Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Analysis

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, which delves into the issue of racism in America or how she describes it as the “racial caste system”; there seems to be a distinct amount of similarities between present time and the past. Americans tend to want to believe that times have changes and they have all progress and done better. Though in some instances that might be true, in reality Americans are simply making excuses in order to rationalize their bias towards not only blacks but minorities as well. I do believe that there is a “New Jim Crow” in America but we seem to be ignoring the topic because it makes us uncomfortable. I believe that we want to think that we have learned from our past …show more content…
Police are even licensed to be bias and discriminate and that is one thing that has not changed at all. According to former West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, if blacks conducted themselves in an orderly way, they would not have to worry about police brutality. Even the statement is racially motivated and forces a person to ask what does he mean by that? Are blacks the only people that have ever committed a crime? The sad news is even if blacks are behaving, they are still accosted by the police. An example that Alexander used was that if young black male is standing outside his high school dressed in baggy clothes and has his hood on and is surrounded by other black males then police officers would most likely assumed that he is a drug dealer compared to his white counterpart. A research study by Phillip Goff and Matthew Jackson found that black males are viewed as older as and less innocent than young white males. The study also revealed that officers tend to unconsciously dehumanize these children by comparing them to apes which ties in to the “beastly” title that blacks received in the …show more content…
Media plays a hand on the information the public receives and to an extent how they digest that information. Media’s purpose now seems to help fuel controversies instead of shedding light on what is important. For instance, when Obama was elected president instead of focusing on the fact that we made history; the focus was on what Donald Trump was doing to undermine Obama’s legitimacy. Interviews were conducted and shows were shown where Trump asked Obama to prove that he was an American citizen. This has never occurred before where a president had to prove who he was to one man. The coverage of this made others question the race and ethnicity of their president instead of what he was bringing to the candidacy. Even though they questioned him, Americans still love to use Obama as an example of reasons why they are no longer racist and in order to shut down the topic in general. By insisting that, racism is no longer in issue because there is a black president so there is no need for any further