Michelle Alexander
Theresa McDermott
Professor Gramlich
Sociology 101 Section 1
April 23, 2013
Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander depicts the grim reality for many young African American men in today’s society in her book the New Jim Crow. The harsh reality for many of them is that they will never be able to fully participate in mainstream society and receive the benefits and basic rights that are taken for granted by the rest of the nation. Her findings show that existence of the Jim Crow laws have yet to fully disappear from society like many believe they have, when it fact, the restrictions of the Jim Crow era have merely been reinvented in the form of the United States’ federal justice system. Today, the United States prison populations are overwhelmingly comprised of people of color. Since the founding of the United States, African Americans have been “denied citizenship that was deemed essential to the foundation” (Alexander 2010: 1). The name given to this denial was Jim Crow and today even with Barack Obama, a black man, as the President of the this great nation, African Americans are still not treated as equals to whites by continually recreating Jim Crow through the federal justice system. As Michelle Alexander writes, “As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow” (2010: 2). In Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, the author explains her main argument which is that the foundation of Jim Crow has not ended, but has merely been justified through the context of the United States’ criminal justice system. Alexander claims that African Americans are largely labels as “criminals” which allows the old ways of discrimination to legal continue. She believes the problem is not the fact that many African Americans are living on the margins of society today (poverty, very little education, etc.), but a result of strategic rules and regulations the
Professor Gramlich
Sociology 101 Section 1
April 23, 2013
Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander depicts the grim reality for many young African American men in today’s society in her book the New Jim Crow. The harsh reality for many of them is that they will never be able to fully participate in mainstream society and receive the benefits and basic rights that are taken for granted by the rest of the nation. Her findings show that existence of the Jim Crow laws have yet to fully disappear from society like many believe they have, when it fact, the restrictions of the Jim Crow era have merely been reinvented in the form of the United States’ federal justice system. Today, the United States prison populations are overwhelmingly comprised of people of color. Since the founding of the United States, African Americans have been “denied citizenship that was deemed essential to the foundation” (Alexander 2010: 1). The name given to this denial was Jim Crow and today even with Barack Obama, a black man, as the President of the this great nation, African Americans are still not treated as equals to whites by continually recreating Jim Crow through the federal justice system. As Michelle Alexander writes, “As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow” (2010: 2). In Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, the author explains her main argument which is that the foundation of Jim Crow has not ended, but has merely been justified through the context of the United States’ criminal justice system. Alexander claims that African Americans are largely labels as “criminals” which allows the old ways of discrimination to legal continue. She believes the problem is not the fact that many African Americans are living on the margins of society today (poverty, very little education, etc.), but a result of strategic rules and regulations the