New Jim Crow
When considering the introduction and chapter three of Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, arguably the most important conceptional foundation to remember is the notion of social oppression, and particularly the fact that social oppression can occur with or without the knowledge or intention of the dominant social group. As Hardiman, Jackson, and Griffin note in their contribution to Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, social oppression that occurs on the institutional level is oftentimes the product of oppressive beliefs and behaviors on the level of the individual and society, making it extremely difficult to pinpoint, and thus challenge, the roots of institutional oppression. Chapter three of Alexander's book highlights this difficulty in its discussion of the Supreme Court's inability or unwillingness to confront qualitatively obvious discrimination in favor of the near-impossible task of identifying specific, individual cases of racial discrimination.
As mentioned above, Hardiman, Jackson, and Griffin...
Alexander makes this clear in the introduction when she highlights the fact that, contrary to popular belief, the War on Drugs started by Ronald Reagan was not actually begun in response to the "crack epidemic" (Alexander, 2010, p. 5). Instead, it began a few years earlier, and only later did the media popularization of a crack epidemic lead to the disproportionate policies and tactics that resulted in a much higher rate of "black and brown" men being incarcerated for drug crimes (p. 5-6). Furthermore, Alexander highlights the fact that the crack epidemic, far from being a natural outgrowth of minority communities, was actually the result of the complex interplay between the media and Reagan's contradictory domestic and foreign policies, because even as he was ramping up the War on Drugs, the CIA, under his direction, were financially and militarily supporting South American guerillas directly…
