Michelle Alexander Color Of Justice Summary

In the reading, Color of Justice, the author Michelle Alexander writes about the unfair justices of the war on drugs, and how it is an inescapable plague for communities of color along with the fear of imprisonment. To start off, Alexander begins by creating a visual image of the life of two different people who are falsely accused as drug felons and have to accept the consequences of being labeled as a felon. Furthermore, her overall argument is surrounded by how whites are even more likely to use drugs than blacks, but there are more blacks incarcerated for drugs. Something that is really eye opening and catching is when Alexander references to the number of nonviolent offenders taking up a surprising percentage more in the criminal justice system versus the violent offenders. In addition, Alexander

The courts have made it incredibly difficult to bring a lawsuit against the police for discriminatory treatment. The courts “demand that anyone who wants to challenge racial bias in the system offer, in advance, clear proof that the racial disparities are the product of intentional racial discrimination—i.e., the work of a bigot” (103). Just as Alexander clearly points out, no police officer or prosecutor is going to say on the record that he or she arrests black people for drug crime because he or she hates black people. They will always say that they are doing their job to keep society safe from dangerous criminals. Alexander quotes a reliable third party to bolster her accusations of racial bias in the American criminal justice system: “Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in seven states, African Americans constitute 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison. In at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than white men”