Law
The New Press
December 13, 2013
336
Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race.
The title I used for this post is a tribute from a buddy of mine from Howard who frequently posts items on Facebook regarding the systems of control and structural racism that exist in our country. I thought that there would be no more appropriate title to a post about a book that describes the current prevailing racial system of control.
Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow describes in great detail the structure and operation of today’s system of racial control in America, the War on Drugs and the resulting explosion in incarceration of predominately young black men. She explains how today’s racial system of control — on its face a colorblind set of laws and institutions — differs greatly from previous systems such as Jim Crow and slavery, and yet how it also has similarities to each. These systems of control are created to serve the political ends of their creators — the white ruling elite; the ends aren’t just about black subjugation — or really, not even primarily about black subjugation — in many ways the racial caste system was designed to keep working class white people from forming common economic cause with minorities (particularly black folks) due to the poor treatment they all get from the moneyed elites who are in charge of the economy.
The book mainly travels the distance from Reagan’s ramping up of the War on Drugs — going from a point at the beginning where America didn’t seem to think drugs were that big a problem on to the end of the decade where they felt it was a major problem — through Clinton’s “tough on crime” initiatives that blew an already bad situation further out of proportion, to selective (and often brutal) policing, selective (and racially punitive) prosecution, the gutting of some important civil liberties (e.g. the Fourth Amendment) in the pursuit of drugs, and government incentives to keep fighting a war on drugs even beyond the point at which it’s clear that treatment would be cheaper and more humane. And underpinning all of this is that despite the fact that all races use drugs at about the same rates, the war on drugs is prosecuted mainly in poor black areas against poor black and Latino people; this can continue because the public at large is not wholly convinced of the humanity of the victims of the drug war.
Books like this can sometimes be weighed down by the fact that they are so dependent on history and statistics; this can make a book not very easy to read or as interesting as the subject matter would demand. However, Alexander does a good job of weaving a coherent story that reads very quickly and satisfyingly throughout. Many times, my intended short reading sessions turned into mini-marathons so that I could finish up a section or chapter. It is about the right length — some 300-plus pages of actual content — and clearly presents its case. It also keeps to its stated goal of exposing and explaining the system instead of attempting to “solve the problem,” though part of a chapter is devoted to some ideas to start conversations on how to solve this huge issue we have.
I would recommend this book to anyone — particularly people who are studying these phenomena, but also to your average Joe who may be unaware of what’s going on.