New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander - Literature review Example

Number] New Jim Crow The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a bestseller of The New York Times written by Michelle Alexander. Alexander is a black civil rights litigator who has written a book which is known to be the bible for a new social movement in the early twenty first century. However, this book has been the best seller for ten consecutive months but at the same time it has been the hot topic for debate and criticism. Alexander has used many views and facts that are considered to be counterrevolutionary, ahistoricism, self-refuting, whitewashing and straining analogy to the actual Jim Crow. Thus, Alexander’s work has been debated and criticized by many sociologists and scholars who believe that she has misrepresented the existing social structure and social justice of the society by portraying the mass incarceration problem in the United States as a racial situation. The most important topic discussed in this book is the mass incarceration and the war on drugs. Alexander has argued that the structure of incarceration has created a new caste system. She talks about the history of incarceration including the causes and reasons of it. Next she discusses the War on Drugs and argues that it was an unnecessary plan which had no impact on the usage rate of drugs but did have an impact on the rate of incarceration of small drug dealers. The low level convictions of drug users have increased the incarceration in US more than any other country while the length of the sentence is also disproportionate. Alexander argues that African-Americans are arrested much more than white people are. The arrest rates for blacks have increased by twenty three while rates for white arrests have increased by eight only (Alexander 32). Even though Alexander has used many facts and statistical prove for her claims, social justice activists and black studies scholars have strongly discredited the best seller The New Jim Crow stating that it promotes a false and vague truth about mass incarceration and simply separates mass incarceration from its central and defining features. The social justice activists believe that this book has generated a new point in racial inequality in a society which had long been supporting civil rights. Alexander’s views are clearly criticized as being correlated to the original Jim Crow laws as they employed a more counterrevolutionary framework whereas the Jim Crow laws included racial segregation and were overruled after the Civil Rights Act 1964. Alexander has marginalized the voices of blacks through a perspective which is rather a mainstream perspective instead of a radical one. It is true that mass incarceration has been a major problem in US as compared to the rest of the world in terms of length of sentence or the overall arrest rates. However, Alexander tracks a questionable history of the causes of this situation and provides unsatisfying solutions. Alexander believes that her target audience are the people who actually care about the racial justice and not those who do not believe that mass incarceration has bought problems that are faced by communities at large (Alexander 43). Alexander’s book shows that she has simply put out her own classifications about the original Jim Crow laws. She has written about the blacks being arrested and put to imprisonment but there is ignorance towards the fact that this is just the demographic viewpoint. Alexander has overstated her case in her book and has simply gone too far to be discredited. Alexander mentions the War on Drugs and its impact on the increasing incarceration but fails to talk about other violent crimes. Similarly she has written about the number of blacks in jails but hasn’t discussed the incarceration of other races. Many other books and statistics show us that whites are part of the mass incarceration as well. Alexander, while talking about the racial segregation, fails to accept the torture and lynching of the Jim Crow laws that have been overruled already. Social activists see the mass incarceration as a problem of the whole society that needs to be addressed rather only the problem of African Americans (Forman 27). There are also many errors in this book which show that Alexander rather had a counterrevolutionary approach. At many points, the book talks about issues that not only show the oversimplified original Jim Crow laws but also show Alexander’s false and misleading understanding of the mass incarceration. This book holds the tendency to mislead anyone with the caste system in the society as well as the misunderstanding about mass incarceration. Alexander takes the attention away from the social problem of mass incarceration and reveals it as a racial problem. She takes away the true meaning and central factors about mass incarceration that should be known to the twenty first century Americans and her history of the causes of this incarceration is also vague. She reveals her false understanding of American history as she is seen simply denying the relevance of the revolutionary history. Many social activists believe that her personal understanding has the tendency to mislead the readers and give them a false framework of possible solutions (Schuessler 1). Theorists and sociologists have marked out several contradictions from her book which show her lack of understanding and misleading the readers. One of the major problems with this book is that it ignores the word capitalism which has become the most important part of the modern American society. The modern economic pattern is also completely ignored and therefore the revolutionary context is rather limited. The topic of the book is such that it requires the historical account and current position of the social structure but Alexander has clearly missed out on the main needs of the subject. The book provides half truths that would impact the reader negatively making them deeply go into ideologies that would cause troubles to survive in the society rather than dealing with them. Even the solutions that Alexander provides are counterrevolutionary as they talk about racial segregation rather than the social structure as a whole. As an historical account too Alexander has omitted many events and important voices of history. In order to explain the mass incarceration and the caste system in America, Alexander has simply ignored the major events that took place in history. The traditions of black academic and political radicalism are ignored. Moreover, the historical account of blacks in American history is portrayed to be of gangsters who are identified and generalized as criminals by the readers. According to Alexander, there is no revolution, no class struggle, no rebellion, no black and brown power, no black history, or anything related to the voices of revolt that changed American history. The most important voices, texts, and years are unnoticed in this book (Forman 30). Alexander has a viewpoint that can shock the social activists. She wrote a bestselling book and yet she is discredited by social justice advocates as she clearly misses out the black movements of the late twentieth century. She continually talks about colorblindness and rules marginalization of the blacks as accidental. She also mentions the history of slavery mentioning the birth and death of slavery where actually it hasn’t died. Sociologists have went on to believe that this book offers absolutely nothing to learn and is not a book which can be read by everyone. It can only be read by those who are strong headed and who have the ability to come out of the book and accept their actual society; which is entirely different (Schuessler 1). However, there are many aspects of this book which are questionable and criticized. Alexander has not only failed to outline some important facts and viewpoints but has also failed to present a true understanding of the Jim Crow laws. She has showed the mass incarceration of the society has a racial problem instead of believing it to be a social problem. Thus, Alexander’s claims are criticized as they are ahistoric, false, and counterrevolutionary. Work Cited Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. USA: The New Press, 2010. Print. Forman, James. Racial critiques of mass incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow. NY: HeinOnline, 2012. Print. Schuessler, Jennifer. Drug Policy as Race Policy: Best Seller Galvanizes the Debate. The New York Times, 2012. Print. Read More