Racism In Michelle Alexander's Tedxtalks

In Michelle Alexander’s TedxTalks, other speeches and papers she touches on a few examples of institutionalize racism as well as America’s need for a much more reformed drug policy. She argues that while it should be almost statistically impossible to have this unprecedented level of racial bias in the United States justice system and prison community, America still finds itself putting a disproportionate amount of blacks and Latinos into the prison system every year, when in fact on average white males between the ages of 12 to 25 years of age are more likely to experiment with, sell, and become chronic users of illicit drugs and alcohol (Washington Post). Despite this trend and the fact that 6.6 percent of white adolescents and young adults …show more content…
Malcom X believed that the only way blacks would get out of this racist environment was to separate completely and form their own state, a black state, and only then would they be able to truly get rid of both overt and institutionalized racism. On the other side of the argument was Martin Luther King Jr. who, as Alexander pointed out, after doing as much as he could for the civil rights movement said that now the American population needs to focus on not just civil rights but human rights. He would have instead advocated for blacks to stand up alongside poor white, Latinos, and all the other victims of institutionalized racism and the prison system in an effort to reclaim the rights for all involved, but do so from the inside out and without violence. Similarly both Booker T Washington and W.E.B. DuBois follow this idea and only slightly differ as to how to handle it. Washington would have tried to combat this prison problem by advocating for improvement within the black community as a whole. He would try to get the black community to try morally rise above the system of institutionalized racism instead of falling into complacency which in part leads to this cycle many blacks face. Finally W.E.B. DuBois would have agreed with Washington on rising about racism however he would advocate doing this from the outside towards the black community. He [Du Bois] would tell the black community that the way to combat institutionalized racism is to become part of the institution. He would call the black intellectuals to figuratively lead the charge against institutionalized racism not through protest, but through becoming active members in the government, then and only then, would they have the power to see true change at the highest bureaucratic level, and that in turn would trickle down through