The New Jim Crow Chapter Summary

The New Jim Crow was a very interesting point of view. In the book Michelle Alexander expresses to us her opinion that the war on drugs is the way to legally discriminate against African Americans and people of color. In the book she encourages us, as United States Citizens to discuss the criminal justice system and how it is not how it should be. In chapter one we are introduced on how the discrimination has made come back according to Michelle Alexander. She did acknowledge that some African Americans have succeeded but she also mentions that even though some African Americans, like Barack Obama, have succeeded, it does not mean that we have gotten rid of the cast system. This is different from the book because the book does not mention anything about a cast system. She explains that racism is able to adapt. All the racial discrimination started when the slavery started. The book then explains about slavery and how it was discussed when they picked the slaves. In the days of slavery, people who needed workers had to pick were they were gonna get cheap labor. In the beginning when black people started coming to the United States, not all of them were enslaved. As agriculture expanded, the necessity of labor and land grew. As this happened, Native Americans became a problem and they were seen as savages. Since the Native Americans were unsuitable to be slaves because they would fight back, the need to find people who would accept to work for low wages grew. Europeans were not good as slaves, not because of their ethnicity but more because there was not enough of them and it would interfere with them migrating to the United States. Therefore the plantation owners saw the Africans as a great slave because they were already powerless and they were easily accessed. As we structured the constitution, we protected the right to have slaves. When slavery became abolished the problems were not over. This is when the laws of segregation came along and then the Jim Crow laws came into place. As black people started coming into power we had to find a way to still have a way to show the difference between poor white people and black Americans. These laws were put out so poor white people could still feel more powerful than those people of color and so the poor whites did not lose their right to vote. Eventually this had to end, we all deserved to be equal rights. Just like Michelle Alexander mentions, it is hard to pin point the end of the Jim Crow Laws. Michelle Alexander mentions the Brown v. Board of Education can be traced back to the end of Jim Crow laws. Eventually the Supreme Court voted to end all white primary election and that all segregation in buses …show more content…
This was until president Ronald Reagan decided to call a war on drugs. The war on drugs led to massive incarcerations that were in the African American population. African Americans and any citizen of color was more likely to get incarcerated than a white male. To this day, like it talks about in the Rennison and Dodge book, we still have more black men incarcerated than any other male. Michelle Alexander also states how there is more arrests made among African Americans, and more sentencing of being a felon is put on people of color. This is done so we can legally deny rights to citizens that we think shouldn 't have those rights. She points out to us that we have elected a black president, but we are still not close to not being …show more content…
In the book she states that this is because of the harsh punishments. She tries to convince us that the prison system is not good and that we need to refine it. In the book she talks about how in the early 1900’s criminologist and other people were strictly talking about how we needed to get rid of prisons because they were not serving the purpose of what they intended to. People who ended up in prison would end up not rehabilitated and would either commit another crime right after they were released or were not able to function well in society. So why are we still letting the system run if it’s purpose is not being