Read The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Audible Audio Edition Michelle Alexander Karen Chilton Recorded Books Books
Download As PDF : The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Audible Audio Edition Michelle Alexander Karen Chilton Recorded Books Books
In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal.
Read The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Audible Audio Edition Michelle Alexander Karen Chilton Recorded Books Books
"I came into this book with a pretty decent grasp on Alexander's thesis—thanks in part to the deserved hype her work has received over the years—but found myself captivated as she connected the dots on so many different aspects of mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, Jim Crow, and the historical intersection between classism and racism.
Alexander notes in her preface that she wrote this book specifically for people who already care about racial justice, and if you're one of those people, I urge you to read this with the promise that you will come away from it with a much more comprehensive understanding of our current racial caste system.
It's so well-researched, so informative, and so compelling. I've seen some readers lament that Alexander spends parts of the second half of the book rehashing arguments from the first half, but this approach actually worked for me: by reiterating certain points throughout, she helped me better understand their context within the bigger picture.
Finally, I have to say that reading this book now—during this point in time—was especially impactful. I learned that there's a deep history of politicians and wealthy whites exploiting white working class vulnerabilities and racial resentments in order to preserve power and deliberately driving a wedge between poor whites and poor minorities. With so much talk right now about the economic anxieties of white working class Trump voters, I came away from this book with an even deeper conviction that pandering to poor and working class whites exclusively is absolutely not the answer. Rather, we need a real movement that addresses class struggles among all races so that we don't risk history continuing to repeat itself."
Product details
|
Tags : The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Audible Audio Edition) Michelle Alexander, Karen Chilton, Recorded Books Books, ,Michelle Alexander, Karen Chilton, Recorded Books ,The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,Recorded Books ,B007R0L47O
The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Audible Audio Edition Michelle Alexander Karen Chilton Recorded Books Books Reviews :
The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Audible Audio Edition Michelle Alexander Karen Chilton Recorded Books Books Reviews
- While Alexander makes several good points about the dilemma of the US criminal Justice system, a system admittedly with many flaws, she constantly employs false dichotomies and uses single statistics to overreach and convey a conclusion that simply isn't supported by her evidence. It's hard to take cold, generalized statistics and apply them to every single individual case accurately. When you begin taking individual cases one by one, these cold statistics don't always show the conclusion that someone like this author hopes they might.
In one instance, the author attempts to paint President Clinton as a closeted racist, liberal sellout, and conservative crony intent on deploying the death sentence on as many black males as he can in order to sway white voters by falsely reporting the details of an execution he attended while Gov. of Arkansas. In the first chapter the author writes that in an effort to appeal to the white lower class voter,
"Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he. True to his word, just weeks before the critical New Hampshire primary, Clinton chose to fly home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him until the morning."
At first glance I found this to be quite an appalling thing for the then Governor to focus on. It seemed as though some mentally impaired man had been a victim of his own impairment, possibly committing a crime he had no intention of committing or any knowledge of what he was actually doing, and that the state of Arkansas was about to murder him simply for being less intelligent than the general public. Alexander makes it sound as though this man was innocent. Her words lead you to believe Bill Clinton is the monster in this story and that Rector was the victim of racial prejudice.
What she didn't write, is that Ricky Rector murdered a man at a club because the bouncer wouldn't let his friend, who wouldn't pay the $3 cover charge, in to the building. Rector became angry, pulled a gun, and fired several shots at the bouncer, wounding two bystanders and killing one man instantly, after the man was struck in the throat and spine by Rector's .38 caliber revolver round. Rector fled the scene, evaded police for 3 days, and eventually agreed to surrender to a police officer he'd known since childhood. This police officer, Robert Martin, visited Rector at Rector's mother's house, where it was implied the surrender would occur. Once in the house, Robert Martin was eventually shot twice in the back by Rector, and died shortly after. Rector now had 2 assaults and 2 murder's on his list of pending charges. And by the way, he is not mentally impaired, at all. That comes next.
Rector, realizing his grievous error in life choices decides enough is enough and walks out the back of his mother's house, having just shot and killed Robert Martin, and puts the gun to his own head. He fires, but misses slightly. The round penetrates his skull, destroying his frontal lobe, but leaving him alive nonetheless. This is where his "mental impairment" begins.
This doesn't sound like much of a victim to me. This mental impairment the author appeals to is one of his own doing, and one resulting from a choice he made to kill himself after consciously deciding to fire several shots into a crowd of people and then intentionally killing an indefensible man. This sort of sweeping logic the author does in order to keep the dirt she want's out and the rest under the rug makes for a difficult and frustrating read. You want to agree with her on most points, but she blatantly misrepresents the facts on so many occasions that you end up writing reviews to express your frustration.
This book started off okay, but it's false implications like this that show the author's intentions. While they are likely coming from a point of genuine concern, they are not in good faith, nor those of someone coming from an unbiased point of view. Read it, but don't just take it at it's word. Just like any other opinion. - I came into this book with a pretty decent grasp on Alexander's thesis—thanks in part to the deserved hype her work has received over the years—but found myself captivated as she connected the dots on so many different aspects of mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, Jim Crow, and the historical intersection between classism and racism.
Alexander notes in her preface that she wrote this book specifically for people who already care about racial justice, and if you're one of those people, I urge you to read this with the promise that you will come away from it with a much more comprehensive understanding of our current racial caste system.
It's so well-researched, so informative, and so compelling. I've seen some readers lament that Alexander spends parts of the second half of the book rehashing arguments from the first half, but this approach actually worked for me by reiterating certain points throughout, she helped me better understand their context within the bigger picture.
Finally, I have to say that reading this book now—during this point in time—was especially impactful. I learned that there's a deep history of politicians and wealthy whites exploiting white working class vulnerabilities and racial resentments in order to preserve power and deliberately driving a wedge between poor whites and poor minorities. With so much talk right now about the economic anxieties of white working class Trump voters, I came away from this book with an even deeper conviction that pandering to poor and working class whites exclusively is absolutely not the answer. Rather, we need a real movement that addresses class struggles among all races so that we don't risk history continuing to repeat itself. - I kind of knew what was happening in my states penitentiaries because I worked my way through college as a state correctional officer. But reading the cold hard facts is especially numbing because I know I contributed in building this New Jim Crow System. After reading this book I feel that I have to take part in dismantling this awful for profit warehousing of my Brothers and Sisters. This book was delivered quickly and was well packaged. I would gladly do business with this Seller again in the future. I pray that enough well meaning people of all races in the USA read this well thought out book and are as deeply moved by it as I am. This was not an easy read for me. But I needed a wake up call especially given the current racial climate of the country.
- This book opened my eyes.
There are many powerful statements in this book but here are a few that stuck with me.
"Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black."
"The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison."
I highly recommend this book to anyone who really want to understand about mass incarceration and how it effects everyone in America.
