The criminal justice system must be changed to prevent crime rather than create it, and to no longer act as a system of racial if not social control. People have a false sense of the situation because poverty and unemployment rates do not include people behind bars.
According to the data, African Americans are no better off now than in 1968. Should we then, Alexander asks, focus on issues that are easier to win, such as affirmative action? In actuality, those battles have not made much of a difference. Most young black men are also not seen as “’poster boys’ for media advocacy” (228). The story of Rosa Parks is instructive here, for she became the face of the Movement due to her impeccable character two other women were rejected by civil rights advocates as plaintiffs because of their backgrounds. It is hard to make a criminal – someone whom society views as dangerous, immoral, or stupid – defensible. Lawyers are also reluctant to take on cases dealing with the much-hated group of criminals. The focus shifted to a legal, not a moral, crusade, and lawyers focused on individual cases, not major systemic change. Many of the organizations are top-heavy with lawyers, which happened during the Civil Rights Movement. It is not that they don’t care, she concedes, but that the organizations are made of fallible human beings who tend to have a hard time believing they are part of the problem. Today the New Jim Crow does not benefit from explicit racial symbols, making it harder to rout.Īlexander moves to the question of why the civil rights community is not very vocal about or active in addressing mass incarceration. The media outcry supporting the boys centered on the noose hung on trees and its old Jim Crow connotations.
Alexander begins with the story of the Jena 6, six young African American boys who, pushed to the breaking point by racial slurs and taunts, beat up a white boy and were to be sentenced as adults.
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