SOC109 Readings 9
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.1)
Racial caste is not dead; it is alive and well in America.
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.1)
The mass incarceration of poor people of color in the United States amounts to a new caste system
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.1)
THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW
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Jim Crow were segregation laws in southern United States.
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The idea of 'The New Jim Crow', is that instead of discriminating based on race. We discriminate based on criminals, something that most people can agree on. But now there is someone who is more likely to be a criminal. That's where the laws on criminals indirectly project discriminative acts onto these groups.
- Instead of not getting certain types of jobs or housing because you're black. Now it's because you're a criminal (also because you're black?).
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.2)
We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.3)
- More African American adults are under correctional control today-in prison or jail, on probation or parole-than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
- In 2007 more black men were disenfranchised than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.4 During the Jim Crow era, African Americans continued to be denied access to the ballot through poll taxes and literacy tests. Those laws have been struck down, but today felon disenfranchisement laws accomplish what poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not.
- In many large urban areas in the United States, the majority of working-age African American men have criminal records. In fact, it was reported in 2002 that, in the Chicago area, if you take into account prisoners, the figure is nearly 80%
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People are shocked at this remark. But there are edge cases, people on the top and people on the bottom. But the truth is, that this is something that is happening.
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There can also be racism on the executive branch of the government. Those who enforce the law. They can arrest and create a criminal record for those minority groups, thus putting them inside that group in which anyone can discriminate against them.
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Incarceration rates are very high. Thus meaning that a lot more people can be in this group of people easily to discriminate against.
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.6)
The overwhelming majority of the increase in imprisonment has been poor people of color, with the most astonishing rates of incarceration found among black men.
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.6)
hree out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) could expect to serve time in prison.
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.6)
crime rates have remarkably little to do with skyrocketing incarceration rates. Crime rates have fluctuated over the past thirty years, and are currently at historical lows
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.6)
Rates of imprisonment-especially black imprisonment-have soared regardless of whether crime has been rising or falling in any given community or the nation as a whole.
- The war on drugs and such was a factor to increasing incarceration rates.
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.7)
People of all races use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates, but the enemy in this war has been racially defined.
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.8)
Violent offenders tend to get longer sentences than nonviolent offenders
- When the drug war happened, the drug related crimes were going down. It was mostly a racial politics move rather than real move on reducing drug abuse.
- The public enemy was defined through the stereotype of a black guy lowriding selling drugs to mothers and ruining their lives. So now there's a public enemy. After the public enemy was defined, it makes sense to crack down on them with policies, etc.
- Extreme-ish laws on even minor drug offences denied basic needs to these felons. But if they can't even get a job or a house or an apartment or anything. They'll re-offend. This is why a good sentencing should be in place. Making people offend less. As talked about in our last lecture SOC109 Lecture 8.
- The fact of having these laws to discriminate, it makes it legal and societally accepted basically. As society molds to the laws, and the other way around. Like the cannabis example from our previous lectures. We learned about how people's opinions change when the laws change.
(Alexander - New Jim Crow (article version), p.16)
What, realistically, do we expect these folks to do? What is this system designed to do? It seems designed to send them right back to prison, which is what in fact happens most of the time. About 70% of released prisoners are rearrested within three years.