The New Jim Crow...What to know!

Good afternoon Donovans,

Sorry this has taken so long. When our group began discussing what we wanted to share with the whole class about Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, we instantly started pulling apart her arguments and critiquing areas of weakness. Alexander lays out her intention to write a book that is accessible to all at the very beginning of The New Jim Crow. As college educated individuals, we have been trained to examine the scholarship and pull apart the pieces that we read. It is important to understand before reading Alexander's work that this book is multifunctional depending on the background of the reader. 

In this vein, it seems appropriate to start with what this book accomplishes. The New Jim Crow is clearly meant to start a conversation, not to be the end of it. Although some of Alexander's metaphors are loose, she does not offer a magic bag of solutions to racism, denial of rights, and the system of mass incarceration in this country. Depending on the reader, Alexander also offers some enlightenment and increases the fluency of the reader to be able to have conversations with others regarding the systematic oppression of black men in our country. For example, Alexander uses court cases that many readers may not be familiar with to back up her claims. Furthermore, Alexander's work has the potential to reaffirm the realities of many Americans in this country and to connect the dots throughout history to unveil the deep historical roots of systematic racism that are often seen as "in the past" due to the prevalent "color blind" attitude of our current society. For example, this can be a reaffirming and empowering text for many of our students. Lastly, Alexander uses language that is specific and clear, making this text accessible for a wider variety of readers, thus, providing many readers with a "fluent language to defend their experience in their knapsack." Alexander undeniably succeeds in arming her readers with knowledge. 

The New Jim Crow unveils two critical points: What is the system and how is it self protected? Our group pulled two specific quotes to share:

What is the system?

"Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination--employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps, and other public benefits, and exclusion for jury service--are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it," (Alexander, p. 2).

How is it self protected? 

"...lower courts consistently rejected claims of race discrimination in the criminal justice system, finding that gross racial disparities do not merit strict scrutiny in the absence of evidence of explicit race discrimination--the very evidence unavailable in the era of colorblindness...many people may not believe they are motivated by discriminatory attitudes but argued that we all have internalized fear of young black men, a fear reinforced by media imagery that has helped to create a national image of the young black male as a criminal," (Alexander, p. 113). 

Our group would also like to share some of our criticisms. 

• It is so hard to disagree with Michelle Alexander's claims that it is easy to read this text without being critical of her sourcing and research methods. 
• Her argument focuses on the War on Drugs as the catalyst for the mass incarceration of black men but negates to acknowledge that this war targeted and still continues to target a specific socio-economic demographic of black men in the U.S. 
• The largest hole in Alexander's work is that she does not devote time in the text to analyzing the economics in low income areas that make these individuals vulnerable in the first place. Instead, she focuses on race. As Aleshia said, "arresting black men in low income neighborhoods is like shooting fish in a barrel but why are they in the barrel?" We talked a lot about how in order to really change the system, we need to disassemble the economic system at work. We talked about the historical racism that occurs in relationship to economics. The system of American slavery is a prime example of this because the system was based in economics, yet the discourse we use to analyze the system is race. 
• Lastly, as Aleshia shared with us, the rate of black women being incarcerated is growing at a faster rate than that of black men. Alexander's chapter on, "Where are all the good black men," does not even give a nod to the incarceration of black women and this is undeniably an issue that we need to be very concerned about. What are the choices that black women are making due to their economic realities that are making them vulnerable to this system?

We hope this was helpful in understanding the complexities of this text. The New Jim Crow is definitely worth reading but we caution you all as readers and as potential teachers of this text, to further the thinking of you and your students to consider the nuances of the economic foundations of the issues Alexander lays out. One suggestion is to incorporate other texts into your reading of this text like Angela Davis' Are Prisons Obsolete? 

Other group members or readers of The New Jim Crow, please feel free to add to this summary!

See y'all tomorrow,

The New Jim Crow Group