The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle AlexanderMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
It is frustrating, in some sense, that so many people, myself included, are so late to reading and understanding the ramifications of this book, which was first published in 2010, with a revised edition in 2012.
Alexander clearly establishes that the legal system (from arrest to incarceration to post-incarceration) is not just a failure, but has both solidified and intensified a deeply entrenched racial caste system in the U.S. She explains the hows and the whys of the workings of this system with thorough evidence from legislation, court documents, prison studies, and news sources. She calls out the war on drugs, apathy, colorblindness, performativity, black exceptionalism--and this is one of the reasons it is such a valuable read. She ties it all together to show how the three distinct phases of mass incarceration: 1) the roundup, 2) formal control and 3) post-prison "invisible" punishment forms an undercaste of predominantly black and brown people who "because of the drug war, are denied basic rights and privileges of American citizenship and are permanently relegated to inferior status" (187).
The book has moments where a tighter editorial hand would have helped the fluidity of the information, but at the same time, the repetition of information help drives home the fact that Alexander's points are not siloed into "criminal justice reform" but need to be part and parcel of understanding race in America. I know that "essential reading" has become almost a cliché, but I do think this one really stands out because of the way it looks so deeply into how racism is truly institutionalized. This is not the story of one person. It is a story of systems, ideologies, and ultimately a societal mechanism that supports racism as an intrinsic element of this country's existence.
