Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Summary

This is a Summary of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

The New Jim Crow is a book praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."

Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.

Available in a variety of formats, this summary is aimed for those who want to capture the gist of the book but don't have the current time to devour all 336 pages. You get the main summary along with all of the benefits and lessons the actual book has to offer. This summary is not intended to be used without reference to the original book.