This is easily one of the most compelling books it has ever been my privilege to read. The base premise that Mass Incarceration is the New Jim Crow is SPOT ON! Mass Incarceration via the so called drug war is a ploy to disenfranchise black and brown people this is the absolute truth. Felony convictions are being used to bring on life long criminalization that legal discrimination that cause homelessness, joblessness and hopelessness proving The Drug War & Mass Incarceration is indeed the New Jim Crow. The book glosses over the fact that black and brown people must make a personal choice to engage in criminal behavior that is wrong if you are legitimately caught in the wrong. Some of the book is wrong because; it assumes being poor is an absolute trap from which there is no escape no matter how hard one tries. My own life story suggests the book is wrong to suggest black and brown people MUST COMMIT CRIMES TO SURVIVE.
I lived in drug infested streets of Baltimore most of my life. I am a black man. I am a disabled man with 13 disabilities. I am an autistic man. Drug dealers would have sold drugs to me just like anyone else had I been the slightest bit interested in ruining my life in drugs. It sounds corny but in elementary school we had a program called Officer Friendly. As a black man it does not take long to learn police officers are anything but our friends. Anyways when I was in 1st grade Officer Friendly showed us drugs, they showed us a film on drugs, they showed what drugs do to people who abuse them. Officer Friendly showed us the whole stupid ugly awful mess that is drug abuse from dealing to abuse. I remembered what I saw. I remember that drugs offered no way out. I was a first grader and I was smart enough to realize that drugs were nothing but a trap one would never get out of. The one thing about drug abuse I could never make sense of is why on Earth would ANYONE, PAY TO MAKE THEMSELVES, VULNERABLE SICK AND A SLAVE TO THEIR DRUG DEALER. I was an autistic child people considered retarded at the time. I did not understand much about the real world but I was smart enough to know drug abuse, drug dealing and crime were just traps set to trap black and brown people. As a black first grader in the 1960's I knew most white people did not like us and they felt we were completely worthless. I asked myself why would any black man commit crimes they know will lead them into the clutches of white people hell bend on our destruction as free people. You see drugs and crime never never made sense to me from the earliest time I can remember. I can't believe grown men and children who were supposed to be so much smarted than my supposedly retarded autistic disabled self would be taken in by such a painfully obvious trap as drug abuse.
The New Jim Crow is a reality but the logic suggesting young black people do not have a choice when it comes to abusing drugs, dealing drugs or committing crimes is just bull. Black and brown people commit crimes because; they are stupid. Only a fool can live as a black man in this racist culture and not know that the so called criminal justice system is not a trap designed to ensnare the black man while letting countless white criminals go free or suffer reduced damage. As a disabled man I saw regularly in my life how people of all races interpreted the rules more harshly so they could have what appeared to be a non-biased logic for excluding me from activities due to my autism and disabilities. You see the New Jim Crow was never invisible to me because; being a disabled, autistic child in the 1960's I was often the victim of a two faced system of justice one for the able bodied another special more harsh legalistic system for me. As an autistic man I learned to walk within the letter of the law because to do otherwise allowed people and institutions to deny me access to opportunities able bodied people wanted for themselves. The New Jim Crow is really nothing new for anyone living with a disability and or autism in the 1960's. I knew the new Jim Crow was in effect the minute the term Police Officer was changed to Law Enforcement Officer. Before our system was a justice system now its a legal system. A legal system is a tool a justice system is a philosophy based on discretion that ensures the punishment fits the crime. White people get justice black people suffer Law Enforcement which is lawful sentences handed down without the slightest bit of discretion to make the punishment fit the crime. Again as a disabled man I have witnessed this same situation way too many times not to know intimately the face of the New Jim Crow.
So this is a great book. The book reveals the face of the New Jim Crow to you neurologically typical non disabled folks but this book is nothing new to me and disabled people who have been suffering from our own unique Jim Crow that has been discriminating against us for years. If you think black and brown people are under-represented in the economic life of America look and see that disabled and autistic folk barely exist in the nations economic life. Don't get me wrong I love this book its message is so totally needed that I lack words enough to do the book justice with my praise.
I took one star off my rating because; in the end the book started with the same tired old socialist big government rhetoric that has done more to keep black, brown and poor folks down than Jim Crow ever could. The name of the game in the United States is capitalism. It is better to focus energy on learning to play the capitalist game if we want the kinds of gains that are ours forever. I am also happy that the book speaks to the suffering of poor white people as well since they too suffer under the yoke of those in power. I must agree that white people are NOT treated the same by the mass incarceration machinery and this I know from experience. I like all people white people included so when I was growing up I had and have white male friends, Growing up police officers would stop me ask questions, ask to search me and I suffered all the indignities of the New Jim Crow just because; I'm black. I'd be with my white friends but only I would be searched I think because; white officers thought I was, "Da Drug Dealer Man corrupting poor white youth!" They would never stop and search my white friends and this happened often. We were on our way to New York to see the buildings, when a police officer stopped one of my white friends in the train station. The officer found my friend had on him a small amount of pot I did not know about. The officer searched me the black man found I had nothing and let me go. The officer took my white friends pot and let him go. I was shocked to see him get on the train, he told me the officer let him go. Had it been me caught with a tiny amount of drugs I would have been labeled a felon and ruined for life. I know of a number of my white friends stopped by officers drugs were found but they were let go especially in Baltimore. Police aren't stupid they know the Drug war is the new Jim Crow and all drug addicts and dealers are their dupes.
To be fair I must also state that, as a little kid I committed one crime and a police officer caught me. The police officer could have run me in but he just scolded me, smacked me on the backside and told me never to do wrong again. I saw him later in my life when I was much older and I asked him why he let me go. The police officer said, I'm a police officer, I can tell when a kid has come from a "Good Home" where his parents care about him no matter what color he is. So even with police officers other considerations determine if black or brown people get arrested. I notice as a black man that I am stopped much less often than black folk with the droopy pants and the stereotypical black urban gangsta look. I always looked like a black science geek so I was always treated with slightly more respect than black friends who looked like stereotypical urban druggie street thugs. As an older black adult geek with a great job most police seem to look past me now. My English and vocabulary was always not only appropriate but superior in quality hence my treatment by law enforcement was usually careful and respectful. The new Jim Crow IS REAL FOR SURE but it is not as black and white as the book would have you believe. The New Jim Crow is a Must Read book and one of the best books on the subject ever but, it has its flaws.
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Every system of injustice depends on the silence, paralysis, confusion, and cooperation of those it seeks to eliminate or control.Highlighted by 4,623 Kindle readers- The system of mass incarceration is based on the prison label, not prison time.Highlighted by 4,199 Kindle readers
- Studies show that people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates.Highlighted by 3,658 Kindle readers
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Jim Crow is an ugly blemish on the American nation and while much of the repressive practices of Jim Crow have been eliminated or at least sharply curtailed, there are still active, often covert and/or conniving ways to keep minority races in their place. These underhanded means of social control and oppression are the subject of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.So, what exactly is the new Jim Crow? It is a means to control, dehumanize, repress, and ultimately destroy the lives of minorities by finding ways to target them for breaking crimes and send them off to prison. The main weapon of control is the disastrous and immoral war on drugs and this book devotes most of its pages to examining this so- called war, showing how it was devised and implemented as a way to unfairly target blacks and other minorities.This book is well- articulated and researched and some of its statistics are shocking. As I read, I often thought that the some of the stats had to be typos- they were too extreme to be true. But a quick check of sources proves them accurate. The chances of getting arrested, going to prison, and spending the rest of your life labeled as a felon are multiple times higher if your skin happens to be dark. Even if exactly the same crime is committed, a white person has exponentially greater odds of getting off easy, sometimes even having all charges dropped or the crime reduced. The disparities among different groups of people prove that the war on drugs has nothing to do with gaining control of a substance and everything to do with targeting specific groups of people.I can remember back in the 1980’s when the war on drugs was picking up steam. I was a university student at the time and we used to debate the drug war and its true motives. We all agreed that the war had nothing to do with the actual drugs- no one, not even a politician, could be so stupid to think that a war could be won against a substance. We knew there was something else going on and now that decades of data are available, the true motives have been exposed. This book does an excellent job explaining how/why the war on drugs was invented and how its proponents have been generally successful at pulling it off and making it seem like a fair, ‘colorblind’ way to deal with criminal activity.America’s racist past isn’t really in the past, as much as we want to believe. We like to think that progress has been made and, in many ways, it has, but we are far away from a truly equal and fair society. The New Jim Crow is an excellent way to learn about the new tactics embraced by the racist crowd and a call to action for everyone who wants to work toward a fair and just society.
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