In a 2011 interview, Michelle Alexander stated,
I believe that within a few decades after the collapse of the old Jim Crow, we as a nation have managed to recreate racial caste in America. Of course, with the election of Barack Obama, it’s widely believed that we have triumphed over race. But in some major American cities the majority of African American men are locked behind bars, or labeled felons for life. Once you’re labeled a felon, you’re trapped. You’re trapped in a permanent second-class status, in which you may be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, food stamps, public benefits.
In the context of mass incarceration as Alexander describes it, what is the relationship between “racial caste” and “social class”?
March 30, 2019 at 2:22 pm
When Alexander describes the American recreation of Jim Crow, she is referring to the mass incarceration of African Americans. There are many causes for this epidemic, including mandatory minimum sentences for minor offenses. These offenses are often brought on by dire economic circumstances as well as systematic inequalities that cause minorities to feel compelled to break the law just to get by. Because many of these sentences, as well as justice that can often be purchased, disproportionately affect people of color, a new caste system is being created, says Alexander. Because of the disproportionately high incarceration rate of African-Americans, they feel disproportionately the effects of going to prison and subsequently the effects of having gone to prison. Alexander describes it as being trapped in a second-class status. Legal discrimination is allowed on many job, housing, and benefits applications. Thus, because this group is unfairly gaining more and more African-Americans, such is the group of second-class citizens who are legally discriminated against. Thus, as long as the justice system operates unfairly, so will the rest of the unfair institutions continue to wreak havoc on the same discriminated groups. Both are the problem, but mass incarceration of certain groups thus disproportionately creates different social classes, thus melding the two ideas.