Resources - books and other resources that have been helpful
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Color Blindness
by Michelle Alexander
Dylann Roof guns down the pastor and eight others at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston.
White police officers shoot Freddy Gray in Baltimore. Sandtown erupts in flames and violence.
A young black man slugs a 69 year old white man on a Metro platform in DC, knocking him unconscious.
We ask what's going on? Didn't the Civil Rights Act take care of discrimination and racism???
Dr. Alexander, a law professor at The Ohio State University, offers some very provocative answers in her book The New Jim Crow:Mass Incarceration in an Age of Color Blindness.
Drawing on voluminous research, she asserts that our nation is still very far from being color blind. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan crafted a southern strategy to pit poor whites against blacks so that Republicans could wrest control of the South from the Dixiecrats. The "War on Drugs" disproportionately affected African-Americans. And then Bill Clinton compounded the problem by instituting the "Three Strikes and Your Out" policy which put even more people in prison.
Some excerpts from the book:
"Approximately a half-million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980- an increase of 1,100 percent." (p. 60)
"Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino." (p. 98)
"One study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students. That same survey revealed that nearly identical percentages of white and black high school seniors use marijuana. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12- 17 are more than a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth." (pp 98-99)
"Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black." (p. 197)
Prosecutors array a long list of charges against offenders and then offer plea deals. The offender, often a young black man, takes a plea and then, even though he serves two years in jail, is labeled a felon. He then has to check a box on an employment application indicating that he has been convicted of a felony. That's enough for most employers to reject him.
Further, as a felon, he can't vote. A consequence, Alexander asserts, is that some 30% of black men are disenfranchised.
Bottom line: this book helped me see the problems in poor black communities in a whole new light. What she says won't be a big surprise to African Americans or to anyone who regularly works in the inner city. But it surprised me - and I think I'm pretty savvy about racism
I encourage you to read this book. It may well help you see our nation from a different perspective.
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