The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander #Book #Review

The New Jim Crow 
by Michelle Alexander 
(The New Press 2012)

How do you feel about Federal penal sentencing guidelines? Have you given any thought to the composition of our prison population? Have you wondered what happens to a person having served her time for a drug charge when she re-enters society?

In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander addresses all of these topics. Her point of view, as the title suggests, is that our penal system has created a new racial barrier applicable to African Americans.  The author traces the history of slavery and segregation in our country, as well as the end evolution of the post-Brown v. Board of Education world in which there was promise of an end of “separate but equal” and related means of segregation. The election of Barrack Obama could have heralded further progress.

The promise of those times, in author’s view, has been buried beneath the War on Drugs, Federal sentencing guidelines, indifference of U.S. Presidents, a Civil Rights movement focused in other directions, and even the U.S. Supreme Court. All of these elements have erected “extraordinary racial disparities” and a “system of  mass incarceration.” Policies of color-blindness are described as having been “catastrophic” for African Americans.

I read through this easily readable explanation with eager anticipation of the solution. I have personally come to favor legalizing and taxing most so-called victimless crimes. I anticipated an evaluation of such a solution, or others, perhaps even a something new.

 Unfortunately, my anticipation was disappointed. Instead, The New Jim Crow, after laying blame at the feet of essentially all elements of government, Civil Rights, and society, ends with a thoughtful comment from James Baldwin but no solutions.

 If you are interested in social justice, and food for thought about policies perhaps gone wrong, you will enjoy The New Jim Crow. If you are looking for insightful, thoughtful solution to perceived problems, you will have to await a hoped for the sequel to this tome.

Warms, Cym

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