Thursday, September 30, 2010

The New Jim Crow' Book Review by Mumia Abu-Jamal

"The New Jim Crow" [Book Review: 6/30/10] 
(c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal 


{Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  (NY: The New Press, 2010, pp.290)
 
 The book, The New Jim Crow, offers an unflinching look at the US addiction to imprisonment, and comes up with a startling diagnosis; American corporate greed, political opportunism and the exploitation of age old hatred and fears have congealed to create a monstrous explosion in the world's largest prison industrial complex.  Further, the author, a law professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, Michelle Alexander, digs deep into US history, and deeper still into US criminal law and practice to conclude that the barbarous system of repression and control known commonly as Jim Crow, had a rebirth in this era.  That's why she calls it: The New Jim Crow.
 
 This system of legal discrimination came into being much as the first one did. After the rout of the South by the Civil War, millions of newly freed Africans exercised these new rights under Reconstruction.  Black men became senators and legislators across the South. But this period was short lived, and as soon as possible, states passed harsh laws known as  Black Codes, which denied rights and criminalized behavior by Blacks, and exposed them to the repression of southern prisons, where convicts were leased out to labor for others; it was the rebirth of slavery by other means.
 
 This present era began at the height of the US Civil Rights Movement, when millions of Blacks fought for their rights denied for more than a century.
 
 Alexander concludes that this new system, this new coalescence of economic and political interests, targeted Blacks, especially those engaged in the drug industry, as the human capital with which to provide massive construction, huge prison staffs, and the other appendages of the apparatus of state repression.
 
 But perhaps Alexander's most salient point is her finding that America's Black population constitutes a 'racial caste' that feeds and perpetuates mass incarceration  [195]
 
 Indeed, every other societal structure supports this superstructure, from broken schools, to de-industrialization, to population concentration in isolated urban ghettoes, to the violence of police, and the silence of the Black Middle class.
 
 One might argue that such a claim seems unsustainable when we see a Black president, hundreds of black political figures and those in entertainment and sports.  But Alexander explains that every system allows exceptions, for they serve to legitimize the system and mask its ugliness and its gross effects upon the majority of Blacks.
 
 For example, while it's well-known that apartheid was an overtly racist system, it allowed Asian and even African American diplomats to live and work in such a regime, by the political expediency of identifying them as "honorary whites" in their official papers.
 
 When comparing both systems, Alexander argues that the US imprisons more Blacks both in raw number and per capita than South Africa at the height of apartheid!
 
 The New Jim Crow - indeed!

--(c) '10 maj 
================

The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!


URGENT Need for Petition Signatures at: http://www.iacenter.org/mumiapetition/


Audio of most of Mumia's essays are at: http://www.prisonradio.org


Mumia's got a podcast! Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Essays - Subscribe at the website or on iTunes and get Mumia's radio commentaries online.


Mumia Abu-Jamal's new book -- JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE USA, featuring an introduction by Angela Y. Davis -- has been released! It is available from City Lights Books: http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100448090

If you are planning to organize an event or would like to order in bulk, you can also receive a 45% discount on any bulk orders of 20 copies or more. The book retails for $16.95, for orders of 20 copies or more the discounted price would be $9.32 per book, plus shipping and handling. Prepayment would be required and books are nonreturnable. If you or your organization would like to place a bulk order, please contact Stacey Lewis at 415.362.1901 or stacey@citylights.com

Let's use the opportunity of the publication of this brilliant, moving, vintage Mumia book to build the momentum for his case, to raise the money we desperately need in these challenging economic times, to get the word out – to produce literature, flyers, posters, videos, DVD's; to send organizers out to help build new chapters and strengthen old ones, TO GET THE PEOPLE OUT IN THE STREETS … all the work that we must do in order to FREE MUMIA as he faces LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE OR EXECUTION!
Please make a contribution to help free Mumia. Donations to the grassroots work will go to both INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and the FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION (NYC).

Please mail donations/ checks to:
FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL COALITION
PO BOX 16, NEW YORK,
NY 10030
(CHECKS FOR BOTH ORGANIZATIONS PAYABLE TO: FMAJC/IFCO)
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
215 476-8812
212-330-8029
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:


Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370

WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!

Subscribe ICFFMAJ email updates list by e-mailing

1 comment:

Adjua Dubb said...

more love always for Mumia, keepin us enlightened with each word, sound, power!