thesis statement for the new jim crow

Alexander’s Overall Thesis From the New Jim Crow Research Paper

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Overall Thesis from the New Jim Crow

In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander explains the challenges that people of color face in modern American society. Her overall thesis from this book is “that mass incarceration constitutes a new system of racial oppression akin to slavery and the original Jim Crow” (Alexander, 32). She argues that in the current Age of Colorblindness, the unique challenges that people of color faced during the era of Jim Crow laws still persist. The only difference is that the approach taken by people in positions of power has changed. The society is currently using the criminal justice system as a tool to oppress people of color. According to this book, there is a disproportionately high number of blacks incarcerated in various prisons across the country.

War on drugs has been an excellent excuse that law enforcement officers use to ensure that they send these minorities to prison. According to Purnell et al., it is more likely for a black to be taken to court when arrested with a small amount of bhang or marijuana than a white (37). It is also easier to convince the judge and the jury that the black man was doing drugs. In terms of sentencing, a black man is more likely to be given a severe punishment than a white man, even if they committed the same offense. The color of the skin is, therefore, used as a means of defining one’s guilt in the current criminal justice system. The main problem is that this form of discrimination has been repackaged as the war on drugs or crime (Adler 38). This strategy has worked so well that even the black community does not realize they are targeted until they become victims of police brutality and the skewed criminal justice system

Significant Cases Discussed in the New Jim Crow and Their Ramifications on Her Thesis

In this book, Alexander argues that American society has entered a new age of legalized discrimination. The language and approaches used have changed over time, but the intent and pain caused to the victims have remained the same. In her book, she has singled out specific cases that explain the era of the New Jim Crow. The following are some of the major cases.

Employment Discrimination

The majority of large corporate institutions and government agencies are owned and managed by whites. The book opines that when employers are presented with a case where they have to choose either a black or a white with similar qualifications, they are more likely to choose white. In some cases, a white would be chosen even if they had an inferior qualification to a black candidate (Austin 11). The reason given would be that the most qualified person was chosen. The truth is that the qualification was based on one’s skin color as opposed to one’s ability to undertake a specific task. Such discrimination is widespread both in the public and private sectors, and it is packaged in a unique form that fighting it has been a major challenge.

Housing Discrimination

The housing sector is another area where minorities in the United States face massive challenges. In public housing, there is open discrimination against blacks when rolling out various programs. In the final stages of approval, one’s race becomes one of the defining factors of whether an individual would be given a house. In the private sector, the problem is even worse, as Austin observes (17). Realtors would deliberately deny a black person an opportunity to buy or rent a house within a given neighborhood primarily because of their race. There is the fear that if the black is given a house in a neighborhood considered exclusively white, there might be an uproar. Some of the current customers may consider leaving the place, while prospective clients would consider buying or renting a house in other places. In an effort to protect their profits and revenue, they would deny an opportunity to live in these neighborhoods.

Denial of the Right to Vote

Alexander argues that blacks form the largest group of disenfranchised voters in the United States. According to Purnell et al., voting is one of the fundamental rights of every American citizen of the right age and of sound mind (51). However, in some parts of the country, there have been deliberate steps taken to ensure that the ability to vote is compromised as much as possible. In some cases, the legality of their voting rights would be questioned, while in other cases, systemic strategies would be used. The goal is to ensure that they do not participate in determining the political leadership of the country. When their votes do not count, it becomes easy for the policy-makers to ignore their plight.

Denial of Educational Opportunity

Education has remained the single most powerful tool for eradicating poverty and empowering the disadvantaged in the society. However, the type of school one attends would define the social networks that they develops and the skills one acquire, which would then play pivotal roles in defining their career success. Some of the best universities in this country, such as Harvard, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and Columbia University, have been accused of bias when admitting students across the country. Austin explains that it is not easy for a poor black student to get admission into these institutions (36). Besides the open bias when selecting students, there is also the challenge of the cost of tuition and other charges, which further limits the ability of poor students to attend these institutions.

Denial of Food Stamps and Other Public Benefits

The United States government has various social protection programs meant to help the very poor members of society. One such program is food stamps, which is meant to ensure that no American citizen would starve (Adler 57). This program is meant for the poorest of Americans and should be issued without any form of discrimination. The problem is that government officials responsible for managing such programs are biased. It is common to find cases where food items are not made sufficiently available to those with food stamps. Such services would be rationed in areas dominated by minorities, especially African Americans (Kilgore 290). Different administrations come to power promising to solve this problem, but most often, they fail to do so.

Exclusion from Jury Service

The book also identifies another challenge with the criminal justice system in the country, which is the exclusion from jury services. It is a common practice for a judge to invite the jury to help in determining whether a suspect is guilty of a crime leveled against them. African Americans are in the best position to understand the plight that their people face and why they would act in a given manner (Austin 78). As members of the jury, they can help to explain events that led to the suspect acting in a given way. Unfortunately, they are rarely chosen to be members of the jury. As such, blacks are left in the hands and at the mercy of whites, who already have informed opinions and are keen on confirming their guilt. When they retire to discuss the case, they start from the point that the suspect is guilty and then focus on finding justifications for the same. It is almost impossible for blacks to get justice in such a system.

Ramifications of These Cases on Her Thesis

These cases, which outline specific ways in which blacks face discrimination, help to reaffirm her thesis. Adler explains that there is always a need to distinguish inflammatory, baseless claims from real challenges that need to be addressed (39). Alexander provides specific cases that can easily be traced and confirmed to explain the New Jim Crow. She makes her case believable by providing information that is already known to American society. For instance, the claim that most of the prestigious universities in the country are out of reach for poor African Americans can easily be confirmed. At Harvey Mudd College, a student is expected to pay $79,539 annually (Ryan 45). The average income in the United States is $63,214, while that of African Americans is $48,297 (Ryan 45). Even if one is willing to pay everything they earn for their child’s fee, they cannot afford it. In this case, cost has been used effectively to deny the poor an opportunity to get the best in education.

Personal Reflection on Her Overall

I agree with Alexander’s overall thesis because they can easily be confirmed. A good example is the brutal and emotive death of George Floyd in 2020. Derek Chauvin, a white police officer with the authority to arrest, deliberately knelt on George’s neck for about 9 minutes (Reny and Newman 1504). The victim’s plea that he could not breathe was ignored, and he suffocated to death. The issue was taken seriously by the government, and Derek was convicted, but many believe this was possible because the merciless murder was recorded and shared publicly. Several similar cases where law enforcement agencies use unnecessary excessive force have been witnessed in this country. The problem is that those who commit the crime are the same people who are expected to protect civilians.

I agree with the claims made by Alexander that the New Jim Crow is as effective in persecuting minorities, especially African Americans, as the old forms of discrimination. According to a report by Purnell et al., the highest population group of inmates in the country is blacks, at 33%, while whites account for 30% (34). It is important to note that the total population of blacks in the United States is only 12%, while whites account for 64% (Ryan 45). The statistics show that an African American is six times more likely to end up in prison than a white person is. The trend is worrying because the concentration of police officers in black neighborhoods is significantly higher than in white-dominated neighborhoods. As Alexander puts it, the problem of racism and systemic discrimination is still alive in the country.

Works Cited

Adler, Jeffrey. Murder in New Orleans: The Creation of Jim Crow Policing . University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Alexander, Michelle. New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness . The New Press, 2012.

Austin, Paula. Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life . New York University Press, 2019.

Kilgore, James. “Mass Incarceration: Examining and Moving Beyond the New Jim Crow.” Critical Sociology , vol. 41, no. 2, 2015, pp. 283-295.

Purnell, Brian, et al. The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle Outside of the South . New York University Press, 2019.

Reny, Tyler, and Benjamin Newman. “The Opinion-Mobilizing Effect of Social Protest against Police Violence: Evidence from the 2020 George Floyd Protests.” American Political Science Review , vol. 115, no. 4, 2021, pp. 1499-1507.

Ryan, Mary. Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics: Employment Earnings Prices Productivity and Other Labor Data 2021 . Bernan Press, 2021.

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The New Jim Crow

By michelle alexander, the new jim crow themes.

The main theme of Alexander's work is that the current American system of mass incarceration, created in response to the rise in drug arrests, is a systematic attempt to marginalize people of color much in the same way that the Jim Crow laws targeted blacks in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Those in prison and those released are part of a system that disenfranchises them; makes it incredibly difficult to find work, housing, or other public assistance; and bestows upon them a shame and stigma that can be nearly insurmountable. As the drug war was racially motivated, the comparison to the historical Jim Crow is fitting and undeniable. It is the new racial caste system, entrenched yet invisible.

Denial and Ignorance

The only way that the New Jim Crow can be sustained is through the mass denial and ignorance of the American people. Most may have inklings of what is going on, but even the most well-meaning find it easier to turn away and not confront this egregious denial of civil rights and liberties. We do not want to think we are part of the problem and do not want to make any sacrifices for change. Furthermore, the relentless media barrage depicting black people as criminals combined with the touting of the colorblindness of the legal system makes us believe that black people are just naturally prone to doing/selling drugs and that there is no racial bias going on.

The Failure of Colorblindness

Colorblindness is a nice idea but does not actually work. The idea presumes that all people are treated equally by the government and legal system regardless of their race, and indeed, the law is written in a way that makes it seem like this is the case. However, there are many avenues for race to creep back in. Studies show that law enforcement conducts racial profiling, that sentencing is much harsher for people of color than whites, that anti-drug legislation and laws like mandatory minimums are intended to target people of color, and that the media and government have essentially conspired to plant a fallacious image in Americans' heads that blacks are prone to criminal behavior, in turn leading to the racial profiling that starts the whole process.

Problems of Law Enforcement and Government

Conservative politicians spearheaded "tough on crime" and "law and order" policies in the late-twentieth century to galvanize poor whites' support and marginalize people of color. They funneled money into law enforcement and provided incentives to crack down on crime. The media contributed by spreading salacious stories of black crime and violence. Law enforcement may not think they are explicitly racist, and indeed, many of the things they do are not explicit, but they are acting out of racial motivations nonetheless. Our government and law enforcement have failed many of our citizens. They have relegated them to second-class status through their persecutions and punitive laws. The criminal justice system is not colorblind or fair.

Inadequacy of Current Civil Rights Movement

Alexander has hard truths for current civil rights activists: they are ignoring the real problem and instead focusing on worthless battles like affirmative action. They are actually part of the problem because of their focus on legal, not moral, battles. They are working on cosmetic diversity in affirmative action, not real change. They have to shift their attention to the larger moral crisis in order to dismantle the current racial caste system, even if it is difficult and throws their own advantages into question.

Lying, Manipulation, Subterfuge, and Obfuscation

The text is rife with examples of these four strategies for misleading the American people. From the very beginning of the war on drugs, actual crime rates and drug usage statistics were ignored in favor of inflaming fears and tensions. Law enforcement was manipulated and incentivized to go after people of color. Prosecutors feigned colorblindness. The media promoted false stereotypes. Supreme Court rulings discounted racism as a real issue anymore. Politicians lied to the American people. The New Jim Crow was able to come to fruition because of all this, and was aided by the denial and willful ignorance of the American people.

History in Alexander's perception is almost cyclical, at least when it comes to race. What is happening today is nearly exactly what happened in the Jim Crow era, and what happened then mirrored the conditions of slavery. These racial caste systems fill the void when one vanishes due to extreme effort and activism, simply implementing new and even subtler methods of marginalizing people of color. Thus, Alexander counsels us to go after real, fundamental change; this requires more effort and more discomfort than normal because the goal is to break the pattern of history and avoid replacing mass incarceration with something even more insidious.

The New Jim Crow Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The New Jim Crow is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Find two examples where Alexander introduces the views of others.

Alexander introduces the views of other by including examples of African Americans who were refused the right to vote, or in turn, were faced with barriers to voting such as “poll taxes” or “literacy tests."

2. Explain the closed door metaphor.

Alexander often says things like, "It closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias in sentencing" (111). The metaphor of closed doors is apt because while doors may literally be closed in terms of suits not able to proceed, the image of a...

What central research question does Alexander ask that politicians and scholars have not been able to answer

The main theme of Alexander's work is that the current American system of mass incarceration, created in response to the rise in drug arrests, is a systematic attempt to marginalize people of color much in the same way that the Jim Crow laws...

Study Guide for The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow study guide contains a biography of Michelle Alexander, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The New Jim Crow
• The New Jim Crow Summary
• Character List

Essays for The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

• Structure and Rhetorical Strategy in "The New Jim Crow"
• Rigorous Reasoning
• Mandated Failures
• What Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" Adds to “If Beale Street Could Talk”
• Mass Incarceration Parallels with Jim Crow

Lesson Plan for The New Jim Crow

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The New Jim Crow
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The New Jim Crow Bibliography

New Jim Crow Thesis Essay

Michelle Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, essentially analyzes the United States criminal justice system. The main thesis/ argument of her analysis is that mass incarceration constitutes a new system of racial oppression that is similar to slavery and the original Jim Crow. Furthermore, she claims that mass incarceration has had a profound impact on how criminal justice issues are interpreted today. She also argues that individuals who have fallen victim to mass incarceration are part of a new racial caste.

Prior to reading the entirety of the book, I thought she would thoroughly discuss how each and every minority is affected by mass incarceration; however, her analysis only focuses on African Americans. She does support her reasoning behind why I think she somewhat overlooked other minorities i. e. Native Americans—because her overarching argument is how the rates of the incarcerated population skyrocketed between the year 1980 and early 2000’s. In all, during this time span, African Americans were disproportionately labeled as felons and targeted the most in the War on Drugs.

In The New Jim Crow, Alexander supports her claim by first stating how politicians from both sides of the political spectrum have repeatedly voted for strict sentencing laws and reallocating public resources. One of the points about chapter one that surprised me the most was when she said, “… funding that had once been used for public housing was being redirected to prison construction… [and] Clinton also made it easier for federally assisted public housing projects to exclude anyone with a criminal history” (2012:57).

In all, Alexander proves that these stringent laws were solely made to impede black people’s growth in the society. For instance, “conservatives argued that poverty was caused not by structural factors related to race and class but rather by culture- particularly black culture” (2012:45). In all, I found these two passages the most preposterous. Quite frankly, I was indignant when I read that passage mostly because even before the unfairness of the justice system, the American government has always worked against blacks by concocting different ways to subjugate this particular race.

Starting from the waywardness of America’s founding fathers, slavery, polygenism, Jim Crow Laws, etc. the system has always been made to keep the black man poor. African Americans did not cause poverty, it is simply ludicrous that even today, the system still affiliates poverty with African Americans. For instance, when someone says “that is a bad/poor neighborhood” today, they are most likely referring to a community that is mostly populated by blacks. (I know for a fact in Dallas, Oak cliff has this stigma). Moreover, in her argument, Alexander ties criminalization of African Americans on welfare.

She made sure to reiterate that while Reagan and other Republicans were the sole initiators of this effort of stripping government aids, the Clinton administration absolutely plummeted public benefits. Clinton made sure to put a federal law ban on anyone with a drug conviction from getting SNAP (food stamps) or TANF, and also granted local authorities the power to refuse people with felonies public housing. In all, all these actions further explain the economic opportunities that are mostly stripped away from African Americans.

The rest of the book entails the effects of the War on Drugs. I found it particularly interesting how the justice system/police have sought different ways to take people to jail based on hunches on drugs or using minor traffic violations as an excuse to stop motorists for drug investigations- even when there is no profound evidence that the motorist has engaged in a drug crime. Also, it was interesting to read how the Supreme Court (whose responsibility is to protect minorities from majoritarian emocracy) has placed somewhat of an infringement on minorities fourth amendment rights.

Finally, Alexander makes sure to note that drug trade offenses have been a driving force of mass incarceration of black people. In terms of politics, I concur with Alexander’s argument that the War on Drugs was established explicitly in racist terms. Ever since working for the Congressman, I have been self-learning about Reagan (mostly because his entire office is decorated with Reagan posters, calendars, and cut out boards of him), and his predecessors.

This book has supported most of my preconceived notions of their administrations. For instance, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s former policy advisor even admitted in a 1994 interview with reporter Dan Baum about these claims: “The Nixon Campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people… we knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin.

And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities… Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did” (LoBianco 2016). So my question to America’s recent president and color blindness goal is- since the foundation of the War on Drugs is solely built on racism, why is this war still ongoing? In all, The New Jim Crow was an amazing read because it gave me a lot of insights about the justice system I was oblivious to like the Mcleskey v. Kemp case.

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The New Jim Crow

Michelle alexander, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The New Jim Crow

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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

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Preface to the 10th anniversary edition summary.

In 2020, 10 years after the original publication of The New Jim Crow , Alexander reflects on the dramatic political and cultural changes of the preceding decade. Since then, Americans have mourned the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and countless other people of color, all of whom aside from Martin died either at the hands of the police or, in Bland’s case, while under police supervision. Deaths like these are nothing new. What is new is the fact that they have become staples on the nightly news and on social media. The last 10 years also saw the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and a series of uprisings catalyzed by the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown’s death by police officers. These tragedies set the stage for an end to the era of colorblindness and race-denial, an era Alexander argues was perpetuated by Barack Obama’s election win.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Jim Crow Laws — Jim Crow Laws: A Historical Analysis of Segregation Laws & its Effects

Jim Crow Laws: a Historical Analysis of Segregation Laws & Its Effects

• Categories: Jim Crow Laws

About this sample

Words: 721 |

Published: Feb 12, 2019

Words: 721 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Alexander, M. (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press.
• Flashfocus. (n.d.). Jim Crow. In Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century Five-volume Set (Vol. 2, pp. 75-77). Oxford University Press.
• Pilgrim, D. (n.d.). What was Jim Crow? Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Retrieved from [insert URL]
• Anderson, J. D. (2016). The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. The University of North Carolina Press.
• Ashworth, J., & Palenchar, J. (Eds.). (2018). Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities. University of Chicago Press.
• Blackmon, D. A. (2009). Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Anchor Books.
• Dailey, J. (2017). The Routledge History of the Twentieth-Century United States. Routledge.
• Fairclough, A. (2010). Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000. Penguin Books.
• Litwack, L. F. (2009). How Free is Free? The Long Death of Jim Crow. Harvard University Press.
• Woodward, C. V. (2001). The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Oxford University Press.

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101 Thesis and The New Jim Crow

Quick Write

What is a thesis statement?

Thesis Statements

a short  statement , usually one sentence, that summarizes the main point or claim of an essay, research paper, etc., and is developed, supported, and explained in the text by  means  of examples and evidence.

A thesis is the topic of the paper and the position you are taking.

It needs to be narrow and debatable; i.e. makes a claim.

For a solution argument, it should present your problem and the solution you are proposing.

Developing Strong Thesis Statements

Work on writing a thesis statement for your essay. If you have one, did you meet the guidelines we talked about?

Share the thesis statements and try to make them more specific.

The New Jim Crow

We read the New Jim Crow article for today.

• What is a caste?
• What is the purpose of prisons?
• What is Jim Crow?
• What is the New Jim Crow?

Understanding Jim Crow

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