The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (thoughts)

This is one of the most important nonfiction books I’ve read this year, and I urge all of my fellow Americans to read it (to all of my fellow world citizens, this is US-specific, hence my phrasing). Alexander has constructed an intelligent, convincing, passionate but even-handed account of how the current US criminal justice system is responsible for institutionalised oppression of African-Americans. And she goes into it assuming she needs to convince the reader of everything; in fact, in her introduction she charts her own journey from scoffing ridicule at the idea of the drug war as the ‘new Jim Crow’ to a growing realisation of the realties of the situation. Over the past four decades, there’s been a revolution in the prison system: from talk in the 60s and 70s of disbanding it altogether to the current mass round ups with overbooked courts and overflowing prisons. She also explains how the label felon follows someone the rest of their life, affecting everything from their ability to get a job, vote, or be eligible for any government assistance. And she explains the disproportional targeting of African-Americans; while drug dealing occurs among all ethnicities in all socioeconomic areas (studies have shown, for instance, that a drug user almost always buys from a dealer that resembles them, which means the vast majority of white suburban drug users are serviced by white suburban dealers), police focus on black ‘ghettos’ almost exclusively.

I learned so much about the realities of drug use and the ‘war on drugs’ (did you know police departments keep any property they confiscate from drug suspects? you know, like accusers got to keep the property of ‘witches’ who were burned? except in this case, even if the suspect is later cleared of all charges, the police keep the property). And I read about decisions the Supreme Court has based in the past three decades that were so unbelievable I found myself flipping to the book to double-check Alexander’s sources. Surely the bastion of our constitutional protections wouldn’t say that it’s legal for police to randomly pull people over based on their skin colour? Or that the drug war is more important that people’s protection from random search and seizures? Oh but they did. Any illusions I retained about the justice system were completely shattered. But I’m glad I know, because now I can write letters to my representatives decrying policies.

I’m not going to get into all of her arguments here; after all, that’s the point of the book. And as a lawyer, Alexander lays it out much better than I ever could. But suffice it to say that grave injustices are being committed daily, and the greatest losers in the drug war are a minority the US has historically marginalized and oppressed. The New Jim Crow is an eminently readable, quite slim, non-partisan book that anyone who cares about our nation should read.

Suggested Companion Reads

• Courtroom 302 by Steve Bogira (I didn’t blog about this, but Bogira is a journalist who spent one year covering an ordinary Chicago courtroom. The people and cases he presents speak for themselves, and I think with its more personal focus it would be a great companion to the macro-analysis of The New Jim Crow.)
• Reading is My Window by Megan Sweeney (Another one I didn’t blog about, despite its powerful effect on me. Sweeny is a sociologist, and this is a report on women prisoners and their relationship to books. I especially recommend it because I think it would be a good ‘short cut’ for empathy.)
• True Notebooks by Mark Salzman (Yay! One I’ve blogged about! Salzman takes a more personal, memoir approach as he describes his first year as a volunteer running a creative writing program in a juvenile detention facility.)
• BookMarks: Reading in Black and White by Karla Holloway (This is an excellent mix of personal and historical accounts of reading as an African American. I list it here for the chapter “A Prison Library,” but the entire book is wonderful.)

(Note: I welcome discussion, but since I’m on vacation and thus without as much internet access as usual, I’ve changed my comment setting to moderation. I don’t want to check my e-mail and find a flame war has somehow erupted (however unlikely that might be)! I’ll be approving as quickly as I can but no guarantees. I also can’t reply to all comments due to typing pain, I’d like to lay out some ground rules. If your comment is racist, I will not approve it. If you say something to the effect of “Wow, too bad the US has all those problems and is so racist, over in [insert foreign country], everything’s perfect,” I will not approve it. And if you want to share facts/links/etc. arguing with what I said in my first paragraph, I won’t approve that either: Alexander’s book is full of sources for all of her information, which I didn’t replicate in this brief review. So before you start talking about why the book’s conclusions are wrong, go read it. With all of that in mind, comment away!)