The New Jim Crow Essay - 1052 Words

In today’s modern world, many people would be surprised to find out that there is still a racial caste system in America. After witnessing the election of a black president, people have started believing that America has entered a post-racial society. This is both a patently false and dangerous mindset. The segregation and stigma of race is still very much alive in our society. Instead of a formalized institution such as slavery or Jim Crow, America has found a new way to continue the marginalization of blacks by using the criminal justice system. In Michelle Alexander’s book â€Å" The New Jim Crow†, she shows how America’s â€Å" War on Drugs â€Å" has become a tool of racial segregation and how the discretionary enforcement of drug laws has†¦show more content†¦After getting the public support for his campaign, America saw an unprecedented rise in its incarceration rate, particularly among African Americans. The â€Å" War on Drugs † has had a disparate impact on the black community even though blacks and whites use drugs at approximately the same levels. This is achieved through a myriad of formal and informal practices. African-Americans are targeted and prosecuted at a much higher rate even though they are not statistically any likelier to abuse or sell drugs than the white population. The police have had a major role in how the effects of the drug war have been mostly concentrated in the black community. A major reason for this is because of the very nature of drug law enforcement. Normal crime involves an injured party or witness that reports it and asks for police action. In drug crime, both the buyer and seller have no interest in reporting the criminal activity and it is the responsibility of the police to actively search for violators. This allows police the discretionary power to decide in which communities they will search for drug activity and who they will apprehend. Even though the rates of dru g abuse are similar in both the black and white communities, police have targeted black communities almost exclusively in their drug control efforts. The federal government has incentivized the drug related activities of local law enforcement through the disbursement of federal grants. TheShow MoreRelatedThe New Jim Crow1185 Words   |  5 PagesThe New Jim Crow The New Jim Crow is a book that gives a look on how discrimination is still and at some post more prevalent today than it was in the 1850s. Author Michelle Alexander dives into the justice system and explains how a lot of practices and beliefs from slavery times are just labeled differently now. The labeling creates legal discrimination, but most people over look it because it is hidden with words such as â€Å"criminals† or â€Å"felon† in order to legally enslave and segregate a certainRead MoreThe New Jim Crow?919 Words   |  4 PagesAlexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, did not see the prison systems as racially motivated until doing further research. After researching the issue, Alexander found the prison system was a way to oppress African Americans and wrote the novel The New Jim Crow. The New Jim Crow follows the history of the racial caste system and in the novel Alexander comes to the conclusion that the mass incarceration of African American is the New Jim Crow, or in other words a new system of black oppression.Read MoreThe New Jim Crow1697 Words   |  7 PagesVictor Ferreira The New Jim Crow Chapter 2 Incarceration rates in the United States have exploded due to the convictions for drug offenses. Today there are half a million in prison or jail due to a drug offense, while in 1980 there were only 41,100. They have tripled since 1980. The war on drugs has contributed the most to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color, most of them African-Americans. The drug war is aimed to catch the big-time dealers, but the majority of the peopleRead MoreAnalysis Of New Jim Crow 1364 Words   |  6 PagesMoreover, the facts that Alexander present in The New Jim Crow clashed with my view of the world in that although I appreciated the facts presented as the reality of what goes on in the world, it showed me that the through the laws enacted and through institutions, the society plays a role in creating and perpetuating the new caste system. This is evident when Alexander (2012) explains that the social racial control not only manifests itself through the justice system but also in the structureRead MoreConsequences Of The New Jim Crow866 Words   |  4 PagesLane The New Jim Crow 11/3/17 Please answer each essay in approximately 450 to 500 words. 1. The Old Jim Crow was color-minded. The New Jim Crow claims itself as colorblinded. Show how the New Jim Crow is color-minded and leads to greater unjust consequences. Include in your answer how the New Jim Crow is more dangerous than the Old Jim Crow. In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, author Michelle Alexander claims that the new racial caste system (New Jim Crow) in theRead MoreThe Breakdown Of The New Jim Crow Essay1474 Words   |  6 PagesThe Breakdown of The New Jim Crow Some say that nothing is ever truly brought to an end and that everything that once was will be again. That seems to be the case when discussing Michelle Alexander s The New Jim Crow, a nonfiction book that argues that Jim Crow has reemerged in the mass incarceration of black people in America. Originally, the name for this era we know as Jim Crow was inspired by a racist character played by Thomas Dartmouth Daddy Rice. During the 1800s, Rice would dressRead MoreSummary Of The New Jim Crow1742 Words   |  7 PagesWorks Cited Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2010. 261 Pages â€Å"The New Jim Crow† Summary â€Å"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 (Alexander 3); which is why the comparison had been made to the Jim Crow laws that existed in the nineteenth centuryRead MoreThe New Jim Crow : Incarceration1470 Words   |  6 PagesMichelle Alexander is a highly celebrated civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. In her book, The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander discusses the legal systems that seem to be doing their jobs perfectly well but have in fact just replaced one racial caste system with a new one. Cornel West called her book the â€Å"Secular Bible of a new social movement.† In 2011, the NAACP gave her book the image award for best Nonfiction. In this book, she focuses on racialRead MoreThe New Jim Crow And Lockdown849 Words   |  4 Pagesindi viduals to have a fair amount of both privileges and disadvantages due our biased society. The second chapter of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Lockdown, offers insight into the injustice that can occur to people of color when being searched by police officers under the guise of random searches. Comparable texts to Alexander’s â€Å"Lockdown† in The New Jim Crow are Allan G. Johnson’s Privilege, Power, and Difference and Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formations which discuss in detail bothRead MoreThe New Jim Crow Laws1667 Words   |  7 PagesIn the book the New Jim Crow Laws there is racial discrimination on the African American people in the American society. What is racial discrimination? It is refusing somebody based on race. In the United States we have been racial discriminate on the African American people and that is what cause the south and north to go civil wat was because slavery and racism that existed and even stil l to this day. In the south the black were less and treated unequal to them historically even today were are