New Jim Crow

Law Professor Michelle Alexander makes a striking and sobering indictment of the U.S. criminal justice system.  She argues that although slavery and Jim Crow are long gone, America still has a caste system of inequality.  Although it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity, it is perfectly legal for institutions to discriminate against convicted felons.  Alexander shows how racial discrimination still lives on through a system of mass incarceration embodied by America’s ongoing War On Drugs, which primarily targets low income communities of color, especially African Americans living in urban areas.

This is an eye-opening book which shows that our nation still has a long way to go in terms of racial equality.