The New Jim Crow 1
Sydney Thompson
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
HIS 320
Book Review; Project 1
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Opal Tometi, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, once said, “many
thought that the abolition of slavery, the end of Jim Crow, and the legislative progress of the
Civil Rights Era, among other watershed moments, would have fundamentally done away with
the racist structures that have long oppressed black people. However, we know that has been far
from the case”.
1
Jim Crow laws were the name given to any state or local laws that enforced the
idea of racial segregation throughout the Southern United States from the end of Reconstruction
in 1877, to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s. While the Jim Crow era
has long been over, many different forms of institutional racism have reared its head, including
the mass incarceration of many black men. Mass incarceration is the phenomenon that refers to
the experiment in incarceration in America today, which can be defined by historically extreme
rates of imprisonment and by the concentration of imprisonment among young, specifically,
black men living in neighborhoods of disadvantage.
2
Author and civil rights activist Michelle
Alexander, has written a book titled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness, in which she describes and examines the idea of mass incarceration and the
thought of comparing it to the Jim Crow era. In this paper, I will be reviewing this book, and
giving my own personal opinion of it, kind of like Ms. Alexander was reading this herself.
1
BrainyQuote.com; Quotes on Jim Crow
2
Oxford Bibliographies: Mass Incarceration—Christopher Wildeman
The New Jim Crow 2
I’d like to start with the book’s introduction. Michelle Alexander begins talking about a
man named Jarvious Cotton, who is currently incarcerated. She starts the read with this:
“Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-
grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. Cotton’s
family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States
but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to vote for
those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather
could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for
attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father
was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote
because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently
on parole.” (Alexander, 2012, p. 1). With this opening statement, it is clear that she is trying to
make a comparison of how this incarcerated man is being denied basic rights just like his
ancestors did as a result of slavery and Jim Crow laws against blacks being able to vote. Right
here, I can already tell that this book is going to open my (or any other readers) eyes, and create a
new perspective on mass incarceration in the United States. Alexander goes on to talk about how
she once disagreed that mass incarceration could be “the new Jim Crow”, but after working at
the American Civil Liberties Union doing some racial justice advocacy, she began to change her
mind. She writes, a comparison of herself 10 years ago, to herself now: “my elation would have
been tempered by the distance yet to be traveled to reach the promised land of racial justice in
America, but my conviction that nothing remotely similar to Jim Crow exists in this country
would have been steadfast. Today, my elation over Obama’s election is tempered by a far more
sobering awareness. As an African American woman, with three young children who will never
The New Jim Crow 3
know a world in which a black man could not be president of the United States, I was beyond
thrilled on election night. Yet, when I walked out of the election night party, full of hope and
enthusiasm, I was immediately reminded of the harsh realities of the New Jim Crow. A black
man was on his knees in the gutter, hands cuffed behind his back, as several police officers stood
around him talking, joking, and ignoring his human existence. People poured out of the building;
many stared for a moment at the black man cowering in the street, and then averted their gaze.
What did the election of Barack Obama mean for him?” (Alexander, 2012, p. 2-3). I chose this
small passage to put in my essay because I love the way she words it. Elation is defined as great
happiness and exhilaration, which I’m sure many people of color (me, as well) felt after the
election of Barack Obama. Even though, at the time of his election, I was still too young to vote,
I felt the excitement that everyone else did about having a black man in office for the first time in
history. For a short while, it seemed like throughout all the trials and tribulations that African-
American people had to face in America, we were still able to triumph over it all. However,
reality soon began to hit again, and more indiscretions against black people began to show. In
this sense, I agree with Michelle Alexander when she talks about the harsh realities of the New
Jim Crow. When she begins to talk about the man on his knees in the gutter, and handcuffed, it
kind of made me think about Eric Garner, a black man who was killed back in 2014 by NYPD in
Staten Island. The police had him on the ground in broad daylight, while onlookers ustared
heavily, averting their gaze every now and then. Despite his numerous attempts of pleading with
the police, screaming “I can’t breathe”, almost begging them to releasing their debilitating
chokehold, it cost him his life. So, in my opinion, Alexander is right, what did the election of
Barack Obama mean for black men in society? While a momentarily joyous event, it did next to
nothing in the discrimination of the black man. I’ll end my review of the introduction of this
The New Jim Crow 4
book here, Alexander makes a lot of excellent points to help readers fully understand why she
chose the title of her book. This makes it an extremely interesting read that many people should
consider.
Moving on to the first half of the book, chapters 1-3. Chapter one is titled, “The Rebirth
of Caste”. A caste is defined as any class or group of people who inherit exclusive privileges or
are perceived as socially distinct
3
. She begins this chapter talking about Abraham Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation. This is the document that single handedly freed all slaves, so I was
quite interested to read further and figure out where she was going to go with this and how she
was going to eventually connect it back to mass incarceration and Jim Crow. My favorite
statement of this whole chapter lies at the beginning. Alexander writes, “the fact that some
African Americans have experienced great success in recent years does not mean that something
