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

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

4.36 of 5 stars 4.36 · rating details · 3,155 ratings · 542 reviews

"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 - m

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Hardcover, 248 pages

Published January 5th 2010 by New Press, The (first published 2009)

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Sep 06, 2012 Judith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: obom-candidates-read, from-the-steps

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander will pick up your everyday white liberal guilt, tie it in knots, and leave you wondering how you could have ever been so simple-minded as to think colorblindness was benign, let alone desirable. While the “War on Drugs,” hopped up on federal funds and confiscated property, is systematically exploiting African American neighborhoods to supply the ever-growing prison industry with human beings to incarcerate, t...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Clif Hostetler rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: current-events

This is not the sort of American exceptionalism to be proud of. The United States has the highest per capita rate of incarceration of any country in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...
That means one of two possibilities. Either we're a country of criminals, or our law makers have an inexplicable fascination with defining crime and punishment in a way that artificially creates criminals. This books says it's the latter.

What do you suppose is so unique about American culture that...more

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 09, 2013 Christine Theberge Rafal rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: politics

The issues this book lays out are horrifying. Did you know the "home of the free" incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than any other country? And that the increase in our prison population since 1980 can be traced not to rising crime rates but to changes in policies, especially to unusually harsh sentencing, supported by race-based surveillance, in the so-called war on drugs. Once someone is caught in the system, the history of a felony relegates them to underclass status forever....more The issues this book lays out are horrifying. Did you know the "home of the free" incarcerates a larger percentage of its population than any other country? And that the increase in our prison population since 1980 can be traced not to rising crime rates but to changes in policies, especially to unusually harsh sentencing, supported by race-based surveillance, in the so-called war on drugs. Once someone is caught in the system, the history of a felony relegates them to underclass status forever.
It had only been a week or so since a police officer had asked to "weigh" my purse at the subway, when I read the chapter about how our Fourth Amendment rights are being eviscerated. I actually had not given consent to the officer. The truth was as I told him: I was using the tunnel to cross the street, not even going through the "turnstiles." I went to sleep thinking about this and all the pieces of that chapter and woke up deciding that the next time someone asks to abrogate my 4th amendment rights, I will propose a deal that they must respect all my other rights and promise not to inflict any physical, psychological or financial harm to me through my person or my property. I decided to write this down to offer it to anyone else who finds themselves facing this "question" because according to stories in this book, innocent people with nothing to hide sometimes found their car was torn up or their front door broken down or worse and they were let go without so much as an apology. If you don't say yes to the search, it seems like the asker will assume you do have something to hide. So I think if it comes up, negotiate.
And that's just the personal side. The other implications of course are to work to end this war on drugs. War can be a very efficient form of theft, right? And historically conquerors literally decimated the conquered men. I am now at the chapter about how police departments can seize assets even of people only suspected and never convicted. In exchange for a fully restored 4th Amendment plus legalization of recreational drugs, especially those less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, I'll trade you major modification/modernization of the 2nd Amendment.
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Nov 17, 2012 Vannessagrace Vannessagrace rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

"... I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow."

"… Once they are released, they are often denied the right to vote, excluded from juries, and relegated to a racially segregated and subordinated existence. Through a web of laws, regulations, and informal rules, all of which are powerfully reinforced by social stigma,...more

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Mar 05, 2012 Lumumba Shakur rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: african-american-studies, civil-rights-movement, political-science, favorites

It is Michelle Alexander's experience as a lawyer which makes this such a successful piece. It is not novelty that makes this book so profound, but the authority upon which the argument is made: simple statistics and inarguable facts. In the very beginning, Mrs. Alexander states for whom this book was written: people who have a hard time convincing friends, neighbors and others that there is something oddly familiar with the current order. She has done this perfectly and thus I highly recommend...more It is Michelle Alexander's experience as a lawyer which makes this such a successful piece. It is not novelty that makes this book so profound, but the authority upon which the argument is made: simple statistics and inarguable facts. In the very beginning, Mrs. Alexander states for whom this book was written: people who have a hard time convincing friends, neighbors and others that there is something oddly familiar with the current order. She has done this perfectly and thus I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a hard time convincing others that the current state of Blackamerica is not due to a mortal/cultural flaw, but instead stems from a perfect storm of institutional control that perhaps was initially well-intended, but at present insist upon maintaining a status quo that has decimated the African-American community and is doing the same to our Latino brothers and sisters.

I was both vindicated and saddened in finding evidence from a lawyer in confirmation of my understanding that the United States Supreme Court, particularly the current make-up, has been a friend to the political and economic elite of this country, an enemy to the politically impotent masses and a main obstacle against any meaningful change in society at large. It was both shocking and appauling to see that the chief justices in the land acknowledging the existence of corrosive racism that has become inherent in the criminal "justice" system, while refusing to do anything but maintain the status quo since the only viable solution would be to dismantle the system - something which they deemed impossible. Once we reach that level of protectionism by the very same institution that is supposed to be the ultimate check on executive and legislative authority, what is left but a complete overhaul of the system - dare I say "revolution"?

The only criticism I have is that in her initial summary of the chapter contents, she seems to often have simply copied key sentences word for word, which is rather annoying, but minimal (and easily forgotten). Stylistically, it made for a redundancy and the book perhaps would have been better off without any foreshadowing summaries at all (current and future authors take note).

It has always been my person theory that most conspiracies are not concocted in smokey backrooms, but simply come into existence when particular interests converge and work towards the same goal in a previously established order. In short, what you have before you is the anatomy of just such a conspiracy and an uncomfortable reality that needs to be first acknowledged before we can ever begin to talk about social, racial and economic justice in the United States in any meaningful way. (less)

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Oct 02, 2012 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've worked in the violence prevention sector for 12 years now, and I've recently started learning about the prison industrial complex. As someone who focuses on systems of oppression, I tend to self-righteously roll my eyes when other white people are "shocked" at blatant cases of discrimination or violence in their community.

So I have to say, while reading this book I WAS SHOCKED. I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole mass incarceration actually went. It has also made me question my assum...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Anthony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: law, criminal-justice

this is a remarkable book. michelle alexander's writing should be a model to legal scholars: she has a clear and compelling thesis, which she lays out succinctly and argues for in full throughout the main chapters of the book. briefly: mass incarceration works in similar ways as Jim Crow by creating a caste system, supported by poor whites encouraged to vote against their class interest. alexander works step by step through the history of the war on drugs, the rolling back of 4th amendment restr...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Marc Medley added it

I just started reading the book last week, but there is no doubt Ms.Alexander sheds a very interesting perspective on the penal system. As you read, it definitely gives you something to think about.

2 likes · like · see review

Jan 17, 2013 marilyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to marilyn by: Bill

This definitely changed my opinion on incarceration, confirmed and amplified my opposition to the War on Drugs, and illuminated the horrifying amount of underlying racism in our criminal justice system to me. It's an Important and well-researched book, and additionally, full of some immensely depressing topics, so it wasn't exactly a page-turner for me, though someone with a more legal bent may find it more so.

One of the stories that really sticks with me is presidential candidate and then-gover...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Tinea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Tinea by: Seyyedreza

Shelves: race-and-racism

This will absolutely become one of my most recommended books; I really urge all people from the US and all people who want to learn more about the US, and how deeply entrenched and structural racism manifests in this country, to read this. My copy is a mess of starred passages and underlined text, too much to quote or summarize here. This, like Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology, is at once a detailed, clear explanation of a complex, often indecipherable interlocking system of oppression,...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Catherine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Michelle Alexander's analysis of institutionalized racism within the justice system is surgically precise, built on rock-solid foundations of historical and statistical fact. She calmly deconstructs white America's pervasive post-Civil-Rights-era ideals of "colorblindness" while calling for unity and solidarity across economic and racial lines. Neither the elegance of Alexander's work nor the sobriety of her tone can mask the urgency of her topic. The New Jim Crow is clear, thorough, and - in a...more

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May 09, 2012 Joe Dennis rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book explains the insidious way the POWER people have of keeping African-Americans in their place, despite the Civil Rights Act, etc. Thought we had progressed, didn't you? So did I. The so-called "War on Drugs", besides being insanely stupid and expensive, yes INSANELY STUPID AND EXPENSIVE, keeps young men of color "in their place" by incarceration, stripping of rights, making them jobless, causing them to carry shame and humiliation basically forever, in effect rendering them impotent, al...more

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Jul 31, 2012 David Smith rated it 5 of 5 stars

It is impossible to overstate the importance of this book. I had a vague idea that the criminal justice system was messed up, but Michelle uses numbers and powerful language to do the issue justice.

Mass incarceration has ruined about 30 million lives directly. 30. MILLION. Take a moment to absorb the truly staggering scope of that number. The charge is most commonly nonviolent marijuana possession. The victims are overwhelmingly black, despite using drugs at slightly lower rates than whites. It'...more

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Mar 19, 2011 lady jane added it

Shelves: non-fiction

The content of this book is so disturbing that I had to take a break from reading it for a week or so. I am still trying to absorb and synthesize the information. I will return later to re-read the last chapter. It is a powerful read, well worth the time and emotional energy.
I live in a city where I can bike a few miles, cross a few neighborhoods and see the divides between the rich, middle-class and poor. I live in a city with a stop-and-frisk policy that unfairly targets African-Americans. I...more

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Jul 05, 2012 Annie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Michelle Alexander does a wonderful job of describing how the current criminal justice system has been structured to incarcerate Black men at a higher rate at harsher sentences for similar crimes committed at the same rate as their white counterparts. Alexander details the rise of mass incarceration from the 1980s "war on drugs" and how the American prison system has become the New Jim Crow that existed in the later half of the 20th century.

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Jun 12, 2012 Patrick Farr rated it 5 of 5 stars

Eye opening look at the disproportional rates at which people of color are locked up. The specific and detailed look into the branding of felons as second class citizens for life was a consequence that I had not considered.

I feel that most who read this book will think that the author has an agenda; as she herself is African-American. However, her points are valid and descriptions of racial discrimination are spot on. The police-state that we live in has incentives for this behavior and the peo...more

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Oct 06, 2012 Jed rated it 5 of 5 stars

Michelle Alexander is clearly aware from the start of the provocative title of her book, but her arguments are strong ones, and the appropriateness of the title becomes clear, not as a metaphor or analogy, but a plain description of what the prison system has become. The disenfranchisement caused by the war on drugs, and the consequences of non violent drug-related felony convictions of young black men in this country has caused no less than a caste system. But the mass incarceration of black me...more

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Sep 08, 2011 Kony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Alexander does a fiery, intelligent job of connecting many dots in a complex web of laws, politics, and hidden repercussions. She traces the legal/cultural threads of racial hierarchy through our nation's history -- starting with slavery, permeating our Constitution, instigating blatantly racist Jim Crow laws and now driving the covertly racist drug war.

This isn't a scholarly work; it's a well-read advocate's call to arms. Her rhetoric is sweeping and repetitive, and it won't convince skeptics....more

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May 19, 2013 Texbritreader rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: african-american, cultural-studies, political

This book was lent to me by a deputy sheriff in our county with a hearty recommendation, and I could soon see the reason why; this indictment of the "War on Drugs" was both fascinating and infuriating. Alexander crafts a strong argument from beginning to end not only of the ineffectiveness and unfairness of the "war" itself but also of its biased prosecution.

Citing numerous examples nationwide of the consistent targeting of African Americans and to a lesser extent Latino Americans for both drug...more This book was lent to me by a deputy sheriff in our county with a hearty recommendation, and I could soon see the reason why; this indictment of the "War on Drugs" was both fascinating and infuriating. Alexander crafts a strong argument from beginning to end not only of the ineffectiveness and unfairness of the "war" itself but also of its biased prosecution.

Citing numerous examples nationwide of the consistent targeting of African Americans and to a lesser extent Latino Americans for both drug searches and prosecutions, Alexander argues that post Civil Rights Act politicians, starting with Nixon and Goldwater have cynically manipulated latent white racism to fuel a sense of fear that could be translated into a tough on crime mentality that eventually evolved into Reagan's launch of the "War on Drugs".

Using statistics and sketches of individual cases the author explains that total American drug use was actually on the decline at the beginning of the "war" but that the rising use of crack cocaine was manipulated by the Reagan administration into a media feeding frenzy about "crack whores", "crack babies" and "gang bangers" who were almost exclusively black. She goes on to detail how the "war" then became institutionalized via the creation of local drug task forces, federal grants for local drug enforcement, the financial incentive of property seizures, the massive increase of prison populations and the many new prisons (often privately run) required to house them.

However, the greatest strength of the work is its illumination of the legal system as it works to prosecute, convict and imprison offenders. The discomfort one feels when reading of numerous examples of unfair or overzealous prosecutions pales in comparison to the outrage inspired by some of the nonsensical legal decisions reached by the courts, including the Supreme Court, about unreasonable searches, unfair sentences or the inability of the system to correct for bias even when the courts accept that the bias is real. Honestly, there were times when the catch-22's were so many that I felt I was reading some kind of weird dystopian fiction.

The main theses here is that through these processes America has created a "new Jim Crow" a system that seeks to control the African American population of our country much like earlier systems: slavery & segregation or as it was often called "Jim Crow". She argues that with these drug related felony convictions for even minor offenses, African Americans (and a handful of others swept up in the same net) are stripped of voting rights, housing rights and job opportunities and that black people become subject disproportionately to these penalties as a result of selective enforcement and prosecution.

The weakness of the book is its failure to properly acknowledge the progress Americans have made on race relations and its lack of emphasis on personal responsibility and although the author does address these head on she still finesses everything in order to maintain her focus on the issues of drug policy and hidden racism. In fairness, she does an effective job and makes a number of good arguments about the limitations of black exceptionalism, affirmative action, the stigma of past criminal convictions, the poverty in inner cities etc. but I'm sure most on the conservative side of politics will be unmoved. A more minor issue, she also uses what I would call circular footnotes: e.g. she quotes a Senator, oddly without naming him/her, but when you follow the footnote to see which Senator she is referencing the footnote merely cites another author's article and you never know who it is - sloppy work.

But overall the book was extremely interesting and thought provoking; surely this would be a good starting point for productive social and political dialogue.

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Apr 17, 2013 Rejena rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it's a well researched compilation of the history of mass incarceration (it's swelling size in particular) and race in all aspects of the criminal justice system. On another hand, if you're at all familiar with things like mandatory drug sentencing laws, racial profiling and the Supreme Court's rejection of disparate impact in criminal procedure cases, it's really nothing new. It does a great job of shining a light on the dangers of colorblindn...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Aaron rated it 5 of 5 stars

I believe this is one of the most important books I have or will ever read. That is not something I say lightly. Michelle Alexander has compiled a thoroughly researched and easily accessible analysis on not only the war on drugs, but also, and perhaps more importantly, the racial implications providing fodder for such endeavors.

I found this book to be both a challenge to my own assumptions and preconceived ideas surrounding race relations in the United States. While reading, I had to force myse...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Seif Salama rated it 4 of 5 stars

Michelle's Alexander's pioneering work in The New Jim Crow has been enlightening and distressing at the same time. Enlightening in that it has revealed a novel way to look at and experience mass incarceration in America today; as a system of inequality shrouded in this idea of colorblindness. The perception is that increased sentencing and arrests are carried out oblivious to color when in actuality only black and brown peoples are targeted. These revelations are distressing because as the inequ...more Michelle's Alexander's pioneering work in The New Jim Crow has been enlightening and distressing at the same time. Enlightening in that it has revealed a novel way to look at and experience mass incarceration in America today; as a system of inequality shrouded in this idea of colorblindness. The perception is that increased sentencing and arrests are carried out oblivious to color when in actuality only black and brown peoples are targeted. These revelations are distressing because as the inequality is made visible, the enormity of the task of overcoming such imbalances become apparent. This understanding is not lost on the author as well as she believes the book is only a stepping stone in the direction of equality and justice for all. Her experiences as a civil rights lawyer and legal scholar have proven to be an asset in arriving at this understanding.
Alexander attempts to link modern day mass incarceration to other racial projects throughout America's history such as slavery and Jim Crow. Modern day mass incarceration is built on the political ideology that race is irrelevant to punishment when dealing with the criminal kind. The idea is that it is the individuals' bad behavior that lands him in prison and not his race. This perception of colorblindness is what gives this new system of Jim Crowism its legitimacy as black legislators have supported the "get tough" measures on crime that targets their own kind. Equally essential to the perpetuation of this new system of inequality is this idea of "black exceptionalism" that says racism is in recession and blacks must be doing very well in America as evidenced by the success of President Obama and Oprah Winfrey amongst others. For this reason she touts the discontinuation of affirmative action. She believes that the success of a few blacks is detrimental to the progress of the group as a whole for it allows race to be taken out of the public debate/discussion when it goes on unabated and runs as an undercurrent in our social institutions.(less)

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Apr 03, 2013 Mike Vogler rated it 3 of 5 stars

The one piece of advice I can offer to the potential reader of this book is to read it with a both a critical eye and an open-mind. "The New Jim Crow" is a very provocative book that squarely confronts the negative effects of the "War on Drugs" and the American criminal justice system.

I could not help but thinking however, that the title, which references the Jim Crow Laws of the Southern United States is a bit mis-leading. It implies that the War on Drugs and subsequent structural laws; such a...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Mary Whisner rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-and-punishment, race-in-america

If this important and powerful book were a car, it would have the bumpersticker that says "IF YOU'RE NOT OUTRAGED, YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION."

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2009), Michelle Alexander describes War on Drugs juggernaut that has filled our prisons, mostly with people of color.

The statistics are staggering. In the last 30 years, the U.S. prison population went from about 300,000 to more than 2 million. Although President Reagan was the Preside...more

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Mar 21, 2013 J. rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: own

Sorry, but when a group of people comprising 13% of a country's population is committing 85% of that country's violent crimes it isn't a racism problem or a drug law problem, it's a black community problem. I live in the deep south and have only known a couple of racists in my entire life. If racism isn't widespread here, the area that everyone is taught racism comes from, then is most likely isn't widespread at all.

Our disgust when young men walk around the local mall with their pants around th...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I read last year...Highly informative and shocking exposure of the racist prison industry and what the counter effects of the "war on drugs" has done persecuting young black men...I worked as a substance abuse therapist for 2 decades so I was privy to much of this...The incredible warehousing of people of color for petty drug crimes must be exposed to the public...Only then can we correct the faulty laws that incarcerate people for substance abuse, which is not a crime........more

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Mar 07, 2013 Mark Bowman rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was recommended to read both at church and at seminary where I work. Alexander presents a compelling analysis/expose of the criminal justice system in the U.S. today. She carefully traces the reasons behind the explosion of the U.S. prison population over the past 25 years, noting that this is not related to an increase in major crime. Instead it correlates to the War on Drugs initiated in the 1970s and has resulted in taking many persons found with small amounts of illegal drugs and m...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Sueij rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Sueij by: AA Reads/ Ypsi Reads 2013

I found this at the library next to a sign saying that it was the Ann Arbor/ Ypsilanti Reads book for 2013. It's amazing.

You can read the summary yourself, but the very short version is that the author lays out clear and deeply compelling arguments that this country, following the demise of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, has instituted a third institutional and *systemic* racial caste system. She details how she didn't believe it herself at first, and why she changed her mind. She lays out cl...more

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Feb 10, 2013 James Millikan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I finished the book after a year hiatus, and I'm glad I did. The parallels drawn between the policies of Jim Crow and the current system of mass incarceration in the United States are lucidly presented, well-researched, and thought-provoking. It is difficult to give a full review without presenting some of the key points presented by the text, so here is a broad sketch of Michelle Alexander's central argument:

Civil rights legislation that banned the oppressive practices of the Jim Crow era, crea...more I finished the book after a year hiatus, and I'm glad I did. The parallels drawn between the policies of Jim Crow and the current system of mass incarceration in the United States are lucidly presented, well-researched, and thought-provoking. It is difficult to give a full review without presenting some of the key points presented by the text, so here is a broad sketch of Michelle Alexander's central argument:

Civil rights legislation that banned the oppressive practices of the Jim Crow era, created unrest among the politically powerful white community as blacks made strides in employment, social mobility, and treatment under the law. To counteract this unease of the politically powerful and elite white community, harsh new drug legislation was introduced which disproportionately affected communities of color. In Alexander's view, the War on Drugs has explicitly targeted minorities in two main ways: by emphasizing hash sentencing for drugs popular with the black community such a crack cocaine, and by the stop and frisk policies of police officers that disproportionately target poor communities of color. Once these targeted groups are in the criminal justice system, they are systematically stripped of their voting rights, they become ineligible for many forms of employment, and are relegated to what Alexander calls the American "undercaste"--a legally justified status of marginalization that smacks of the policies of Jim Crow.

I was initially skeptical of the argument presented in this text, largely due to my "you do the crime you do the time" convictions about the criminal justice system. But as I thought more deeply about the current system and read up on the statistics of incarceration, I slowly became convinced of Alexander's account. One example which I found especially convincing was the examination of drug use in the inner city verses the suburbs: non-violent drug offenses occurs at roughly the same rate in the predominately white suburbs as in the inner cities, but poor drug offenders of color are far more likely to be arrested and labeled as fellons than their suburban counterparts. I can see no reasonable explanation for this disproportionality besides a law enforcement and legal system that privileges the affluent and politically powerful.

Michelle Alexander does a good job of framing this central argument of the book within it's larger philosophical, sociological, political, legal, and historical context. Framing the text's narrative amidst the towering intellects of Dr. King, W.E.B. Du Bois, Fredrick Douglass, and a vast array of contemporary scholars, Alexander identifies the salient developments and attitudes that have contributed to the current system of mass incarceration.

This important and well-written text is recommended for anyone interested in the prison-industrial complex, critical race studies, contemporary politics, white privilege, drug policy, or legal scholarship. (less)

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Feb 01, 2013 charlotte rated it 5 of 5 stars

The U.S. prison population has increased hundreds of times over in the past 30 years. In that time, since the end of the Civil Rights era, most Americans have continued to live and go to school in racially homogeneous neighborhood, and Africans Americans, as a group, continue to have worse health outcomes, lower educational achievement, higher unemployment, and less wealth than their white counterparts. And the vast majority of U.S. prisoners and ex-prisoners are people of color. What do we make...more The U.S. prison population has increased hundreds of times over in the past 30 years. In that time, since the end of the Civil Rights era, most Americans have continued to live and go to school in racially homogeneous neighborhood, and Africans Americans, as a group, continue to have worse health outcomes, lower educational achievement, higher unemployment, and less wealth than their white counterparts. And the vast majority of U.S. prisoners and ex-prisoners are people of color. What do we make of these facts?

As legal scholar Michelle Alexander lays out in this book, mass incarceration in the U.S. has maintained a racial caste system, replacing Jim Crow segregation, which in its turn replaced slavery. The "colorblind" system we have today allows hundreds of thousands of African Americans (as well as people of other races) to be legally discriminated against in the ways Jim Crow once allowed explicit racial discrimination: in housing, employment, and voting. In other words, you aren't a racist if you discriminate against "felons"--even when "felon" de facto means a black man.

As chapters 2-4 lay out, the criminal "justice" system allows law enforcement and prosecutors the power to decide who is targeted for questioning, searches, arrests, stiffer charges, longer sentences, and harsher penalties almost entirely at their own discretion. This might be fine if police and prosecutors had no preconditioned racial stereotypes, and weren't susceptible to the same coded messages in political speeches and mass media as all of us. Try this thought experiment: picture a drug dealer. What race is the person in your head? If you are like most Americans, you picture a black person. Yet public health studies show that white and black Americans use and sell illegal drugs the same amount. But white Americans are several times less likely to be searched and arrested, and even if they are, at every step of the legal process, whites fare better than blacks facing prosecution: they are more likely to receive bail, face fewer and lesser charges, and receive less severe penalties. Yet racial bias is virtually un-proveable and un-challengeable in an individual's particular case. Racial profiling is legal, and as long as an officer or prosecutor isn't stupid enough to say out loud that they hate black people, no legal challenge is possible on the grounds of race. At the same time, the federal drug policy--less a response to a truly rising epidemic than a tactical political move--makes drug sweeps a profitable for law enforcement, by tying federal funding to numbers of drug arrests and allowing the seizure of property involved in drug trafficking. Chapter 4 describes in detail the daily struggles this system creates for the individuals caught up in it, even after formal release. The label "felon" legally locks a person out of social assistance programs like public housing, welfare, and food stamps, and saddles them with debts associated with their own arrest, trial, and incarceration--not to mention experiencing the shame and social exclusion that comes along with the stigma of criminality.

Despite the insistence of prime-time TV, mainstream news, and the sincere belief of cops and friends of cops I know, I stopped believing that the legal system existed to stop crime and protect ordinary people a long time ago. I could cobble together some statistics and studies to support my cynicism, but with this book, Alexander has made the argument more cogently and comprehensively than I ever could. What the system is about is preserving a status quo, tamping down rebellion, and keeping working class people divided along racial lines so we don't unite along class lines. As Alexander lays out, the three systems of racial control in the U.S. -- slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration -- in their inception were ruling class reactions to multiracial threats: colonial rebellions of indentured servants, white and black; working class Populists in late 1800s who attracted both poor white farmers and black Americans to their platform; and popular social movements that emerged through the 1960s and '70s to challenge the prevailing order. In each period, liberal leaders betrayed the movements that initially gave them power, by eventually siding with the conservatives who used race to drive a wedge through a class-based challenge to their authority: racism was written in the Constitution through states rights and the 3/5 compromise; Populists accepted segregation and made the poor white southerner their sole constituent; and Democrats embraced the War on Drugs and tough-on-crime approaches with as much gusto as Republicans.

Alexander makes the critical point that none of these systems was solely the product of racial hostility. Slavery and Jim Crow were primarily systems of managing black laborers; mass incarceration manages the black unemployed, whose labor is no longer critical to profits in a service economy where manufacture has become global. These systems were and are able to exist not because the majority of Americans are KKK-card-carriers, but because of profound and widespread racial indifference -- i.e., not hostility to people who are different, but simply unconcern. In describing the breakdown of multiracial alliances and the rise of each racial caste system, she echoes W.E.B. Du Bois in describing the psychological wage of whiteness; with the beginnings of slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration, working-class whites, without winning any radical change in their social standing or additional material security, accepted the "racial bribe": you may still be poor, you may still have to work for a boss, you may still have no control over your own life, but at least you aren't a n**.

The last chapter is the most important, in my view, wherein Alexander points the way forward. She is realistic that dismantling mass incarceration will take a massive, grassroots movement; it cannot be litigated or legislated away. It has be explicitly talked of as a social justice issue: activists cannot simply speak of the economic cost of imprisoning millions of people, for instance, or the latent racism in the system will simply mutate into another form. It has to involve people of all races and become consciously class-based--all of us or none of us, with the us encompassing white, black, Asian, Latin, and others. She includes a particular call to racial justice activists and organizations to rethink civil suits and affirmative action as the frontiers of advocacy. Affirmative action, she argues, has in fact allowed the system of mass incarceration to flourish: so long as individual African Americans attend Ivy League schools, head corporations, and even get elected President, Americans at large can believe that racism is no longer an issue, while the system on the whole continues to lock most African American families into a permanent undercaste. Heady and controversial stuff, and I challenge any and every American read and contemplate that analysis and the facts assembled in this book.(less)

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“... as recently as the mid-1970s, the most well-respected criminologists were predicting that the prison system would soon fade away. Prison did not deter crime significantly, many experts concluded. Those who had meaningful economic and social opportunities were unlikely to commit crimes regardless of the penalty, while those who went to prison were far more likely to commit crimes again in the future.” — 3 people liked it

“The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the black community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.” — 2 people liked it

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