...After the collapse of Jim Crow, especially seeing the great success experienced by some African Americans, we start to feel the system of racial caste is officially dead and buried. However, that is just an illusion. Behind the rhetoric of institutionalized equity, our criminal justice system is working as the new Jim Crow preventing blacks from participating in our electoral democracy. While Constitutional amendments guaranteed African Americans "equal protection of the laws" and the right to vote, through a web of laws, regulations, and informal rules, all of which are powerfully reinforced by social stigma, they are confined to the margins of mainstream society and denied access to the mainstream economy. During the Reconstruction Era, whites felt threatened and outraged as African Americans were exposed to more social and economic opportunities and started to obtain political power. To turn the table and regain all the black labors they had for free for centuries, southern states drastically increased the penalties for minor offenses. Southern conservatives founded Ku Klux Klan, which fought a terrorist campaign against Reconstruction governments and local leaders, complete with bombings, lynchings, and mob violence. I can never forget those horrible pictures in which some white onlookers were smiling or laughing with the blacks burning or hung on the tree in the background. How sick they had to be to enjoy watching another human being tortured and murdered? Reconstruction...
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...Michelle Alexander, Civil Rights Attorney, details the occurrence of legalized discrimination in her book called "The New Jim Crow." The New Jim Crow indicates that even though slavery has been long abolished, systemized inequalities still exists. There is a strong existence in employment opportunities, educational systems, public assistance, and jury selections across the country. Without taking a closer look, one could easily believe that the prison system is designed to rehabilitate those who have had trouble with the law. However, there is a question as to whether those who are truly rehabilitated have access to equal opportunities when released from correctional facilities. One can further question whether those persons are given fair...
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...A book “The New Jim Crow” is written by Michelle Alexander, who is a legal scholar and civil rights litigator. It is published in 2010 by The New Press. The name comes from the old Jim Crow laws, which prevailed in the former federal state of the United States by the 1960s. The book covers the race in the United States related to the social, political and legal phenomenon, and tried the term "The New Jim Crow" applies to African Americans in the contemporary American situation. The new Jim Crow told a truth that is the United States has been reluctant to face. The New Jim Crow has lead to millions of African Americans locked behind bars in the United States, then denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement, and at the same time transferred to a permanent second-class status. Alexander's book is in the New York Times bestseller list for 10 consecutive months, and philosopher Cornel West has called it the "secular bible for a new social movement in early twenty-first-century America." And led to the reentry centers, community centers, churches, university, and national prisons raise awareness efforts. Author...
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...The issue of mass incarceration sparked conversation about racial disparities within the prison system. Following the abolishment of Jim Crow, legal racial segregation in the United States appeared dead. According to civil rights advocate, Michelle Alexander this is not the case; racial segregation appears dead, but mass incarceration perpetuates a racial caste system that preserves this outdated practice. In Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, she points to the cause, enforcement, and victims of this system, but her arguments lack the depth to stand against counterarguments. Primarily, Alexander links mass incarceration’s cause of the War on Drugs. Her secondary cause for this phenomenon appears after this war begins; many defendants cannot obtain “meaningful legal representation” (Alexander 17), a claim which widely goes undisputed. Meanwhile, the argument that “convictions for drug offenses —not violent crime—are the single most important cause of the prison boom in the United States” (Alexander 102), a repetitive argument in her book, sparks controversy. Scholars, such as Pfaff, believe that writers distort the role of drug convictions due to focusing on only...
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...Name: Instructors name: Course: Date: The Lockdown Analysis and Summary In the introduction, the author Alexander Michelle begins with Jarvious Cottons story, a man of African American decent who was on parole from violation of drugs and thus not able to perform his voting rights. Mr Cotton however, is not the only one or the first ever in his family to be denied democratic participation. His grandfather was also intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan who prevented him from voting while his father was also denied his right to vote due to poll taxes and literacy tests. Alexander contends that during the Reagan administration there was an escalation of drug wars which was a purported response to a crisis of crack cocaine in the black ghettos. The war on drugs had a very devastating impact in the ghettos of the African American communities. Even with the election of Barack Obama, Alexander still feels that there was no triumph over race. In the second chapter titled ‘the lock down’, Alexander Michelle also talks about the legal misinterpretations. She clearly notes that due to the war on drugs, there is an inflow of people into the system of criminal justice. Despite the high influx of people, still there is not enough representation for all of them. Because of the case in Supreme Court Gideon vs. Wainwright, everyone including the poor have a right to legal representation. In many cases, a large number of people never have access to legal counsel or if they do are lucky...
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...Name: Instructors name: Course: Date: The Lockdown Analysis and Summary In the introduction, the author Alexander Michelle begins with Jarvious Cottons story, a man of African American decent who was on parole from violation of drugs and thus not able to perform his voting rights. Mr Cotton however, is not the only one or the first ever in his family to be denied democratic participation. His grandfather was also intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan who prevented him from voting while his father was also denied his right to vote due to poll taxes and literacy tests. Alexander contends that during the Reagan administration there was an escalation of drug wars which was a purported response to a crisis of crack cocaine in the black ghettos. The war on drugs had a very devastating impact in the ghettos of the African American communities. Even with the election of Barack Obama, Alexander still feels that there was no triumph over race. In the second chapter titled ‘the lock down’, Alexander Michelle also talks about the legal misinterpretations. She clearly notes that due to the war on drugs, there is an inflow of people into the system of criminal justice. Despite the high influx of people, still there is not enough representation for all of them. Because of the case in Supreme Court Gideon vs. Wainwright, everyone including the poor have a right to legal representation. In many cases, a large number of people never have access to legal counsel or if they do are lucky...
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...The 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 “criminals” or “felon” in order to legally enslave and segregate a certain type of people. This discrimination is located in multiple areas of the U.S. government. Alexander goes through the ways of how discrimination is still prevalent in employment, the housing market, education, and basic voting rights. Alexander unveils these discrimination practices by comparing modern government systems to the old Jim Crow laws. Alexander believes that the racial caste system is mostly the same and the only thing that has changed is what we call it now. People of color are mostly the ones incarcerated, so if you use the label criminal you are able to mention people of color without directly mentioning them. Language is everything and how you label it changes the way people view it. Throughout the book her biggest argument and case on this new system is incarceration specifically. Alexander uses a few good points in order to justify her claims. Alexander talks about the “War on Drugs.” Alexander says that the War on Drugs, a policy put into effect through Reagan’s reign...
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...Erin Gorman 11/11/13 Reflection paper 3 The New Jim Crow In the book The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Alexander puts into perspective that racism still exists in society today. She explains that our criminal justice system is unfairly targeting African American men through mass incarceration with harsh punishment. When released from prison most of these men have less rights then when they entered. This is where Alexander’s idea of the new Jim Crow comes from. She argues that the rights being taken away from African American men are the same rights that they’ve had to fight for, for the past 100 years, and that they are constantly being denied their citizenship. The criminal justice system is using their crimes as an excuse to give harsh punishments and take away rights mirroring the old Jim Crow laws. There are a prominent number of African American men in prison. This is because the police are prejudice against people of color. They may not be doing it consciously but with the stigma that comes with being African American everyone watches them more closely than white men. With the blacks being watched more closely they are going to be getting caught more for their crimes and the whites will get off the hook more. This helps explain why there are so many black men in prison. Also with the stigma that African Americans are more violent and defiant they are more harshly punished for their crimes. If a black man and a white man commit the same crime the black man usually...
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...December 1st 2015 The New Jim Crow "The New Jim Crow" highlights the racial extents of the War on Drugs. It argues that federal drug policy unfairly targets communities of color, keeping millions of young, black men in a cycle of poverty and behind bars. The book begins by challenging claims that racism is dead. Those who believe that full equality been achieved would do well to notice many African Americans' reality today. An extraordinary amount of blacks are still barred from voting because in nearly every state, as convicted felons cannot vote. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans have served time in prison as a result of drug convictions and are branded felons for life. Voting is also barred for those currently incarcerated. Alexander uncovers the system of mass incarceration: a system comprised of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control criminals both in and out of prison. The greatest instigator of mass incarceration is the War on Drugs. Rather than combat drug activity, the War on Drugs has served as a deliberate strategy to control people of color and remove them from the political process, which is racist in both application and design. Alexander suggests that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration constitute a "rebirth of caste" in America. Beginning with slavery and continuing with Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration places entire groups of people into discriminatory positions in society, permanently. The War on Drugs began in earnest in...
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...Chapter 2: The Lockdown Rules of the Game Just Say No Supreme Court Sanctions Legal Misrepresentation The Fourth Amendment isn’t the only rule violated in these situations; most of the American civil liberties have been undermined due to the drug war. The Court has allowed the following: War on Drugs tactics #1: Consent Searches Started in 1960’s but rarely used until the 1970’s -primarily for hostage situations, hijackings, and prison escapes Once arrested, one's chances of ever being truly free of the system of control are slim, often to the vanishing point. Tens of thousands of poor people go to jail every year without ever talking to a lawyer. Approximately 80% of criminal defendants are indigent and thus unable to hire a lawyer. People fear police harassment, retaliation, and abuse−especially poor people of color. Those looking for an attorney often find that unless there are broken bones and no criminal record, private attorney would unlikely be interested in the case. Without significant provision over the authority when exercising police discretion, they can arrest Americans for nonviolent drug charges with relative ease. The Supreme Court lets them do it by, and I quote, “eviscerating Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by the police.” Due to this, people are outright saying that there is a “virtual drug exception” in the Bill of Rights. What this means is that the Supreme Court is creating and abusing a section of the Bill...
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...In the book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander—a Ohio State University professor, director of Racial Justice Project at ACLU of Northern California, and director of the Civil Rights Clinics at Stanford Law School—was the uncovering research about the system of mass incarceration, which are rules, policies, and laws that helped control the amount of criminals entering and leaving prisons. The author begins with slavery and continues to explain the Jim Crow segregation, which both represent mass incarcerations. Mass incarceration prevents discrimination towards groups of people. For example, the author states, “After the death of slavery, the idea of race lives on.” (26) This specific example...
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...The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander I believe to be a wakeup call for the truly “blind” in today’s mass incarceration of black people. Alexander brings light to how the Civil Rights Movement brought upon a new implementation of racial separation. Her understanding of how Mass Incarceration is the opening to a New Jim Crow of how black people in particular lack any real rights of citizenship. Her book seems to overview the typical media covered topics of people being arrested for use and selling of drugs, rulings in the Supreme Court, and struggles of ex-convicts but of course not to the extent that is required. As the media coverage is not about the true facts but rather embellished and or...
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...In chapter five of Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” it begins by reminding the readers of Presidents Barrack Obama’s speech urging black men to be better father figures. A question in which he brings up is where are all the true black fathers in today’s society? He then answers they are in the prison system. A prison system that has been filled up with people of color. Schmalleger presents us in his text book “Criminology” with the Social Structure Theories providing us with a better understanding. These theories suggest “negative aspects of social structures such as disorganization within the family, poverty or income inequality within the economic arraignments of society, and disadvantages...
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...On The New Jim Crow In The New Jim Crow, the author blames society for moral failure of the greatest kind in “failing to see the larger problem.” Though, she never actually diagnoses a larger problem-or rather, in attempting to do so, gives a vague diagnosis regularly deflecting, falling into methodical errors, and making unsubstantiated presumptions. The state is both the problem and the solution. Agency is important but not too important. Environmental factors are important but not too important. ‘Racially coded’ language is both racist in its implications and not racist in language. Thus, one could come to any number of conclusions based on these deductions, ever giving truth and falsity to every number of them. First, the author tries to establish that the system is inherently targeting blacks. She does so by citing crime statistics’ supposed inaccuracy and setting a backdrop of racism. The author arrives at the conclusion that mass incarceration would not happen today if we were to recognize racial lines. She defines the main contributing factors to the ghettos as (1) the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization, (2) the increase of drug circulation and the “war on drugs”, and (3) the perpetual...
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...Corrie Gripenstraw Dr. Jackson American Government November 2, 2015 Book Analysis This paper will present a brief overview of the author and the book, followed by the book’s thesis. It will discuss the major power structures and institutions that are supporting the criminal justice system. This book aims to dispel the common misbelief that the issue of racism is no longer relevant in modern day America. The main idea of The New Jim Crow is that the War on Drugs is, at least in part, racially motivated. It traps African American men in a cycle of poverty. One of the main effects of the War on Drugs is the denial of thousands of African Americans the right to vote. This is eerily similar to the original Jim Crow. The book opens with the case...
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