New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

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Michelle's Alexander book, the New Jim Crow, will be remembered in the future as the defining piece of literature on 21st century slavery wherein there are more African Americans engaged in cages now without their freedom than there were at the end of colonial slavery. The book is an eloquent rendition of the history of America's ability to adapt new systems of control over the African American population since the country began engaging in the horrid and inhumane practice of slavery and other forms of caste systems such as the original Jim Crow and the 21st century Jim Crow. The author gives readers' a thorough view of the history of caste systems in America from indentured servants through the creation of slavery as well as the beginning of Jim Crow.

There are many salient points that are provided within the literature, but the most important point that the book elucidates upon is the fact that America's system of injustice toward African Americans has been able to adapt and morph itself into the worst form of caste slavery in the history of mankind under the current penal system that houses millions of mostly brown and black young males. Beginning with the fact that after the discovery of America there was initially an indentured servant caste system that affected Blacks and whites alike, the book provides a historical account of how the system reached its current position. Whites who were elite were reviled by both Black and white indentured servants who were bonded to work in the new colonies, at this time, neither of the constraints of "race" applied but when these poor Black and white indentured servants began to cooperate against the elite class, the elites needed a way to break this cooperation and ensure that it would not occur again in the future.

This is when the plan was cultivated to play off the race of the whites by providing them with a little more authority and willing to place them in marginally higher positions over the Black indentured servants to establish the poor "white" caste that would at least have its white identity and not be as poor and destitute as the Black caste. Once this system was established, poor whites began to not be indentured when arriving to the so called "New World" but more and more indentured servants were needed to feed the growing economies of ...