The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow

Introduction

            The New Jim Crow is an article that shows the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States. This account has led to the jailing and sentencing if many African Americans and the rise of the second class status made of people whose rights and freedoms are denied (Seresin, 2017). The main focus of this essay is to relate The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and the rise of social injustices experienced in the United States.

Main Body

            In the foreword of the book, Cornel West declares to prove indispensable in the fight against social injustice in contemporary American society(Seresin, 2017). According to Cornel west, the racial division among the Americans still exists and that the idea of colorblindness as just a construct of mind because it seems to be not working in the United States. Therefore, he feels that there is a need to call for a fight against social injustices experienced by the African Americans, the inferior race. Alexander compares the present-day incarcerated African Americans and their forefathers who encountered the same experience. Alexander suspected the claims of social injustice done to the African Americans until she started working in the American Civil Liberties Union, where she experienced the truth on broad daylight(Seresin, 2017).

In chapter one of the book, Alexander gives the history of the racial caste system in the United States. She claims that racism has been adopted from generation to generation and what change in a particular era is the change in social injustices(Seresin, 2017). She gives an example of the colonial era where the back people were enslaved by the colonizers as cheap labor for their farms and factories. She adds that this system was replaced by the Jin Crow caste system appeared a different system, but still applied the colonial way of monitoring and suppressing the black people. Alexander also argues that the new racist systems develop after the decline of the old ones keeping the continuity of the culture of racial inequality and social injustice in the United States(Seresin, 2017)..

During the Jin Crow caste system, the police took advantage of the state War of Drugs to incarcerate the bigger number of the poor and black people. Although the War of Drugs was aimed at curbing drug abuse in America, it was misused by the police to show their hate against black people in the United States(Seresin, 2017). In chapter two of the book, Alexander studies the American justice system and reveals how the police have been less observant of the rules of service provided by the criminal justice system. The police harassed the black suspects even before being charged before the court of law(de Souza, 2028).

Conclusion

            The New Jin Crow reveals the social injustices experienced by African Americans in the United States. The injustices race from the law enforcement officers and the criminal justice system. The racial lines have been bold between the whites and the blacks since for long. African Americans have been treated as outcasts in workplaces, American learning institutions, political leadership, and many other areas (de Souza, 2028). Despite the continued fight for racial equality in the United States, new racism systems have been developed which maintain the continuity of the racial inequality and social injustices to African Americans. The criminal justice systems have been at the forefront to encourage the social injustice for African Americans despite the claim of justice for all by the American government.

References

de Souza, M. L. (2018). Oppressed, segregated, vulnerable: Environmental injustice and conflicts in Latin American cities. In The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Development (pp. 549-559).Routledge.

Seresin, I. (2017). The New Jim Crow Plot Summary.LitCharts (Online) Available at: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-new-jim-crow/summary (Accessed: 29 Feb 2020).