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

by Michelle Alexander

Early in the 1980s, the typical cocaine-related story focused on white recreational users who snorted the drug in its powder form. These stories generally relied on news sources associated with the drug treatment industry, such as rehabilitation clinics, and emphasized the possibility of recovery. By 1985, however, as the War on Drugs moved into high gear, this frame was supplanted by a new “siege paradigm,” in which transgressors were poor, nonwhite users and dealers of crack cocaine. Law enforcement officials assumed the role of drug “experts,” emphasizing the need for law and order responses—a crackdown on those associated with the drug. These findings are consistent with numerous other studies, including a study of network television news from 1990 and 1991, which found that a predictable “us against them” frame was used in the news stories, with “us” being white, suburban America, and “them” being black Americans and a few corrupted whites.34 The media bonanza inspired by the administration’s campaign solidified in the public imagination the image of the black drug criminal.