Martínez / 1 Eduardo Martínez The New Jim Crow / Préci Miguel Saucedo The New Jim Crow​
by Michelle Alexander centers around the idea of racial discrimination after the death of Jim Crow laws. Alexander states that “Denying African Americans citizenship was deemed essential to the formation of the original union. Hundreds of years later, America is still not an egalitarian democracy”(1). Because of this concern, she posits the reasoning behind the state of American racial affairs. The central question revolves around the forms in which minorities, African­American males in particular, are systematically oppressed in the age after the original Jim Crow Laws have ended. This concern is a topic of interest for Alexander because she believes that the proponents of a “racial caste” system have kept their position by enforcing policies that are meant to oppress lower racial classes. Alexander explains her positioning by saying that mass incarceration is the new form of social control of minorities that is similar to the old Jim Crow Laws. She claims that “Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all practices we supposedly left behind” (2). Alexander then goes on to say that the new Jim Crow is manifested through this system, and that it can be even more detrimental to people of color than the high of Jim Crow laws. In a sum, she states that “We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” (2). Alexander’s argument towards this conclusion is built on five chapters of argument followed by one chapter focusing on steps to take action on the issues discussed in the book. This Préci will focus on the first five chapters of this book, because the last chapter focuses on ideas for people to get involved, rather than an actual argument. Each chapter of argument focuses on a different aspect contributing to the New Jim Crow. In order to explain The New Jim Crow, Alexander explains the foundations built by the Old Jim Crow laws. In the section titled “The Birth of Jim Crow” in Chapter 1, Alexander explains the resentment that Whites faced towards blacks during the reconstruction era. She states that “ as African Americans obtained political power and began the long march towards greater social and economic equality, Whites reacted with panic and outrage (30). To show some of this outrage, she mentions the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and laws tailored to arrest African Americans for things such as “insulting gestures” (31). In the following section, Alexander goes further on the topic of KKK terrorism tactics, and explains that as the age of Jim Crow laws ended, a new push for oppression began. In Chapter two, Alexander goes in depth about the United States prison system, and how the war on drugs plays a prominent role in locking up people of color. She argues that “Convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates in the United States” (60). To explain this, she gives out a few relevant statistics such as drug arrests having tripled since 1980, meaning that “there are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980” (60). Martínez / 2 Chapter three picks at racial discrimination within the criminal justice system. Alexander argues that “in the drug war, the enemy is racially defined” and that the policies described in chapter two are more often, if not ​
exclusively​
, enforced in poor communities of color (98). She also goes on to explain that “people of all races use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates”, which refutes the reason for such high enforcement of policies in minority communities (99). In the section “Closing the Court Doors: McCleskey v. Kemp”, Alexander described the court case where the tolerance of racial bias in the courtroom was determined. McCleskey was a defendant charged for killing a white police officer, and was sentenced to the death penalty by his prosecutor. Because of this, he presented a study that showed the disparity in the number of death penalty sentences for the killing of Black victims vs. the number of death sentences for the killing of White victims. In the end, the court rejected claims that his prosecutor was violating his 14th Amendment rights by calling for the death penalty based off racial bias because the courts needed to see “evidence of conscious, racial bias” specific to McClesky’s case (111). Alexander argues that this gave way to an assurance that the courts are tolerant of racial bias. In the section “Unconventional Wisdom” Alexander talks about how the driving force for drug arrests is rooted in misconceptions of Blacks as the main drug dealers in America. To combat this idea, she cites a study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Washington that determined: “the Seattle Police Department’s decisions to focus so heavily on crack, to the near exclusion of other drugs, and to concentrate its efforts on outdoor drug markets in downtown areas rather than drug markets located outdoors or in predominantly white communities, reflect ‘a racialized conception of the drug problem’” (127). Chapter four, titled “The Cruel Hand” explains that once Blacks have served their time and are released from the prison system, they face even more oppression than they did before they were sentenced. She explains that “a criminal record today authorizes precisely the forms of discrimination we supposedly left behind” (141). Some examples of this discrimination include “employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service” (141). The “Boxed in” section does more to explain this discrimination through a prevalent enforcer: the criminal question box on applications for welfare (and jobs, and housing, etc.). This is a form of discrimination that is based on past criminal convictions. If one is unable to receive help from the government to turn their life around after being set free from prison, then their logical next step is to look for employment. But the problem, Alexander argues, is that ex­felons are boxed in because it becomes incredibly difficult for them to find a job when they must tell employers of their past convictions. Alexander also brings up the point of how the media determines how not only Non­Blacks view Blacks, but how Blacks view Blacks. Citing reality TV shows like ​
Flavor of Love​
and genres like gangsta rap that depict and enforce racial stereotypes, she states that “those who were demonized… did what all stigmatized groups do: they struggled to preserve a positive identity by embracing their stigma” Martínez / 3 (174­175). Alexander points out that, unfortunately, many of these actions result in nothing more than a minstrel show showing Blacks in a negative light; both by the world around them, and by themseleves. Chapter five, simply titled “The New Jim Crow”, brings in all the previous arguments together to explain the similarities of old discriminatory policies to new, modernized ways of oppression, mainly mass incarceration. The section “How it Works” sums it up best. In a sequence of action, people of color are oppressed and criminalized. The War on Drugs causes three phases leading into incarceration. The first is the roundup, or the police conducting “drug operations primarily in poor communities of color” (185). The next is the period of formal control. This encompases the racial descrimination in the court rooms that lead to harsh sentencing and long periods of control under the justice system. The final stage is one of invisible punishment. Through this phase, ex­convicts face legal discrimination imposed by “laws [operating] collectively to ensure that the vast majority of convicted offenders will never integrate into mainstream, white society” (186). Alexander uses this format to argue that the racial discrimination faced now is very much similar to the Jim Crow laws of the past. One crucially important point that Alexander makes towards the end of the chapter comes about when she discusses the absence of racial hostility and the White victims in the racial caste. Although the analogy of mass incarceration to Jim Crow laws hold up very well, there are some key differences that must be acknowledged in order to progress forward. Alexander states that “this system of control depends far more on racial indifference … than racial hostility” (203). A majority of Americans no longer want to hold the same racist views as generations before them. In this age of colorblindness, however, we do find problems with this sentiment. To expand on this problem, Alexander suggests that a racial caste system that includes white people would only thrive in the age of colorblindness. She explains that if all arrests were done on African Americans, then there would be public outrage, but since there’s other racial groups included in the system, people are able to justify reasoning behind such high rates (204). In essence, in order for mass incarceration to remain “race­neutral”, there must be some victims of races other than African American.