The New Jim Crow
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A Review of the New Jim Crow and the Condemnation of Blackness
The Influence of Past Racism on Present Criminal Injustice 143 Review Essay The Influence of Past Racism on Criminal Injustice: A Review of The New Jim Crow and The Condemnation of Blackness Jelani Jefferson Exum THE NEW JIM CROW: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color- blindness. By Michelle Alexander. New York: The New Press. 2010. THE CONDEMNATION OF BLACKNESS: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. By Khalil Gibran Mu- hammad. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2010. There are books that, on their own, are informative and moving. But, of- tentimes, reading books together—one right after the other—compounds each works’ transformative power. Michelle Alexander’s much-needed report (calling it simply a book hardly does it justice), The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, can certainly stand on its own as an important statement about the current use of mass incarceration to maintain a racial caste system in the United States. The same strength can be found in The Condemnation 0026-3079/2012/5201-143$2.50/0 American Studies, 52:1 (2012): 143-152 143 144 Jelani Jefferson Exum of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s account of the connection of blackness to criminality in this country. Each book, on its own, gives readers a greater understanding of the racism within the criminal justice system. However, reading them jointly paints a disturbing picture of the past and present use of incarceration and crime rhetoric in America and leaves one with an overwhelming sense of injustice and the data to know that the injustice is real. -
Racial Critiques of Mass Incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow
RACIAL CRITIQUES OF MASS INCARCERATION: BEYOND THE NEW JIM CROW JAMES FORMAN, JR.* In the last decade, a number of scholars have called the American criminal justice system a new form of Jim Crow. These writers have effectively drawn attention to the injustices created by a facially race-neutral system that severely ostracizes offenders and stigmatizes young, poor black men as criminals. I argue that despite these important contributions, the Jim Crow analogy leads to a distorted view of mass incarceration. The analogy presents an incomplete account of mass incarceration’s historical origins, fails to consider black attitudes toward crime and punishment, ignores violent crimes while focusing almost exclusively on drug crimes, obscures class distinctions within the African American community, and overlooks the effects of mass incarceration on other racial groups. Finally, the Jim Crow analogy diminishes our collective memory of the Old Jim Crow’s particular harms. INTRODUCTION In the five decades since African Americans won their civil rights, hundreds of thousands have lost their liberty. Blacks now make up a larger portion of the prison population than they did at the time of Brown v. Board of Education, and their lifetime risk of incarceration has doubled. As the United States has become the world’s largest jailerand its prison population has exploded, black men have been particularly affected. Today, black men are imprisoned at 6.5 times the rate of white men. While scholars have long analyzed the connection between race and America’s criminal justice system, an emerging group of scholars and advocates has highlighted the issue with a provocative claim: They argue that our growing penal system, with its black tinge, constitutes nothing less than a new form of Jim Crow. -
The Impact of Black Political Representation on the Racial Attitudes, Policy Preferences, and Vote Choice of Whites in Minority Majority Congressional Districts
University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2014 The Impact Of Black Political Representation On The Racial Attitudes, Policy Preferences, And Vote Choice Of Whites In Minority Majority Congressional Districts Emmitt Y. Riley University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Riley, Emmitt Y., "The Impact Of Black Political Representation On The Racial Attitudes, Policy Preferences, And Vote Choice Of Whites In Minority Majority Congressional Districts" (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 787. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/787 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE IMPACT OF BLACK POLITICAL REPRESENTATION ON THE RACIAL ATTITUDES, POLICY PREFERENCES, AND VOTE CHOICE OF WHITES IN MINORITY MAJORITY CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS by Emmitt Y. Riley III A Dissertation Presented In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Political Science Oxford, Mississippi August 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Emmitt Y. Riley III ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Scholars examining black political representation have focused on the degree to which African American politicians can impact the everyday living conditions of African Americans. Despite years of African American political representation within the United States House of Representatives, political scientists have devoted very little scholarship to examining how whites react to African American leadership. Given that African Americans remain under represented in government and current legal challenges threaten the future of minority majority districts, it is important to gain better insight into how black representation might impact the white community. -
Facing Racism: a Vision of the Beloved Community
Facing Racism: A Vision of the Beloved Community Approved by The 211th General Assembly (1999) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Developed by The Initiative Team on Racism and Racial Violence Published by The Office of the General Assembly 100 Witherspoon Street Louisville, KY 40202-1396 Copyright © 1999 The Office of the General Assembly Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Printed in the United States of America Cover design by the Office of the General Assembly Department of Communication and Technology No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans- mitted in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanically, photocopying, re- cording, or otherwise (brief quotations used in magazine or newspaper reviews ex- cepted), without the prior permission of the publisher. The sessions, presbyteries, and synods of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may use sections of this publication without receiving prior written permission of the pub- lisher. Additional copies available from Presbyterian Distribution Service (PDS), 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, KY 40202-1396, or by calling 1-800-2612 (PDS) or OGA Sales 1-888-219-6700 Please specify PDS order #OGA-99-033 October 1999 To: Pastors of Churches and Clerks of Sessions Where There Is No Installed Pastor, and Stated Clerks and Executives of Presbyteries and Synods Dear Friends: The 211th General Assembly (1999) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has asked me to send you a copy of the policy statement on “Facing Racism: In Search of the Beloved Community.” The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) recognizes that the task of dismantling racism is a long-term struggle that requires discernment, prayer, and worship based action. -
The Effects of American Slavery on Contemporary Voting Institutions
A Culture of Disenfranchisement: How American Slavery Continues to Affect Voting Behavior * Avidit Acharya,† Matthew Blackwell,‡ and Maya Sen§ October 31, 2015 Abstract In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on the argument that intervening history had atten- uated many voting inequalities between blacks and whites. But how, where, and by how much have things changed, and does history still predict voting inequal- ities today? We show that parts of the American South where slavery was more prevalent in the 1860s are today areas with lower average black voter turnout, larger numbers of election lawsuits alleging race-related constitutional violations, and more racial polarization in party identification. To explain this, we develop a theory of behavioral path dependence, which we distinguish from other theories of path dependence. We show evidence of behavioral path dependence demon- strating that disenfranchisement can linger over time and that the effects of re- strictions on voting rights can persist culturally. *Comments and suggestions welcome. Many thanks to Tim Blessing, Gary King, Eitan Hersh, Nathan Kalmoe, J. Morgan Kousser, Douglas Spencer, Matthew Winters, Wendy Wright, and panel participants at the 2014 APSA, 2015 MPSA, and 2015 EPSA meetings for helpful feedback and suggestions. Thanks also to Heather O’Connell, Stephen Ansolabehere, and Ariel White for data assistance. †Assistant Professor, Stanford University. email: [email protected], web: http://www.stanford. edu/~avidit. ‡Assistant Professor, Harvard University. email: [email protected], web: http://www. mattblackwell.org. §Assistant Professor, Harvard University. email: [email protected], web: http://scholar. -
Jim Crow Laws. in the Streets, Resistance Turned Violent
TEACHING TEACHING The New Jim Crow TOLERANCE LESSON 4 A PROJECT OF THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER TOLERANCE.ORG Jim Crow as a Form of Racialized Social Control THE NEW JIM CROW by Michelle Alexander CHAPTER 1 The Rebirth of Caste The Birth of Jim Crow The backlash against the gains of African Americans in the Reconstruction Era was swift and severe. As African Americans obtained political power and began the long march to- ward greater social and economic equality, whites reacted with panic and outrage. South- ern conservatives vowed to reverse Reconstruction …. Their campaign to “re- deem” the South was reinforced by a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, which fought a BOOK terrorist campaign against Reconstruction governments and local leaders, EXCERPT complete with bombings, lynchings, and mob violence. The terrorist campaign proved highly successful. “Redemption” resulted in the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the effective aban- donment of African Americans and all those who had fought for or supported an egalitarian racial order. The federal government no longer made any effort to enforce federal civil rights legislation … . Once again, vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as “mischief ” and “insult- ing gestures” as crimes were enforced vigorously against blacks. The aggressive enforce- ment of these criminal offenses opened up an enormous market for convict leasing, in Abridged excerpt which prisoners were contracted out as laborers to the highest private bidder. from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incar- Convicts had no meaningful legal rights at this time and no effective redress. They were ceration in the Age understood, quite literally, to be slaves of the state. -
Evidence and Implications for VRA Preclearance After Shelby County
The Geography of Racial Stereotyping: Evidence and Implications for VRA Preclearance After Shelby County Christopher S. Elmendorf* Douglas M. Spencer** The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) effectively enjoined the preclearance regime of the Voting Rights Act. The Court deemed the coverage formula, which determines the jurisdictions subject to preclearance, insufficiently grounded in current conditions. This Article proposes a new, legally defensible approach to coverage based on between-state differences in the proportion of voting age citizens who subscribe to negative stereotypes about racial minorities and who vote accordingly. The new coverage formula could also account for racially polarized voting and minority population size, but, for constitutional reasons, subjective discrimination by voters is the essential criterion. We demonstrate that the racial-stereotyping, polarized-voting, and population-size criteria would yield similar patterns of coverage, at least with respect to African Americans, and we show, ironically, that the new pattern of coverage would coincide with historic coverage under the “outdated” formula invalidated by Shelby County. Recently developed statistical techniques permit the new coverage formula to be further refined based on estimates of racial Copyright © 2014 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their publications. * Professor of Law, University of California, Davis. -
IMAN 2(3) Sept 2014
International Journal of the Malay World and Civilisation (Iman) 2(3), 2014: 67 - 75Ding Choo Ming 67 Some Challenges in Managing Cultural Differences in a Multi-Ethnic Country: Malaysia DING CHOO MING ABSTRACT To develop an united nation of different ethnic groups is hard. It requires the ability of all the people from different ethnic groups to understand, communicate and interact with one another and work together to create a broad-and-inclusive space for new national political discourse to replace the existing narrow-and-exclusive political interests. This would involve a new cultural competence and cultural literacy which include awareness of one’s own cultural worldview and attitude towards the cultural differences, knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and cross-cultural skills. As it is, many Malaysians have learnt and developed the skills, but many others have not. This would involve a process to continuously examine biases and prejudices to develop new cross-cultural skills to share a passion for cultural competence. Malaysia has a rich cultural diversity that could be harnessed for the nation’s benefit. Sadly, the differences among us form the bases of fear, suspicion, misunderstanding, clashes and conflict. Just consider how dull life would it be if we all look, think and act alike. By learning to recognise our similarities and appreciate our differences, we can overcome prejudice and work towards a more peaceful and productive nation. This article touches on the importance of education in the broadest meaning of learning to accept and respect the differences as the right way to everyone from different ethnic groups to grasp the values, norms, and traditions which would affect how we perceive, think, interact and share the nation with one another. -
Tables and Figures
Apartheid’s Legacy 45 Figure 2.1 The Net Benefits and Costs of Apartheid, by Race 5.00 4.00 4.04 3.00 3.28 2.00 1.00 .56 0.00 −1.13 −1.00 −2.00 −3.00 Average Net Benefits of Apartheid Average −4.00 −5.00 African White Colored Asian Origin Source: Author’s compilation from the 2001 Truth and Reconciliation Survey. Note: The bars in this graph represent each racial group’s average score on an index representing the net benefits of apartheid. The index is simply the difference between benefits and costs, and thus negative scores indicate that costs outweigh benefits (and vice versa). Cross-race difference .63. ס ;of means: p Ͻ .001 to 4.0 among whites (with standard deviations in the range of about 2.5 to 3.8). Among blacks, 34.9 percent have a score of 0, while 14.2 percent were net beneficiaries of apartheid; among whites, for 20.3 percent apartheid was a wash on the factors con- sidered here, while 76.7 percent see themselves as net beneficiaries (data not shown). Those of Asian origin tend to have profited from apartheid (69.8 percent), while Colored South Africans are almost equally divided in terms of having benefited, having been harmed, and coming out even from apartheid.19 The old apartheid system meant quite different things for the different races in South Africa. Moreover, the groups conventionally classified as “Black” did not fare the same under apartheid. 34 Overcoming Apartheid Table 2.1 Demographic Attributes of South Africa’s Racial Groups Asian Attribute African White Colored Origin Gender Percentage female 50.1% 50.7% -
Democracy, Majoritarianism, and Racial Equality: a Response to Professor Karlan
Vanderbilt Law Review Volume 50 Issue 2 Issue 2 - Symposium: Defining Article 5 Democracy for the Next Century 3-1997 Democracy, Majoritarianism, and Racial Equality: A Response to Professor Karlan Christopher L. Eisgruber Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr Part of the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Christopher L. Eisgruber, Democracy, Majoritarianism, and Racial Equality: A Response to Professor Karlan, 50 Vanderbilt Law Review 347 (1997) Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol50/iss2/5 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vanderbilt Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Democracy, Majoritarianism, and Racial Equality: A Response to Professor Karlan ChristopherL. Eisgruber* I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 347 II. THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF MAJORITY-BLACK D ISTRICTS ........................................................................... 349 III. THE POSSIBILITY OF ASSEMBLY BACKLASH ....................... 352 IV. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND MAJORITARIANISM ............................................................. 354 V. RACIAL EQUALITY AND AMERICAN POLITICS ...................... 356 VI. CONCLUSION ...................................................................... 359 I. INTRODUCTION Only with great trepidation -
The Asian American Movement's Vision of Racial and Political Solidarity
UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations 1-1-1995 Creating a panethnic identity: The Asian American movement's vision of racial and political solidarity Rosette Ho Wirtz University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/rtds Repository Citation Wirtz, Rosette Ho, "Creating a panethnic identity: The Asian American movement's vision of racial and political solidarity" (1995). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 490. http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/85km-yaww This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. U M I films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in ^pewriter face, while others may be from aity type of con^uter printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photogr^hs, prin t bleedthrough, substandard margins, and inqjropera lignm e n tcan adversely affect reproduction. -
Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the "War on Drugs" Was a "War on Blacks" Kenneth B
University of Florida Levin College of Law UF Law Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 1-1-2002 Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the "War on Drugs" Was a "War on Blacks" Kenneth B. Nunn University of Florida Levin College of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Kenneth B. Nunn, Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the "War on Drugs" Was a "War on Blacks," 6 J. Gender Race & Just. 381 (2002), available at http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/107 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at UF Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UF Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Race, Crime and the Pool of Surplus Criminality: Or Why the "War on Drugs" was a "War on Blacks" Kenneth B. Nunn* INTRODUCTION The War on Drugs I has had a devastating effect on African American communities nationwide. Throughout the drug war, African Americans have been disproportionately investigated, detained, searched, arrested and charged with the use, possession and sale of illegal drugs.2 Vast numbers of African Americans have been jailed and imprisoned pursuant to the nation's tough drug trafficking laws, implemented as part of the War on Drugs.3 Indeed, in some * Professor of Law, University of Florida, Levin College of Law.