The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

by Michelle Alexander Narrated by Karen Chilton

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A groundbreaking and devastating analysis of the American prison system, The New Jim Crow is essential reading and, unfortunately, as relevant and urgent today as it was when it was first published more than a decade ago.

Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.
Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been
adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of
the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the
winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has
spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice
reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable
argument that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned
it.” As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is “undoubtedly the most important book
published in this century about the U.S.”

Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a
tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the
impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

A civil-rights lawyer's disturbing view of why young black men make up the majority of the more than two million people now in America's prisons. In this explosive debut, Alexander (Law/Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity) argues that the imprisonment of unusually large numbers of young blacks and Latinos-most harshly sentenced for possession or sale of illegal drugs, mainly marijuana-constitutes "a stunningly comprehensive and well-designed system of racialized social control." The "warehousing" of inner-city youths, she writes, is a new form of Jim Crow under which drug offenders-in jail or prison, on probation or parole-are denied employment, housing, education and public benefits; face a lifetime of shame; and rarely successfully integrate into mainstream society. The author blames the situation mainly on the War on Drugs, begun by Ronald Reagan in 1982, which grew out of demands for "law and order" that were actually a racially coded backlash to the civil-rights movement. The situation continues because of racial indifference, not racial bias, she writes. Many will dismiss the author's assertions; others will find her observations persuasive enough to give pause. Most people who use or sell illegal drugs are white, but in many states 90 percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses are black or Latino. Police departments, given financial incentives-cash grants and the right to keep confiscated cash and assets from drug raids-to focus on drug enforcement, find it easier to send SWAT teams into poor neighborhoods, where they will face less political backlash, than into gated communities and college frat houses. Also, most people donot care what happens to drug criminals, feeling that "they get what they deserve." So what's to be done? Alexander writes that civil-rights leaders, reluctant to advocate for criminals, remain quiet on the issue; President Obama, an admitted former user of illegal drugs, is not in a position to offer leadership; and policymakers offer only piecemeal reforms. She hopes a new grassroots movement will foster frank discussion about race, cultivate an ethic of compassion for all and end the drug war and mass incarceration. Alarming, provocative and convincing.

From the Publisher

"Devastating. . . . Alexander does a fine job of truth-telling, pointing a finger where it rightly should be pointed: at all of us, liberal and conservative, white and black."—Forbes

"Alexander is absolutely right to fight for what she describes as a 'much-needed conversation' about the wide-ranging social costs and divisive racial impact of our criminal-justice policies."—Ellis Cose, Newsweek

"Invaluable . . . a timely and stunning guide to the labyrinth of propaganda, discrimination, and racist policies masquerading under other names that comprises what we call justice in America."—Daily Kos

"Many critics have cast doubt on the proclamations of racism's erasure in the Obama era, but few have presented a case as powerful as Alexander's."—In These Times

"Carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable."—Publishers Weekly

"[Written] with rare clarity, depth, and candor."—Counterpunch

"A call to action for everyone concerned with racial justice and an important tool for anyone concerned with understanding and dismantling this oppressive system."—Sojourners

"Undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S."—Birmingham News

"During the past decade, no single book was more directly responsible for reshaping how the American public understands race and mass incarceration than Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow."—Carolyn Copeland, Daily Kos

"[The New Jim Crow] took the academy and the streets by storm, and forced the nation to reconsider the systems that allowed for blatant discrimination."—The Chronicle of Higher Education

“If you’re interested in learning more about the real lives caught up in our country’s justice system, I highly recommend The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. It offers an eye-opening look into how the criminal justice system unfairly targets communities of color—and especially Black communities.”
—Bill Gates

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170529643
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	04/13/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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