More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 21 - April 17, 2025
We are not free of our racial history. To the contrary, a new caste system has been born again in America, a system of mass incarceration unlike anything the world has ever seen. We are not saved.
and to small groups of activists and students. The book was first published in January 2010, one year after President Obama’s inauguration. It was a time when our country was awash in “post-racialism.” Black History Month events revolved around “how far we’ve come.” Many in the black community and beyond felt that, if Obama could win the presidency, anything was possible.
despite appearances, since the end of slavery our nation has remained trapped in a cycle of reform, backlash, and reformation of systems of racialized social control.
Every system of injustice depends on the silence, paralysis, confusion, and cooperation of those it seeks to eliminate or control. When the people of Ferguson stood up to the police violence, harassment, and abuse their community had endured for decades and remained standing even as the tanks rolled in, everything changed.
I did not, and could not, know when writing this book that our nation would soon awaken violently from its brief colorblind slumber. In the final chapter, I did predict that uprisings were in our future, and I wondered aloud what the fire would look like this time.
No issue has proved more vexing to this nation than the issue of race, and yet no question is more pressing than how to overcome the politics of white supremacy—a form of politics that not only led to an actual civil war but that threatens our ability ever to create a truly fair, just, and inclusive democracy.
the many ways our drug policy debates rapidly changed once drug addiction became perceived as a white problem and wealthy white investors became interested in profiting from the emerging legal cannabis industry. Many of the reversals have been quite dramatic. For example, former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner stated in 2011 that he was “unalterably opposed to decriminalizing marijuana” but by the end of 2018, he had joined the board of directors of a cannabis company.
beyond his control. Her experience is not unique. Over the years, many women have shared with me that reading The New Jim Crow allowed them to release some of the hurt and anger they felt toward black men in their lives—men they felt had betrayed them by returning to prison after promises not to do so, or who had failed to secure jobs or housing upon their release and were therefore unable to help support their families. As
Today, women are more likely than men to be imprisoned for drug-related offenses—a particularly troubling reality given that 62 percent of women in state prisons have minor children, many of whom are forced into foster care or left with relatives who scarcely have the means to care for them. The separation of families is now widely understood as a human rights crisis at the border, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the destruction of black families in the era of mass incarceration.
As I see it, the War on Drugs—more than any other government program or political initiative—gave rise to mass incarceration as defined above. Although the political dynamics that gave birth to the system date back to slavery, the drug war marked an important turning point in American history, one that cannot be measured simply by counting heads in prisons and jails. The declaration and escalation of the War on Drugs marked a moment in our past when a group of people defined by race and class was viewed and treated as the “enemy.”
A literal war was declared on a highly vulnerable population, leading to a wave of punitiveness that permeated every aspect of our criminal justice system and redefined the scope of fundamental constitutional rights.
If we want to reduce violence in our communities, we need to hold people accountable in ways that aim to repair and prevent harm rather than simply inflicting more harm and trauma and calling it justice. Fortunately, a growing number of restorative and transformative justice advocates—such as Danielle Sered, Fania Davis, sujatha baliga, and Mariame Kaba—are helping communities to break free of “justice” models that benefit punishment bureaucracies but perpetuate the harms of crime and violence.
stigmatization in the era of mass incarceration. Violence is also traceable to the brutalities of global capitalism. When factories closed and moved overseas, work suddenly disappeared from segregated communities in inner cities, plunging them into economic collapse. Despair and violence predictably flared. Our nation could have responded with a wave of care and concern—with stimulus packages, bail-out plans, and major investments in education and job creation—but instead we declared war. Like all wars, the War on Drugs has been cruel and unforgiving.
The safest communities are not the ones with the most police, prisons, or electronic monitors, but the ones with quality schools, health care, housing, plentiful jobs, and strong social networks that allow families not merely to survive but to thrive. What our communities need and deserve is no mystery. The more difficult question is: what is necessary to end the politics of white supremacy, to reimagine justice, and to rebirth democracy in America?
