A review by wlreed312
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

challenging informative sad

4.5

Everyone in America should read this book. As someone who has family that has been a direct participant in the war on drugs (I have a cousin who was an undercover narcotics officer before he retired) this was both eye-opening and upsetting. I knew some of the history because I've read quite a bit about the Nixon years, and learned some more about the Reagan years through various sources, but there was still so much I was unaware of. I thought the last chapter dealing with the concept of exceptionism was particularly enlightening. I was more than a little pained by the multiple mentions of Bill Cosby as someone who had been a positive figure in the black community, but that's what I get for waiting so long to read it. I did get slightly bogged down in the legalese occasionally, but it never got so bad I didn't understand the points being made. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings