The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Michelle Alexander

New Press, 2010 - Social Science - 290 pages

As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status - much like their grandparents before them.
In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community - and all of us - to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Citizenjoyce - LibraryThing

I remain surprised that neither Alexander nor those in the abolition (of the police force) people have anything good to say about Obama. She does say that they have to be willing to upset their allies ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Cataloger623 - LibraryThing

I found the book incredibly sad. It is a litany of how those in power with a racist agenda have worked to undermine the efforts of Blacks to gain equality. It describes how these same people have ...

About the author

Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Formerly the director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Project in Northern California, Alexander served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor, emeritus, at Princeton University and is currently Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
• Author: Michelle Alexander
• Edition: illustrated, revised
• Publisher: New Press, 2010
• ISBN: 1595581030, 9781595581037
• Length: 290 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies; Social Science / Penology