posted May 04, 2012 08:13 PM            

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness~by Michelle Alexander

I have heard portions of her speech on my local Pacifica Station for weeks now. It is up on utube and I urge everyone to listen to what the lady has to say. I am on the wait list at the local library to read her book.

53 min long, it is an education. An education to the reality of millions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BSwEYyFu2E

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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly

Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama's political success and Oprah Winfrey's financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that [w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control (More African Americans are under correctional control today... than were enslaved in 1850). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the war on drugs. She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarceration—but her carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable book should change that. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

“Explosive debut…alarming, provocative and convincing.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Michelle Alexander’s brave and bold new book paints a haunting picture in which dreary felon garb, post-prison joblessness, and loss of voting rights now do the stigmatizing work once done by colored-only water fountains and legally segregated schools. With dazzling candor, Alexander argues that we all pay the cost of the new Jim Crow.“
—Lani Guinier, professor at Harvard Law School and author of Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice and The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy

“For every century there is a crisis in our democracy, the response to which defines how future generations view those who were alive at the time. In the 18th century it was the transatlantic slave trade, in the 19th century it was slavery, in the 20th century it was Jim Crow. Today it is mass incarceration. Alexander's book offers a timely and original framework for understanding mass incarceration, its roots to Jim Crow, our modern caste system, and what must be done to eliminate it. This book is a call to action.”
—Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO, NAACP

“With imprisonment now the principal instrument of our social policy directed toward poorly educated black men, Michelle Alexander argues convincingly that the huge racial disparity of punishment in America is not the mere result of neutral state action. She sees the rise of mass incarceration as opening up a new front in the historic struggle for racial justice. And, she’s right. If you care about justice in America, you need to read this book!”
—Glenn C. Loury, economist at Brown University and author of The Anatomy of Racial Inequality and Race, Incarceration and American Values

“After reading The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander's stunning work of scholarship, one gains the terrible realization that, for people of color, the American criminal justice system resembles the Soviet Union's gulag---the latter punished ideas, the former punishes a condition.”
—David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer-prize winning historian at NYU and author of W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963

"We need to pay attention to Michelle Alexander's contention that mass imprisonment in the U.S. constitutes a racial caste system. Her analysis reflects the passion of an advocate and the intellect of a scholar."
—Marc Mauer, Executive Director, The Sentencing Project, author of Race to Incarcerate

“A powerful analysis of why and how mass incarceration is happening in America, The New Jim Crow should be required reading for anyone working for real change in the criminal justice system.”
—Ronald E. Hampton, Executive Director, National Black Police Association

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
265 of 278 people found the following review helpful
Important, Eye Opening Work February 14, 2010
By Middle-aged Professor
Format:HardcoverThirty years ago, fewer than 350,000 people were held in prisons and jails in the United States. Today, the number of inmates in the United States exceeds 2,000,000. In this book, Alexander argues that this system of mass incarceration "operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race." The War on Drugs, the book contends, has created "a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society." Mass incarceration, and the disabilities that come with the label "felon," serve, metaphorically, as the new Jim Crow.

The book develops this argument with systematic care. The first chapter provides context with a brief history of the rise, fall and interrelation of the first two racial caste systems in the United States, slavery and Jim Crow. Subsequent chapters provide close scrutiny of the system of mass incarceration that has arisen over the past thirty years, examining each stage of the process (e.g., criminalization, investigation, prosecution, sentencing) and the many collateral consequences of a felony conviction (entirely apart from any prison time) and how and why each of these has operated to the detriment of African-Americans. The book also explores how the caste system Alexander identifies is different and not-so-different from Jim Crow, the many political and economic forces now invested in sustaining it, and how it has been rendered virtually immune to challenge through litigation. The book concludes with an argument that while many particular reforms will be needed to change this system, nothing short of a social movement that changes public acceptance of the current system can solve this problem and offers critiques and proposals for the civil rights movement based on this analysis. Everyone who reads this book will come away seeing the War on Drugs and mass incarceration in a new light.
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Her impassioned speech is chock full of data. The data alone makes you sit up, the personal examples she gives makes you want
to cry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Alexander

posted May 06, 2012 06:22 PM            

such people don't seem to realize how nearly impossible it is to feed a drug habit on welfare...

posted February 15, 2013 05:08 PM            

Unfortunately, even as more people become aware of the problem, the government is becoming less responsive to the demands of people to right these wrongs.

Racial discrimination is one of the worst symptoms of a government that no longer abides by the Constitution and whose justice system is largely rotted out. Other symptoms of this breakdown of justice include the undeclared wars abroad and the stripping of our civil liberties, along with a financial crisis brought about by unpunished lawlessness on Wall Street (which has left many people homeless.)

Altogether, things are not looking good; currently John Brennan is awaiting confirmation as CIA Director in spite of his refusal to assure the Senate that he will not use drones to kill Americans on US soil.

posted February 16, 2013 10:00 AM            

quote:

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Other symptoms of this breakdown of justice include the undeclared wars abroad and the stripping of our civil liberties, along with a financial crisis brought about by unpunished lawlessness on Wall Street (which has left many people homeless.)

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posted February 16, 2013 02:45 PM            

That such a large portion of the population have not only been disenfranchised, but re-enslaved is not part of our discourse.

Too big to jail?

I am reluctant to turn this thread over to Wall Street, but they are in fact the power brokers behind much- if not all of the political problem.

Money is always the root. Ignorance plays a major part as well.

Too bad tea drinkers did not support the mismanaged occupy movement. It was refreshing [at first] that occupy -was not managed imho
"Nobody goes to jail,” writes Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine. “This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth." Here is the complete interview from which we played an excerpt on our Feb. 22 show. Taibbi explains how the American people have been defrauded by Wall Street investors and how the financial crisis is connected to the situations in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio.

why isn't wall street in jail

The "war on drugs" has incarcerated many who should not be there. Prisons are profitable after all. Ever see the wall street drug lords go to jail? No, just the guy with dark skin and a dime bag. Wall Street owns us. And we paid them for it.

posted February 16, 2013 03:45 PM            

personally i think we are at the watershed...though things look hopeless, the tide is turning...elizabeth warren is a pit bull in lamb's clothing, among others on the path.

posted February 16, 2013 04:15 PM            

I heart liz.

to the above= Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Feb. 14, 2013 Banking Committee Hearing titled "Wall Street Reform: Oversight of Financial Stability

posted February 17, 2013 08:18 AM            

After I watched the hearing footage, I wanted to send her fan mail. Heck, I want to drive up to DC right now and hit some hot spots on the off chance that I'll run in to her.
Stalker