The New Jim Crow: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Alexander describes a Father’s Day in 2008 when then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama gave a speech at a church in Chicago urging black men to “be better fathers.” Although this message has been advocated by several other famous black men, the mainstream media treated the speech as an astonishing event. Social research has shown that the idea that black men disproportionately “abandon” their families is false. However, criticisms of Obama’s speech generally failed to mention the fact that the stereotype of the absent black father is created by a very real phenomenon: mass incarceration. The question, “where have all the black men gone?” is asked frequently in contexts ranging from political debate to the pages of Ebony magazine, but few people ever provide the true answer, which is that they have gone to prison.

Alexander points out that more African Americans are in prison today than were enslaved in 1850. Yet most people do not notice this regression in racial equality because their attention is focused on exceptional black celebrities. Meanwhile, the media has helped to create mass public support for the War on Drugs through sensationalism and (racialized) stereotypes. Nowadays mass incarceration is such a normal part of the American political system that such propaganda isn’t even necessary. Alexander also considers people’s ability to deny phenomena taking place right before their eyes, which she claims involves a careful mix of “knowing and not knowing” at the same time. Although people might know that a disturbingly large percentage of black and Latino populations are incarcerated, it’s easy to persuade ourselves that this is justified, or—because incarcerated people are by nature hidden from view—simply put it out of our minds.

In the 20th century, many otherwise compassionate white people chose to vote for Jim Crow, thereby lending their support to a racist structure of power much like the one that exists in the form of mass incarceration today. Because of this structure, racism can now operate without the conscious actions of individual racists. Alexander compares mass incarceration to “a birdcage with a locked door” in order to emphasize that it consists of multiple different structures that (both literally and metaphorically) imprison a portion of the population as the “underclass.” Each wire of the cage individually can be reasoned away, but it is only when we step back from this “maze of rationalizations” that it becomes obvious how the system truly functions.

Alexander reviews the three stages of criminal punishment outlined in Chapter Two. The first stage involves an interaction with the racially-biased police system. The second is the conviction stage, during which defendants are pressured to plead guilty and are often given excessively long sentences due to mandatory minimum laws. The final stage can be thought of as “invisible punishment,” when a prisoner reenters society under the label of “felon” and encounters a whole host of restrictions, sanctions, and discrimination as a result. The prisoner is now part of society’s “undercaste” and will remain so for the rest of his life.

Some people argue that although the brutality and racism of the criminal justice system is abhorrent, it is “nothing new,” and Alexander concedes that there is some validity to this point. As she herself has argued, many of the worst aspects of mass incarceration have their origins in slavery, chain gangs, racist trials, and Jim Crow. The key difference, however, is just how pervasive mass incarceration truly is. Rather than being part of a structure of racialized social control, mass incarceration is the structure. Alexander argues that another striking thing about mass incarceration is how closely it resembles the racist system of control that preceded it: (the original) Jim Crow. While she has outlined many of the similarities already, she proceeds to explicitly identify more now.

Both Jim Crow and mass incarceration were deliberately created to redirect working-class white people’s anger away from legitimate economic issues and toward the scapegoat of African Americans. Similarly, both systems operate through an elaborate system of legalized discrimination that creates “a parallel social universe.” At the centre of this discrimination is political disenfranchisement, which both systems depend on to survive. Related to this is the deliberate exclusion of black people from juries, along with Supreme Court rulings that prevent challenges to the racial bias of the legal system. Both systems also rely heavily on—and work to reinforce—racial segregation, further increasing this sense of two parallel universes and pushing the most marginalized communities deeper into poverty.

Alexander then moves on to a connection between Jim Crow and mass incarceration that she has not yet described in detail: the “symbolic production of race.” This phrase refers to the way that both Jim Crow and mass incarceration “produce” the racial caste that they then criminalize, control, and oppress. Alexander emphasizes that although the word “criminal” is theoretically race-neutral, mass incarceration has made criminality a racialized idea. Black men are associated with criminality whether or not they have committed a crime. This did not happen “organically,” but was a deliberate component of the War on Drugs. Thus even African-American children are linked to the stereotype of criminality; meanwhile, non-black criminals are symbolically “made black” by doing time in prison.

At the same time, Alexander is keen not to overstate the similarity between mass incarceration and Jim Crow. It is very important, for example, that the War on Drugs and mass incarceration are officially framed as race-neutral. The lack of explicit racism has “turned the black community against itself.” Whereas black people across different classes, education levels, and geographic regions joined together to fight against the explicitly racist policies of Jim Crow, this has not taken place in the case of mass incarceration. Similarly, the War on Drugs (mostly) contains a lack of “overt racial hostility.” Whereas overt racism was integral to Jim Crow, from the 1980s onward the general public generally disfavored explicit racist sentiment, and thus the drug war had to hide its racism in order to survive.

Alexander identifies another important difference: the fact that, while most whites did not suffer from Jim Crow, mass incarceration has had a direct, terrible impact on many white people. This does not mean white people are the intended targets of the War on Drugs; rather, they are “collateral damage.” Although the drug war has affected white people, if it had done so on the same scale that African Americans are currently being locked up it would cause national outrage. In order to emphasize this point, Alexander compares drug offenses to another (even more) dangerous social problem that arose to prominence in the 1980s: drunk driving. At the time, public pressure led to the institutionalization of mandatory minimum sentences for drunk driving—yet where for drugs these are in the region of 3-5 years, for drunk driving they tend to be 2-10 days. Alexander argues that this is because 78% of those arrested for drunk driving are white men.

Another difference between Jim Crow and mass incarceration is that where no reasonable African American supported Jim Crow, it is often claimed that many black people support “tough on crime” policies. Alexander suggests that these claims are often somewhat unfounded, and do not take into account the fact that African Americans would much prefer spending on resources such as education, health, and employment for their communities. Furthermore, even where some black people may indeed support “tough on crime” approaches, this rarely applies to drugs. Most poor African Americans understand that turning to the drug trade is usually the last resort of those who have no other employment opportunities.

At the same time, there does exist an ongoing debate within African-American communities over the root causes of mass incarceration and whether black people themselves are at all to blame. Alexander points out that although black people can hardly be said to have “benefited” from Jim Crow, those who played by the rules were made marginally more safe by the system; some African Americans today distance themselves from criminals for the same reason. This is part of the broader phenomenon of “the politics of respectability,” which involves the elite sacrificing the rights of the poor and “undesirable” classes for their own advantage. In the past (such as during the development of the New Deal), the political class of African Americans has deliberately diverted resources away from the poorest black communities and toward more “respectable” recipients. Alexander argues that it is thus unsurprising that some black leaders today have also imitated “tough on crime” rhetoric.

The tough approach taken by some African-American leaders has meant that black youth are often expected to meet impossible expectations, and are then blamed when they fail to meet them. Alexander argues that in reality, nobody can be expected to make good choices all the time—particularly not young people who face poverty, violence, discrimination, and a lack of jobs and resources. While it’s a good idea to encourage everyone to act in a responsible and principled manner, Alexander urges that this does not work “as a liberation strategy.” Instead, we must focus on why so many people of color who made one or two minor mistakes now find themselves locked up in prison.

Alexander emphasizes that poor people of color are, in the words of the philosopher Tommie Shelby, “forced to make choices in an environment they did not choose.” These people deserve much better, and it is certainly within the realm of possibility to provide them with more. Since the 1960s, black people have been pushed into ghettoes that in many cases have suffered total economic collapse. The “extreme marginalization” that poor black people now face is arguably even more dangerous than their exploitation as slaves, because at least when a population is exploited they are needed by society at large. When a population appears to be neither needed nor wanted, this opens the door for egregious human rights abuses.