Jim Crow laws were laws created to strengthen racism and segregation. It was a white person’s desperate attempt to maintain a sort of superiority over black people. Nowadays it might seem impossible for laws promoting racism and segregation to exist, but they do. Concealed by inconspicuous phrasing there are still laws to this day that allow blacks and other minorities to be taken advantage of solely based on their race. The book written by Michelle Alexander titled The New Jim Crow outlines the major problems associated with the American judicial system, mainly the War on Drugs. Alexander brings to light many issues that primarily affect blacks and other minorities from this she derives that America has a new set of Jim Crow Laws. Given the
In her critically acclaimed book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander explores this topic in-depth and delivers it in a very parsimonious, yet powerful way. She explores the history of mass incarceration, argues how this phenomenon came to be, and attempts to discern possible ways to diffuse this troublesome situation. In this paper, I will explore some of the topics delivered in Alexander’s book in conjunction with theories, peer-reviewed studies, and statistical reports to try to piece together some topics presented with conflict. First, I will explore the history of mass incarceration here America to attempt to see why there are racial discrepancies and where their origins lie. Second, I will look at Michelle Alexander’s book and review its chapters examining its evidence, in addition to its possible limitations. Lastly, I will examine mass incarceration’s effect on families in the United States, more specifically the effects that mass incarceration has on those related to the offender, and also the effects on the offender himself. To complete the last part of my analysis, I will look at contemporary criminological and sociological theories and how incarceration and families
Michelle Alexander presents three compelling arguments in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. First, American society is repeating the outrages of the early Jim Crow laws, which imposed racial segregation on the bogus principle of separate but equal; second, our country has a widespread dilemma of increasing mass incarceration numbers, and, finally, that our modern so-called “colorblind” era thwarts multitudes of people from understanding or acknowledging that racist undertones exist beneath elevated rates of mass incarceration as a result of America’s “Drug War”. Michael M. Cohen, author of Jim Crow’s Drug War: Race, Coca Cola, and the Southern Origins of Drug Prohibition, provides support for Alexander’s assertion
This paper was written to discuss the hot button topic, “Black Lives Matter.” Specifically, in regard to law enforcement. This has been an ongoing and controversial issue ever since the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. This is when the movement “Black Lives Matter,” was born, with the belief that blacks are treated unfairly by law enforcement. I, however, do not believe that blacks are treated any more unfairly by law enforcement than any other race.
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. "Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs: Racism in America Today."International Socialist Review Online November-December.32 (2003): n. pag.ISReview.org. International Socialist Organization. Web. 07 Dec. 2013. .
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States. Michelle Alexander (2010) argues that despite the old Jim Crow is death, does not necessarily means the end of racial caste (p.21). In her book “The New Jim Crow”, Alexander describes a set of practices and social discourses that serve to maintain African American people controlled by institutions. In this book her analyses is centered in examining the mass incarceration phenomenon in recent years. Comparing Jim Crow with mass incarceration she points out that mass incarceration is a network of laws, policies, customs and institutions that works together –almost invisible– to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined by race, African American (p. 178 -190).
In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander states that we still use our criminal justice system to “label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage i...
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than directly rely on race, we use the criminal justi...
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New
As Elie Wiesel once stated, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (“Elie Wiesel Quote”). Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which discusses criminal justice and its role in mass incarceration, promotes a similar idea regarding silence when America’s racial caste system needs to be ended; however, Alexander promotes times when silence would actually be better for “the tormented.” The role of silence and lack of silence in the criminal justice system both contribute to wrongly accused individuals and growing populations behind bars.
The book, the Strange Career of Jim Crow is a wonderful piece of history. C. Vann Woodard crafts a book that explains the history of Jim Crow and segregation in simple terms. It is a book that presents more than just the facts and figures, it presents a clear and a very accurate portrayal of the rise and fall of Jim Crow and segregation. The book has become one of the most influential of its time earning the praise of great figures in Twentieth Century American History. It is a book that holds up to its weighty praise of being “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The book is present in a light that is free from petty bias and that is shaped by a clear point of view that considers all facts equally. It is a book that will remain one of the best explanations of this time period.
Professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, writes that a racial caste system existing in America reflect the Jim Crow laws that were "separate but equal" from the time of the Civil War until the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the mid 1960's and which continue today. She is a graduate from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University and clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Subsequently, she was on the faculty of Sanford Law School serving as the Director of the Civil Rights Clinic before receiving a Soros Justice Fellowship and an appointment to the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Professor Alexander has litigated civil rights cases in private practice while associated with at Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller law firm, with additional advocacy through the non-profit sector, as the Director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Van Woodward, traces the history of race relations in the United States from the mid and late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. In doing so Woodward brings to light significant aspects of Reconstruction that remain unknown to many today. He argues that the races were not as separate many people believe until the Jim Crow laws. To set up such an argument, Woodward first outlines the relationship between Southern and Northern whites, and African Americans during the nineteenth century. He then breaks down the details of the injustice brought about by the Jim Crow laws, and outlines the transformation in American society from discrimination to Civil Rights. Woodward’s argument is very persuasive because he uses specific evidence to support his opinions and to connect his ideas. Considering the time period in which the book and its editions were written, it should be praised for its insight into and analysis of the most important social issue in American history.
To look closely at many of the mechanisms in American society is to observe the contradiction between constitutional equality and equality in practice. Several of these contradictions exist in the realm of racial equality. For example, Black s often get dealt an unfair hand in the criminal justice system. In The Real War on Crime, Steven Donziger explains,
Persuasion Throughout history there have been many struggles for freedom and equality. There was the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. There was the fight against government censorship in Argentina, spoken against by Luisa Valenzuela. And there was the struggle for women's equality in politics, aided by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.