In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander shows the social illness of ethnic discrimination in a fresh light. Mass incarceration in the United States constitutes an ethnic caste structure, and she takes the readers on a past and thorough trip on how this comes around. The author of the book backs up her opinions with many references to figures and coherent philosophies from further considerate authors. In the earlier time, racial discrimination was lawful and authorized by the administration in the procedure of old Jim Crow laws and slavery. Now, though, most of the American people don’t consider themselves ethnically distinguished. Nowadays, most American people reject ethnic dissimilarity and naturally white bigot notions.
The majority of the individuals in the US reflect that they are color-blind people when it comes to tolerating race and, indeed provision, mass incarceration as color-blind. For them, most of the Black people and brown males who were caught up in law enforcement’s zealous War on Drugs are merely “faceless men” who didn’t play by the rules and regulations. In accord with the author, this “callous colorblindness” has “proved catastrophic for African Americans”(Alexander, “The New Jim Crow”), which are furthermore probable to be round-up for drug-related crimes than that of white people, also as figures show that the white people are more probable to obligate drug-related crimes. The present criminal-based justice scheme made this ethnicity below the caste, made up most of the time Latinos and African-Americans, with fewer white Americans as “collateral casualties,” which are pulled in by the remainder of the War on Drugs. This is the New Jim Crow. “race has always influenced the criminal justice system.” (Forman Jr) Notwithstanding government statistics that disclose that black people were no furthermore likely to be embarrassed by drug-related crimes than white people, the War on Drugs is paid mostly in contradiction to the African-Americans in the ghettos, which are grounded on the implicit and misunderstood supposition that the poor-black men are dangerous offenders and the users of drug or the dealers.
Consequently, black people are furthermore likely to get detained, cheated, sentenced, or confined, whereas white people are set free, negotiated to smaller charges or provided with probation. At the end of the year 2004, 12.6 percent of black men that are aged from 25 to 29 were confined as related to 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and just 1.7% of white men in the similar age group. African Americans with criminal beliefs are “caught up in [a] new system of control” that made this novel ethnic class after they left the prison. A criminal free from the custodial discovers the world out of it, furthermore inspiring and intending for him to fail at each turn. He rapidly finds that the administration has essentially eradicated his elementary human rights and any chance he expected to have for “re-entry” into normal society (Alexander, “The New Jim Crow”).
When imprisoned, he is also “locked out.” He frequently ends up being back in prison. He could not be qualified for backed housing due to the fact of his previous belief or probation rank. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) policies exclude individuals with arrest histories, irrespective of the fact that they result in beliefs, from getting housing aid. As police target Latinos and African Americans in the War on Drugs, the policies “guarantee highly discriminatory results.”(“Legal Scholar”) He could not get any federally-funded public assistance as the rules and regulations need states to bar him from receiving it enduringly. He is unentitled for food-stamping for the rest of his life. He could not get an occupation as companies ask about the arrest histories, and when a candidate checks “the box,” the company is less likely to continue further with his request. Several states stopped him from being employed as they barred him from receiving job-related authorization because of his ex-criminal rank. Contingent on the criminality, an ex-criminal might be unentitled to federal student loans, importantly preventing his economic and educational prospects (Alexander, “The New Jim Crow”).
He could not ballot though he is in prison or on trial. In the majority of the states, he could not win an election while he was on bail. Certain countries reject the right to vote for numerous years after the issue or the remainder of his life. The majority of them have established a “bureaucratic maze” of events and penalties that are intended to change it unreasonable, if not unbearable, to reinstate his voting rights. As these “colorblind” strategies excessively disturb black people, they are the current day equal of literacy tests and poll taxes. The New Jim Crow. How did all this come about? The writer points out that too many of the players are closing together in a type of “perfect storm.” She pointed out that the Reagan Government, which started the War on Drugs 3 years beforehand, the nation had even gotten off the cracked cocaine and when the nation was furthermore worried about addressing deficiency (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander).
The use of Drugs was indeed on the decay when the War on Drugs was initiated. She blames the Reagan Administration for arranging this War on Drugs to make an understated and color-blinded technique to endure the discrimination in contradiction to the African-American people. She pointed out it to law enforcement, tainted by the federal funding money and the drug war penalty-based rules and regulations. Police ordered drug-enforcement actions as they were “bribed” with the assistants and arms, as well as military equipment: “tanks, bazookas, anything [they] wanted.” Law and enforcement agencies are permissible to retain detained possessions purportedly used in the unlawful drug action for their usage, also deprived of accusing anybody of criminality. Subsequently, police conduct “fishing expeditions for drugs… with nothing more than a hunch,” which is their understatement for ethnic summarizing.
Police could lawfully “engage in a wholesale roundup of nonviolent drug offenders.” The prosecuting attorney has nearly freed discretion to negotiate with or pile up the custodies in contradiction to the perpetrator, who typically will option to appeal to minor charges, irrespective of responsibility, to evade the further severe consequences that are recorded in the obligatory condemning package for the additional charges. (Alexander, “The War on Drugs and the New Jim Crow”) Ms. Alexander shares figures that demonstrate prosecuting attorneys gives white drug criminals improved negotiating pacts than African-American people for similar or minor crimes. She pointed out that the United States Supreme Court, which, in the previous 50 years, methodically taken away our legitimate defenses in the 5th and 6th Amendments by rulings grounded on the Court’s “perverse logic,” “archaic legal fiction” and a great deal of respect to the law enforcement, which unavoidably ran to this misuse of power (Alexander, “The New Jim Crow”).
Lastly, with its presiding in Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001), the Court has effectively “closed the courthouse doors” to the assert of ethnic bias by plotting that the normal people have no personal right of the act for the discrimination in the Civil Rights Act. She points out the obligatory condemning strategies, which need large verdicts for the crack cocaine beliefs (disturbing mostly the African-American people) while giving furthermore compassionate verdicts for powder cocaine beliefs (disturbing mostly the white people). “Mandatory minimum sentences are unjust, ” and “harsh sentencing is the primary cause of the prison explosion.” She pointed out this to Bill Clinton, who ran a “tough on crime” movement and sustained this strategy by mounting the War on Drugs. Clinton contracted the federal “three strikes; you’re out” law, which made obligatory life verdicts for 3-time criminals and enlarged capital for the local police services and jails of the state. His government’s rules and regulations resulted in the “largest increases in … prison inmates of any president in American history” and applied the HUD-based strategies that made community coverage unobtainable to drug criminals. She pointed it out to the Black Congressional Caucus for going alongside, also ratifying the War on Drugs. She pointed it out to the African-American people who believed in the tougher crime fustian and combined in the “general attitude of „toughness.” She also pointed it out to President Barack Obama, who mercilessly acknowledged he dishonored the drug-related rules and regulations and got away with it, though lots of African-American people are in prison for a similar reason (Alexander, “The New Jim Crow”).
President Obama has noted that “[t]oo many [African-American] fathers are AWOL” nowadays, however unsuccessful in inquiring where they may be discovered. They may be originating in the jail, “locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites.” She points out the civil rights and the criminal justice improvement collections that have continued to be silent, unwilling to originate to the protection of “criminals.”(The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander)
They have mostly turned out to be unsuccessful, and their plan for improvement is outdated as, according to her, the mass incarceration of persons of color could not be resolved over the lawsuit. Ms. Alexander warned that this in his book is “not for everyone.” For those who will read it, those “people who care deeply about racial justice,” she challenged them to dialogue around the race by “resisting the temptation for colorblind advocacy.” Color blindness is “actually the problem.” She proposes that supporters work to conclude the mass incarceration as a scheme of social control, not criminality-based control. As a real-world problem, she confines her dissertation to that of African-American involvement but leaves it exposed for conversation and request to the other sections: Latinos, women, Asian-American people, immigrants, and gays. The book proposes that the reforms need a recharged civil-rights drive, linking “all of us” (that includes “the white man”) after a human-rights-based method. Epilogue: New news and proceedings back up Ms. Alexander’s declarations(Tan). On September 18, 2010, AP News reported that a well-known individual, who is a white person, acquired a one-year postponed verdict and evaded criminal drug charges after supplanting embarrassed to two crime responsibilities that are associated with a cocaine-drug broken in the previous month. Two days later, the Minnesota Public Radio broadcast a newscast section on voter disenfranchisement in Minnesota amongst criminals on trial. The journalist usually reverberates Ms. Alexander’s numbers: around 10% of the voting-age African American people and 7% of American Indians, then only 1% of white people in Minnesota could not vote as they are in jail or on trial. In Minneapolis, the Guthrie Theater lately presented a CLE panel conversation panel on ethnic prejudice and fairness subsequent to its performance of the off-Broadway melodic The Scottsboro Boys. 4 In late July 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which drops the federal punishing rules and regulations for certain cracked cocaine linked principles (Forman Jr).
The condemning differences between cracked-cocaine and powder-cocaine principles are currently 18 to 1, abridged from 100 to 1. Notwithstanding the differences also still “too wide,” President Obama has signed a bill into law. Perspectives that trailed usually acclaimed the bill. Ms. Alexander’s book is a wake-up call to supporters, and these feelings designate that they are attending.
Works Cited
Alexander, Michelle. “The New Jim Crow.” Ohio St. J. Crim. L., vol. 9, 2011, p. 7.
—. “The New Jim Crow.” The American Prospect, Dec. 2010. American Prospect, http://prospect.org/article/new-jim-crow-0.
—. “The War on Drugs and the New Jim Crow.” Race, Poverty, and the Environment, vol. 17, 2010, pp. 75–77.
Forman Jr, James. “Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow.” NYUL Rev., vol. 87, 2012, p. 21.
“Legal Scholar.” NPR.Org, https://www.npr.org/2012/01/16/145175694/legal-scholar-jim-crow-still-exists-in-america. Accessed 23 Nov. 2017.
Tan, Shaun. The Arrival. Arthur A. Levine Books New York, 2007.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6792458-the-new-jim-crow. Accessed 23 Nov. 2017.
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