Preview

New Jim Crow Thesis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
903 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
New Jim Crow Thesis
Michelle Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, essentially analyzes the United States criminal justice system. The main thesis/argument of her analysis is that mass incarceration constitutes a new system of racial oppression that is similar to slavery and the original Jim Crow. Furthermore, she claims that mass incarceration has had a profound impact on how criminal justice issues are interpreted today. She also argues that individuals who have fallen victim to mass incarceration are part of a new racial caste. Prior to reading the entirety of the book, I thought she would thoroughly discuss how each and every minority is affected by mass incarceration; however, her analysis only focuses on African Americans. She does …show more content…
She made sure to reiterate that while Reagan and other Republicans were the sole initiators of this effort of stripping government aids, the Clinton administration absolutely plummeted public benefits. Clinton made sure to put a federal law ban on anyone with a drug conviction from getting SNAP (food stamps) or TANF, and also granted local authorities the power to refuse people with felonies public housing. In all, all these actions further explain the economic opportunities that are mostly stripped away from African Americans. The rest of the book entails the effects of the War on Drugs. I found it particularly interesting how the justice system/police have sought different ways to take people to jail based on hunches on drugs or using minor traffic violations as an excuse to stop motorists for drug investigations- even when there is no profound evidence that the motorist has engaged in a drug crime. Also, it was interesting to read how the Supreme Court (whose responsibility is to protect minorities from majoritarian democracy) has placed somewhat of an infringement on minorities fourth amendment
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary Of Reading Chapter 2
    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary Of Reading Chapter 2

    Throughout the chapter the author explains the way that the system works, and she points out ways that the drug war frequently functions to undermine many civil liberties. She further demonstrates how people who commit minor offenses, and in far too many cases, people who are innocent become involved in the criminal justice system.…

    • 342 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Gender And Jim Crow Summary
    • 297 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Gender And Jim Crow Summary

    In Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina 1896-1920, Glenda Gilmore exposed the benefits of adjusting our angle in studying the southern political narrative of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In studying elite, educated, black and white women, Gilmore found sources that voiced the opinions and views of these women. By placing educated black and white women at the center of her study, Gilmore revealed how the political activism and mutual cooperation by women of both races influenced southern progressivism. Gilmore remarked that her focus on educated female leaders slights the working class point of view, as other stories “remain to be told.” Wilmington’s working class females served…

    • 297 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Analysis of the Strange Career of Jim Crow
    • 940 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Analysis of the Strange Career of Jim Crow

    Some critics say that C. V. Woodward’s novel “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” was simply a book about racism. Other critics also attack his style of writing in this very popular novel. However, I believe that Woodward’s novel is not just a book about racism. It is a book about history. I believe it is a book about race relations, not racism. Woodward shatters the stereotypical view of segregation through chronicling the history of America from reconstruction through the late 1960’s.…

    • 940 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper
    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper

    Thomas D. Rice was a white man but was wearing black face makeup, in 1832; Thomas started performing “Jump Jim Crow”. The Jim Crow laws came to existence in 1877 when the whites regained power in the government in the South after the war and made it law. The Civil Rights act passed in 1964 ended discrimination by law and said no one may be discriminated against race, gender, or religious reasons. There were many court cases that helped fight the Jim Crow Laws. The Jim Crow Laws were the laws that people had to live by, it was racial segregation towards colored people and it separated the blacks from the whites in schools, busses, bathrooms, work, and many other places. The laws were to keep the African Americans out…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Summary: The New Jim Crow
    • 1652 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Summary: The New Jim Crow

    One such initiative that has resulted because of her work is the Campaign to End the New Jim Crow (CENJC). This initiative was formed in Harlem, New York during October of 2011 and is a coalition of several racial injustice prevention groups. The group’s mission is to raise awareness and about mass incarceration and institutional racism, with the goal of building a grassroots, bottom-up movement that challenges the racist ideologies that have helped produce these conditions (CENJC, 2014). The groups vision is to foster a "movement that is committed to ending mass incarceration entirely and to push for a fundamental shift from a punitive model to a healing and transformative model of justice--a model that does not criminalize people for public health problems like drug addiction and does not criminalize poverty" (CENJC, 2014). Since it’s beginning, the group has developed and implemented several outreach programs, committed to advocacy and uncovered numerous incidents of racial injustice within the local area, pursuing their investigation and demanding responsibility (CENJC, 2014). While there is much work to do, the CENJC is collaborating with similar groups throughout the country to address and remedy the disease of mass incarceration and racial justice…

    • 1652 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Essay
    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Essay

    Alexander illustrates that the racial caste system is a “social control (14), developing, “politically, socially, legally, context overtime (15).” Our Criminal Justice System follows the method of mass incarceration constructed upon the conflict of drugs abuse was an embodiment of racism to cage African Americans socially and economically very much like the Old Jim Crow during the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. Alexander uses intellectual facts to rationalize the idea that greater amounts of African Americans are known to be imprisoned, than enslaved in the nineteen-fifties. The claim of Michelle Alexander of War on Drugs was devised to justify for mass imprisonment upon African Americans in a sense forcing them into the racial caste system, “a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom (12).” Colored people are in “undercaste–a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law…” As Alexander states, she uses the term undercaste, and permanently to exemplify the concept that are coordinated as the second class by…

    • 471 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper
    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper

    According to Sources One, Two and Three, the Jim Crow laws had a major impact upon the legal and social lives of African Americans living in the Southern States, which included restriction on speech, food and beverage, relationships and many more. Firstly, in Source 1, Clifford Boxley states that African American males “You don’t mess with white women. You don’t talk back to white women. You don’t sass white women. You don’t even find yourself in the presence of white women alone, okay?” This situation restricts African Americans from even being along with a white women, let alone take interest in them. Clifford Boxley also states that “You don’t talk about religion. You don’t talk about politics. You don’t talk about any of these things.”…

    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Analysis Of The New Jim Crow
    • 288 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Analysis Of The New Jim Crow

    This week’s readings discussed a concept called “The New Jim Crow” which is about how black people and Latino's are most likely to get more prison time than their counter-parts even when the crime committed is the same. The author goes on to talk about how people who are black and brown get stopped more and searched than any other race. Personally, I think the reason why people who are black and brown are most likely to be stopped and searched is because , in most cases they cannot afford a good lawyer who will stand up for their rights , There are public defenders but they have lot of cases to deal with and paper work with that being said if they can get someone to admit to the crime and do the time and get a shorter sentences they're work…

    • 288 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper
    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper

    The name for Jim Crow Laws is believed to be derived from an old minstrel routine. Actor Thomas Dartmouth would perform routines as a clumsy, dimwitted African American slave. “Jim Crow” then became a widely used derogatory term used for blacks. Jim Crow laws were appointed for the reason of power, the power of one race over another. The laws were initiated to create a racial caste system in the south. This era of Jim Crow, which lasted nearly a century, led to a struggle for all African Americans. The Jim Crow Laws affected African Americans by keeping with the “separate but equal” doctrine and by playing a key role in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird.…

    • 854 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper
    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Jim Crow Laws Research Paper

    Throughout the history of the United States and the world, there has been racism and prejudice. During 1877 and the mid-1960's there was a particular set of laws that were set that were anti-black. The saying has a few rumored whereabouts, the Jim Crow laws made anti-Black racism legal. During the peak of the segregation the churches taught that Whites were the Chosen people and that Blacks were cursed to be servants.…

    • 433 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Jim Crow Era Research Paper
    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Jim Crow Era Research Paper

    The Jim Crow era began in the late 1870’s and originated from American pop culture (Gale). Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated in most southern and border states, but not exclusively (Pilgrim). A man named Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice performed a song that was a mocking imitation of a black plantation slave (Gale). Rice was the first person to ever wear blackface makeup, he used burnt cork to darken the color of his face (Gale). Jimcrow or jimcrowing refers to the injustice of segregating blacks to lesser facilities (Gale). At the start of the Jim Crow era, laws were put into place to enforce racial segregation (Urofsky). These laws extended to parks, cemeteries, theaters, schools, and restaurants to…

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The New Jim Crow Analysis
    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The New Jim Crow Analysis

    In chapter 3, Alexander mostly discusses about how race works in the criminal justice system. Alexander explains that African Americans and Latinos are the majority of the prisoners in the U.S prison system. African American are 20-25 times more likely to be more arrested for drugs abusing at least 15 out of the 50 states, and 3/4 prisoners who are arrested for drug abuse are colored. Alexander stated “A bit of common sense is overdue in public discussions about racial bias in criminal justice system” (103), Alexander is debating over whether the black men have been targeted by the criminal justice system or unfairly treated. I agree with alexander because from what I have understood from The New Jim Crow , the black community are undermined by government and even if the slavery era has ended the system finds way to control…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Jim Crow And Segregation Analysis
    • 172 Words
    • 1 Page

    Jim Crow And Segregation Analysis

    According to the article “Jim Crow and segregation” says the Jim Crows are just a set list of laws that violated blacks as human beings. When one thinks of the past, many images come to mind. One of the most prominent images of the early twentieth century in the South was the COLORED and WHITE signs that dotted the landscape across the South. They were separated from everything from water fountains to restaurants and even churches. I read a story of 2 young boys ages 12 and 13, Who walked into a restaurant to eat some lunch, And they were mobbed by all of the white people in the restaurant and severely beat up over the fact that they did not see the white only sign on the front door. This was just one incident back in the day.. Blacks all…

    • 172 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Influence Of Jim Crow Laws
    • 192 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Influence Of Jim Crow Laws

    Hatred still continued to grow towards African Americans throughout the south even though equality had been granted to blacks. In 1890, Southern began to believe in the idea that equality would be accepted for African American but segregation would be put in place as well. The “Jim Crow” laws were a series of laws that took place in southern states of the United States. These laws supported segregation between whites and blacks. These laws began to take place through the years the U.S was trying to achieve reconstruction. African Americans began to move to the north escaping from the “Jim Crow” laws. With job openings booming in the north, not only were they trying to get away from these laws but also wanted to seek economic opportunities…

    • 192 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    War on Drugs
    • 2405 Words
    • 10 Pages

    War on Drugs

    The policies that constitute “War on Drugs” are primarily based on racism due to biased policies, Jim Crow laws, and racial bias. Since America has been knowledgeable of the problems drugs bring upon the public the government has attempted to fight against drugs, however every fight is not fair. War is defined as a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation, however can war be based upon race? Or can war even exist if there is not a clear enemy. When you take the word war and glue it to the relations with drugs, racism becomes a factor. The so-called “war on drugs” is just a pretty way of saying war against the Africa Americans families. During the 1980s drugs infested the public and became a major issue. The public began to get concern with the consequences that began to increase higher than ever. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse states that cocaine was mostly commonly used in 1985. It was clear that there had to be something done in order to reduce the consequences. That was when the so-called “War on Drugs” began, yet the war came with baggage. The war on drugs delivered the police system to be racially bias.…

    • 2405 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More

Related Topics