The New Jim Crow

This is a sustained, book length argument that mass incarceration amounts to a new racial caste system comparable to Jim Crow, and that it has created an underclass of people, mostly black men, who are locked out of mainstream life for ever. Michelle Alexander writes about the history and workings of the War on Drugs, showing how police departments were given incentives to buy into it, how the courts made it difficult to bring accusations of racial bias on one hand and officers of the law were given extraordinary leeway to pursue charges on the other hand, leading to a system that targets poor blacks over other drug users. Given that someone with drug charges on their record can't receive public assistance, live in public housing, vote, or often convince anyone to give him/her a job, people end up forced out of society and often end up back in prison.

The book is thorough, well written, well documented (50 pages of notes). The closing chapter is especially powerful, where Alexander addresses such questions as whether affirmative action helps or harms, whether the election of Barack Obama, or the success of other prominent black citizens, means that racism is fading in the US, and what is needed to ensure that another racial caste system doesn't take the place of mass incarceration.