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On The New Jim Crow Analysis

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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 …show more content…
Her logic usually follows as such: A is both A and not A, so B is both B and not B. It quickly unravels into an astronomical mess of wholly contradictory statements. She describes stereotypes of criminals as both true and not true. True, in that if they were true, it’s not the fault of black culture. False, in that the stereotypes are but a mere projection that white culture has painted onto blacks. Of which, they have chosen to embrace in what the author defines as a way blacks increase self-esteem in perpetual victimhood. This paradoxical logic creates leap after leap of false assumptions and of course causing the author to either ignore reality all together, or ignore her previous

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