The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
"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...
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"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.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9781595581037 (1595581030)
Publish date: January 5th 2010
Publisher: New Press, The
Pages no: 290
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
History,
Cultural,
Book Club,
African American,
Politics,
Sociology,
Law,
Social Issues,
Social Movements,
Social Justice,
Race
I knew this would be a hard read and I was right. I learned so much in this book. I am appalled that this discrimination is going on. I did not know how completely a felony conviction takes over a person's life and how much it ruins that life. This book opened my eyes to the abuses that go on to...
This is an important read for social-justice-oriented folk. Michelle Alexander – a law professor and former ACLU attorney – lays out a cogent argument for mass incarceration and the drug war functioning as systems of racial control, comparable though not identical to prior systems such as Jim Crow. ...
I gained a lot of interesting knowledge, though I was not as shocked by the main thesis as others may be. I agreed with the authors main argument prior to reading the first page and found many of the arguments I have made to others contained within the pages of this book. While this book is well wri...
Even if you're familiar with the subject matter, the book is surprising and saddening. Well-written and well-documented, this is one to recommend to anyone who doesn't see this as a serious and shameful problem. There are quite a few books out now on the drug war and its disproportionate effect on A...
What a spectacular book. I was a bit skeptical of the title going in—it's a bit Godwin-esque to compare all racial injustices to slavery and/or Jim Crow. But she addresses that head-on, with a bit of skepticism on her own part. Having recently read The Warmth of Other Suns and seen some of the ways ...