Short Paper #2 Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow In The New Jim Crow, author Michelle Alexander proposes an argument that there is a new caste system in society for people of color. This caste system takes place in the form of mass incarceration which she claims is similar to Jim Crow laws in the way that it is a “well-disguised system of racialized social control” (Alexander 4). Mass incarceration is a main component of this “new caste system” because African American males in particular are more likely to be targeted for crime and are less likely to receive adequate legal representation and fair punishment. Michelle Alexander aims to bring the issue of incarceration to the head of civil rights concerns in order to amend and avoid problems of racial control in the future.…show more content… For starters, she begins by leveling with the reader and admitting that she herself did not believe that “a new racial caste system was operating in this country” for a long time, but as she immersed herself in her job as a civil right lawyer she began to realize that there was something amiss. This technique is successful in drawing the reader’s attention toward what she is about to propose instead of just coming out with an outrageous topic and causing the reader to lose interest. She also goes on to talk about how she is a civil rights lawyer and has seen evidence over time that has led her to come to this conclusion. Since the readers know that she is a civil rights lawyer and has seen issues that imply the existence of a new caste system, it is easier to find what she goes on to explain more