NCJ Number
243639
Date Published
2012
Length
327 pages
Annotation
This book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, argues that the U.S. criminal justice system is being used as a contemporary system of racial control even as it adheres to the principle of colorblindness.
Abstract
This book argues that the U.S. criminal justice system is being used as a contemporary system of racial control even as it adheres to the principle of colorblindness. The author states that despite the election of Barack Obama, the United States has not ended the use of racial caste, instead it has merely redesigned it by targeting Black men through the War on Drugs and the decimation of communities of color. She argues that mass imprisonment of the poor and minorities has exposed the racial and class bias by American politicians and Black leaders, respectively. She notes that the basic structure of legalized discrimination in today's society hasn't changed but instead the language used to justify it has. In today's era of colorblindness, race is no longer used to justify discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Instead, officials use the criminal justice system to label persons of color as "criminals" and then they use this label to continue to use old forms of discrimination: employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service. Notes and index