The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. Michelle is an Associate Professor of Law at Ohio State University, writer and civil rights activist. She earned a J.D. from Stanford Law School.
Previously, Michelle was a member of the faculty of Stanford Law School. Then as Director of the Racial Justice Project of the ACLU of Northern California. Today she is an opinion columnist for The New York Times.
This is in fact a stunningly 10th Anniversary Edition including a new preface. Michelle is again addressing black men, violence, and a new way forward. Across these initial sixty pages arises a new, strong message. While the book’s message may appear simple, the research data delivers a complex analysis. Since the end of World War II the government has established laws targeting the incarceration of black men.
Yet, gains during the civil rights movement became in fact, the target of a ‘law and order’ mindset. The crack cocaine wars of the 1980s were certainly not even in place when President Reagan’s War on Drugs was launching nation wide. This was a build up from the Nixon Administration, even accelerated by President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill. In addition, the book asserts prisons are creating cages to hold and punish young black men as a control method.
The hidden impact for any felon
Convicted Felon? As a result, laws exclude felons from loss of voting rights, public housing, obtaining welfare, and specifically, employment opportunities. How many times do you recall seeing an employment question asking if you were a convicted felon? Michelle positions these efforts directly target the urban black populations across the country. As a result they are never achieving the American Dream.
Chapter 1, The rebirth of Caste, is a perfect introduction. In fact, this also elevates Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson:
Michelle delivers the brief synopsis below which illustrates how the new Jim Crow laws operate:
This, in brief, is how the system works: the War on Drugs is a vehicle through which extraordinary numbers of black men are forced into the cage. The entrapment occurs in three distinct phases, each of which has been explored earlier, but a brief review is useful here. The first stage is the roundup. Vast numbers of people are swept into the criminal justice system by the police, who conduct drug operations primarily in poor communities of color. They are rewarded in cash—through drug forfeiture laws and federal grant programs—for rounding up as many people as possible, and they operate unconstrained by constitutional rules of procedure that once were considered inviolate. Police can stop, interrogate, and search anyone they choose for drug investigations, provided they get “consent.” Because there is no meaningful check on the exercise of police discretion, racial biases are granted free rein. In fact, police are allowed to rely on race as a factor in selecting whom to stop and search (even though people of color are no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites)—effectively guaranteeing that those who are swept into the system are primarily black and brown.
The conviction marks the beginning of the second phase: the period of formal control. Once arrested, defendants are generally denied meaningful legal representation and pressured to plead guilty whether they are or not. Prosecutors are free to “load up” defendants with extra charges, and their decisions cannot be challenged for racial bias. Once convicted, due to the drug war’s harsh sentencing laws, people convicted of drug offenses in the United States spend more time under the criminal justice system’s formal control—in jail or prison, on probation or parole—than people anywhere else in the world. While under formal control, virtually every aspect of one’s life is regulated and monitored by the system, and any form of resistance or disobedience is subject to swift sanction. This period of control may last a lifetime, even for those convicted of extremely minor, nonviolent offenses, but the vast majority of those swept into the system are eventually released. They are transferred from their prison cells to a much larger, invisible cage.
The final stage has been dubbed by some advocates as the “period of invisible punishment.” This term, first coined by Jeremy Travis, is meant to describe the unique set of criminal sanctions that are imposed on individuals after they step outside the prison gates, a form of punishment that operates largely outside of public view and takes effect outside the traditional sentencing framework. These sanctions are imposed by operation of law rather than decisions of a sentencing judge, yet they often have a greater impact on one’s life course than the months or years one actually spends behind bars. These laws operate collectively to ensure that the vast majority of people convicted of crimes will never integrate into mainstream, white society. They will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives—denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then be released again, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality.”
pgs. 382-384.
Colorblindness ?
Michelle writes ‘colorblindness’ is addressing Martin Luther King’s famous call. Yet, this simply a tool by politicians in the south to dismantle affirmative action and anti-poverty programs. We cannot use race, to justify discrimination or exclusion. However, this remains perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals. So, back to the job application checkbox ‘convicted felon’ now stops employment. So, employment discrimination, public housing discrimination, denial to vote. Add the denial of educational opportunities and even the denial of food stamps. This remains perfectly legal.
In conclusion, Michelle is addressing the powerful state of America’s well-defined Jim Crow laws. This is a very compelling book. Released in 2010, now refreshed upon the 10 Anniversary Edition with even more accurate and timely insights. Again, very revealing and a must read.