Alexander is unequivocally critical of Clinton, and even has harsh words for Obama at the end of the book. Liberal politicians have moved to the right on this issue in order to win votes, and the maze of misinformation may even have mislead them as well.

The reasons for this tend to revolve around the fact that it is hard not to support being tough on crime. However, liberal politicians have been guilty of the same rhetoric and concomitant political measures. It is certainly easy to condemn conservative politicians for getting the whole 'law and order' and 'tough on crime' policies started, especially since they were very obviously rooted in race. in so doing, Clinton - more than any other president - created the current racial undercaste. They ignore that statistics that trouble them and continue on in a blase, and of course very dangerous, fashion.Ĭlinton eventually moved beyond crime and capitulated to the conservative racial agenda on welfare. People find it easy to believe in stereotypes rather than take the time to investigate their validity, and they content themselves by thinking that people are in jail because they did something legitimately wrong. One of the main themes of the book is how even though the overt racial hostility of the Jim Crow era no longer really exists, the indifference, apathy, and denial of the American people regarding the treatment of the black members of their country are absolutely sufficient to prop up the system of marginalization. They need only racial indifference, as Martin Luther King Jr. racial caste system do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. She even acknowledges that the conspiracy theory that the government introduced crack into black neighborhoods to facilitate a genocide was not utterly unbelievable.

While it is a strong statement and might seem at first read to be histrionic, all of the data eventually bears the truth of the statement out. 3Īlexander take readers through her discovery of the New Jim Crow with this sign being one of the main ways that she starts to think about the realities of mass incarceration. I was rushing to catch the bus, and I noticed a sign stapled to a telephone pole that screamed in large bold print: THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW.

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander