Summary: The New Jim Crow

Imagine yourself walking in the middle of the night, and suddenly, a person approaches you with a gun and threatens to rob you of all your possessions. Take a moment to focus on the robber’s physical appearance, what does the robber look like? Regardless of what the robber looks like, the physical characteristics of him or her have no actual significance. The purpose of this scenario is to show how visualizing and defining a criminal based on physical features is a form of active participation within the system of mass incarceration. The appearance of the theoretical robber was formed from hegemony and preconceived notions of what a robber, or any criminal, looks like. Similarly, during the War on Drugs from the 1980s to the early 2000s, law enforcement sought out possible drug offenders based on hegemonic beliefs of race and class that have developed over time. Consequently, this led to the disproportional incarceration of minority groups, especially African Americans, to the point where they represented over 80 to 90 percent of all arrested drug offenders (Alexander 64).