Essay about Love: Prison and New Jim Crow

Submitted By fazoland2123
Words: 295
Pages: 2

While I was watching the Bill Moyers interview with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander I learned that our system treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. I found it interesting that we have a criminal justice system that’s very wealth sensitive. I also learned that two thirds of the people in our state prison system are people of color. We incarcerate more people than any other country in the world. When I look at all of these facts I realize that America has an issue that we should all be concerned about. This interview meant a lot to me being a black male. Right now for black men in the United States, there’s a 32 percent chance you’re going to jail or prison. That right there does not make me feel comfortable every day I wake up. When I hear a statistic like that it only makes me work harder to prove that stat wrong. I am just tired of hearing the racial stereotypes that can make people lose hope. The interview means to me that we have to build a new movement that ends mass incarceration and the history of racial caste in America. After reading The New Jim Crow I learned that a new system of racial control has taken over the United States. I also learned that people of color are targeted at a young age for minor offenses. In the United States today we have a new racial caste system, meaning that we have a system of laws and policies. These laws and policies operate to lock up people of color and poor people of color who live