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

by Michelle Alexander

politics that was born in the nineteenth century and matured in the Jim Crow era.77 This political strategy is predicated on the notion that the goal of racial equality can only be obtained if black people are able to successfully prove to whites that they are worthy of equal treatment, dignity, and respect. Supporters of the politics of respectability believe that African Americans, if they hope to be accepted by whites, must conduct themselves in a fashion that elicits respect and sympathy rather than fear and anger from other races. They must demonstrate through words and deeds their ability to live by and aspire to the same moral codes as the white middle class, even while they are being discriminated against wrongly.78 The basic theory underlying this strategy is that white Americans will abandon discriminatory practices if and when it becomes apparent that black people aren’t inferior after all.