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A review by dullshimmer
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
5.0
The New Jim Crow is not an easy book to read. Even so, I do believe that it is an important book to read. It is a book that deeply challenged me on how our justice system works; how powerful labels like criminal and felon are both in my own mind and the culture at large; and how easy it has been to target certain people, in this case black men, disproportionately for crimes.
As you can tell this is not an uplifting read, but to me it help understands the anger and the discontent that is behind movements like BLM. I already knew things were bad, I just didn't realize that they could be as bad as Michelle Alexander portrays it. Now admittedly maybe it isn't as bad as she is portraying it, but I think she makes a compelling case that there are things wrong even if what we're arguing about is the degree to which they're wrong.
Alexander's main argument is that the "War on Drugs" has had a devastating impact on black communities, particularly black men. This is due to many factors working together. You have policing that works on strongly racial presumptions, financial incentives for police to find all the drugs they can which leads to an erosion of personal rights, a legal system that doesn't particularly care about this unless the racism is on the surface of things, a system of mass incarceration that is larger than any other country in the world, and the stigma of labels like criminal and felon that allows for legal discrimination. All of these things work together to create a terribly unjust system particularly for Black Americans.
For Alexander, you can't really take any of these parts away from the picture. Once you do you have a problem. You can't just look at the prison population, you have to look at everyone who has been to prison and is still labeled a criminal or felon as well, because that prison sentence still has a devastating impact even if they are not technically still in prison. I think Alexander would argue this would be bad even if it wasn't racially tinged, but add the fact that enforcement is disproportionately targeted to black men and black communities, it makes it even worse.
This is why Alexander doesn't just call this a flawed justice system, but rather a "New Jim Crow". This isn't because she believes that there is a one to one correlation to the two systems, but that there are enough similarities to warrant the connection. The systems may look very different, but they seem to be achieving a lot of the same results. Maybe this is simply by accident, but it seems kind of hard to believe.
Now I've seen a lot of people criticize the book. The most consistent one is that she cherry picks facts. I don't know that this is as devastating of a claim as some want it to be. I mean we all do it, but another problem is that most people don't really point out what she's cherry picking. I've seen mention that only 25% of prisoners are behind bars for drug crimes. That's still half a million people though, and as I've said above that's not including people who are in the system and labeled a felon due to previous drug crimes.
I also get the sense that people aren't super happy with her only focusing on drug crimes, but to me it makes sense. I don't think she's saying that arresting people for violent crimes is a bad thing, but rather that those kind of crimes should be our focus instead of arresting millions upon millions of people for non-violent drug crimes. I think this idea comes across strongly when she compares how the legal system works against drunk driving, which kills far more people annually than drug related crimes. The punishments for drunk driving are paltry compared to the mandatory drug sentences leading us to ask why is this the case?
Another issue I've seen is that it isn't about race, but rather economic status. Alexander brings up how both poor blacks and poor whites are the ones most affected. I think there is a lack of concern in general about poor people, but it's not that Alexander doesn't mention this. However, I think that black poor people are being targeted much more than white poor people in general so I'm not sure that Alexander is off the mark in her focus. It does hold that this is also an economic issue as well.
That's not to say that I don't think there are issues with the book. There are some examples that she presents that aren't nearly as strong as others. The most glaring is her introductory example of Jarvious Cotton. You would think by the focus of the book that he'd simply be a man who was a felon due to drug possession or some other non-violent crime. He's not. He committed armed robbery then shot and killed one of the men who he was robbing.
Using a murder case starting off a book about people who are unjustly arrested and convicted for non-violent crimes is an odd way to start the book. Especially since she's not upfront with the details of the case. She does have examples that demonstrate her case much better later in the book, but this is not one of them. I get what she is trying to do with the story, but it doesn't work the best.
I'm sure my other complaint is more due to the formatting that she's used to within her discipline, but I am not a huge fan of end notes. I like footnotes so much better. I understand this is a preference thing, but end notes always require so much flipping to check the references and I find footnotes so much more integrated feeling than end notes.
My take away from a book like this is that Michelle Alexander definitely raises a lot of very powerful points. Maybe you can't buy the idea that our justice system and the "War on Drugs" set out to make an underclass that is disproportionately black. Regardless of whether it was intentional or not that seems to be the result. I'm honestly not sure what is worse, that it was done intentionally, but subtly or that it was unintentional and that nobody really cares. I guess to me the effectiveness of a system lies not in its intentions, but in its results.
If the system is even half as bad as Alexander is making it out to be, then it needs to change. So even if she's off a bit on some of her stats, I'm not sure how much that matters. I hope it's not as bad as what she's presented it, but I'll be honest I probably wouldn't be surprised much if it was.
So overall, I would say that The New Jim Crow is a book that needs to be read. Maybe you'll agree with it, maybe you won't. I'm not sure how much I can be said to agree with the book, as I'm not sure I had thought as much about the topics presented as I should have. I will say this though she said a lot of things that made sense. There are some weaknesses to her work, as there are most every work, but I would say that the good far outweighs the bad here. It won't be an enjoyable read, but I feel like it's an important one.
As you can tell this is not an uplifting read, but to me it help understands the anger and the discontent that is behind movements like BLM. I already knew things were bad, I just didn't realize that they could be as bad as Michelle Alexander portrays it. Now admittedly maybe it isn't as bad as she is portraying it, but I think she makes a compelling case that there are things wrong even if what we're arguing about is the degree to which they're wrong.
Alexander's main argument is that the "War on Drugs" has had a devastating impact on black communities, particularly black men. This is due to many factors working together. You have policing that works on strongly racial presumptions, financial incentives for police to find all the drugs they can which leads to an erosion of personal rights, a legal system that doesn't particularly care about this unless the racism is on the surface of things, a system of mass incarceration that is larger than any other country in the world, and the stigma of labels like criminal and felon that allows for legal discrimination. All of these things work together to create a terribly unjust system particularly for Black Americans.
For Alexander, you can't really take any of these parts away from the picture. Once you do you have a problem. You can't just look at the prison population, you have to look at everyone who has been to prison and is still labeled a criminal or felon as well, because that prison sentence still has a devastating impact even if they are not technically still in prison. I think Alexander would argue this would be bad even if it wasn't racially tinged, but add the fact that enforcement is disproportionately targeted to black men and black communities, it makes it even worse.
This is why Alexander doesn't just call this a flawed justice system, but rather a "New Jim Crow". This isn't because she believes that there is a one to one correlation to the two systems, but that there are enough similarities to warrant the connection. The systems may look very different, but they seem to be achieving a lot of the same results. Maybe this is simply by accident, but it seems kind of hard to believe.
Now I've seen a lot of people criticize the book. The most consistent one is that she cherry picks facts. I don't know that this is as devastating of a claim as some want it to be. I mean we all do it, but another problem is that most people don't really point out what she's cherry picking. I've seen mention that only 25% of prisoners are behind bars for drug crimes. That's still half a million people though, and as I've said above that's not including people who are in the system and labeled a felon due to previous drug crimes.
I also get the sense that people aren't super happy with her only focusing on drug crimes, but to me it makes sense. I don't think she's saying that arresting people for violent crimes is a bad thing, but rather that those kind of crimes should be our focus instead of arresting millions upon millions of people for non-violent drug crimes. I think this idea comes across strongly when she compares how the legal system works against drunk driving, which kills far more people annually than drug related crimes. The punishments for drunk driving are paltry compared to the mandatory drug sentences leading us to ask why is this the case?
Another issue I've seen is that it isn't about race, but rather economic status. Alexander brings up how both poor blacks and poor whites are the ones most affected. I think there is a lack of concern in general about poor people, but it's not that Alexander doesn't mention this. However, I think that black poor people are being targeted much more than white poor people in general so I'm not sure that Alexander is off the mark in her focus. It does hold that this is also an economic issue as well.
That's not to say that I don't think there are issues with the book. There are some examples that she presents that aren't nearly as strong as others. The most glaring is her introductory example of Jarvious Cotton. You would think by the focus of the book that he'd simply be a man who was a felon due to drug possession or some other non-violent crime. He's not. He committed armed robbery then shot and killed one of the men who he was robbing.
Using a murder case starting off a book about people who are unjustly arrested and convicted for non-violent crimes is an odd way to start the book. Especially since she's not upfront with the details of the case. She does have examples that demonstrate her case much better later in the book, but this is not one of them. I get what she is trying to do with the story, but it doesn't work the best.
I'm sure my other complaint is more due to the formatting that she's used to within her discipline, but I am not a huge fan of end notes. I like footnotes so much better. I understand this is a preference thing, but end notes always require so much flipping to check the references and I find footnotes so much more integrated feeling than end notes.
My take away from a book like this is that Michelle Alexander definitely raises a lot of very powerful points. Maybe you can't buy the idea that our justice system and the "War on Drugs" set out to make an underclass that is disproportionately black. Regardless of whether it was intentional or not that seems to be the result. I'm honestly not sure what is worse, that it was done intentionally, but subtly or that it was unintentional and that nobody really cares. I guess to me the effectiveness of a system lies not in its intentions, but in its results.
If the system is even half as bad as Alexander is making it out to be, then it needs to change. So even if she's off a bit on some of her stats, I'm not sure how much that matters. I hope it's not as bad as what she's presented it, but I'll be honest I probably wouldn't be surprised much if it was.
So overall, I would say that The New Jim Crow is a book that needs to be read. Maybe you'll agree with it, maybe you won't. I'm not sure how much I can be said to agree with the book, as I'm not sure I had thought as much about the topics presented as I should have. I will say this though she said a lot of things that made sense. There are some weaknesses to her work, as there are most every work, but I would say that the good far outweighs the bad here. It won't be an enjoyable read, but I feel like it's an important one.