The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration and Racial Justice

Introduction: Alexander's Purpose and Argument

Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, is a professor at Union Theological Seminary, a New York Times columnist, and a civil rights lawyer and advocate. Her motive in writing the book was to explain how Jim Crow still exists in America, even though people sometimes choose not to see it. It exists today in hidden and not-so-hidden ways, as it is part of the power structure that still dominates American society. The prison industrial complex is just one example of how Jim Crow persists, as Alexander demonstrates. Her aim is to draw attention to the mass incarceration system rooted in racial prejudice and to unite people in opposing it: "If we want to do more than just end mass incarceration—if we want to put an end to the history of racial caste in America—we must lay down our racial bribes, join hands with people of all colors who are not content to wait for change to trickle down, and say to those who would stand in our way: Accept all of us or none."¹ Alexander's intention is to open the eyes of her audience and to inspire them to become activists in their own right, helping to overthrow the New Jim Crow system.

Core Arguments: Criminal Justice and Racial Caste

Alexander's main arguments are threefold. First, the criminal justice system is racially prejudiced and oppressive toward young Black men, as evidenced by the fact that half of the young Black male population in urban areas "are currently under the control of the criminal justice system."² Second, the War on Drugs is a pretext for oppressing the Black community: Black defendants are routinely denied adequate representation and are pressured into accepting plea deals to avoid harsher sentences—yet they are still drawn into the prison industrial complex, and once inside, there is almost no possibility of escape.³ Third, the "prison label" is applied to ex-convicts to keep them oppressed even after release, making reintegration into mainstream society extremely difficult and effectively forcing many back into a life of crime and back into the prison system—a system that functions as the new plantation.⁴

It has been well documented that prisoners are used as a new form of labor that allows corporations to profit.⁵ All of this is made possible under the New Jim Crow because, as Angela Davis notes, the prison industrial complex is "accompanied by an ideological campaign to persuade us once again…that race is a marker of criminality."⁶ It is precisely this ideological campaign, Alexander argues, that must be deconstructed.

Mass Incarceration as a Human Rights Issue

Mass incarceration is both a civil rights and a human rights issue—just as the arrest of millions in the Soviet Union under Stalin was a human rights abuse. Millions ended up in the Soviet Gulag prison system, and a comparable dynamic is unfolding in the United States. The Soviets waged an ideological war against anyone who objected to their worldview; in the U.S., a similar logic operates through the criminal justice system. The elites—historically rooted in White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) backgrounds—have maintained a dominant power structure since the nation's founding. While slavery ended in the nineteenth century, Jim Crow replaced it, and today the New Jim Crow—enacted through mass incarceration of the Black male population—serves as the mechanism of control and oppression that keeps the Black community subordinated. If this is not a human rights and civil rights issue, it is difficult to imagine what would qualify as one.

Bibliography

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow. New York: New Press, 2012.

Davis, Angela. The Meaning of Freedom. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2012.

Schlosser, Eric. "The Prison Industrial Complex." The Atlantic, December 1998. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/304669/