Tag Archives: felons

Michelle Alexander is a law professor and former lawyer who has written the very popular book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” Alexander believes that due to the targeted mass incarceration of people of color, we are now living in a “New Jim Crow.” Alexander explains that because so many young black men have been through the prison system, they are legally being discriminated against in employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service, just as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents once were under slavery and Jim Crow laws. Alexander describes the black community as being in a “caste” system, helpless to further their status as long as this “New Jim Crow” system is in place. Her solution is to build a “major social movement” to dismantle the “caste” system. Alexander however, is wrong in this strangely worded, hyperbolic, and confused book.