The aspects of the racial caste system is defined as a racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom. Alexander contends that Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and slavery were all caste systems. The original Jim Crow laws, that were put into place after slavery, advocated racial discrimination in public housing, employment, voting, and education. The Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s apparently ended the Jim Crow era by winning the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Alexander asserts that the racial caste system has not ended, but just simply been redesigned. The criminal justice system functions as a new system of racial control
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Mass incarceration as a tool of racial control has many similarities to the Jim Crow era of laws. They both have similar political origins, as they are designed to drive a wedge between blacks, poor whites, and working-class whites. They also offered a path to legalized discrimination. Those labeled as felons before turning to age 21 faced legal discrimination for the rest of their lives in employment, housing, voting, and public assistance. One in seven black men lost their right to vote over the last three decades. These incarcerated blacks are also excluded from serving on juries, which is similar to the Jim Crow era of all white juries trying black defendants in the South. Racial segregation continues to make the black experience invisible to the majority of whites, who are more easily able to ignore their experience of discrimination. Currently, the stigma of being labeled a criminal is "fundamentally a racial stigma." Criminality is not a racial stigma for whites. The word criminal has become interchangeable with the word black. This connection did not happen organically but was constructed by politics and the …show more content…
The War on Drugs is a major cause of poverty and unemployment, not the other way around. Imprisonment creates far more crimes than it prevents. Mass incarceration as a crime reduction strategy is an outright failure, and it is both ineffectual and expensive. Yet mass incarceration as a tool of racial control is highly successful. Many wish to believe that the problem of mass incarceration or the War on Drugs can be solved without bringing race into it. However, it is that kind of colorblind thinking itself that is the problem. Per Alexander, we need to talk about race openly and honestly. We must stop debating crime policy as though it were purely about crime. People must come to understand the racial history and origins of mass incarceration-the many ways our conscious and unconscious biases have distorted our judgments over the years about what is fair, appropriate, and constructive when responding to drug use and drug crime. We must come to see, too, how our economic insecurities and racial resentments have been exploited for political gain, and how this manipulation has caused suffering for people of all colors. Finally, we must admit, out loud, that it was because of race that we didn’t care much what happened to “those people” and imagined the worst possible things about them. The fact that our lack of care and concern may have been, at
Mass incarceration as a tool of racial control has many similarities to the Jim Crow era of laws. They both have similar political origins, as they are designed to drive a wedge between blacks, poor whites, and working-class whites. They also offered a path to legalized discrimination. Those labeled as felons before turning to age 21 faced legal discrimination for the rest of their lives in employment, housing, voting, and public assistance. One in seven black men lost their right to vote over the last three decades. These incarcerated blacks are also excluded from serving on juries, which is similar to the Jim Crow era of all white juries trying black defendants in the South. Racial segregation continues to make the black experience invisible to the majority of whites, who are more easily able to ignore their experience of discrimination. Currently, the stigma of being labeled a criminal is "fundamentally a racial stigma." Criminality is not a racial stigma for whites. The word criminal has become interchangeable with the word black. This connection did not happen organically but was constructed by politics and the …show more content…
The War on Drugs is a major cause of poverty and unemployment, not the other way around. Imprisonment creates far more crimes than it prevents. Mass incarceration as a crime reduction strategy is an outright failure, and it is both ineffectual and expensive. Yet mass incarceration as a tool of racial control is highly successful. Many wish to believe that the problem of mass incarceration or the War on Drugs can be solved without bringing race into it. However, it is that kind of colorblind thinking itself that is the problem. Per Alexander, we need to talk about race openly and honestly. We must stop debating crime policy as though it were purely about crime. People must come to understand the racial history and origins of mass incarceration-the many ways our conscious and unconscious biases have distorted our judgments over the years about what is fair, appropriate, and constructive when responding to drug use and drug crime. We must come to see, too, how our economic insecurities and racial resentments have been exploited for political gain, and how this manipulation has caused suffering for people of all colors. Finally, we must admit, out loud, that it was because of race that we didn’t care much what happened to “those people” and imagined the worst possible things about them. The fact that our lack of care and concern may have been, at