The New Jim Crow Book Summary

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Key Insights

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness tackles a topic that is both highly nuanced and critically important: the criminal justice system’s failure to treat people of color (POC) as legitimate members of society. Alexander’s best-selling book likens the systematic discrimination currently facing POC to the Jim Crow Laws of the early and mid-1900s, which deemed African Americans second class citizens and denied them irrevocable civil rights.

Through insightful and engaging prose, Alexander voices the ongoing struggles of the black community and the many prejudices that continue to negatively influence this population.

War on Drugs

In 1982, United States President Richard Nixon declared a war against drugs.

At the time, only two percent of the U.S. population believed that illegal drug use was the most urgent political problem the country was facing.

So, why initiate a war over an issue that 98% of the nation was not concerned about?

Ultimately, it was a political tactic. The War on Drugs was less about illegal substances and more about appeasing the white individuals who lived in rural areas and were resistant to the ongoing progression of black civil rights.

By the mid-1980s, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was formed. Over the next six years, the DEA would spend more than $1.4 billion addressing illegal drugs.

Throughout Reagan’s administration, the number of incarcerated individuals climbed significantly even though the overall use of narcotics had declined.

To this day, there are more than 2.3 million people in U.S. prisons, many of whom are POC and are serving time for drug-related offenses.

Consider this. If you are young and black and live in Washington D.C., there is a three in four chance you will end up in prison during your lifetime. On a larger scale, this equates to 75 out of every 100 people serving time. If you fit this description, you are much more likely to face a prison sentence than your non-POC peers.

But why?

Some people believe that more blacks being put behind bars means that there are simply more black people committing crimes. 

However, the data tells a different story.

It is proven that people of all races buy and sell drugs at a similar rate. In fact, white people are statistically more likely to be involved in illegal drug activity than individuals of any other race.

To put this in perspective, there are more black people in U.S. prisons than there were in South African prisons during the apartheid. Even China, Russia, and Iran have lower incarceration rates than the United States.

Mass Incarceration

So, what do we do about this? 

First, we need to look at the U.S. criminal justice system itself.

In this country, drug sentencing is unusually punitive and harsh. While a standard prison sentence for a first drug offense in most developed countries is roughly six months (or even just a fine), the U.S. has initiated a mandatory five to ten year sentencing for the same crime.

The police themselves play a critical role in this disparity.

In the United States, Police can stop and search any person they encounter. If an...

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