In The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander introduces readers to the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States and challenges readers to view the crisis as the “ the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.” In the introduction, Alexander writes “what the book is intended to do and that is to stimulate much needed conversation about the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating racial hierarchy in the United States.” We come to understand, How the United States create criminal justice system and maintain racial hierarchy through mass incarceration? How the current system of mass incarceration in the United States mirrors earlier systems of racialized …show more content…
According to Alexander (2010), states the United States, has switched to a new form of racism know as color blind racism. Color blind racism refers to contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics. The types of practices that take place under color blind racism are subtle, institutional and apparently nonracial. These practices are not racially overt in nature, such as racism under slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. Instead, color blind racism flourishes on the idea that a potential cause of such disproportionately high incarceration rates for African Americans is that they are disproportionately poor. When black people were emancipated many things were in a shamble for all people. Whites didn’t know what type of control they were going to have over the people of color. At least when blacks were in slavery the racial order was most effectively maintained, by contact between slave owners and their slaves, they had the control for supervision and discipline, and there was less resistance or rebellion behavior when they had control. This threatens slave owner’s interest and created a social distance or an inferior behavior from slaves. It would seem that white control was unclear since slavery was gone (Alexander 2010). There is nothing new about the lack of correlation between earlier system, crime and punishment. Punishment is primarily a tool of social control, the extent or severity in which a person receives is based on the crime. The reality is that the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control
Michelle Alexander in her book "The New Jim Crow" argues that Mass Incarceration is similar to Jim Crow; Alexander believes that caste systems such as Jim Crow and slavery are similar to the existing system of mass incarceration. In addition, Alexander accuses the U.S. criminal justice system, implying their laws undividedly target African Americans through the War on Drugs and racial limitation. In comparing mass incarceration with Jim Crow, Alexander points to compelling parallels regarding political disenfranchisement, legalized discrimination, and symbolic production of a race. Alexander, moreover, effectively offers a rebuttal to the counterargument that the New Jim Crow does not carry the same level of racial hostility as the Old Jim
Alexander (2010) describes the New Jim Crow as a moment where society have already internalized the stereotypes of African American men as violent and more likely to commit crimes and where mass incarceration has been normalized – especially in poor areas– . That is, today is seen as normal that black parents are missing in their homes because they are in institutions of control (p.181). She also stresses American society denies racism when they assume the justice system works. Therefore, she claims that “mass incarceration is colorblind” (p.183). American society does not see the race biased within the institutions of control.
“The New Jim Crow” is an article by Michelle Alexander, published by the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law. Michelle is a professor at the Ohio State Moritz college of criminal law as well as a civil rights advocate. Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law is part of the world’s top education system, is accredited by the American Bar Association, and is a long-time member of the American Law association. The goal of “The New Jim Crow” is to inform the public about the issues of race in our country, especially our legal system. The article is written in plain English, so the common person can fully understand it, but it also remains very professional. Throughout the article, Alexander provides factual information about racial issues in our country. She relates them back to the Jim Crow era and explains how the large social problem affects individual lives of people of color all over the country. By doing this, Alexander appeals to the reader’s ethos, logos, and pathos, forming a persuasive essay that shifts the understanding and opinions of all readers.
The work by Victor M. Rios entitled Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness depict ways in which policing and incarceration affect inequalities that exist in society. In this body of work I will draw on specific examples from the works of Victor M. Rios and Michelle Alexander to fulfill the tasks of this project. Over the course of the semester and by means of supplemental readings, a few key points are highlighted: how race and gender inequalities correlate to policing and incarceration, how laws marginalize specific groups, and lastly how policing and incarceration perpetuate the very inequalities that exist within American society.
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
“Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. This is what it means to be black” (Alexander 197). Today our nation represents an interracial racial caste system - a caste system that includes white people within its control as a means to remain a colorblind system. Mass incarceration is no different than slavery or Jim Crow, it is simply a new racial caste system in the age of colorblindness (Alexander
2010, “Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4(1): 1-31, in this Albonetti’s study is discussed in which it was found that minority status alone accounted for an additional sentence length of “one to seven months.” African American defendants were “likely to receive pretrial release but were more likely to be convicted, and be given harsher sentences after conviction than white defendants charged with the same crimes.” One of the reasons behind this are the sentencing laws, it is seen that these laws are designed in a way that they tend to be harsher towards a certain group of people, generally towards the people of color than others thus leading to inequality with the sentencing
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...
The criminal justice system is united under one basic law body, in which no racism is present. Personal beliefs and anecdotes prove nothing, the criminal justice system isn’t racist. Although it may seem African Americans are highly discriminated upon in the justice system, there is ample amounts of data to prove otherwise. The criminal justice system is united under one basic law body, in which no racism is present. The system is not to blame for the racial differences found in the United States criminal justice system. The racial issues found in the system are due to inner city isolation and common crime patterns involving drugs even if it may seem as if the system is racist.
In todays society the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This high incarceration rate is due to the growing phenomena known as mass incarceration. This phenomenon has led to massive increase of people being placed in prison and the amount of money being used for these prisons. The book, Race to Incarcerate by Marc Mauer, focuses on mass incarceration as our default social policy because of the weak welfare state in the U.S. In the book Mauer discusses the causes and the problems with this policy.
“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 ...
These authors’ arguments are both well-articulated and comprehensive, addressing virtually every pertinent concept in the issue of explaining racially disparate arrest rates. In The Myth of a Racist Criminal Justice System, Wilbanks insists that racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is a fabrication, explaining the over-representation of African Americans in arrest numbers simply through higher incidence of crime. Walker, Spohn and DeLone’s The Color of Justice dissents that not only are African Americans not anywhere near the disproportionate level of crime that police statistics would indicate, they are also arrested more because they are policed discriminately. Walker, Spohn and DeLone addi...
These statistics demonstrate that racialized mass incarceration exists in the U.S. There are a few reasons why African Americans are discriminated against by the legal system. The primary cause is inequitable protection by the law and unequal enforcement of it. Unequal protection is when the legal system offers less protection to African Americans that are victimized by whites. It is unequal enforcement because discriminatory treatment of African Americans that are labeled as criminal suspects is more accepted.
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
Racism within the Justice System. Living in the twenty first century, Americans would like to believe that they are living in the land of the free, where anyone and everyone can live an ordinary life without worrying that they will be arrested on the spot for doing absolutely nothing. The sad truth, with the evidence to prove it, is that this American Dream is not all that it appears to be. It has been corrupted and continues to be, everyday, by the racism that is in the criminal justice system of America. Racism has perpetuated the corruption of the criminal justice system from the initial stop, the sentencing in court, all the way to the life of an inmate in the prison.