The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

When the United States now has a prison population of nearly the same size and proportion as Stalinist Russia during the Great Purges, you know there's something deeply wrong with this country. (We have 760 per 100,000, the Soviets had ~800.) 1.6 million people out of 300 million are in prison today in America (The Gulag held 1.7 million in 1953). That's more than all of Hawaii. This population includes almost 100,000 minors, and even an increasing proportion of the elderly.

How did this happen? Racial prejudice through law is not new, of course. After the end of slavery, southern Democrats enforced racist laws, effectively cutting off the newly freed populations from voting rights, jury duty, and so forth. This was the first Jim show more Crow.

There was a brief refuge with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations of the 1960s, and the civil rights movement. The Voting Rights Act killed the first Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Bill and desegregation did too. However, after the assassinations of the late 1960s, when JFK and RFK and the Reverend King and Malcolm X all fell, bloodied martyrs, war riots and a fear of the loss of public order choked the American public.

In 1968, Richard Nixon promised them law and order, to be 'tough on crime'. He used covertly racist advertising, setting the 'inner city' and the 'peacenik' against the 'silent majority'. He began the War on Drugs. Then came Ronald Reagan, who described welfare fraud, and whipped up racist panic about crack babies, crack heads, gangbangers. His stories were lies. Drug usage was on the decline among black communities when he made his first self-righteous crusades in 1982. But here, the laws were biased, punishing crack over powder cocaine. Crack was cheap, favored by blacks, and cocaine, used by whites, was not as heavily prosecuted. The majority of drug users are white (being the majority of the population) but the majority of those imprisoned are black.

What is the state of drugs today? Drug abuse/dependence among white and black youth is roughly equal, ~8% as of 2013. However, blacks are ten times more likely to be apprehended by whites It has remained at this point since the beginning of the drug war, and even after the exponential increase in police spending in the drug war.

How is the new Jim Crow implemented beyond drugs? First, through searches and seizures, and the dismantling of the 4th amendment. Second, through the pressures of the judicial system. Third, through the extremely harsh treatment which these prisoners now receive.

The legal protections of the fourth amendment have been largely curtailed in the drug war. Property can be confiscated and homes invaded on unproven allegations. 'Material self-interest' allows law enforcement to target anyone, anywhere, for any reason.

The judicial system has been complicit in this new aggressive policy. Mandatory minimum sentencing has led to disproportionately long sentences for even minor counts of personal possession. Heavy mandatory penalties against non-violent offenders - e.g., fifty years prison for minor amounts of personal possession, are now upheld by the Supreme Court. So there goes the Eighth amendment as well.

Government privatization of the prison system, with market incentives gone perversely wrong. When prisons are privatized, what is their means of making a profit? Tacit support of 'tough-on-crime' laws, increasing prisoner intake, earning a profit by cutting out amenities, keeping their 'guests' there as long as possible. Imagine a hotel with mandatory attendance, how else would they make money?

Twenty years ago, former prisoners could at least earn a living with manufacturing jobs. They'd stay out of the customers' eyes. Now, these jobs have vanished. What's left are those jobs at the very bottom, or nothing at all.

This is the Gulag Archipelago of our age. It is a hidden state within a state, where we dump our poor, our tired, our huddled masses. This book is essential reading, not just for the activist or the politician, or the social worker, not even only for those in poverty who know this already, but the average American voter. It is time to stand up against the George Wallaces and Jan Brewers and Joe Arpaios of the world. Time for the Freedom Riders of history to march again against bigotry, and this time to fight for a more lasting place in the sun. show less

"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."

“African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell prohibited drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for precisely the same conduct.”

“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but show more rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.”

Over the last couple of years I have read a few excellent books on the horrors of mass incarceration. It is always a complete slap in the face and the frightening thing is, it has even become worse after Obama took office in 2008. What this superbly written and researched book does, is tie in all the other sinister travesties that have been put in place, to keep blacks and other minorities in virtual leg-chains. Prisoners in their own impoverished communities without the right to vote, stripped of their humanity and walled off from having a decent existence. Protests have been igniting across America for months now, to address these injustices. Lets pray, that we see some kind of change.
This is an outstanding book and should be required reading. It was published in 2010 and this 10th Anniversary edition, features an excellent foreword that takes us up through Trump's election.

**Also a terrific audiobook edition. show less

A meticulously researched and expertly argued critical analysis of the racial motivations of the War on Drugs. This far-reaching history details the birth and death of the Jim Crow era and what political forces moved in to fill the void after its demise. It explores the way the modern American ethos of color-blindness has allowed an racially targeted system of oppression to flourish beyond a veil of justice. It documents the progressive powers granted to law enforcement and the building pressure to continue producing criminals or lose their funding. It examines the bloated prison system, fattened over time by mandatory minimum sentences, and makes suggestions to activists on how to approach dismantling the system.

I found this book to be show more extremely discouraging, convicting, and inspiring. It is eloquently written and hauntingly direct in details. A lot of these ideas have passed into general knowledge, and while nothing in this book was particularly surprising, it was very difficult to see it all laid out so clearly. However, I believe this book is necessary reading for the American public. It's hard to be aware of the bizarre nature of the world you live in, until you are shown an alternative, and America is very much alone in the industrialized world for pursing this system of criminal justice. show less

4.5/5

A gutting and gripping detailed account of how the powers that be in the United States have created another version of Jim Crow laws with the mass incarceration of black and brown men, supported by a populace that is both complicit and ignorant of how big a problem it has become. Alexander argues that the War on Drugs that the American government started in the 70's and 80's is not only imprisoning large and disproportionate amounts of black men for small drug possession charges, but also creates roadblocks after imprisonment that prevent them from the ability to lead successful and meaningful lives in their communities. All of this on top of the social stigma associated with being a 'lawbreaker', and we find ourselves in a show more situation where there is a silent under caste in the US consisting majorly on racial minorities who have little hope of escaping their circumstances. The US government, and the Supreme Court have even backed-up all of these laws, empowering law enforcement and prosecutors with monetary incentives and legal immunity to racially profile, as well as preventing legal challenges against this system from being heard in the future. Alexander makes it clear that our societies cyclical nature of institutionalized discrimination and suppression, followed by 'brief moments in the sun' will not change unless we address the underlying issues of unintentional racism, the pitting of one race/class against each other, and the apathetic attitude that many have across the political spectrum. This cycle might indeed be especially hard to break because it rests upon the use of race neutral reasoning and language unlike it's the cycles of slavery and Jim Crow before it.

Like I said, it's a gutting read. I think since the book was initially published in 2010, race issues have returned to a greater awareness within the collective minds of society, and yet we find ourselves in much the same situation, making the book just as powerful and applicable as it was on initial release. Alexander is an excellent writer, but she doesn't muddle the writing with extra adornment which suits the point of the book. She is clear, concise, and returns the reader consistently to to her major points of emphasis to make sure that they remember them. She backs up her arguments with exhaustive citation that show she really did the work. She is convincing and the writing itself is very accessible, making for a book that could be a good entry point for someone with limited knowledge on the issues at hand. I especially appreciated that Alexander didn't shy away from criticizing the relatively fresh Obama administration, and make clear that his inauguration does not change the issues at hand, and even in some ways could make them harder to overcome.

Having not read many book concerning racial issues I view this book very highly. I can see how it would be a foundational piece of material of the more contemporary literature on the topic, though I could easily be mistaken. It's the type of book that makes you want to become better informed and active, which I see as the highest compliment that you can give to a piece of non-fiction writing. Luckily, Alexander's source material is extensive, and readily available. show less

If young white people were incarcerated at the same rate as young black people are incarcerated, it would be a national emergency. Instead, we are blind to
the suffering of the unjust incarceration of young African Americans, and the plight of their families. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness , by Michele Alexander, proposes that mass incarceration as a means of racialized social control of African American communities is analogous to the Jim Crow era of legal oppression of the descendants of the formerly enslaved. She asks: Why has the prison population increased four -
fold between 1960 and 1990? Why is our current incarceration rate 6 -9 times that of other developed countries? Why do three out of four show more young African -
American men end up in jail or prison at some point in their lives? Why was the “War on Drugs” ramped up at a time when drug -related crime was actually decreasing ? Why has the “War on Drugs” been primarily waged in poor communities of color, when studies have shown that all races use and sell drugs at
similar rates? Why is sentencing for crack cocaine (cheaper and used by poor people of color) so disproportionate when compared to sentencing for powder cocaine (used by more affluent European Americans)? Why are local police departments given extra financial incentives to pursue drug crimes? Why were local police departments given military equipment so that they could pursue drug crimes with military policing rather than community policing, even for the most minor of drug crimes? When drug crime prisoners complete their sentences, they come out as second class citizens, no longer having the right to vote, serve on juries, and being able to be legally discriminated against in employment, housing, educations, benefits, virtually guaranteeing that their only income option would be drugs, if they come from the ghetto and return to the ghetto. Why, then are we shocked by recidivism? Since the drug problem in the ghettos of inner
cities did not begin until the factories closed and jobs left, why wasn’t the drug problem attacked by bringing jobs back to these places? Why are non-violent drug issues/addictions, treated as crimes rather than health issues?n this book, Alexander examines the connections between the War on Drugs, racial caste, and disenfranchisement. She lays it all out with stunning clarity. Alexander, an attorney, demonstrates that the targeting of communities of color is no accident but part of an intentional plan to create a new caste system aimed at making poor communities of color second class and restricted to a “parallel” universe that allows very few options in life. It was Richard Nixon, a Quaker, who declared the first “war on drugs.” John Ehrlichman, staffer, said the 1968 Nixon campaign, and then the Nixon White House had two enemies: the anti - war left, and black people. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ This “intentional” plan has been continued by all subsequent presidents at a huge human cost to our country, and billions of dollars that might have been spent on education, or other human capital. The last chapter of the book is called “The Fire This Time.” It challenges every historical civil rights organization and efforts at racial justice that have not worked, that are not working to change the paradigm under which we live. Alexander asks, how can us become all of us ? “Accomplishing this degree of unity may mean [black advocates] giving up fierce defense of policies and strategies that exacerbate racial tensions and produce for racially defined groups primarily...cosmetic racial benefits.
For meaningful progress to happen, whites must give up racial bribes, too, and be willing to give up their racial privilege. Some might say that in this game of chicken, whites should make the first move.” Exactly. What would it mean for Friends to give up our racial privilege? How do we intervene on this current national emergency, the killing by police of many unarmed black boys and men that are but a symptom? The New Jim Crow is a book that has ideas about embryonic solutions to heal the superating wounds. show less

The United States locks up a proportion of its population that is almost unheard of among other countries, and an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of those incarcerated are African-American men. We know this. But it is, I think, entirely too easy not to understand what it truly means.

Michelle Alexander takes a good, long, hard look at this reality, at how it's come to exist, how it perpetuates itself, what its consequences are, and what would have to happen in order to change things. The roots of the situation, unsurprisingly, lie buried deep in the racist history of America, but the truly difficult and insidious thing, as Alexander shows us, is that the system as it currently exists does not even require anyone involved to be show more consciously and deliberately racist in order to keep producing these horrifically racially unbalanced results. The real heart of the problem lies in the War on Drugs, whose policies result in levels of gross injustice that I truly believe would be unconscionable even if they didn't work to create what Alexander calls a "racial undercaste." But they do, thanks to the disproportionate rates at which African-Americans are targeted by police looking to make drug arrests and the increased likelihood that they will go to jail for the offense. And it isn't just the fact that so many more black men are locked away that's the real problem. It's the fact that once someone has a criminal record, often even just for a minor possession charge, it becomes perfectly legal to discriminate against them in some pretty major ways. Ex-convicts may find it impossible to get jobs or housing, they can and are denied access to programs like food stamps, and with a felony conviction they may lose the right to vote. Essentially, they become second-class citizens, which is where the comparison to Jim Crow laws comes in, although Alexander is very careful to acknowledge the differences as well as the similarities between the two.

Alexander's points and arguments here are carefully thought-out, well-stated, and relentlessly rational. She is, I think, especially good at addressing, in a clear and non-judgmental fashion, that naive little voice that kept popping up somewhere in the back of my head whispering, "Well, yes, but, still, if they would just not do the crime, it wouldn't be a problem, right?" And I appreciated that, the way she gave me exactly the points I needed to hear, when I needed to hear them.

I feel a little bad that it took me this long to get around to reading this, after having it on my shelf for many years. And the fact that it was written during the Obama administration does make some aspects of it feel a little strange and dated right now. But I think I'm actually glad that I finally picked it up at this particular moment, when it begins to feel like perhaps there might be the possibility of a spark of hope that things might change in the realm of law enforcement. Because otherwise it would be impossible to feel anything but thoroughly depressed and infuriated after reading it. show less

wow. this is an utterly devastating look at our criminal "justice" system, especially in relation to the war on drugs and targeting of black men. also she really explains how we are told that black men are arrested for violent crime and that we are fed that falsehood, but that the reality is quite different. (truly integrating that knowledge, i think, will take a while, because of how ingrained the lies are.) reading this felt a lot like it used to feel when i first learned about oppressions and how they operate. this book is hard, eye-opening, and so hugely important in explaining how mass incarceration from the war on drugs has not made communities safer, drugs less common, drug use lower, and has intentionally and with lasting show more repercussions decimated the black (and to a lesser extent the brown) populations that were inching their way to too much equality. the ruination of the 4th amendment and the money and materials grab from police departments is stunning and crushing, and probably the biggest takeaway from this book for me, personally.

she managed to take huge concepts and make it readable and accessible. this isn't hard to read, except that in content it's so gutting. her explanations of it all is so well done and so convincingly written.

"Every system of injustice depends on the silence, paralysis, confusion, and cooperation of those it seeks to eliminate or control."

"White people are generally allowed to have problems, and they've historically been granted the power to define and respond to them. But people of color - in this 'land of the free' forged through slavery and genocide - are regularly viewed and treated as the problem.

This distinction has made all the difference. Once human beings are defined as the problem in the public consciousness, their elimination through deportation, incarceration, or even genocide becomes nearly inevitable. White nationalism, at its core, reflects a belief that our nation's problems would be solved if only people of color could somehow be gotten rid of, or at least better controlled. In short, mass incarceration and mass deportation have less to do with crime and immigration than the ways we've chosen to respond to those issues when black and brown people are framed as the problem. ...[T]hroughout our nation's history, when crime and immigration have been perceived as white, our nation's response has been radically different from when those phenomena have been defined as black or brown. The systems of mass incarceration and mass deportation may seem entirely unrelated at first glance, but they are both deeply rooted in our racial history, and they both have expanded in part because of the enormous profits to be made in controlling, exploiting, and eliminating vulnerable human beings."

"Human rights champion Bryan Stevenson has observed that 'slavery didn't end; it evolved.'"

"White supremacy, over time, became a religion of sorts. Faith in the idea that people of the African race were bestial, that whites were inherently superior, and that slavery was, in fact, for blacks' own good, served to alleviate the white conscience and reconcile the tension between slavery and the democratic ideals espoused by whites in the so-called New World. There was no contradiction in the bold claim made by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' if Africans were not really people. Racism operated as a deeply held belief system based on 'truths' beyond question or doubt. This deep faith in white supremacy not only justified an economic and political system in which plantation owners acquired land and great wealth through the brutality, torture, and coercion of other human beings; it also endured, like most articles of faith, long after the historical circumstances that gave rise to the religion passed away. In Wacquant's words: 'Racial division was a consequence, not a precondition of slavery, but once it was instituted it became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own.' After the death of slavery, the idea of race lived on."

"As numerous researchers have shown, violent crime rates have fluctuated over the years and bear little relationship to incarceration rates - which have soared during the past three decades regardless of whether violent crime was going up or down."

"No other country in the world disenfranchises people who are released from prison in a manner even remotely resembling the United States. In fact, the United Nations Human Rights Committee has charged the U.S. disenfranchisement policies are discriminatory and violate international law."

"The widespread and mistaken belief that racial animus is necessary for the creation and maintenance of racialized systems of social control is the most important reason that we, as a nation, have remained in deep denial." show less