The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcerration in the age of colorblindness
By Michelle Alexander
“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
Crowchallenges the civil rights community — and all of us – -to
place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for
racial justice in America.