The New Jim Crowe Book Review
Abstract
Michelle Alexander wrote a brilliant book, in my opinion. She does not ramble on about what she thinks but bases the book in its entirety in statistical proof. She states her overall opinion or thesis and follows it up with a decent blueprint to capture the reader and makes the reader want to go and find evidence against her claims. She claims that the United States the highest incarceration rates on the planet, that black males go to prison at a higher rate than their white counterparts, re significant differences in the surveys to be found, they frequently suggest that whites and ultimately charges that the mass incarceration system was created to replace and uphold a new type of Jim Crowe rule that…show more content… It quickly but efficiently moves into describing or re-describing what a caste system is. The caste system, as it pertains to the usage in Alexander’s work, is based on race. This is an easy enough concept to follow but it is necessary to define because if there is only one planet, there really can be only one race – the human race. Alexander continues to state that slavery coupled with Jim Crow created yet a new definition of the caste system, which is the use of the term that Alexander uses in the chapter. It’s like Jim Crowe on steroids because outlawing slavery only gave birth to what Jim Crowe was/is. The European and many other Euro-Asian nations have the caste system as well, but this caste system was and is always going to be awkward because this is America – the Home of the Free as the Star-Spangled Banner suggests. The Emancipation Proclamation gave rights but those rights were not recognized or adhered to. Jim Crowe was born and became stronger than the government because Jim Crowe was indirectly backed by the government. In Southern states, the lawmakers, the legislators and governors made the laws and changed them to suit the needs of the status quo and that racial caste system that was Jim Crowe. At the time of the Reconstruction, shortly after the Civil War, many impoverished farmers, white farmers, were livid, annoyed and disgusted that their livelihood was destroyed…show more content… American Indians were considered unsuitable as slaves, Alexander notes because the Indians had enough willpower and pride to most-likely die in battle rather than to be enslaved, even if they knew they would be outmatched. Even with powerful militias, compared to the Indians, many plantation owners were fearful just the same. So, this led to plantation owners stumbling upon the idea that since they already had indentured servants who were having children, coupled with the notion that those Europeans who were migrating over to America would not work in the fields and in those conditions, created a utopia for the plantation owners - slavery forever. The benefits are boundless and politicians who were slave owners as well salivated at the idea that legislation would really support this idea as well. What an idea, slaves from African having children, who could one day not only work beside their parents but one day take their parents place. This was a generational