Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Analysis

However, the success of these individuals is outweighed by the failure of numerous African Americans who are exposed to racial segregation. This essay will cover the topic of racial segregation from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. The New Jim Crow is a book that highlights the plight of African Americans using stories and statistics to explain the incarceration system in America and the effect it has on the African American community. This essay will focus on the first chapter in a bit to outline her arguments in the book. Ultimately, it will support her argument and use external resources to prove the existence of racial segregation. As a result, slavery manifested in different ways throughout the south, and later, throughout the country.

The author’s main argument centers on the judicial system in the country and the resulting incarceration statistics that are largely against African Americans. The years towards, and after, the end of slavery saw the development of a sustained systematic plan. The plan was intended to create an illusion of rising crime rates and link it to African Americans. At the time, civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. Segregationist leaders accused the supreme court of not taking action against the raising crime rates and going as far as helping the criminals (Alexander p. These statements put pressure on the judicial system to adopt tougher laws promoted by congress against African Americans charged with criminal offences. The law and order rhetoric too root as evidenced by its popularity as a key topic during the 1968 presidential election (Alexander p.

The incarceration statistics presented in various sources in the modern America are a result of the segregationist plan of the 1950s and 1960s. The African American community has grown disenfranchised by the lack of equality in a country that claims to have awarded them their freedom. In addition, missing a court date after the summons were issues justified the issuance of an arrest warrant for the offender (New York City Council, 1). The final piece of the puzzle is the areas in which these arrests were common. Poor neighborhoods in New York where African Americans lived. This shows a clear target to criminalizing African American communities. In the modern era, America has the largest number of incarcerated individuals per capita in any country (Walmsley, 1).