Preview

New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1926 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness
Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness. New York : [Jackson, Tenn.]: New Press ; HV9950 .A437 2010

The Birth of Slavery in the US
1. In the 17th century labor for plantations was based on indentured servitude.
2. 1675 Bacon's Rebellion
3. By 1770 "By the mid-1770s, the system of bond labor had been thoroughly transformed into a racial caste system predicated on slavery.
"Racial division was a consequence, not a precondition of slavery, but once it was instituted it became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own.”
Loïc Wacquant, “America’s New ‘Peculiar Institution’: On the Prison as Surrogate Ghetto,”
Theoretical Criminology 4, no. 3 (2000)
…show more content…
Emancipation Proclamation 1863
"Following the Civil War, it was unclear what institutions, laws, or customs would be necessary to maintain white control now that slavery was gone. Nonetheless, as numerous historians have shown, the development of a new racial order became the consuming passion for most white
Southerners. Rumors of a great insurrection terrified whites, and blacks increasingly came to be viewed as menacing and dangerous. In fact, the current stereotypes of black men as aggressive, unruly predators can be traced to this period, when whites feared that an angry mass of black men might rise up and attack them or rape their women." [Michelle Alexander, Cornel West, The
New Jim Crow]
2. 14th Amendment 1868
3. 15th Amendment 1870
4. "Black Codes" in South
"As expressed by one Alabama planter: “We have the power to pass stringent police laws to govern the Negroes—this is a blessing—for they must be controlled in some way or white people cannot live among them.” While some of these codes were intended to establish systems of peonage resembling slavery, others foreshadowed Jim Crow laws by prohibiting, among other things, interracial seating in the first-class sections of railroad cars and by segregating
…show more content…
Reconstruction 1863-1877 (Disputed election of 1876 was given to Republican Hayes, but an agreement to withdraw federal troops from the South and an end to reconstruction left the Democrats in control of the South for more than a century.)

The Birth of Jim Crow in the US
7. Plessy v. Ferguson – "separate but equal" standard set – 1896

8. Three philosophies of race during and after reconstruction
a. Liberal – paternalistic emphasis on stigma of segregation and hypocrisy of government b. Conservative – blames liberals for pushing blacks too far and warned blacks that things could be worse under the Redeemers
c. Radical – populist movement of poor whites and blacks against planters, railroads, and big business
"The Populists took direct aim at the conservatives, who were known as comprising a party of privilege, and they achieved a stunning series of political victories throughout the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    “If negro had not been brought to America, the Civil War could not have occurred”Thus, argues that different perspectives on slavery from North and South made the War inevitable…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Both intend to control this concentrated power. In Chapter 9, Brink and Harris discuss what Whites think of Negroes. They conclude that Whites suffer from guilt about the way that they treat or do not treat the Negro (p. 138). This guilt has destroyed the country and is leading the extinction of the White race.…

    • 1312 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The United States encountered many difficulties prior to the Civil War. As the years went through, it was clear that the Constitution’s laws would not solve many of the issues left on the decisions of the heads of the state. Constitutional amendments were subjected to free interpretation and manipulation and several difficulties remained to be solved, making the threat of a war real and imminent. The Civil War of 1861 became, in fact, a terrible reality, due to religious issues and sectional power struggles.…

    • 775 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summary: The New Jim Crow

    • 1331 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Imagine yourself walking in the middle of the night, and suddenly, a person approaches you with a gun and threatens to rob you of all your possessions. Take a moment to focus on the robber’s physical appearance, what does the robber look like? Regardless of what the robber looks like, the physical characteristics of him or her have no actual significance. The purpose of this scenario is to show how visualizing and defining a criminal based on physical features is a form of active participation within the system of mass incarceration. The appearance of the theoretical robber was formed from hegemony and preconceived notions of what a robber, or any criminal, looks like. Similarly, during the War on Drugs from the 1980s to the early 2000s, law enforcement sought out possible drug offenders based on hegemonic beliefs of race and class that have developed over time. Consequently, this led to the disproportional incarceration of minority groups, especially African Americans, to the point where they represented over 80 to 90 percent of all arrested drug offenders (Alexander 64).…

    • 1331 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After the Civil War, a great question arose. That question was what was to be done with the former Confederate States of Americas (CSA). Although there were a number of ways to address this critical issue, there were three major attempts: Lincoln's, Johnson's, and Congress's. All three of them wanted to politically restore the USA, but did not pay much attention to the economic and social stability of the South. The Lincoln, Johnson, and Congressional plans for Civil War reconstruction all wanted to restore the Union, but they each differed in a few critical aspects.…

    • 870 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One solution to these questions is the media. For example the media targeting and portraying the black people as dangerous. In the next example the media even goes so far to say that ‘Killer bees' also called ‘Africanized bees' are attacking households throughout the US. These Africanized bees are originally from Africa and have gotten to the US after being brought to South America. The Africanized bees are said to be different from the normal more gentler and kindler European bees. This shows that the American media even portrays more aggressive bees as bees that originated from Africa and they…

    • 690 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Reconstruction Dbq

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Following the culmination of the Civil War, issues regarding the restoration of seceded states to the Union, the emancipation of slaves, and the overall re-development of political institutions in the nation prevailed. The idea of Reconstruction was proposed to political officials in late 1865, when the effects of the tumultuous Civil War were at its most devastating. The various enactments of the period were deemed void and not actively enforced. Democratic and Republican political parties refused to meet resolutions, imperative to the reconstruction of the nation’s governmental structure. The economy was in an absolute distress, and emancipated blacks faced considerable amounts of opposition. Social, economic, and political policies instituted during the Reconstruction Era are deemed failures due to the burden of racial segregation, economic distress, party discrepancies, and the lack of effective enforcement.…

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    When President Obama was elected into office, continues to be lauded for ushering a new era of colorblindness. Forr many it was seen as the final defeat of racsim…

    • 205 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Growing up in America, , as a black male in Philadelphia, Pa, throughout my life I have seen many of my ethnic group arrested and convicted for various crimes and offences. This has had a profound effect on my perspective of the Pennsylvania Judicial system, including police, courts and prison. Being in an environment that glorified violence, I saw young men fall victim to the delusion that we could avoid the consequences of crime. But I have also seen the unfairness of the system and the bad results of incarceration for individual and families. Since attending Community College of Philadelphia, I have taken two classes that have given me a better insight into this subject. Academic work for History 101 and English 102 have shown me the nation we live in has been built off the exploitation of lower class citizens, who as a result live in environments cut off from mainstream society. These citizens often experience discrimination as well.…

    • 1427 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Racism is a topic that has always been controversial for a countless number of years. It has been a serious topic since the beginning of America. Everyone has been a victim of racism at least one time in their life; no matter what race they may be. But what is racism? Racism is a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others. People have been trying to find a “cure” to racism for a very long time. “What is the answer to racism?”…

    • 1319 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Color-Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in Post Race America. By Charles A. Gallagher…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    ncreasingly, governments are adopting alternative strategies to mass incarceration and drawing on the rhetoric of community to create softer and less restrictive sanctions. This paper argues that this transition provides an opportunity for geographers concerned with incarceration to consider a more expansive understand- ing of the carceral state. To call for a more geographically expansive consideration of incarceration, this paper draws upon a study of one juvenile court that sought to end racialized over-incarceration by promoting a “com- munity orientation”. As a consequence, juvenile detention now acts as a single node in a broader process of sorting, placing, and punishing, but the carceral aspects of juvenile court involvement…

    • 109 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Defending Slavery

    • 2485 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Under this context slavery did contribute to create an ample social gap between the “white” and “black” races.…

    • 2485 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    This piece of work is mainly about the social analysts position to the issue of racism and mass incarceration and also how the various principles of distributive justice can be applied to different positions in our issue of focus. It is quite evident that the main work of the social policy analysts is to identify current problems, evaluating them and coming up with solutions regarding to it. Once they discover the problem they try to check for the causes that may leading to that problem and also other problems that may be related to it. However, different social policy analysis’s have differing views regarding a certain problem and also…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Color blindness or also referred to as race blindness is the exclusion of race in the assessment of a human being. Color blindness is a new concept that strives to mineralize racial discrimination. Our society has strived to find a state of colorblindness but has yet to succeed. Past discriminations have hindered the progress of colorblindness in society. Due to racism in the past many hurdles were created for minorities to overcome in the present. Hurdles such as poverty and negative stereotypes. These hurdles in turn have made it hard for our society to truly become color blind. The racism from the past has made our society unable to truly practice colorblindness because it has caused individual, institutional, and systemic discrimination in the present.…

    • 1631 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays