Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

9 reviews

lizziaha's review against another edition

informative

4.0

This book made a huge contribution to the shifting of my worldview. I highly recommend this book for a more complete understanding of race in America. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Police brutality, Racism, Gun violence, and Drug use

emmablue's review against another edition

4.5

every american should read this book. the information is essential.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Police brutality

Moderate: Death, Drug use, Hate crime, and Slavery

alyssa_s10's review against another edition

informative medium-paced

5.0

One of the most important books to read if you are an American. Or belong to one of the countries that has a police system heavily based on the American police system. This book should be part of a mandator  reading list for college. I listened to the audio book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Racism, and Police brutality

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Slavery

Minor: Addiction

kayleighr's review against another edition

challenging informative medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Violence

Moderate: Drug use, Slavery, Racial slurs, Death, Murder, and Hate crime

Minor: Addiction

stardustmelody's review against another edition

challenging informative slow-paced

2.0

Given that the book is over a decade old, it's not surprising that's it's already out-of-date. This is a very in-depth look at a very narrow problem - specifically, how has the war of drugs been used to alienate black men from mainstream American society? It does have a place in an anti-racist library, but I wouldn't put it at the top of the to-read queue.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism and Racism

Moderate: Abandonment, Ableism, Classism, Gun violence, Mental illness, Drug use, Police brutality, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Addiction, Drug abuse, Grief, and Confinement

Minor: Violence and Deportation

sarahrosea's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Classism, Police brutality, and Drug use

Moderate: War, Violence, and Police brutality

caelinsullivan's review against another edition

informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug use, Drug abuse, Racism, and Slavery

zombiezami's review against another edition

challenging dark informative sad medium-paced

4.0

I'm glad I finally got to read this after having it on my shelf for so long. It's an important political touchstone for a reason. Well reasoned and well researched. It's amazing how the impact of this book has been felt in the last few years, to the point where this book almost seems not to go far enough, since discussions of abolition are more mainstream. Still, very foundational. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Blood, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Violence, and Police brutality

Moderate: Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Slavery, and Torture

Minor: Antisemitism, Car accident, Colonisation, Excrement, Genocide, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and War

incarceration, capital punishment

rubybooks's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative medium-paced

5.0

I apologise in advance if this review is a bit jumbled - I listened to the audiobook, so I just made some notes while I was listening. This is definitely a book that you should read for yourself! I'll mention a lot of the themes Alexander touches on, and the ones that stood out to me, but so many topics are covered so I won't be able to mention them all. I'd highly recommend the audiobook, but I also want to get a physical copy so I can mark notes and passages.

The New Jim Crow is a work of non-fiction focusing on mass incarceration in the United States and how it affects Black Americans. I didn't know that much about mass incarceration in the US, beyond knowing vaguely about policies such as the war on drugs. And let me tell you, I learned so much from this book! Alexander backs up her ideas with evidence so well, which I appreciated as I can now integrate those examples into my own conversations. I read an updated edition that included an additional preface where Michelle Alexander addresses questions she has received about the book, such as why she focused on Black men and not Black women. and I liked that she included this.

Alexander covers so much in this book - it's impossible for me to mention it all. The book begins by talking about slavery and the aftermath of abolition. The birth of Jim Crow meant that even after slavery was abolished, it still continued through labour, discrimination and incarceration. Slavery even remained appropriate as a punishment for a crime. Alexander discusses the past in order to compare the systemic racism to the current state of mass incarceration in the USA. Everything is discussed within the context of colourblindness, and how it can be just as dangerous as being overtly racist.

There is a lot of discussion on Reagan's war on drugs, which I knew a little about, but I learned so much more detail here. For example, I didn't realise that the war on drugs actually started before crack cocaine was a thing, rather than a response. There was and is a huge discrepancy between drug charges for middle class white men using powdered cocaine, and working class Black men using smaller amount of crack cocaine. The amount of time people serve as minimal sentences for only carrying small amounts of drugs is horrific, especially when Alexander compares sentences to other countries.

It is common for police to use traffic violations as a pretext to search for drugs. Federal grants greatly incentivised the police force's participation too. Alexander uses the metaphor of a bird cage for systemic racism to link together many factors contributing to mass incarceration, such as police drug searches, racial bias, pressure to plead guilty, harsh sentencing laws, invisible punishment outside of prison and the treatment of people as second class citizens. A lot of this content is heavy, and some of the case studies were hard to read about because their situations were so clearly unjust. It was especially disheartening to see all the times the Supreme Court reversed their own decisions.

So overall, I would highly recommend reading this book. I think mass incarceration is a topic that a lot of people don't know much about, and I think this book is a great starting point to understanding its devastating impact and the relation of mass incarceration to past systems of racial control. The New Jim Crow helped me confront my own unconscious biases, as well as thinking more about comparisons to other justice systems. I learned so much from this book and it did not disappoint! I'd give content warnings for mentions of racism, mass incarceration, slavery, drug use, police corruption.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug abuse, Drug use, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, and Slavery