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Saturday, January 12, 2013

Racism in America Today « Larry Miller's Blog: Educate All Students!

Racism in America Today « Larry Miller's Blog: Educate All Students!:


Racism in America Today

I recently read Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It takes head-on the “elephant in the room” concerning race in America. I feel it is a must read for anyone interested in equality and social justice.
According to Alexander, more black men are behind bars or under the watch of the criminal justice system in the US than there were enslaved in 1850…and more African-American men are disenfranchised now because of felon disenfranchisement laws than in 1870. She constructs a formidable argument that the “war on drugs,” declared in 1982, had every intention of creating a new form of discrimination largely against black men.
Alexander’s book establishes that the war on drugs is truly meant to reinstate legalized discrimination that