The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander Summary

While working for the American Civil Liberties Union, Michelle Alexander’s perspective changed as she gained insight on the racial bias in our criminal justice system and how it has been altered throughout time. In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindless, Alexander compares our current justice system to the Jim Crow laws of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which enforced racial segregation, by calling our system “The New Jim Crow.”
Alexander describes America’s racial history in depth by covering slavery, the Civil War, reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement. The author also explains that The War on Drugs in the 1980s was not based on correct statistics about drug use, but rather to satisfy white people. During this time period, society was often harsher in criminal cases, especially with the media’s influence through
exaggerated papers and news. These harsh anti-drug laws severely harmed black communities already suffering from economic issues.
Alexander’s concept for how minorities, especially black people, lack true rights of citizenship is based on the mass imprisonment of these minorities and how law enforcement claims their stops are not for racist reasons. This concept is clear in today’s media, but our current society has become so desensitized to this issue, that it does not seem to be a relevant issue to many. Citizens arrested for drugs rarely get an easy, hassle-free trial seen, considering how we view drug use. Most of these arrested people happen to be poor, meaning they cannot afford a decent lawyer. Mandatory minimums in sentencing also lead to absurdly exaggerated sentences, along with a probation and parole system that is nearly impossible to adhere to, causing most offenders to return to jail.
The “colorblindness” of Supreme Court rulings rule this system. The outcomes of these arrests are often harsh and rigorous because while jury selection is supposed to be colorblind, it is implicitly racist in terms of the selection of jury members chosen by the lawyer.
These punishments do not end as soon as an inmate is out of prison. When a person is released from jail, society does not consider much when looking at their profiles. These citizens are immediately released into a society that is ignorant towards their situation, and almost always keep them marginalized. Most of them cannot purchase public housing or vote, nor are they eligible for assistance such as food stamps. Most importantly, these people cannot find jobs because their applications are often not considered once they acknowledge that they are a felon. The shameful association with being a felon not only oppress these citizens within their own minds, but make it incredibly difficult to continue their life as normal even after they are released from prison. This concept is hypocritical and does not make sense. Society often believes that these felons should not be eligible for any public assistance because they should work to earn their lives back after their mistakes, however our society makes that task nearly impossible with the negative stigma we give these people. These stigmas are the reason they cannot attain a job to earn back their lives.
With all of the clear statistics and information on what is occurring everyday in our criminal justice system, one would assume that more Americans would be bothered by the treatment of these people, however ignorance makes most Americans blind to the situation their country is in.
Changing our situation would not be an easy task, and the loopholes our government uses to carefully word things in a seemingly fair way makes people doubt that this situation is serious or important. Many years of stereotypes and media embellishment have allowed our criminal justice system to weaken.
While reading The New Jim Crow, I appreciated Alexander’s clarification that she does not believe Jim Crow and the New Crow are identical because there are, in fact, many contrasting traits. Although both of these circumstances somewhat, if not completely, revolve around racist ideas, it is obvious that one is not identical to the other. It is clear that today’s society is less aggressive and violent, even though it is still racist. It is rigorous enough already for any minority to fit into the absurd standards of white
citizens.
In Michelle Alexander’s final chapter, she explains why civil rights organizations today do not focus on or address the mass imprisonment of minorities, because they prefer to take affirmative action on more legal issues rather than those of morality. Although this concept makes sense, legal issues often stem from moral ones, which is why focusing on moral issues within our society is important and prevents these problems from becoming extreme.
I personally valued that the author did not provide her methods to fix the crisis, but instead explains why things are the way they are, like the criminal justice system, private prisons, law enforcement profiling and incentives, and our consciousness towards this issue. Despite the problems and discomfort that arise from speaking out about these subjects, it is extremely crucial that we, as a society, do not become desensitized towards what seem to be “everyday” problems.