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

Sep 12, 2020 Kerith rated it it was amazing

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Such an insightful book. I have a social justice background and perspective. Before I read the book, I believed that the criminal justice system was infected by systemic racism. And, I believed it was havarti cheese like, with lots of small holes that were opportunities for top-down, piecemeal reforms.

Yet, when I finished, I realize in fact that the criminal justice system is more like provolone, with virtually no avenues for reform. Alexander deftly shows how civil rights and justice organizat Such an insightful book. I have a social justice background and perspective. Before I read the book, I believed that the criminal justice system was infected by systemic racism. And, I believed it was havarti cheese like, with lots of small holes that were opportunities for top-down, piecemeal reforms.

Yet, when I finished, I realize in fact that the criminal justice system is more like provolone, with virtually no avenues for reform. Alexander deftly shows how civil rights and justice organizations had sought change and reform through those holes, but the system has used those past attempts for change to close up those havarti cheese gaps from the 70s-present.

And, I saw first-hand the inequities she talked about - I grew up in a rural, mostly white community where most of my classmates smoked pot recreationally throughout high school. Hardly any were arrested, much less locked up; occasionally when the cops broke up parties, a couple kids were "booked" for DUIs, but released the next morning. I can't think of a single classmate whose life was ruined by the criminal justice system for this drug use. Perhaps ironically, I was the nerd who didn't do pot or other drugs precisely because I feared it would ruin my future (my future was not ruined, but neither was anyone else's).

I moved to Southern California in 1990 and saw these inequities at school and in work. I was initially astonished - because I had assumed that what I experienced in Sonoma (a lot of talk about being tough on crime but no real action) was true in the rest of the country - but, over time I became so inured to the systemic inequities, that I failed to recognize just how impenetrable systemic racism was. I kept thinking there were small avenues of reform.

I've always believed in the radical change MLK and Alexander discuss, but it's more urgent now and I truly grasp at least some of the depths of systemic racism in our criminal justice system, thanks to Alexander. I can't hide behind the illusion that if we widen the havarti cheese sized gaps until there's no cheese, we'll eventually achieve equality. We need a new system. ...more

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