"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."
As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.
In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.
290 pages, Hardcover
First published January 5, 2010
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Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at The Ohio State University, a civil rights advocate and a writer.
2 books 83.4k followers
In February of 2016, a powerful article appeared in The Nation: “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn't Deserve the Black Vote.” The name of its author—Michelle Alexander—struck me as familiar. Then I realized she was the Ohio State law professor who had caused some stir five years ago with her book The New Jim Crow, a book which demonstrated how our criminal justice system was in effect little more than a system of racial oppression. It was then I decide I had put off reading The New Jim Crow long enough.
Alexander has the credentials and the experience to know whereof she speaks. After graduating from Stanford Law and clerking for Justice Blackmun, she went to work for the California ACLU, specializing in criminal justice reform. It was there she began to realize that the American criminal justice system was not designed to reform criminals, or to control them, or even merely to punish them; instead, like the Jim Crow laws in the old South, its result was a virtual caste system, a method of social control that excludes black people in general—and poor black males in particular—from full participation in American society. Its most noticeable effect is mass incarceration: today, the United States locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world, and the number of black people in prison is three times greater than their percentage of the general population.
But The New Jim Crow demonstrates that it is not merely the large number of people in prison, but the severe curtailment of their rights after they leave prison that generates much of the system's hopelessness. Felons are excluded from public housing, welfare, employment opportunities, and even in many states the right to vote. These felons—a significant percentage of the urban black population—become an underclass unable to rise, an underclass filled with pariahs who are excluded from America's freedoms.
Although many people see the rise of mass incarceration as a response to the crack “epidemic” of the 80's, Alexander argues persuasively that it was instead a retaliation against the civil rights gains of the 60's and 70's. “Law and Order” had for years been a code phrase for racial control, exploited by Nixon and others, but it was Reagan's “War on Drugs”—unleashed two years before cocaine was any kind of a problem—that put the system in operation. But it was not until the '90's when Bill Clinton signed the the 1994 crime bill (which Bernie Sanders voted for), and subsequently ended “welfare as we know it,” that the system achieved the merciless efficiency that it maintains to the present day.
This is an important book, and one that progressives like myself—who have put the Bernie shirts away and now display a Hillary sign on the lawn (or at least displayed one until some joker in the neighborhood stole it)—should read carefully and take to heart. It outlines the formidable task--whoever may be president--that we have ahead of us in the years to come.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander will pick up your everyday white liberal guilt, tie it in knots, and leave you wondering how you could have ever been so simple-minded as to think colorblindness was benign, let alone desirable. While the “War on Drugs,” hopped up on federal funds and confiscated property, is systematically exploiting African American neighborhoods to supply the ever-growing prison industry with human beings to incarcerate, the mass imprisonment of young black men is inevitable. Felony convictions of African Americans for simple possession of the kinds of drugs that white youth are routinely expected to “experiment with” are easily obtained, but incarceration is just the beginning. Once branded a felon in America today, one has no future--no job, no loan for tuition, no food stamps to help feed the children, no vote, no jury service. In some states, no amount of restitution can change a felon back into a citizen. Alexander’s scholarly study is more than convincing and, as she admits, its lesson is more than challenging. While the best and brightest of African American leaders merely provide evidence for those who insist that racism is not the problem, the future remains grim.
Hardly an author opened my eyes for the real dimensions and roots of the prison industry as Alexander did, she nails down the problems intrinsic to an injustice system growing like a virus or tumor in a once prospering nation.
I´ll compare 3 examples of systems, from best to worst, to demonstrate that it´s not just a problem of hidden, suppressed racism, but a question of the societal model too.
1. Fair, sustainable, eco social, Keynesian, Nordic model countries with rehabilitative justice such as Scandinavia, Switzerland, the Netherlands.
2. Democratic countries with a renewed, played down, ignored, and not indemnified history of colonialism, oppression, slavery, and full of sick philosophies, politics, economics, and humanities.
3. Dictatorships with exploitative economic models.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the population lives in point 2 and 3 countries and that a change can just come with a sustainable and fair economic and societal model, because as long as stupid doctrines and agenda dominate any aspect of life, economy, education,… and even the public debate about the future is infected, there is no hope.
Look at what rehabilitative justice and punitive justice are related too, take for instance these quizzes showing how other mentalities, ideologies, and faith influence and poison all other aspects of mentality and the lives of other people.
http://www.politiscales.net/
https://9axes.github.io/
https://www.politicalcompass.org/
Extremism of any kind in one single aspect, especially certain, not all, kinds of conservatism and right wing politics, not to forget this eye for an eye thing and the wannabe break free market, tend to be against restorative/rehabilitative justice, adoring enforcing retributive/ punitive justice and a destructive and unnecessary system.
There is the old saying that prisons make criminals and nothing could be closer to the truth, because being incarcerated with people with terrible lives full of poverty, abuse, violence, mental health issues,… that forced them to be criminal to survive together with a state that doesn´t care about them, instead of helping these individuals to resocialize is the perfect breeding ground for an endless continuation of a vicious circle.
After surviving in circumstances so cruel and inhuman most won´t go out without permanent psychological trauma, scarred for life, PTSD, and new mental issues added to the ones that led to imprisonment, the delinquents are stigmatized, branded, the state does as much as possible to make their life even bleaker, without hope of resocialization or a new beginning, forcing them to become criminal again to simply survive, because they have close to no other perspective. It´s nothing else than a feudalistic socioeconomic status system with very few chances of escape if one has the bad luck of being born poor and not white.
If one looks at the numbers, statistics, and timelines and compares the War on drugs that destroyed black communities as much as the narcotics, the main economic doctrine, and the politics, one sees a parallel of extreme increase of all problems in the US, while many European countries, especially Scandinavia, have nothing like that.
It might also be a good idea to take a look at the interconnection of public private partnerships, prison industry, and the possible context with the development, because it´s a bit as if the car industry could define the safety standards or the food industry the legal limits for contamination with whatever, there are enough chemicals to choose from, or Big Pharma… You get the picture. This could lead to the interest of both the companies and the state to, well, imprison as many people as long as possible to make money.
Not even to mention the conscious and subliminal racist thinking that is still poisoning many influential minds, that enabled their parents to transform the jurisdiction and legislation, to more or less secretly and subtly integrate Jim Crow in a new, even more vicious way. Because it seems legit and fair for the conservative, rich, opportunistic, and stubborn wing who thinks that they have full rights, while people of color are just three fifths.
They would immediately call their major or governor or, why not, the president, doesn´t seem improbable these days, if the police would dare to make a crackdown in their rich gated community. Ok, the officers would possibly not even come close, because the high security standards and guards would possibly not let them in. „I´m sorry gentlemen, you have no permission to disturb our residents. Why don´t you try it in the red lined, poor, hopeless areas, guess you´ll have much more luck there to boost your busts.“
Because bigoted, politically correct people don´t judge people because of color, but by asking if they are poor, evil, dangerous criminals who, after leaving prison, deserve exclusion from jury and voting, housing, education, and employment discrimination, most citizenship rights,… or honest, hard working, good citizens.
Just progressive social, economic, and political reforms, Big History, and a reprocessing of the past, including redemption, could stop the madness. But it´s still a long way to go, because as long as people think that one black president means that racism has been exterminated, which is the same illogic as saying that sexism disappeared overnight in the countries ruled by women, no important and open public debate can arise.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
This one is especially creepy and distinctive, because if one clicks „incarceration rate per 100.000 population“ there is the US followed by states that are no great places to live, there are close to no other Western democracies in the top list, giving massive implications of something going terribly wrong here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retribu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restora.
Just look at the categories down at the end of the 2 articles, once it´s related to sustainable, intelligent retributive solutions and on the dark side to retributive tribalism founded by wacky humanities. The Big History picture of this, that is close to unexplored, is immense.
6 books 2,120 followers
1988. English 201. I was a college freshman, required to write a paper about fads vs. trends. For reasons I cannot recall, I chose to write about the War on Drugs. I can’t recall anything about the paper, either, though I can still see the “This Is Your Brain On Drugs” commercial that was rolled out in 1987 by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Washington D. C. was embroiled in the Iran-Contra Affair. It was an election year. Perestroika had just begun rolling off western tongues. Benazir Bhutto was named Prime Minister of Pakistan. I was eighteen and although I knew all about apartheid in South Africa, and stood in line to see Mississippi Burning when it was released late that year, I had been raised in nearly all-white communities in rural Washington state. The notion that the War on Drugs was at the heart of a “stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow” (p 4) would have been beyond my limited understanding of race in these United States.
Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is stunning. The racialized social control she writes of in the introduction is quite simple to state, but devastating in complexity: the United States, since the dismantling of Jim Crow began in the mid-1940s, has sought to maintain the social dominance of its white population by the systematic mass incarceration of people of color, primarily young black men.
You can’t believe that so radical a policy, carried out on a massive scale that requires the collusion of each branch of government, not to mention the FBI, CIA, and local law enforcement, is possible? Don’t take my word for it. Read Alexander’s painstakingly documented book. Follow up her statements with research of your own; sadly, it’s very easy to connect the dots, all the way back to the start of slavery in the Colonies, long before the Federation was formed, long before the Constitution of the United States declared that slaves were defined as three-fifths of a man.
I could provide you the litany of statistical evidence Alexander lays out, but it’s hard to know where to start or where to stop. The data are here; the numbers are real, and they are soul-crushing. I challenge you to read this and learn for yourself. What makes this book so compelling, however, is Alexander’s ability to put human faces in front of the statistics, to show us that our shared history has neither a shared interpretation nor shared consequences.
Alexander effectively repeats and summarizes the concepts on a regular basis, which is a welcome relief, because so much of this information is hard to process. I expended much energy in rage and frustration of how this system came to be and is allowed to continue that I needed the frequent re-focus. About two-thirds of the way in, she offers this summation:
This, in brief, is how the system works: The War on Drugs is the vehicle through which extraordinary numbers of black men are forced into the cage. The entrapment occurs in three distinct phases . . . The first stage is the roundup. Vast numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system by the police, who conduct drug operations primarily in poor communities of color. … The conviction marks the beginning of the second phase: the period of formal control. Once arrested, defendants are generally denied meaningful legal representation and pressured to plead guilty whether they are or not. …The final stage has been dubbed by some advocates as the period of invisible punishment. … a form of punishment that operates largely outside of public view and takes effect outside the traditional sentencing framework. . . and collectively ensures that the offenders will never integrate into mainstream, white society.
One of the most thought-provoking issues raised in The New Jim Crow is the concept of colorblindness, and how Martin Luther King’s call to create a society where people are not "judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" has been badly distorted by politicians in their attempts to dismantle affirmative action and anti-poverty programs. Recognition of this distortion is not new, of course, but it’s been skillfully employed in the mass incarceration movement by those who don’t want to appear racist. As Alexander states:
“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 rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.”
Martin Luther King, Jr fought for a society where people were not judged by the color of their skin. He never called for the color of their skin to be ignored.
Michelle Alexander states in the opening sentence that
This book is not for everyone. I have a specific audience in mind—people who care deeply about racial justice but who, for any number of reasons, do not yet appreciate the magnitude faced by communities of color as a result of mass incarceration…(and) those who have been struggling to persuade their friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers, co-workers, or political representatives . . . but who have lacked the facts and data to back up their claims. Last, but definitely not least, I am writing this book for all those trapped within America’s latest caste system. You may be locked up our lock out of mainstream society, but you are not forgotten.
So it’s natural to end such a bleak assessment of race in America with the question, what can be done? Michelle Alexander addresses this extensively, including taking the traditional civil rights organizations to task for turning their backs on the long-standing issue of mass incarceration of black and brown Americans.
As a white woman living again in predominantly white, rural Washington state, I despair at my ability to contribute anything useful to the dialogue, much less to be an agent of change. I accept I’ll be branded an SJW (fine by me) and shout mostly to a choir of my own peers. But I know, after reading what Michelle Alexander wrote in her preface, that this book is for me; I am the audience she had in mind. She also states in the introduction that:
A new social consensus must be forged about race and the role of race in defining the basic structure of our society, if we ever hope to abolish the New Jim Crow. The new consensus must begin with dialogue, a conversation that fosters critical consciousness, a key prerequisite to effective social action.
After Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, MO last August, and the Black Lives Matter campaign spread across social media, I vowed to listen, read, and better educate myself about racial injustices, as well as hold myself accountable for on my own assumptions and prejudices. The New Jim Crow makes me uncomfortable; it makes me angry, ashamed, fearful, and determined. Determined never to be so blind again.
You need to read this. I don’t pretend to have a terribly high opinion of the US. Like Australia, it is a settler society that really needs to reconcile and make amends with its own past. For instance, until very recently the US had a holocaust museum, but no museum to slavery. The history of slavery and of Jim Crow is a stain that marks the entire sweep of US history – and that stain is red, because it is in blood.
The problem is that since the US has never reconciled itself with its past, it finds it impossible to see how the stereotypes and common sense assumptions that pervade its national consciousness remain profoundly racist. In fact, a large part of the point of this book is to show that ‘colour blind’ visions of US race relations today are perhaps the largest problem facing people of colour. From slavery, to Jim Crow, to the criminalisation of black America, the thing that makes the new racial system so effective is that it is hidden in plain sight.
Effectively, the US has an injustice system, rather than a justice system. I mean, the system is constructed to create criminals, it is created to destroy lives – and it does so in ways that make the pathways of escape from the systematic injustices of ‘law and order’ so narrow that hardly anyone can make it through. Well, when I say that, that only really applies if you are black or brown. White people are much less likely to be caught in the structural traps set by the criminal injustice system – but, hasn’t that always been thus?
The problem is the ‘war on drugs’. By any measure – well, other than counting the wealth of the owners of private prisons in the US, and criminalising huge numbers of black and brown people – the war on drugs has been an abject failure. The US now has a quarter of the people imprisoned in the world. It is quite amusing hearing people from the US go on about their love of freedom – it displays a level of double speak that would make Orwell blush. But the war on drugs has been used most effectively to put black and brown America back in their place after the Civil Rights victories of the 1950s and 60s. As the author points out repeatedly here, whites and blacks use drugs at similar rates, they commit most crimes at similar rates (although, there is evidence that whites are actually more likely than blacks to use drugs) however, the social stereotypes are that blacks are the drug users and drug dealers and that stereotype is then realised in the way blacks are treated by the police force, and then by the criminal justice system, and then by the prison system, and finally in how they are treated after they leave the prison system. A white person caught with drugs is treated better by the criminal justice system at every single stage than a black person is. They are less likely to be arrested in the first place, less likely to get a conviction, less likely to end up in jail – and all of this while being just as likely to commit the crime. But the system has been so rigged by its assertion of ‘colour blindness’ that even the profiling that clearly happens, and the disparities in sentencing that are blindingly obvious, cannot even be complained about, since everyone already knows that ‘racism doesn’t exist’ any more – I mean, President Obama was black, wasn’t he…?
I’m not going to list the examples she gives throughout this of the jaw-droppingly horrible treatment of people – I kept finding myself making involuntary noises throughout reading this. Honestly, there were points in this so shocking I almost laughed out loud, it was like something from an incredibly poor taste comedy show – you know, called Justice in America. The chapter where she details how police are encouraged to confiscate ‘the proceeds of crime’ is so disturbing that Kafka could have written it. No, in fact, Kafka would probably think it was too over the top and so even he might have shied away from writing it.
The worst of this is that it isn’t all that clear to me how the gross injustices detailed in this book are ever going to be overcome. Defining blacks as criminals has been a master-stroke – I mean, it makes it nearly impossible for even the left to support the mostly black men who have had their citizenship rights removed from them – being someone who supports blacks is bad enough, but someone who supports criminals? Who is going to do that? Potentially, not even fellow blacks. Really, this book would make you weep.
A part of this where I made one of my little noises was where she said that prisons are often placed out in the country, you know, where mostly white people live – where the prisoners then swell the local population, but, since they are prisoners, where they aren’t allowed to vote. This gives these mostly white areas more representative power (given their larger population), and it simultaneously takes representative power away from the black neighbourhoods were the prisoners would otherwise live. Three-fifths compromise, anyone? Yep, it’s just like being back in the good ol’ days when a black person’s vote was worth only three-fifths of that of a white person’s – the more things change…
The use of shame to keep black people in their place is particularly disturbing, but has proven stunningly effective. This book is a case study in discussing how effectively shame can be deployed as a form of symbolic violence against an entire population.
Like I said, this really needs to be compulsory reading. Once again, I’ve come away from reading a book utterly despising both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Sure, I would be forced to support either of them before Trump – but the harm they both did as Presidents is beyond disgusting.
Criminal Purpose
Intention is not the equivalent of purpose - neither for individuals nor for societies. Intention is mental and ephemeral, an idea-before-the-fact which is part of a complex of other ideas, many of which may be contrary or contradictory. Intention is expressed in what we say about what we want. Purpose is the behavioral result of actions which are actually taken, and which reveal our frequently unstated or even unconscious commitments. Purpose is the concrete effects of what we do; it is what happens. Purpose emerges from intentions through politics. We can rationalise, delude, and comfort ourselves about intention but purpose is the reality which insists on being seen for what it is. And purpose is often surprising, and sometimes ugly.
The stated intention of the American legal system is equal justice under the law, a part of the American Dream of ‘opportunity’. An actual purpose of this system is the political sterilisation and social suppression of Black America. The intentional Dream is a purposeful Illusion. It matters little whether the majority of Americans intend for this to be the case. The politics of accommodating conflicting intentions has ensured that it has come about. This is the argument presented by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow. It becomes a compelling argument once it is recognised that publicly expressed intentions - especially political intentions - have little to do with national purpose.
The American ‘War on Drugs’ is a central example of the phenomenon. Illegal drug usage was on the decline in the US in the 1970’s. The expressed political intention was to eliminate it entirely from American society. The real purpose was revealed only as the accompanying intentions of Black Ops in Central America, Conservative reaction to Great Society and Civil Rights legislation, and unresolved racial hatred began to interact. The behavioral purpose was coherent and deadly: the short term destruction of Black communities through the introduction of crack cocaine and associated criminality; and the long term political disenfranchisement of Black citizens through legislation that denies voting and a range of other fights to drug crime felons.
The purposeful results of the war have been remarkable, and remarkably unnoticed politically in America. What politician can stand against drug legislation while the war against drugs still rages? What liberal intellectual can deny the continuing impoverishment and dependency on public assistance in the Black community? And even in those organisations meant to promote the cause of Black equality like the NAACP, would it not be fatal for the future of affirmative action if they were to align with a ‘weak’ stance on crime? A perfect sociological storm therefore - one might almost say conspiracy, and who knows, it may well be.
It is important to understand that the national purpose has nothing to do with the reduction of crime. Criminality is part of the purpose. Alexander says “The term mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison. Once released, former prisoners enter a hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social exclusion. They are members of America’s new undercaste.” This undercaste is in fact a new way to legitimate racial oppression. That is its purpose regardless of intention. Only when someone like Alexander articulates this sort of implicit purpose, is it possible to do something about it.
The new undercaste in other words is no accident; it is imposed subservience- slavery - by other means. This is clear if one looks at the history of Black oppression in America. Alexis de Toqueville, as usual, provides a convenient datum from the mid-nineteenth century: “The Negro race will never leave those shores of the American continent to which it was brought by the passions and the vices of Europeans; and it will not disappear from the New World as long as it continues to exist. The inhabitants of the United States may retard the calamities which they apprehend, but they cannot now destroy their efficient cause.” In this context The New Jim Crow is but the latest attempt to retard and destroy. The journey from indentured bondage to slavery to violent segregation to criminal servitude is one of continuously pursued purpose. This is the real Deep State Conspiracy.
Postscript: I am once again struck with the ability of literature to anticipate science in the articulation of social issues. In this case a novel such as Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn elaborates just the kind of criminilisation of a social group through the directed use of law more than 50 years before Alexander’s analysis. See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show.
This book rends the heart. It will have you exclaiming aloud. Its immediacy, its relevance to how we live today, in short, its astonishing salience, knocks the so-called knowledgeable reader on his or her ass.
Those who read this book should discard all pretense that they are unbiased. My brothers and sisters, it is not something we can choose not to be. It is implicit, engendered in us by our culture. Evidence discussed here even suggests that it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, we’re all subject to the same biases.
In that sense the book is invasive; it tends to show you your faults, personally. It’s utterly gripping. Written with economy and clarity. If only everyone, every American, would read this book. Then perhaps we could begin to address our problems.
The book’s thrust is how the war on drugs, promoted by the Raygun administration, “cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.” (p. 69)
The section about the degradation of one’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure will set your hair on fire. All such searches must be consensual. You have the right to say no. But almost no one does thanks to the Supreme Court’s odious machinations. There’s a wonderful coda, too, that briefly looks at the errors Civil Rights lawyers have made over the years.
That I should be reading this during the fourth week of the Derek Chauvin trial, the day after Daunte Wright, an unarmed black man, was shot and killed in a most despicable manner in a neighborhood of Minneapolis. I throw my hands up in despair. (Now Adam Toledo too, 13 years old. Who’s next?)
In a caste system, people inherent their socio-economic status. In the New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander describes in great detail America's racial caste system whereby people are segregated by race.This system was started by slavery, then maintained by the old Jim Crow laws. After the death of the old Jim Crow laws, a new caste system was established through a system of mass incarceration and deportation that impacted both the people imprisoned or deported and their families. This system of mass incarceration and deportation has segregated millions of black and brown people and relegated them to a second-class status.
The mass incarceration resulted from Reagan's war on drugs, which wasn't really about drugs at all. It was, and continues to be, a war against people of color. Mass deportation started under Trump.
Alexander states that her greatest concern at this point is that our current system of mass incarceration and deportation will "morph into something new and more dangerous."
The New Jim Crow is essential reading for Americans who don't or haven't followed these issues closely over the last 30 years. It's a well-organized, thoughtful, accessible read - neither too light or too cluttered with footnotes. If you have followed the reasons for and impacts of the US approach to incarceration on the African-American community (and be honest with yourself on whether you've read a few WashingtonPost or Atlantic Magazine articles from time to time or really dug in over time on the data and history), there's little new here, but it's a good reminder and summary, anyway.
If you want to wake up friends or colleagues about the reality of the so-called War on Drugs, mandatory minimums, 3-strikes laws, disparities in sentencing between users of powder cocaine vs. users of crack cocaine, and other salient facts covered in The New Jim Crow, you might find it even more effective to invite them to watch The 13th (a Netflix documentary) with you. It does an even more powerful job of communicating the same fundamental facts, with the added bonus of Alexander, Angela Davis, Jelani Cobb, Henry Louis Gates, Newt Gingrich, and others - speaking directly to the viewer.
This book has a number of things going for it:
1. Most people who read this book are not good with numbers
2. Most people who read this book are not good with complicated arguments, especially if these arguments involve numbers.
3. People who are not good with numbers and arguments generally allow this deficit to be filled with an abundance of sympathy and feeling.
4. Sympathy and feeling facilitate sonorousness much better than facts and reason
That this book is tripe would, in better, freer ages, need not be said. But we live in an age of intellectual oppression--and even the most obvious facts, and the most blatant lies--are not as clear to use as they should be. The New Jim Crow is a symptom of this intellectual glaucoma. The problem is that people actually believe this hazy nonsense when it's very clear that the author of this book is either very dishonest--in which case she is quite intelligent, given the massive sales of this book--or she is very stupid, and does not know the frailty of her own arguments--in this case, she can join the club of her none-too-inquisitive readers.
What is admittedly brilliant about this book is the constant three-card monty Alexander maintains throughout. When it suits her purpose, she's happy to complain about the arrest rate, unaware that her central these lies in the conviction rate, and that the low level of convictions per black arrests may actually signal that crimes are under-enforced. She's also partial to citing her own work, which in turn cites other work, which in turn has, as its source, one unreliable dataset (explained below). Almost as if she's hiding something.
Though there is much dawdling over hack psychology studies (any of those results replicable?), though there are many crocodile tears shed over anecdotes of injustice, though the prose of a wannabe James Baldwin (who isn't?!), the basic thesis of the book is simple: Blacks and whites use drugs as a similar rate, but blacks are locked up at a much higher rate than whites. The system that locks up them up is "mass incarceration," our eponymous blight on the black community. Bad this one supposed insight with three-hundred pages of sob stories and studies unworthy of Chicken Soup for the Soul and, presto, you have a cultural phenomenon.
Because taking arms against this bloated, wretched hydra would take all day, let's strike at that central thesis, the heart of the book: The claim that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rate.
1. The data Alexander use are unreliable. Where do the numbers come from which she uses to claim that whites and blacks use drugs at the same rate? Answer (for those of you who couldn't be bothered to check the footnotes): The census. Yes, that's right, the census. Yes, that's right, the self-reported government questionnaire is what Alexander bases her most important conclusions upon. The census.
Anyone who has ever worked with social science data knows that self-reported data are unreliable. If human behavior were really a mirror to what humans say to interviewers, the world would be Utopia. Instead, what we see are humans who behave much differently in real life than they do in questionnaires.
In this particular instance, the questionnaire is the GOVERNMENT'S. Let's put this another way--what incentive would you possibly have to lie about illegal activity TO THE government? Think on that for a moment.
The data are junk. This alone should be enough to disqualify this book from any regard. But let's keep going.
2. Though the data are so spurious on their face as to warrant immediate dismissal, let's play devil's advocate. After all, if blacks and whites lie to census takers at equal rates, we would come to roughly the same results--that is, that blacks and whites use drugs at the same rates.
Thing is, this is not what we see. Johns Hopkins put out a study showing that when it comes to drug use, blacks lie about drug use. As the journal Addictive Behavior tells us, blacks lie about drug use at much higher rates than whites.
3. Even if Alexander's data weren't corrupt (the possessive is used loosely here, since Alexander can only steal her bad data from other sources). even if blacks and whites really do use drugs at the same rates. even if these things held, Alexander's complaints against mass incarceration would be piffle. Why? Because even if parity existed between the races in drug crimes, gross disparities would exist in all other areas of recorded crime.
In Chicago in the year 2011, the murder rate among blacks was 20 times higher than among whites. Not 20% higher--20 times. Rates of other crimes--burglaries, rapes, etc. show a similar disparity. Greatly disparate rates are seen even after controlling for urban/rural divides, North/South, suburbs/city.
In other words, if there truly is parity between the races when it comes to drug crimes, it would be a huge and hugely improbable surprise given the tremendously higher rates of criminality of blacks with respect to non-drug crimes. Occam's Razor suggests that it is not some strange aberration we are witnessing, and that, hey, maybe that unreliable data led us astray. Occam's Razor, though, is a tool of common sense. And common sense is not allowed when you're in the center of a lie.
BUT THERE'S MORE. Because even if all the drug offenders were taken out of prison, the US would have the largest prison population in the world (p. 126).
The central thesis of the book is hollow. The rest is racial pornography. The simple truth is this: Mass incarceration exists because the USA has more crime than any other civilized nation on earth. Look it up! And blacks commit a grossly disproportionate amount of this crime. Look it up! That simple. Throw as many bogus numbers and phony studies on it as you want: The truth changes not a lick.
How many people who laud this book actually read the footnotes? How many actually read the studies Alexander cites? Here's the most interesting question: How many readers actually care that her work is bunk? I venture to say none, though there's always a margin of error. This book appeals to the racial onanist, and no one else; luckily, racial onanism seems to be the primary preoccupation of the chattering classes. Keep in mind that this is far different from actually having a desire to help black people. Helping black people actually requires looking at facts, and making policies which--but I'm harshing the buzz, aren't I?
Why is there no book-length rebuttal to this trash? Why are there barely any rebuttals at all? Since when is attacking a blockbuster book a foolish business move? But wait--an attack would require putting for facts which don't accommodate our racial onanism. The much-ballyhooed "dialogue" which, messiah-like, is always just beyond the horizon, is impossible for this fact. That there hasn't been a widespread rejection of this bauble is a testament to how much power white guilt has over whites and blacks alike.
You then encounter the latte-sipping classes advocating for "revolution," since it is, after all, the ruling classes and elites which have led us down this racist path. Brilliant. Of course, now that this tripe is "required reading" on so many campuses, the revolution we really need is one that will demand the truth from its prophets and teachers, and cast away this doggerel bile.
Readers of the world, unite!
No, black people aren't the majority in our American prisons because they're more likely to commit crimes. They're there because the "War on Drugs" has been applied to them more frequently than any other racial group.
Give a damn, people. Read this book and stop lying to yourselves.
I grew up in Chicago so I am well aware of how race can divide a city. I've lived it, seen it, the good and the bad. There are no problems harder to solve then sociological ones. One can mandate changes, change the laws, make more and more things people say and do illegal, but. it doesn't change the way they think, change their long held beliefs, inborn prejudices and biases. Why I believe things only change on the surface, looks like we're making progress, but look underneath and you'll find something else there.
This book looks underneath, to a system that though it has changed focus, has been in place for a very long time. The statistics are staggering, the arguments well presented and thoughtfully explained. Not sure I agree with everything she presents, nor how she does it, but it is eye opening, definitely makes one think. John Legend is now leading a movement to have rights restored to convicted felons. So many of those that are black and brown in jail for drug charges, many for marijusnz, which is now legal n many states. When they get out they are not really free, hard to find a job if not I'm possible, stripped of their rights, they turn back to crime. What else can they do? Where can they go?
I plan to read later this month, American Jail, as a follow up to this one. I have though had great success with listening to non fiction audio books. I'm enjoying them now. I think this narrator was very good and that this was the perfect platform for this scholarly written book. A strong, eye opening read that hopefully will provide room for thought, basic understanding for those who read.
One of the most important books I have ever read. With eloquence, passion, and careful research, Michelle Alexander shows how slavery in the United States has not disappeared - it has just changed shape, into the mass incarceration of black men. Among many formidable arguments, Alexander emphasizes the importance of doing away with the notion of colorblindness and how we need to see race more than ever. A quote that highlights her point:
"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 rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color 'criminals' and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it."
Overall, I recommend this book to everyone. You really should read this now. Alexander does a remarkable job of revealing uncomfortable truths about the United States - mainly, that racism is well and alive - while urging us to take action, to treat each other with compassion, and to recognize that true compassion involves taking action against institutionalized forms of oppression like mass incarceration. In other words: donate to the ACLU, go out and join protests, and say that "black lives matter" without an ounce of hesitation. I know I have a lot of work to do - and I hope we can all fight together. I will end this brief review with some of Alexander's words, because she says everything way better than I can:
"Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem. The fact that the meaning of race may evolve over time or lose much of its significance is hardly a reason to be struck blind. We should hope not for a colorblind society but instead for a world in which we can see each other fully, learn from each other, and do what we can to respond to each other with love. That was King's dream - a society that is capable of seeing each of us, as we are, with love. That is a goal worth fighting for."
It is Michelle Alexander's experience as a lawyer which makes this such a successful piece. It is not novelty that makes this book so profound, but the authority upon which the argument is made: simple statistics and inarguable facts. In the very beginning, Mrs. Alexander states for whom this book was written: people who have a hard time convincing friends, neighbors and others that there is something oddly familiar with the current order. She has done this perfectly and thus I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a hard time convincing others that the current state of Blackamerica is not due to a mortal/cultural flaw, but instead stems from a perfect storm of institutional control that perhaps was initially well-intended, but at present insist upon maintaining a status quo that has decimated the African-American community and is doing the same to our Latino brothers and sisters.
I was both vindicated and saddened in finding evidence from a lawyer in confirmation of my understanding that the United States Supreme Court, particularly the current make-up, has been a friend to the political and economic elite of this country, an enemy to the politically impotent masses and a main obstacle against any meaningful change in society at large. It was both shocking and appauling to see that the chief justices in the land acknowledging the existence of corrosive racism that has become inherent in the criminal "justice" system, while refusing to do anything but maintain the status quo since the only viable solution would be to dismantle the system - something which they deemed impossible. Once we reach that level of protectionism by the very same institution that is supposed to be the ultimate check on executive and legislative authority, what is left but a complete overhaul of the system - dare I say "revolution"?
The only criticism I have is that in her initial summary of the chapter contents, she seems to often have simply copied key sentences word for word, which is rather annoying, but minimal (and easily forgotten). Stylistically, it made for a redundancy and the book perhaps would have been better off without any foreshadowing summaries at all (current and future authors take note).
It has always been my person theory that most conspiracies are not concocted in smokey backrooms, but simply come into existence when particular interests converge and work towards the same goal in a previously established order. In short, what you have before you is the anatomy of just such a conspiracy and an uncomfortable reality that needs to be first acknowledged before we can ever begin to talk about social, racial and economic justice in the United States in any meaningful way.
5 stars for in depth, persuasive and eye opening analysis of complex and important issues. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander argues that the war on drugs and its consequent incarceration of a disproportionate number of black American men amounts to a new form of racialized social control akin to the Jim Crow laws. She does an extraordinary job reviewing history, the different branches of the legal system, and the economic, social and political circumstances of black Americans today. She does a particularly skilful job of anticipating arguments against her thesis, responding to each one with careful and persuasive analysis. She acknowledges that she does not have a clear roadmap to address the new Jim Crow, but she offers some good starting points. This book was published in 2010, but it seems particularly timely now. I listened to this as an audio. It doesn't make for entertaining listening -- it's not a book based on anecdote, flashy drama or humour -- but it reminded me of some of my favourite university courses -- courses that had the ability to shift and challenge my way of seeing things. As I listened to this audio book, I couldn't help thinking that it's unfortunate that current political debate is so far removed from this level of analysis and thoughtfulness.
in his foreword, Cornel West describes this book as "the secular bible for a new social movement" and indeed it was. this is a seminal modern sociopolitical tract, passionately argued and incredibly influential in shaping the perspectives of many social justice advocates. the first half was an amazing read for me. in her chapters illustrating the racial disparities existing within policing and sentencing, Alexander provides ample evidence of how the arbitrariness of being born into a certain skin color can lead to a life upended and diminished, in perpetuity. I eventually had issues with several of the key points being made in its second half; in particular, that mass incarceration equals apartheid. nevertheless, Alexander is always a very persuasive writer and much of this book is spot-on. younger readers will need to be familiar with the U.S.'s former national obsessions with crack cocaine and with marijuana to truly understand the author's justifiable anger. overall, this is a flawed but powerful and valuable analysis of the hideously unjust War on Drugs. (spoiler: drugs won.)
progress notes
Chapter 1: The Rebirth of Caste
an impressive introduction to Alexander's thesis: namely, mass incarceration is the heir to Jim Crow, which itself was the heir to African-American slavery. the author shows the direct link between the establishment of race-based slavery, with its focus on the literal, legalized dehumanization of African-Americans as a way to differentiate between white laborers and black laborers, to the establishment of Jim Crow laws, which was a Southern reaction to the Reconstruction and a way to legislatively mandate the disempowerment of newly-freed slaves. from there she connects that disenfranchisement to the War on Drugs and its subsequent enshrinement of laws that specifically targeted and imprisoned mass numbers of African-Americans.
although I strongly disagree with her characterization of the Constitution as being entirely based on protecting the system of American slavery, when looking at this chapter overall, that is a minor quibble. Alexander is clear-eyed when it comes to portraying how racialization in the U.S. had as its objective the division of natural allies - multi-ethnic laborers - into racial categories. and thus numerically inferior property-owners would be spared combating a unified class. in general, I really appreciated Alexander's centering of class throughout this chapter. she has a similar clarity when laying out the facts about the War on Drugs. although first weaponized by Nixon, then made into an actual catchphrase and then system of policies and initiatives carried out by both Reagan and Bush Sr., the greatest strides when it came to funding this domestic war and imprisoning African-Americans were made under an especially loathsome and hypocritical Democrat: the inexplicably still-well-regarded Bill Clinton. the author is particularly successful in illustrating how racialized rhetoric could be stripped of specifically racist terminology - and so the charge of "racism" falls flat - yet not only be successful in transmitting racialized messages to voters, but could eventually, legally, impact one race over another. which is the entire intent of such rhetoric, per Alexander.
throughout this chapter, there is a theme: liberals attempting to make liberal policy from afar, conservatives seeking to divide along racial lines, and progressives forging coalitions across racial lines but giving up when popular sentiment moves against them. I wonder if this theme will continue in subsequent chapters.
Chapter 2: The Lockdown
this enraging and horrific chapter details the War on Drugs that Alexander posits as the gateway to the U.S.'s problem of mass incarceration. (I struggle to call it simply a "problem" - that word seems much too small to describe such a massive injustice.) the chapter begins with the drug war's blanket refusal to respect the 4th Amendment, with police and courts alike ignoring basic American rights to not be arbitrarily stopped & searched and to not have their homes invaded without due process. of particular interest to me were the details on DEA trainings that taught officers how to best conduct "fishing expeditions" despite lack of evidence, how to use "drug-courier profiles" successfully (e.g. both traveling with and without luggage, acting calmly or anxiously, traveling solo or with a companion, etc. et al are all apparently traits of potential drug couriers), and how a high-volume approach to arrests is preferable to more deliberate targeting. an important lesson for all: you do not have to consent to speak or to have your possessions searched!
"The Lockdown" then discusses the incentives that made the war on drugs so popular with police departments across the country: in particular, (1) the Byrne Grant that funneled millions of dollars to drug enforcement initiatives and the expansion of SWAT teams (reauthorized at an even higher level by Obama), and (2) the ability of police departments to forfeit assets including cash, material possessions, and property from those even suspected of abetting drug sales, and then use those forfeitures as they see fit. police ski trip anyone? as always, follow the money. interesting that when Congress finally attempted to rein in some of these insane excesses in 2000, with the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, the most widely cited examples of abuse were regarding a number of prominent and wealthy white businessmen who suffered under these forfeitures. hard LOL. the chapter closes with an introduction to the revolving door of incarceration. uplifting stuff!
Chapter 3: The Color of Justice
this chapter examines the many unsurprising decisions made by the Supreme Court to disallow "claims of racial bias at every stage of the criminal justice process, from stops to searches to plea bargaining and sentencing" despite the obvious, statistically proven racial disparities that exist in each of these areas. in sum, the Supreme Court has taken colorblindness as the law of the land to such a degree that racial bias can never be claimed unless an officer, a prosecutor, a judge, or a jury member literally uses a racist epithet to describe a POC; otherwise, there will always be race-neutral reasons that can be used to justify decisions made by officers, prosecutors, judges, and juries. it doesn't matter if the numbers show that more black and brown people are are being stopped, frisked, tried, and sentenced than white people; the claim that such things have a root in racism is automatically rejected unless racist language is specifically used in a specific situation. the Supreme Court does not view implicit or explicit bias to be real.
the stacking of juries with white jurors is also discussed. I'm not sure how much I agree with Alexander's list of factors that could correlate with race, and which are used by prosecutors to strike potential jurors, "such as lack of education, unemployment, poverty, being single, living in the same neighborhood as the defendant, or prior involvement with the criminal justice system" - that list actually felt like a bunch of racist generalizations - but it remains easy to believe that prosecutors could use such factors to make sure that there are no black people on a jury that is hearing the case of a black defendant. the incredible powers of prosecutors in general to simply do as they please are given a scathing critique by the author in this chapter.
another key point that is made repeatedly in "The Color of Justice" is one that has bothered me for decades: the disparity of sentencing given to users of crack cocaine versus users of powdered cocaine (literally the same drug) i.e. "hundred to one" sentencing, in which the sentences given to convicted crack users and dealers is federally mandated to be much greater than the sentences given to users and dealers of other drugs, including powdered cocaine. as many have forgotten, this legislation was crafted by a certain Senator Joe Biden. as those who follow this issue know, sentencing guidelines have indeed been softened since then and are set to be softened further by a certain President Joe Biden - whose son is well-known to have enjoyed some crack cocaine himself. coincidence? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Chapter 4: The Cruel Hand
Alexander paints a portrait of the diminishment and cruelty many experience post-incarceration: the challenges in finding housing and work; the financial burden of having to pay various fees due to incarceration but without the means to pay them; all the layers of red tape in simply being able to vote (an almost uniquely American issue); the inability to serve on a jury; the deep stigma of being in the carceral system that is experienced by both the convicted and their families. the author also hammers the completely absurd evictions from public housing of residents who unwittingly having family members and caregivers who fall afoul of drug laws. at the end of the chapter, Alexander parallels the popularity of "gangsta culture" with both the reaction of stigmatized communities that embrace their stigma (e.g. gay pride, "black is beautiful") and with black minstrel shows that were popular with both black and white audiences.
I agreed with much of what I read, in particular as a person who has provided social services to, trained, and hired formerly incarcerated individuals. I do feel lucky to live in San Francisco when it comes to this issue, as SF does not allow discrimination by public entities against the formerly incarcerated when hiring (although the legislation should be broadened to include private companies) and there are at least a handful of agencies here whose mission is to support re-entry.
all that said, still some mixed feelings about the point of this chapter, similar to how I felt about the BLM protests. namely, that the issue in question is not by any means simply a black issue; police violence is an issue for black, brown, and white people. on the one hand, part of me feels that any path to addressing the problem of police violence is a good path, because at least it is being addressed. on the other hand, not only is a black/white binary being reinforced, shouldn't we be able to get just as many if not more people involved with a cause if an injustice is impacting everyone? (clearly not.) and isn't an injustice still an injustice - no matter the skin color of the person experiencing that injustice? racializing broad systemic injustices can often be unnecessarily divisive; this is why I'm more of a class & money progressive rather an identitarian. unlike issues of racial bias within the Drug War itself, I think the issues surrounding re-entry into American society exist beyond racialization.
I understand that the book has built a narrative in which - due to the War on Drugs - black people experience an incredible injustice from the specifically American disparity that exists between black and white people when it comes to the discovery, prosecution, and sentencing of people for drug-related crimes. that narrative therefore has its climax or perhaps denouement in this chapter i.e. this is what happens to many black people when they leave the prison system. I get it and can't disagree. but this problem would also exist without black people being in that system, because the system itself is rotten. the carceral system in so many countries around the world is rotten. the post-carceral system in the U.S. goes above and beyond that endemic rottenness, regardless of race. racializing post-incarceration diminishment and cruelty - much like racializing police violence - does not get at the root of a banally cruel system that does an injustice to all colors and ethnicities. a person will be experiencing stigma, lack of job prospects, challenges in finding housing, and an inability to vote no matter what their race may be.
Chapter 5: The New Jim Crow
the author answers the popular 2000s questions of "where are all the black fathers who should be taking care of their kids?" posed by politicians like Obama and "why is it so hard for black women to find a mate?" posed by pop tv hosts like Tyra Banks with the answer the black men are all in prison. she also differentiates between the white criminal experience and the black criminal experience with the explanation "Whiteness mitigates crime, whereas blackness defines the criminal." this is a reductive but still often powerful chapter.
Alexander maps the stages of entrapment for African-Americans:
1. "the roundup" - "vast numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system by the police, who conduct drug operations primarily in poor communities of color"
2. "the period of formal control" - imprisonment
2. "invisible punishment" - life after release from incarceration
I didn't love her comparison of prisons to apartheid, which felt like a pat and shallow way to force agreement. any person can see how the the sheer number of incarcerated black men compared to white men illustrates racial disparities on a massive scale. which indicates a massive problem. but apartheid and the prison system are two very different things. I hate this hysterical tendency on the Left to reach for the most emotionally charged language (e.g. misuse of concepts like "white supremacy" and "genocide") to further bolster their already very strong critiques.
nonetheless, this is a very strong reason for her use of that word/concept:
"The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watch Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away from drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites."
as the chapter progresses - including through a section that purports to show the weaknesses of her parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow, but actually does nothing of the sort, LOL - it becomes increasingly clear that the idea of mass incarceration creating a system of apartheid is actually her central point. Alexander posits that the racial caste system in the U.S. has moved from one based on exploitation (slavery) to subordination (Jim Crow) to marginalization (mass incarceration). although I remain unconvinced about the effectiveness or even the truth of this analogy, she certainly makes a compelling case.
sidenotes:
- when it comes to ye olde W.E.B. Du Bois versus Booker T. Washington debate, she unsurprisingly falls within the Du Bois camp. no one likes poor Booker these days, alas.
- her takedown of "respectability politics" made use of a lot of irritating generalizations about black politicians and the black bourgeoisie, but was still riveting and well-argued
- she approvingly quotes conservative economist Glenn Loury at least three times in this chapter. very surprising! what next, a quote from Thomas Sowell??
Chapter 6: The Fire This Time
Alexander's fiery final chapter provides her recommended next step to achieve progress within a structurally racist America: burn it all down. perhaps I'm overstating, but that is clearly the vibe. and it is an understandable reaction: the systemic injustice of mass incarceration and its clearly disproportionate impact on African-Americans warrants an equally systemic overhaul. a revolutionary overhaul, so to speak. off with the systems' heads!
to make her point that the entire structure needs a complete change, the author attacks three areas of so-called liberal reform, dismissing each as either misguided or simply not enough: (1) a legalistic approach to the problem (she insists that the only action that will stick is a mass protest movement that leads to a total overhaul of the system); (2) "colorblind" laws (Alexander is not impressed by the gains made by race-neutral policies that have reduced or eliminated mandatory minimum sentences, restored early-release programs, created programs that favor treatment over incarceration); and perhaps most surprisingly, (3) affirmative action (which she considers a sop thrown to African-Americans that only benefits the black elite and functions as a fake example of how the U.S. is "doing something about race"; despite her attack, she does worry that if affirmative action is taken away, this will lead to a decrease in black college students, and subsequently, black professionals).
I found her three-pronged attack to be frequently compelling and frequently ridiculous. but I say that with the benefit of reading The New Jim Crow over ten years after it was published, so it is hard to hold certain predictive errors against the book overall. how could Alexander know back then of the recent Supreme Court ruling that eliminated race-based college admissions - I doubt she would want to be aligned with the conservative majority's decision (although I certainly was); moreover, how could she know that after California eliminated affirmative action and replaced it with more race-neutral policies, that the number of black students would actually not decrease? how could she know that race-neutral criminal justice reforms have actually decreased the racial disparities within the prison system over the past decade? and most achingly, how could she predict that the U.S. would actually have the mass civil rights movement targeting policing that she felt was necessary - namely, the BLM protests of 2020 - but that the most visible result of those national protests is that major media publications now capitalize the B when mentioning black people?
despite all of that, this chapter makes one profoundly humanistic point, perhaps the most important point of the entire book: a just society cares about ALL of its people, including everyone who is not a model citizen, including its criminals. it is so easy to sympathize with "the innocent" and "the good" who have been unjustly accused or who have suffered violence that wasn't of their making. it is much harder to recognize the humanity within those deemed the worst of us. a just society tempers its justice with mercy, it applies its laws fairly; it does not other its people, it does not persecute or criminalize based on innate characteristics; it does not dehumanize its humans. why? the answer is a simple one: there but for the grace of God go I.
