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

by Michelle Alexander

The only major change to the original text relates to language. I’ve eliminated terms such as felon, ex-offender, and inmate, except when those labels or classifications are being explained or are relevant to a point being made in the text. When I was researching and writing the book, those terms were widely used by policymakers, journalists, academics, and activists as they described and combatted the system of mass incarceration. In recent years, formerly incarcerated and convicted people have challenged the use of these labels and offered alternatives such as “returning citizen.” A similar effort has been under way to persuade journalists and others to abandon use of the term illegals to describe people who are in this country without proper documentation, and to use the term undocumented immigrant instead. Although some have argued that it’s cumbersome to say “formerly incarcerated” rather than “felon,” or inconvenient to say “a woman in prison” rather than “inmate,” I do not see why anyone who values the dignity of those who have been caged would complain about the “difficulty” or “inconvenience” of uttering a few extra words to emphasize someone’s humanity during the era of mass incarceration. There are many things that are difficult to manage during this period of our nation’s history; avoiding terms that reduce people to prison labels is not one of them.