Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America

[ellisonz]

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander with a forward by Cornel West

January 16, 2012

Under Jim Crow laws, black Americans were relegated to a subordinate status for decades. Things like literacy tests for voters and laws designed to prevent blacks from serving on juries were commonplace in nearly a dozen Southern states.

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. She says that although Jim Crow laws are now off the books, millions of blacks arrested for minor crimes remain marginalized and disfranchised, trapped by a criminal justice system that has forever branded them as felons and denied them basic rights and opportunities that would allow them to become productive, law-abiding citizens.

"People are swept into the criminal justice system — particularly in poor communities of color — at very early ages ... typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes," she tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "[The young black males are] shuttled into prisons, branded as criminals and felons, and then when they're released, they're relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement — like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to be free of legal discrimination and employment, and access to education and public benefits. Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you've been branded a felon."

On Monday's Fresh Air, Alexander details how President Reagan's war on drugs led to a mass incarceration of black males and the difficulties these felons face after serving their prison sentences. She also details her own experiences working as the director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union.

More: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/16/145175694/legal-scholar-jim-crow-still-exists-in-america

I've been saying it for years: War on Drugs + Southern Strategy = The Weakening of Black Political Power

[elleng]

1. Beyond this,

SCHOOL SEGREGATION still exists. Its based on race + class/economic status, and as long as this is true, Jim Crow will ALWAYS exist.

Without good education, none will succeed.

[ellisonz]

4. That's an excellent point.

I've seen this first hand in my life. I am a product of the Pasadena Unified School District in California, which was the first school district outside of the South to be ordered by Federal courts to desegregate. The result was a city that was 40% White with a public school district that was maybe 5% White - massive flight to surrounding, less diverse communities and a boom in the private schools.

For a really good case study comparison look at this issue, I recommend:

The Conspiracy of the Good addresses nagging questions that are part of the public debate over schooling. Why do our public schools, especially those in poor and working-class communities of color, fail to live up to the promises of the American dream? Why do reforms, those standard items in political campaigns, fail to create meaningful change? This book argues that "progressive," well-meaning, good-hearted men and women, who often advocate "good intentions" in the name of "helping those in need," have ended up doing more harm than good. The Conspiracy of the Good explores how these "good intentions" go awry. Michael E. James argues that the core value of the American experience is conflict-not consensus-despite what mainstream historians have espoused over the last few decades.

http://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Good-History-Schools-Schooling/dp/0820457795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326840571&sr=8-1

[duhneece]

2. THE most important civil rights/human rights movement today, I think

I arranged for our local NAACP to donate this book to our library; we took the picture & wrote the text (most small town newspapers have let their reporters go, so they welcome it when you provide them the story & picture...and that way, we can 'frame our story.'
The War on Drugs has destroyed enough lives. Enough!!!!

[ellisonz]

10. Thank you.

Making the truth available is the most important task that faces believers in the equality of rights and dignity of human kinds today. Every act in this cause is as Robert F. Kennedy described in 1966:

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Full speech: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkcapetown.htm

[unblock]

3. "progress" is moving from racism by legislation to racism by selective enforcement

one thing that is a clear abomination in my mind is the removal of voting rights.
i don't believe any government should be have the power to EVER to strip voting rights from anyone.
this simply provides a mechanism for the government to choose its own constituency.

through selective enforcement of laws; discriminatory process and sentences; and suspension of voting rights for convicts and even felons who have served their time, governments have skewed the voting population against blacks. and republicans are taking steps to amplify this against any and all groups they think might be more inclined to vote for democrats.

this is just plain wrong.

[Solly Mack]

5. k/r

[malaise]

6. She is correct

Invent new crimes - effries like three strikes, allow the boys to profit from private prisons and they're back in business.

Do not forget to watch Slavery by Another Name on February 13th on PBS

http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/

[ellisonz]

8. Thanks for the heads up!

I'm bookmarking so I don't miss it. The academics are really starting to chip away at the myth, and that's important. The dialectic will change one day.

Aloha.

[malaise]

11. You're welcome

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. k&r

[hfojvt]

9. the right to serve on juries?

Nonsense, all they gotta do is register on DU ...

But it always cracks me up when that is listed like it is some kind of punishment. "I can't even do jury duty, wah, wah."

Also, I would like to see more detail on that non-violent crime. I see plenty of violent crime on the news. Just yesterday, Martin Luther King's birthday was celebrated in Kansas City with a triple-homicide.

[ellisonz]

12. It's about civil rights...

...that's just one aspect of it:

13 states may strip felons of the right to vote permanently: http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286

[Starry Messenger]

13. k&r

The 1% have been trying to recreate slavery since the end of the Civil War. We won't have a truly progressive nation until we find a way to truly end the racism and Jim Crow institutions that exist in this country.

[ellisonz]

14. Kick.

[ellisonz]

15. One more time...