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A review by ericadawson
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
tense
4.5
A thoroughly-researched book that doesn't get too jaded to read, The New Jim Crow is a great explanation of the blight of mass incarceration on American society. While there were things I already knew, there were lots of things I didn't. Many points about prison and police abolition were solidified for me
To me, though, Alexander takes an approach to white people's complicity in white supremacy/anti-Blackness that does too much to reduce their own responsibility--collectively and as individuals--in a) the support for the structures that exist to hold Black people down, and b) the refusal (passive or active) to dismantle them. Perhaps because this book was written in what I'd now call a wildly different time from ours--it was 2010, Obama was the first Black president, the word "postracial" was taken seriously, and from what I can see/remember, none of what exists now in the uber-racist 2023 was part of the mainstream conversation 13 years ago. Hindsight and the current political climate might be tainting how I receive this book. I hope so. I cannot fathom being expected to be as concerned for poor white people's racist tendencies and economic plight as I am for the pain and violence I and other Black people experience at their hands, under the system they helped build.
To me, though, Alexander takes an approach to white people's complicity in white supremacy/anti-Blackness that does too much to reduce their own responsibility--collectively and as individuals--in a) the support for the structures that exist to hold Black people down, and b) the refusal (passive or active) to dismantle them. Perhaps because this book was written in what I'd now call a wildly different time from ours--it was 2010, Obama was the first Black president, the word "postracial" was taken seriously, and from what I can see/remember, none of what exists now in the uber-racist 2023 was part of the mainstream conversation 13 years ago. Hindsight and the current political climate might be tainting how I receive this book. I hope so. I cannot fathom being expected to be as concerned for poor white people's racist tendencies and economic plight as I am for the pain and violence I and other Black people experience at their hands, under the system they helped build.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism