Chapter 5 of The New Jim Crow
Chapter 5 of “The New Jim Crow” is the eponymous title of the book The New Jim Crow. It begins with the author Michelle Alexander describing an extraordinary Sunday in which the first black Democratic nominee for president took to the podium of the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago. The author see the system of mas incarceration as having three different components: Roundup, formal control and invisible punishment. Each of these combines are what create a “New Jim Crow” laws in America, a nod to historic laws that were put on the books to harm black.
The reason that he brings both Barack Obama and Opera Winfrey into this discussion is because they give the impression that Blacks have made it to the mainstream culture. The reality is laws are still discriminatory towards blacks and whites use this figures as an excuse for argument’s sake that there is not insidious racial profiling of blacks.
Questions:
- Are figure like Barack Obama signs of a new era of racial equality, or are they merely blacks who have been adopted into the white mainstream culture.
2. What sorts of political action can change deeply embedded cultural problems? 3. What would the effect of racial profiling be of black officers were placed in black neighborhoods?
4. When it comes to drug sentences, what effect would the legalization of drugs have on the black prison population?
5. What can Americans do to pressure the judicial system to operate in a way that is not discriminatory to black?
