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A review by shiradest
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
5.0
This book, which ends with a devastating quote from James Baldwin, does indeed inspire me to work toward helping our "lost, younger brothers" to join us in building a kinder safer world for all of us.
Yet I might not have understood her premises on a visceral level had I not met an ex-felon in PG County, MD (called "Ward 9" by those of us still living in DC back in the day) who was barred from voting. I saw before me a fellow human being, apparently a decent person, denied a basic civil right even after he finished paying what the law lays out as his debt to society. That can only build resentment and further pain for all of us.
M. Alexander takes up the mantle of Dr. King's Poor People's Movement, essentially asserting that cultural change is what we need work toward, and urgently: now.
20 October, 12016 HE
Yet I might not have understood her premises on a visceral level had I not met an ex-felon in PG County, MD (called "Ward 9" by those of us still living in DC back in the day) who was barred from voting. I saw before me a fellow human being, apparently a decent person, denied a basic civil right even after he finished paying what the law lays out as his debt to society. That can only build resentment and further pain for all of us.
M. Alexander takes up the mantle of Dr. King's Poor People's Movement, essentially asserting that cultural change is what we need work toward, and urgently: now.
20 October, 12016 HE