For the last couple of years social justice advocates have loudly sung the praises of Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which has garnered a huge following and spawned an allegedly new designation for racial inequity in the United States. However, while I do agree with Alexander that there is a humongous issue with mass incarceration in the United States, I believe that Alexander’s work promotes a false understanding of mass incarceration in the United States. My objection to the Jim Crow analogy is based on what it obscures. Proponents of the analogy of mass incarceration to the Jim Crow Laws focus on those aspects of mass incarceration that most resemble Jim Crow and minimize or
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The New Jim Crow’s racial narrative is certainly compelling, and obviously important, so it makes sense that readers would give it additional weight. But drug offenders constitute only a quarter of our nation’s prisoners, while violent offenders make up a much larger share: one-half (Forman). Though the New Jim Crow is persuasive in its attention to the racist nature of drug prohibition, as Forman notes, “even if every single one of these drug offenders were released tomorrow, the United States would still have the world’s largest prison system” (Forman). He observes that her framework over-emphasizes the class, even among African-Americans, and notes that Alexander does not discuss the mass incarceration of other races. In fact, Alexander mentions other races, especially white prisoners, only in passing; she says that mass incarceration’s true targets are blacks, and that incarcerated whites are “collateral damage” (Alexander). The analogy of mass incarceration of the Jim Crow Laws generates an incomplete account of mass incarceration–one in which most prisoners are drug offenders and white prisoners are largely invisible. Alexander’s analogy directs the reader’s attention away from features of crime and punishment in America that require our attention if we are to understand mass incarceration in all of its …show more content…
Alexander’s text instills the widespread belief that the War on Drugs is purely the invention of racist White politicians into readers saying, “The drug war was motivated by racial politics, not drug crime” (Alexander). However, in the 1960s and intro the 1970s, residents of black neighborhoods in New York felt constantly threatened by those associated with the drug trade. Vanessa Barker’s 2006 article states, “many African Americans, the social group most adversely affected by crime and the drug trade, supported Rockefeller’s anti-drug efforts. Since the late1960s, many black activists pushed the state to take a tougher stand against lawlessness in their communities. African Americans wanted the state to fulfill its responsibility and provide protection” (Barker, 23). Clearly, New York’s African Americans were not totally passive victims either, as Alexander’s text suggests. Far from being a White-only conspiracy, the real story of the drug war shows us that non-White people have also contributed to this contemporary racial hierarchy. As Forman, Barker, and so many others have pointed out, this Black culpability makes mass incarceration and the drug war much different than racialized social systems of the past, such as the Jim Crow
The New Jim Crow’s racial narrative is certainly compelling, and obviously important, so it makes sense that readers would give it additional weight. But drug offenders constitute only a quarter of our nation’s prisoners, while violent offenders make up a much larger share: one-half (Forman). Though the New Jim Crow is persuasive in its attention to the racist nature of drug prohibition, as Forman notes, “even if every single one of these drug offenders were released tomorrow, the United States would still have the world’s largest prison system” (Forman). He observes that her framework over-emphasizes the class, even among African-Americans, and notes that Alexander does not discuss the mass incarceration of other races. In fact, Alexander mentions other races, especially white prisoners, only in passing; she says that mass incarceration’s true targets are blacks, and that incarcerated whites are “collateral damage” (Alexander). The analogy of mass incarceration of the Jim Crow Laws generates an incomplete account of mass incarceration–one in which most prisoners are drug offenders and white prisoners are largely invisible. Alexander’s analogy directs the reader’s attention away from features of crime and punishment in America that require our attention if we are to understand mass incarceration in all of its …show more content…
Alexander’s text instills the widespread belief that the War on Drugs is purely the invention of racist White politicians into readers saying, “The drug war was motivated by racial politics, not drug crime” (Alexander). However, in the 1960s and intro the 1970s, residents of black neighborhoods in New York felt constantly threatened by those associated with the drug trade. Vanessa Barker’s 2006 article states, “many African Americans, the social group most adversely affected by crime and the drug trade, supported Rockefeller’s anti-drug efforts. Since the late1960s, many black activists pushed the state to take a tougher stand against lawlessness in their communities. African Americans wanted the state to fulfill its responsibility and provide protection” (Barker, 23). Clearly, New York’s African Americans were not totally passive victims either, as Alexander’s text suggests. Far from being a White-only conspiracy, the real story of the drug war shows us that non-White people have also contributed to this contemporary racial hierarchy. As Forman, Barker, and so many others have pointed out, this Black culpability makes mass incarceration and the drug war much different than racialized social systems of the past, such as the Jim Crow