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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMichelle Alexander: A Vision for America Beyond the 'New Jim Crow'
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36460-focus-michelle-alexander-a-vision-for-america-beyond-the-new-jim-crowProf. Alexander: Yeah. I was raised to believe that there had been extraordinary racial injustice in our history, but that we are on the right path. And we may have a long way to go, but we are on the right path, headed, albeit too slowly, towards that promised land that Dr. King spoke of so eloquently. And in many ways, I think my own parents, being interracially married, felt they had to believe in that, they had to believe that by bringing mixed race children into this world they were bringing them into a world where there was hope for their future.
And so I was really raised on that narrative that we were overcoming. And when I became a civil rights lawyer and was a baby civil rights lawyer, just starting out, and I saw that sign stapled to a telephone pole saying, The drug war is the new Jim Crow, yeah, I thought that was hyperbole. I shook my head and said, Yeah, criminal justice system is racist in a lot of ways, but it doesnt help to make such absurd comparisons to Jim Crow. People will just think youre crazy.
And then I hopped on the bus and headed to my new job as director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU in California. And it was really only through those years of representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality, and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color, and attempting to assist people who had been released from prison as they faced just one unimaginable barrier after another not just to their so-called re-entry, but to their basic survival after being released from prison that I had my series of experiences that led to my own awakening that we hadnt ended racial caste in America. We had just redesigned it.
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Michelle Alexander: A Vision for America Beyond the 'New Jim Crow' (Original Post)
eridani
Apr 2016
OP
I agree with Michelle Alexander that what we need a new party to push this level of change.
RedCappedBandit
Apr 2016
#2
dr60omg
(283 posts)1. The New Jim Crow is an amazing work of scholarship
Clinton supporters ought to read it and think about what she writes.
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)2. I agree with Michelle Alexander that what we need a new party to push this level of change.
Uncle Joe
(58,366 posts)3. Kicked and recommended.
Thanks for the thread, eridani.
malaise
(269,056 posts)4. Must Read
A DUer recommended this book to me a few years ago.
It is MUST READ
http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/the-book/
dembotoz
(16,808 posts)5. yep really a must read
one of those
holy fuck she nails it
books