Analysis Of The New Jim Crow By Michelle Alexander

In Chapter 5, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander gives us a great aspect on what society calls, “where the black men have gone”. In addition, the chapter also reveals, why many black children have been raised by single mothers. Michelle Alexander does an astonishing job going into depth and providing us with great information. Furthermore, I made a connection between the chapter and Coach Carter, a film that analysis the experiences of many black young men living without a role model so call, their fathers.
The first thing that stood out to me was the ratio between black women and black men. Naturally, they are 3 million more black women than black men in communities across the U.S. (Alexander, 179). Further, the author claims that there

are roughly around a million black men in prison. In result, many of those black men that end up in prison are because of minor drug related offenses. In other words, the War on Drugs has been on the rise and they target minorities, more specifically the black community. Despite them going to jail, there was a study conducted by Rebekah Coley from Boston College, “Rebekah found that fathers not living at home are more likely to keep in contact with their children than fathers of any other ethnic or racial group” (Alexander, 179). This quote illustrates the significant relationship between black fathers and their children. Consequently, we don’t see this relationship because of Hollywood films. Hollywood films usually portrays black single mothers raising their multiple if not single child, and usually the father doesn’t have any contact with their child. Second hand, in films they usually have the child learns the values of life throughout his experiences on the streets. Further, as the child gets older, he usually ends up joining a gang but that’s because the gang becomes his new family. For example, Coach Carter is a great film that displays the values of each individual black young man, some join the gang, others have personal problems at home. However, they all bring their talents together in the basketball court which leads them to fall back onto their new family. The reason why I bring this up is because we are getting fool by the media, now I’m not saying that the media is FAKE unlike Donald Trump, however, I believe that films can display the wrong information at times. With that being said, I hope you guys can make some sort of connection between the text and your routine on day to day basis.