Michelle Alexander The New Jim Crow Summary

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Is the “war on drugs” really racist? On the surface, crime and punishment appear to be unsophisticated matters. After all, if someone partakes in a crime, shouldn’t he or she have to suffer the consequences? In the article “The New Jim Crow,” author Michelle Alexander argues that "hundreds of thousands of black men are taken away in handcuffs, often due to a massive federal program know as the War on Drugs” (739). The “war on drugs” was declared by president Richard Nixon in 1971, as recreational drug use was on the rise, Nixon named it “public enemy number one in the United States.” Alexander says the war on drugs was created to force a vast number of black men behind bars (742). Crime and punishment are multidimensional problems that stem
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