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

by Michelle Alexander

The Supreme Court has now closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the criminal justice process, from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing. The system of mass incarceration is now, for all practical purposes, thoroughly immunized from claims of racial bias. Staggering racial disparities in the drug war continue but rarely make the news. One recent development that did make news was President Obama’s decision to sign legislation reducing the hundred-to-one disparity in sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine to eighteen to one, a small step in the right direction.117 Under the new law, it takes 28 grams of crack cocaine to net a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, while it still takes selling 500 grams of powdered cocaine to net the same sentence. There should be no disparity—the ratio should be one-to-one. But that disparity is just the tip of the iceberg. As noted in chapter 2, this system depends primarily on the prison label, not prison time. What matters most is who gets swept into this system of control and then ushered into an undercaste. The legal rules adopted by the Supreme Court guarantee that those who find themselves locked up and permanently locked out due to the drug war are overwhelmingly black and brown.