The Role Of Education In The New Jim Crow

Education has always been a basic human right, across every society around the world. We have always needed to disseminate information and teach people about different skills in order to perpetuate our societies, as they cannot function if people will never go beyond the basics and specialize. However, it is also because of education that we become more holistic people, taking in new ideas and thinking about them, allowing us to develop ourselves as an individual. This is why education is important in creating informed citizens within our own societies, creating our individual “voice” and instigate change within our societies. James Baldwin’s article “A Talk to Teachers” stresses this, as he discusses that education is important in the
It is such a hidden issue because people either aren’t aware of its operation or simply don’t care that it exists, as people simply cannot understand its full implications. However, there are serious consequences with this system of mass incarceration, for both the people who are labeled felons or criminals, and the families or communities that are associated with them. For example, she states, “Once you have the felony stamp, your hope for employment, for any kind of integration into society, it begins to fade out.” People who have jailed for drug crimes are suddenly thrown out into the real world and stripped of their dreams and even their rights, as being branded a felon or a criminal allows employers, the government, even citizens to turn them away and look at them with contempt. However, the ones that are the worst affected if the communities that have to deal with this reality constantly, as they are too ashamed of their association with these experiences that they separate themselves, becoming isolated within their self-imposed stigma. Without this book, many people would not have known the full scale of the War on Drugs and its effects on poor communities, especially poor communities of color, as many police officers view blacks and latinos as targets, although whites have used illegal drugs at a much larger scale. This is why
In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander proposes that in order to end this system, we must end the War on Drugs. However, she also argued that “If we hope to end this system of control, we cannot be satisfied with a handful of reforms.” It is true, as a complete change within the status quo and society itself is incredibly difficult and requires immense amounts of effort. However, many civil rights leaders like Dolores Huerta, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, and others have faced this same dilemma. Despite this, they had the drive to push forward and lead others to make meaningful progress within their respective societies. Through our awareness and willingness to make a change, our “voices” can continue to raise concern about the issues that we face today, such as mass incarceration, existing racism that exists our society, and other issues that we face in our society today. Although what we currently face is different from the struggles that they had to confront in their lives, we all had to use the same mediums of writing and speaking to express our ideas and disseminate them to the greater collective, creating a wave that would soon be impossible to