Summary Of Forman's Critique Of The Jim Crow Analogy

“Show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again and that’s what they become” (Adichie, 2014). Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. Forman’s critique of the Jim Crow Analogy appropriately depicts the danger of a single story. While I agree with most of Michelle Alexander’s submission regarding mass incarceration, reading Forman’s critiques about Jim Crow analogy provided a wider horizon and a far more realistic potential at stopping the incalculable damage mass incarceration has inflicted on the US community. I found the following Forman’s critiques as his strongest and most valid arguments:
It fails to consider Black attitudes toward crime and punishment
In as much as I agree that Low-income and undereducated African Americans are currently incarcerated at unprecedented levels, debating the evil of mass incarceration cannot be done at the expense of many victims of violent crime whose blood cry for vengeance. According to Foreman (2012), “more than 90% of black homicide victims are

He argues that as compelling as the critics of war on drug is, it cannot be the basis for the appalling US mass incarceration rate because as he stated, “Considering all forms of penal institutions together, more prisoners are locked up for violent offenses than for any other type, and just under 25% (550,000) of our nation's 2.3 million prisoners are drug offenders” (Forman, 2012. P. 19). So releasing every single one of these drug offenders will not prevent the United States from still remaining the world's largest prison system operator. I thought if the argument is about mass incarceration, we cannot leave violent crime out of the