A review by nuggetworldpeace
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
5.0
I don't think I've ever read anything that I'd label a "must-read" before this.
Michelle Alexander meets you where many of us are - at a place where the title seems hyperbolic - and through well-written, well-researched chapters details how we've gotten to our current system of racial control, where black and brown people are disproportionately pulled from their communities, impoverishing those communities. Despite similar rates of drug use across races, police have been increasingly placed in urban ghettos during the Drug War - financially boosted by the federal government, even though there wasn't really a surge of drug use at the time to begin with. Once arrested, the next undue burden is the prosecution; punishments are far more severe for measures that disproportionately affect black and brown folks more than white folks (e.g., crack cocaine vs. drunk driving), so most will take a plea deal of guilty for a lighter sentence, not realizing then that their felony record will impact their job opportunities and voting ability for the rest of their lives. We put the responsibility of individuals to be unimpeachable, when we're all humans, and we've all probably broken the law at least once in our lives. We don't think mass incarceration is so problematic, because it's theoretically "color-blind," but it isn't really; you just have to look. I do appreciate that Ms. Alexander ends this book with a direction to take, though I have to chew on what that looks like for me in my personal life.
Michelle Alexander meets you where many of us are - at a place where the title seems hyperbolic - and through well-written, well-researched chapters details how we've gotten to our current system of racial control, where black and brown people are disproportionately pulled from their communities, impoverishing those communities. Despite similar rates of drug use across races, police have been increasingly placed in urban ghettos during the Drug War - financially boosted by the federal government, even though there wasn't really a surge of drug use at the time to begin with. Once arrested, the next undue burden is the prosecution; punishments are far more severe for measures that disproportionately affect black and brown folks more than white folks (e.g., crack cocaine vs. drunk driving), so most will take a plea deal of guilty for a lighter sentence, not realizing then that their felony record will impact their job opportunities and voting ability for the rest of their lives. We put the responsibility of individuals to be unimpeachable, when we're all humans, and we've all probably broken the law at least once in our lives. We don't think mass incarceration is so problematic, because it's theoretically "color-blind," but it isn't really; you just have to look. I do appreciate that Ms. Alexander ends this book with a direction to take, though I have to chew on what that looks like for me in my personal life.