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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Paperback – January 16, 2012
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Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThe New Press
- Publication dateJanuary 16, 2012
- Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101595586431
- ISBN-13978-1595586438
- Lexile measureNC1390L
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Editorial Reviews
Review
—Forbes
Alexander is absolutely right to fight for what she describes as a much-needed conversation” about the wide-ranging social costs and divisive racial impact of our
criminal-justice policies.
—Newsweek
Invaluable . . . a timely and stunning guide to the labyrinth of propaganda, discrimination, and racist policies masquerading under other names that comprises what we call justice in America.
—Daily Kos
Many critics have cast doubt on the proclamations of racism’s erasure in the Obama era, but few have presented a case as powerful as Alexander’s.
—In These Times
Carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable.
—Publishers Weekly
[Written] with rare clarity, depth, and candor.
—Counterpunch
A call to action for everyone concerned with racial justice and an important tool for anyone concerned with understanding and dismantling this oppressive system.
—Sojourners
Undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S.
—Birmingham News
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : The New Press (January 16, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1595586431
- ISBN-13 : 978-1595586438
- Lexile measure : NC1390L
- Item Weight : 1.04 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #178,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #75 in Criminal Procedure Law
- #206 in Civil Rights & Liberties (Books)
- #514 in Criminology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

A longtime civil rights advocate and litigator, Michelle Alexander won a 2005 Soros Justice Fellowship and now holds a joint appointment at the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. Alexander served for several years as the director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California, which spearheaded the national campaign against racial profiling. At the beginning of her career she served as a law clerk on the United States Supreme Court for Justice Harry Blackmun. She lives outside Columbus, Ohio.
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She continues, “I did not, and could not, know when writing this book that our nation would soon awaken violently from its brief colorblind slumber… We now have white nationalist movements operating openly online and in many of our communities; they’re … recruiting thousands into their ranks. We have a president who routinely unleashes hostile tirades against black and brown people---calling Mexican migrants ‘murderers,’ ‘rapists,’ and ‘bad people,’ referring to developing African nations as ‘s-ithole countries,’ and smearing the majority-black city of Baltimore as a ‘disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.’ Millions of Americans are cheering, or at least tolerating, these racial hostilities. And yet… we also have vibrant racial justice movements led by new generations of activists… as well as growing movements against criminal injustice led by those who are directly impacted by mass incarceration. Many of these movements aim to redefine the meaning of justice in America.” (Pg. xiii)
She goes on, “It is tempting… to write an updated version of ‘[this book] that would account for all that has occurred. The new, revised version would describe how and why our nation has swung dramatically from … a ‘race to incarcerate’… to a bipartisan commitment to downsizing our prison system during the same period of time that a liberal, black president drastically expanded the system of mass deportation and mass surveillance.” (Pg. xvi) “The new, expanded version of this book would describe the relationship between the politics of mass incarceration… and the role of prison profiteering in the expansion of these systems… But telling the story of everything that has changed and remained the same would require a new book entirely.” (Pg. xviii)
She explains, “I’m frequently asked… what about violent crime?... I chose to focus my attention on the exponential increase in arrests, prosecutions and sentences for nonviolent crime and drug offenses…. I thought that the time was overdue for public attention to be focused on state violence, rather than violence committed by individuals in impoverished, segregated communities suffering from economic collapse.” (Pg. xxii)
Later, she summarizes, “A new social consensus must be forged about race about the role of race in defining the basic structure of our society if we ever hope to abolish the New Jim Crow. This new consensus must begin with dialogue, a conversation that fosters a critical consciousness, a key prerequisite to effective social action. This book is an attempt to ensure that the conversation does not end with nervous laughter.” (Pg. 19)
In the Introduction, she outlines, “I had come to suspect that… the criminal justice system … was not just another institution infected with racial bias but rather a different beast entirely… I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-designed system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow.” (Pg. 4-5)
She notes, “The decline in legitimate employment opportunities among inner-city residents created economic desperation, leading some to sell drugs---most notably crack cocaine… Joblessness and crack swept inner cities precisely at the moment that a fierce backlash against the Civil Rights Movement was manifesting itself through the War on Drugs. No one should ever attempt to minimize the harm caused crack cocaine and the related violence… Numerous paths were available to our nation in the wake of the crack crisis, yet for reasons traceable largely to racial politics and fearmongering, we chose war. Conservatives found they could finally justify an all-out war on an ‘enemy’ that had been racially defined years before.” (Pg. 65)
She observes, “the people who wind up in front of a judge are usually guilty of some crime. The parade of guilty people through America’s courtrooms gives the false impression to the public---as well as to judges---that when the police have a ‘hunch,’ it makes sense to act on it… The truth, however, is that most people stopped and searched in the War on Drugs are perfectly innocent of any crime… The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) trains police to conduct utterly unreasonable and discriminatory stops and searches throughout the United States.” (Pg. 88-89)
She states, “Most people imagine that the explosion in the U.S. prison population during the past twenty-five years reflects changes in crime rates. Few would guess that our prison population leaped … in such a short period of time due to changes in laws and policies, not changes in crime rates. Yet it has been changes in our laws… that has been responsible for the growth of our prison system, not increases in crime.” (Pg. 117)
She points out, “Any notion that drug use among blacks is more… dangerous is belied by the data; white youth have about three times the number of drug-related emergency room visits as their African-American counterparts. The notion that whites comprise the vast majority of drug users and dealers… may seem implausible to some… however, the prevalence of white drug crime---including drug dealing---should not be surprising. After all, where do whites get their illegal drugs? Do they all drive to the ghetto to purchase them from somebody standing on a street corner?... Whites tend to sell to whites, blacks to blacks… The notion that most illegal drug use and sales happens in the ghetto is pure fiction.” (Pg. 124)
She suggests, “From the outset, the drug war could have been waged primarily in overwhelmingly white suburbs or on college campuses. SWAT teams could have … raided the homes of high school lacrosse players known for hosting coke and ecstasy parties after their games. The police could have seized televisions, furniture, and cash from fraternity houses based on an anonymous tip that … a stash of cocaine could be found hidden in someone’s dresser drawer… Suburban homemakers could have been placed under surveillance and subjected to undercover operations… All of this could have happened … in white communities, but it did not. Instead, when police go looking for drugs, they look in the ‘hood.” (Pg. 155)
She says, “What about gangsta rap and the culture of violence that has been embraced by so many black youth? Is there not some truth to the notion that black culture has devolved in recent years, as reflected in youth standing on the street corners … and rappers boasting about beating their ‘hos’ and going to jail? Is there not some reason to wonder whether the black community, to some extent, has lost its moral compass? The easy answer is to say yet and wag a finger at those who are behaving badly… The more difficult answer… is to say yes… we should be concerned about the behavior of men trapped in ghettoized communities, but the deep failure of morality is our own… it is helpful to step back and put the behavior of young black men who appear to embrace ‘gangsta culture’ in the proper perspective. There is absolutely nothing abnormal or surprising about a severely stigmatized group embracing their stigma… Psychologists had long observed… a powerful coping strategy… is embracing one’s stigmatized identity.” (Pg. 212-213)
She asserts, “The fact that Barack Obama can give a speech … [on] the subject of fathers who are ‘AWOL’ without every acknowledging that the majority of black men in many large urban areas are currently under the control of the criminal justice system… They did not walk out on their families voluntarily; they were taken away in handcuffs, often due to a massive federal program known as the War on Drugs.” (Pg. 223)
She observes, “sanctions imposed by operation of law… often have a greater impact on one’s life course than the months or years one actually spends behind bars… the vast majority of people convicted of crimes will never integrate into mainstream white society. They will be… denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then released again, caught in a close circuit.” (Pg. 231)
She acknowledges, “It is frequently argued in defense of mass incarceration that African Americans want more police and more prisons because crime is so bad in some ghetto communities… The argument… seems relatively straightforward, but… [has some aspects] which are quite problematic. To begin with, the argument implies that most African Americans prefer harsh criminal justice policies to other forms of governmental intervention, such as job creation, economic development… educational reform… as long-term solutions to problems associated with crime… The one thing that is clear from the survey data … is that African Americans in ghetto communities experience an intense ‘dual frustration’ regarding crime and law enforcement.’ (Pg. 258-259)
Back in the New Deal era, “Although many poor African Americans rejected the … strategies of the black elite, ultimately moral uplift ideology became the new common sense… Black elites found they had much to gain by positioning themselves as ‘race managers,’ and many poor African Americans became persuaded that perhaps their degraded status was, after all, their own fault. Given this history, it should come as no surprise that today some black mayors… as well as preachers, teachers… and ordinary folk---endorse ‘get tough’ tactics and spend more time chastising the urban poor for their behavior than seeking meaningful policy solutions to the appalling conditions in which they are forced to live and raise their children.” (Pg. 266)
She laments, “The economic collapse of inner-city black communities could have inspired a national outpouring of compassion and support. A new War on Poverty would have bene launched… compassion and concern could have flooded poor and working-class communities in honor of the late Martin Luther King Jr. All of this could have happened, but it didn’t. Instead, our nation declared a War on Drugs.” (Pg. 271) She proposes, “There is no path to liberation for communities of color that includes this ongoing war.” (Pg. 288)
She concludes, “another generation of advocates… who know best the brutality of the new caste system.. should [be] … emboldened… by the fierce urgency of now. Those of us who hope to be their allies should not be surprised… that when those who have been locked up … finally have the chance to speak and truly be heard, what we hear is rage…. We may be tempted to control it, or doubt it… But we should do no such thing… we should do nothing more than look him in the eyes and tell him the truth.” (Pg. 324)
Both thought-provoking and controversial, this book will be “must reading” for anyone concerning about current issues such as drugs, crime, etc.
Such marginality has several causes, yet she sees colorblind racial indifference and the War on Drugs as the two biggest culprits in the creation of yet another permanent racial under-caste. To make her case, Alexander pounds readers with facts, statistics, and Supreme Court rulings--the fact that "as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records" as one of many gut-checks (7). In short, Alexander's The New Jim Crow lays bare the troubling, racist realities of the American criminal justice system. And yet, maybe due to the severity of her topic, Alexander makes occasional leaps in logic, oversimplifies at times, and even lets the pathos of the subject matter cloud her conclusions. Nevertheless, her arguments are mostly sound and ultimately make the case for a desperately needed shift in public discourse and civil rights advocacy to address the "human rights nightmare" that is mass incarceration (15).
One of the most convincing parts of The New Jim Crow is the chapter entitled "The Lockdown." With powerful detail, Alexander takes readers step-by-step along the criminal justice chain to expose how the racist War on Drugs is waged. What she calls the "Rules of the Game," Alexander convincingly argues that the War on Drugs depends upon the erosion of Fourth Amendment rights--rights that protect privacy of person and property. Alexander threads the Supreme Court decisions of California v. Acevedo, Terry v. Ohio, and Florida v. Bostick to show that police tactics such as stop-and-frisk are protected by Supreme Court rulings. This point is not to be taken lightly, for it leads readers to understand that the state is absolutely complicit in both freeing police to round up whomever they want as well as tie the hands of citizens seeking legal recourse against discriminatory policing. This dynamic of racist state-based control, Alexander reveals, gets worse and worse as those arrested are hamstrung by unchecked prosecutorial powers, grossly inadequate public representation, mandatory minimum sentences, and perpetual "correctional supervision" if labeled felons (92). Readers are left wondering how such injustice can go on in a supposedly democratic society. Alexander is at her best here, implicating the entire institution of American justice in fewer than 50 pages.
Alexander's arguments in parts of other chapters, however, lack precision and evidence. In Chapter 4, Alexander writes: "If we actually learned to show love...and concern across racial lines during the Civil Rights Movement--rather than go colorblind--mass incarceration would not exist today" (172). Although a belief in cross-racial "love" and solidarity seems like it would remedy racial inequalities and, in a clear reach, mass incarceration, Alexander's argument is regrettably naïve here. For one, as she demonstrates pages earlier in the same chapter, civil rights leaders and everyday folk acknowledging race or "blackness" is not something that can be easily remedied with simple effort or even love. Rather, unconscious and conscious racism is difficult to out and defeat--with the 1995 study in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education in Chapter 3 as one of her many examples (107). While it is helpful to recognize that racism works at the unconscious level, it's unfair to argue that such "pre-thought" racism will go away with simple love and concern. Mass incarceration, without question, is part and parcel of a larger history of black criminalization and the racist political economy that is the US criminal justice system. In the above quote, it seems like Alexander is lost in the pathos of her subject and ignores her very own arguments from pages earlier.
What is also problematic is Alexander's assumption that love "across racial lines" was absent during the Civil Rights Movement. Aside from the fact that she provides no evidence, one can simply study the history of the civil rights movement in North Carolina or Milwaukee and discover that cross-racial concern was absolutely occurring during the civil rights movement. Now how we define "love" and "concern" may be up for debate, but to categorically frame the civil rights movement--and all conscious sympathizers--as lacking in concern and love just doesn't hold water. It would have been much more productive for Alexander to take the civil rights movement as well as racial justice champions to task with convincing evidence. She does this to some degree in her later chapters, but her "no concern" claim unfairly lays mass incarceration at the feet of civil rights thinkers.
If Alexander's purpose is to "stimulate a conversation" and get people thinking and talking about mass incarceration, she has accomplished her goal (15). Over the past two years, in fact, Alexander has appeared on National Public Radio, Democracy Now, and C-SPAN, as well as been invited to give talks in churches, universities, bookstores, and other spaces around the country. In light of her critical embrace of the Civil Rights Movement and the apparent rise of her The New Jim Crow as perhaps a galvanizing force for justice, the popularity of her book begs a few questions: Is The New Jim Crow and similar works that centralize injustice the new frontier for a contemporary Civil Rights Movement? And is The New Jim Crow evidence enough that the Civil Rights Movement has never ended, but only recast in the realm of ideas? Alexander, of course, would argue that a movement must be more than ideas; it must also be built on love, human and racial recognition, and the full embrace of difference. For Alexander, nothing less will do. However, as she argues in her "Introduction," racialized systems of control are "inevitable"--almost as if mass incarceration is destined to be reborn (15). Though Alexander gives ways to prevent this rebirth, such teleology, though present throughout her book, is never reconciled. In the end, we are left with a conflicted, uneasy sense of hope as the racial control telos haunts readers even after the book has been shelved.
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