide ethnological information about DeSoto's exploration. These documents provide records of the most civilized Native American culture in that time period- the Mississippian Indians. This relates to our Georgia Studies class because in Georgia Studies we learned that the Mississippian culture was the most advanced culture and Hernando DeSoto wrote about the Mississippian chiefdom systems. We also learned that he wanted to spread Catholicism
Racism has been a prominent dilemma from as far as the 18th century to today. We’ve made many improvements from the 1930s to today but we aren’t finished yet. By definition, racism is the prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior. Racism and discrimination caused African Americans to be treated as inferiors and second class citizens. Throughout time, this led them to fear white people and what they could do to them.
“The New Jim Crow” was written by Michelle Alexander based off of her experience working for the ACLU of Oakland in which she saw racial bias in the justice system that constituted people of color second-class citizens; Which is why the comparison had been made to the Jim Crow laws that existed in the nineteenth century. Alexander notes comparisons in white resentment, colorblind language, segregation in neighborhoods, legal discrimination, etc., while the difference are the lack of activism that is shown in response to these injustices. Goes over the entire history of slavery; Documenting the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws, and then the civil rights movement to the War on Drugs that Reagan, in 1980, began in order