About this ebook
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."
Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.
Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.
Ratings and reviews
4.5
494 reviews
Tim Simmons
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April 16, 2015
It's a good start but a lot was left out for example to many black man are being out right murdered by white police officers and its found to be justified. Second, a black male sentencing is two third longer then a white male committing the same crime. Then think of the black male father figure taken from the home leaving the mother to work and the streets to raise the child, which produces the next gen
17 people found this review helpful
A Google user
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January 31, 2019
Reading this was a detrimental part of my education that absolutely changed my perspective on systemic racism in the United States. It exposes the true history of the US from a blackness perspective and creates a framework for implementing change. The prison-military industrial complex is purposely not taught in most public curriculum to hide the truth -- that slavery is still very much alive in the US.
2 people found this review helpful
Michael arnold
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June 27, 2016
First two pages illistrates how its the white mans fault for a black man to commit a crime and is than denied the same rights as a white man. Who by the way if he had commited the same crime would be denied the same rights as the black man. Learn how to write an unbiased book and it might not turn out half bad
14 people found this review helpful
About the author
Michelle Alexander is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Formerly the director of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Project in Northern California, Alexander served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor, emeritus, at Princeton University and is currently Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary.
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