Michelle Alexander: "A System Of Racial And Social Control

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. I would say the Bush administration carried on with the drug war and helped to institutionalize practices, for example the federal funding, drug interdiction programs by state and local law enforcement agencies, and the support for sweeps of entire communities for drug offenders, communities defined almost entirely by race and class. All of us are sinners. Private prison companies now listed on the New York Stock Exchange would be forced to watch their profits vanish if we do away with the system of mass incarceration. The new jim crow quotes with page numbers. You had to be willing to work for abolition. There are very few people who are able to work because they've been branded criminals and felons.

1. Best quotes from the new jim crow
2. Quotes from the new jim crow
3. The new jim crow quotes with page number
4. The new jim crow quotes with page numbers

Best Quotes From The New Jim Crow

"Martin Luther King Jr. called for us to be lovestruck with each other, not colorblind toward each other. The New Jim Crow is filled with passages that explain the disparate impacts of the US criminal justice system. It doesn't matter if it was five weeks, five years ago, 25 years ago. Conducting large numbers of stop-and-frisk and SWAT house raids in poor communities of color provokes considerably less political backlash than doing the same in an affluent white suburb. Ten Years After “The New Jim Crow”. To be clear, Alexander is not accusing law enforcement and other stakeholders of explicit and conscious racism.

There have been many positive strides made. With dazzling candor, Alexander argues that we all pay the cost of the new Jim Crow. " More black men are disenfranchised today as a result of felony disenfranchise[ment] laws. It's growing up not knowing and forming meaningful relationships with their relatives, their parents. SPEAKER 1: Ms. Alexander, listening to you, my heart broke. When you're released from prison in most states, if you're not fortunate enough to have a family who can support you and meet you at the gates and put you up and give you a job, if you're like most people who are released from prison, returning to an impoverished community, you're given maybe a bus ticket, maybe $20 in your pocket, and you return to an impoverished, jobless community. Incarceration rates, especially black incarceration rates, have soared regardless of whether crime is going up or down in any given community or the nation as a whole. I start asking him more questions. He's sharing more details and information. Quotes from the new jim crow. That is what it means to be black. All people make mistakes.

Some scholars have actually argued that the term "mass incarceration" is a misnomer, because it implies that this phenomenon of incarceration is something that affects everyone, or most people, or is spread evenly throughout our society, when the fact is it's not at all. Prior drug wars were ancillary to the prevailing caste system. Like slavery and Jim Crow before it, the New Jim Crow was instituted by appealing to the vulnerability and racism of lower-class whites, who felt threatened economically and socially by black progress, and who want to ensure they're never at the bottom of the American social ladder. The New Jim Crow Quotes. What do we do as people of faith, people of conscience in response to the emergence again, of this vast new system of racial and social control? Best quotes from the new jim crow. This system is about something else as currently designed. It's encouraging that in states like Kentucky and Ohio and in many other states around the country, legislation has been passed reducing the amount of time that minor, nonviolent drug offenders spend behind bars. Of course, while this sounds good, it is not the case. This system is now so deeply rooted in social, political, and economic structure that it is not going to just fade away. So America has a higher incarceration rate than other nations. What is this system seen designed to do? Ninety-five percent pictured a Black person, although Blacks in reality make up only 15 percent of drug users.

Quotes From The New Jim Crow

In a speech delivered in 1968, King acknowledged there had been some progress for blacks since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but insisted that the current challenges required even greater resolve and that the entire nation must be transformed for economic justice to be more than a dream for poor people of all colors. Just today, the New York Times reported that more than half of the African Americans in New York City are jobless. We have got to be willing to work for the abolition of this system of mass incarceration [INAUDIBLE]. What's more, many people believe that racism in America is a relic of the past. The New Jim Crow Quotes and Analysis | GradeSaver. "Those of us who hope to be their allies should not be surprised, if and when this day comes, that when those who have been locked up and locked out finally have to chance to speak and truly be heard, what we hear is rage. And he becomes more and more agitated and upset. I understood the problems plaguing poor communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality education—the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

She says that although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens. TOP 25 JIM CROW QUOTES (of 75. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added. The media circulates misinformation. … The aim is to reduce the jail population to save money. Unfortunately, the economic, social, and political marginalization ex-offenders face does indeed place them in a similar position.

And do it for those of who have no voice. And it was almost like clockwork. And it is a virtual statistical inevitability that if you're raised in that community, you too will someday serve time behind bars. I said, "I'm sorry, I can't represent you with a felony record. " In each generation, new tactics have been used for achieving the same goals—goals shared by the Founding Fathers. "He declared the drug war primarily for reasons of politics — racial politics.

The New Jim Crow Quotes With Page Number

Liberal politicians have moved to the right on this issue in order to win votes, and the maze of misinformation may even have mislead them as well. Your voice doesn't count. And then he said something that made me pause: Did you just say you're a drug felon? The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. Slavery and Jim Crow were not eliminated through piecemeal reforms and court decisions, nor for that matter, through intractable economic contradictions. Segregationists began to worry that there was going to be no way to stem the tide of public opinion and opposition to the system of segregation, so they began labeling people who are engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience and protests as criminals and as lawbreakers, and [they] were saying that those who are violating segregation laws were engaging in reckless behavior that threatens the social order and demanded … a crackdown on these lawbreakers, these civil rights protesters. As an African American woman, with three young children who will never know a world in which a black man could not be president of the United States, I was beyond thrilled on election night. Private prison companies listed on the York Stock Exchange could be forced to go belly up, watch their profits vanish. The federal government gave state and local police departments tremendous monetary incentives to maximize the number of drug arrests. E., the work of a bigot. Describing the rise of Jim Crow in the wake of a growing Populist movement, Alexander notes, History seemed to repeat itself.

Like what you just read? In my state, in Ohio, you can't even get a license to be a barber if you've been convicted of a felony. What's to become of me? The media, which sensationalizes drug crime for views and has stereotyped black people as mainly responsible for drug crime. It was just as I was beginning my work with the A. I was well aware that there was bias in our criminal-justice system, and that bias pervaded all of our political, social, and economic systems. She spoke with FRONTLINE about how the war on drugs spawned a system dedicated to mass incarceration, and what it means for America today. There are many times when it felt too hard. In fact, most criminologists and sociologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have moved independently [of] each other. Alexander describes how the two prior systems of racial control, slavery and Jim Crow, functioned to create a racial underclass. We should hope not for a colorblind society but instead for a world in which we can see each other fully, learn from each other, and do what we can to respond to each other with love. The plan worked like a charm.

There are millions of African-Americans now cycling in and out of prisons and jails or under correctional control. Cotton's family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one's life. A penal system unprecedented in world history? And we've got to be willing to tell that truth in our churches, in our community centers, in our schools, in prisons, in re-entry centers.

The New Jim Crow Quotes With Page Numbers

Suddenly you're treated like a criminal, like you're worth nothing. For a customized plan. So, the hope Alexander finds is in the next generation of organizers and activists who may, with clear vision, still find a new way forward. We may reduce the size of prison population in some states somewhat by reducing the length of time some people spend behind bars, but as long as people, when they're released from prison, still face legal discrimination in employment and housing, are still denied food stamps, are still denied financial aid and access to education to improve themselves, they'll be back. It is not uncommon for people to receive prison sentences of more than fifty years for minor crimes.

And when we effectively challenged that core belief, this whole system begins to fall right down the hill. We're going to put you in a cage, lock you in a literal cage, treat you like an animal, and when you're released, we're going to make it almost impossible for you to find work or housing or care for your children. " 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. Audiobook Length: 16 hours and 57 minutes. What were you finding out? Those who had meaningful economic and social opportunities were unlikely to commit crimes regardless of the penalty, while those who went to prison were far more likely to commit crimes again in the future. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay the rent? Have you forgotten your password?

Discrimination in public benefits is perfectly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and largely less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. And Congress began giving harsh mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offenses, sentences harsher than murderers receive, more than [other] Western democracies. The rage may frighten us; it may remind us of riots, uprisings and buildings aflame.