Has American developed a Prison “Racial Undercaste?”

Date:  08-20-2010 ACLU presents an author’s view that indeed we have.

Michelle Alexander, author and legal scholar, presents her case that America has produced a “new racial under caste” during the past 30 years. In her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander puts forth her view that although the large scale incarceration of Americans seems to be neutral as far as racial make-up, it is not. Alexander is quoted in a June 4, 2010 ACLU post as stating, “A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.” According to the ACLU post, America incarcerates more black people today than the racist apartheid government of South Africa did during its heyday. The post further declares that more African-Americans are disenfranchised now than at the time of passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. According to Alexander and sentencing reform advocates, the “war on drugs” is responsible for the racial disparity. Such advocates profess that although substance abuse encompasses people of all races, African-Americans are arrested and convicted more often, and also receive the stiffest sentences. Alexander believes that if Americans do not remedy this situation, “history will judge us harshly.”