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Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
New Press
January 2010
On Sale: January 5, 2010
352 pages ISBN: 1595581030 EAN: 9781595581037 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as
a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the
Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was
prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was
barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton
cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United
States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.
--FROM THE NEW JIM CROW As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over
race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of
young black men in major American cities are locked behind
bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow
laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage
of the African American community remains trapped in a
subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them. In this incisive critique, former
litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander
provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in
America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that,
by targeting black men and decimating communities of color,
the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary
system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the
principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges
the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass
incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial
justice in America.
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