The New Jim Crow

The older I get, the more I find myself reading the acknowledgments at the end of books. At the end of The New Jim Crow, Alexander thanks her husband for reviewing her work, which is not exceptional in and of itself, but she notes that as a federal prosecutor, he disagrees with her assessment of the criminal justice system (she is a public defender). I find this very interesting, but also can see why they would differ on their opinions based on the ways they approach the law.

I wasn't alive yet for the start of the War on Drugs in the late '70s, but I remember the rhetoric as my parents described it: crack was everywhere, all the babies were addicted to crack, when I was born they were very worried that I was not going to be able to grow up and get married because everyone but me would be addicted to crack. It was not sound logic. And yet I can absolutely see how this was made into a nationwide panic that “required” heavy-handed solutions, and how we got to the place we are.

I just didn't realize the extent of how many people are swept into the prison system on massive charges for even first-time offenses of way less insidious drugs than crack, and how frequently people were convinced to plead guilty even if they were innocent, and how those systems resulted in millions of people who were unable to participate in society forever-after due to all the ways we as a country legally discriminate against felons (housing discrimination, welfare discrimination, employment discrimination, etc.).

And then you add the layer of what it means to be “criminal” on top of that, what “those people” look like, who and what neighborhoods get targeted by police for suspected drug use, and WOOF. It's so much. So so much.

Well-researched (EXTENSIVE notes at the end) and fascinating and horrifying, even if it did take me the better part of a month to read. The downside is that the “solution” to the problem of mass incarceration is the overhaul of like 17 systems to eliminate overt and covert racism and rethink how we talk about poverty (for black and white people), and figure out how to get people drug treatment when needed instead of criminalizing people. That even systems designed to be thought of as good (like the now-defunct affirmative action) were not designed to lift up ALL people so much as an exceptional few (rising tide lifting all boats rhetoric giving way in which most boats drown while a few are raised up).

It's giving me a lot to think about. Would recommend.

Buddy read with Jeananne, and I believe we're going to do Caste by Isabel Wilkerson next, which should segue perfectly from this.