“Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.”(Lyndon Johnson). For generations in the United Stated, ethnic minorities have been discriminated against and denied fair opportunity and equal rights. In the beginning there was slavery, and thereafter came an era of racism which directly impacted millions of minorities lives. This period called Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system up in till mid 1960s. Jim Crow was more than just a series of severe anti-Black laws, it became a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were positioned to the status of second class citizens. What Jim Crow did is represented the anti-Black racism. Further on, In 1970’s the term “War on Drugs” was coined by President Richard Nixon . Later President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war. In reality the war had little to do with drug crime and a lot to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a strategy of used by the government. The President identified drug abuse as national threat. Therefore, they called for a national anti-drug policy, the policy began pushing for the involvement of the police force and military in drug prohibition efforts. The government did believe that blacks or minorities were a cause of the drug problem. They concentrated on inner city poor neighborhoods, drug related violence, they wanted to publicize the drug war which lead Congress to devote millions of dollars in additional funding to it. The war on drugs targeted and criminalized disproportionably urban minorities. There for, “War on Drugs” results in the incarceration of one million Americans ...
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...1. Web. www.drugpolicy.org/communities/race/.
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Michelle Alexander wrote a book called "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." The original Jim Crow was a racial caste system that segregated whites from blacks, where whites were privileged and viewed as the chosen ones while blacks were taught to be minority and used as servants between 1877 and the 1960s. The Jim Crow system kept whites superior to blacks with laws created to keep whites favored. It was a legal way to prevent African Americans from getting an equal education, from voting; it was a system of "Separate but Equal". In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed to outlaw discrimination due to ones skin color. Although this act was passed we still continue to live in a society where discrimination is quite relevant but systemized. Through Michelle Alexander's book we can understand her argument that there is a new form of legal discrimination although laws state that discriminating an individual because of their race is illegal. Michelle explains that there is a current mass incarceration among black men in the United States. The use of, possession of, or selling drugs is illegal but it has been systematically created that laws make it impossible to. She claims that the criminal justice system uses the War on Drugs as a way to discriminate and repress the black man.
The drug war is the New Jim Crow because it empowers the state with the tools to target, and denies African Americans civil rights, citizenship, and justice in the pretext of elaborate criminal changes that serve as a mean to furthermore disenfranchise African Americans.
Throughout the semester, we have discussed many different issues that are currently prevalent in the United States, specifically those related to racial discrimination. One specific issue that I have developed interest and research in is that of institutionalized racism, specifically in the form of mass incarceration, and what kinds of effects mass incarceration has on a community. In this paper, I will briefly examine a range of issues surrounding the mass incarceration of black and Latino males, the development of a racial undercaste because of rising incarceration rates, women and children’s involvement and roles they attain in the era of mass incarceration, and the economic importance that the prison system has due to its development.
Shapiro, David. Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration. Rep. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2011. Print.
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Bryan Stevenson grew up poor on the Del-Marva peninsula, a grandchild of Virginia slaves. He is a public interest lawyer, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery Alabama. He has dedicated his life to helping the poor, the incarcerated, and the unjustly condemned (Stevenson, 2012). He writes this book to allow the reader to get close to, “mass incarceration and extreme
Trachtenberg, B. (2009, February). Incarceration policy strikes out: Exploding prison population compromises the U.S. justice system. ABA Journal, 66.
Many people claim that racism no longer exists; however, the minorities’ struggle with injustice is ubiquitous. Since there is a mass incarceration of African Americans, it is believed that African Americans are the cause of the severe increase of crimes. This belief has been sent out implicitly by the ruling class through the media. The media send out coded messages that are framed in abstract neutral language that play on white resentment that targets minorities. Disproportionate arrest is the result of racial disparities in the criminal justice system rather than disproportion in offenders. The disparities in the sentencing procedure are ascribed to racial discrimination. Because police officers are also biased, people of color are more likely to be investigated than whites. Police officers practice racial profiling to arrest African Americans under situations when they would not arrest white suspects, and they are more likely to stop African Americans and see them as suspicious (Alexander 150-176). In the “Anything Can Happen With Police Around”: Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places,” Michelle Fine and her comrades were inspired to conduct a survey over one of the major social issues - how authority figures use a person’s racial identity as a key factor in determining how to enforce laws and how the surveillance is problematic in public space. Fine believes it is critical to draw attention to the reality in why African Americans are being arrested at a much higher rate. This article reflects the ongoing racial issue by focusing on the injustice in treatment by police officers and the youth of color who are victims. This article is successful in being persuasive about the ongoing racial iss...
Through the term Jim Crow is not one that you see on a day-to-day basis to refer to the disenfranchisement of blacks in today’s society, it still exist and is full fledged. Targeting black through the form of drugs allows for racial discrimination to occur without using the classification as a public basis. Though one might argue that the issue is drugs, race is a consistent trait that is common is all cases of mass incarceration.
In the United States, the rate of incarceration has increased shockingly over the past few years. In 2008, it was said that one in 100 U.S. adults were behind bars, meaning more than 2.3 million people. Even more surprising than this high rate is the fact that African Americans have been disproportionately incarcerated, especially low-income and lowly educated blacks. This is racialized mass incarceration. There are a few reasons why racialized mass incarceration occurs and how it negatively affects poor black communities.
In conclusion, we realize that the mass incarcerations in the United States exist and it is only a disguised Jim Crow law. It is evident as even the critics of Michelle Alexander’s argument against mass incarceration admit to the Jim Crow Law. Discrimination against black Americans should be rectified and avoided to ensure stability of a country.
The most problematic conclusion about Mass Incarceration, whatever the causes or practices, is that currently America has had the highest national prison rates in the world; furthermore, the rates of minorities (particularly African Americans) are extraordinarily disproportionate to the rates of incarcerated Caucasians. Despite the overall rise in incarceration rates since the 1980s, the crime rates have not been reduced as would be expected. Researchers, activists, and politicians alike are now taking a closer look at Mass Incarceration and how it affects society on a larger scale. The purpose of this paper is to examine the anatomy of Mass Incarceration for a better understanding of its importance as a dominant social issue and its ultimate relation to practice of social work. More specifically the populations affected by mass incarceration and the consequences implacable to social justice. The context of historical perspectives on mass incarceration will be analyzed as well as insight to the current social welfare policies on the
Michelle Alexander’s use of “Jim Crow” is a viable and useful analogy to describe the current American criminal justice system and mass incarceration. I believe our criminal justice system does not truly define justice or fairness. Also, I agree on the fact that while old “Jim Crow” laws may be dead; the current justice system serves many of the same purposes of those laws. Today, mass incarceration is the biggest issue in our criminal justice system, for mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow.
Shelden, R. G. (1999). The Prison Industrial Complex. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from www.populist.com: http://www.populist.com/99.11.prison.html