Week Two February 2, 2016

 “This book argues that mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow and that all those who care about social justice should fully commit themselves to dismantling the new racial caste system” (Alexander 11). THE NEW JIM CROW

  DEFINITIONS  “ Racial caste”  “stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom. Jim Crow and slavery were caste systems. So is our current system of mass incarceration” (12).  “creates and maintains racial hierarchy” (13)  Foundation for “racial state” (18)  “ Mass incarceration”  “refers not only to criminal justice system but also the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison” (13)  Works through seemingly COLORBLIND language and policy THE NEW JIM CROW

 DISTINCTION  Racial Bias  Individual  Creates racial discrimination in an otherwise just/equal system  Racial Social Control  Structural and institutional  Maintains racial discrimination as part of the system that upholds racial hierarchy  Role of Mass Incarceration in society

 WAR ON DRUGS

  Why does Alexander begin her first chapter with the history of slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow?  Why does she say that the idea that the “evolution” of racial caste “reflects some kind of linear progress would be misguided?” (22) Free Write Exercise

  Slavery, Race Formation, and Early US History  Reconstruction  Redemption and Jim Crow  Civil Rights Movement Chapter One “The Rebirth of Caste”

  Slavery foundational to US democracy and Constitution  Federalism  Electoral college  3/5 th clause  Race and Racism continued long-after slavery  “Racial division was a consequence, not a precondition, of slavery, but once it was instituted it became detached from its initial function and acquired a social potency all its own” (Wacquant quoted 26) Slavery, Race Formation, and Early US History

  Rebuild South after devastating war and end of slavery and freeing of enormous population of enslaved Black people  Legislation  13 th Amendment, 15 th Amendment, Civil Rights Act, Outlawing of Ku Klux Klan Acts (29)  Freedman’s Bureau  Military protection of federal government  Increased literacy rates  Public Education system  Numerous Black elected officials RECONSTRUCTION

  Period of re-implementing racial hierarchy known as ‘redemption’ by racist Southern whites  Retreat of federal support and protection for freed Black people  ‘Black Codes’ eventually lead to formal, wide- spread, systemic segregation policies known as Jim Crow ‘REDEMPTION’ Late 1870s to 1965

  Segregation enforced through wide-spread terror  “current stereotypes of black men as aggressive, unruly predators can be traced to this period when whites feared that an angry mass of black men might rise up and attack them or rape their women” (28)  “Birth of a Nation” (1915)  Heroizes KKK and vilifies and demeans Black people ‘REDEMPTION’ Late 1870s to 1965

 BLACK ACTIVISM WEB Dubois Sociologist NAACP Wrote “Black Reconstruction in America” Advocated self-defense and northern migration Ida B. Wells-Barnett Journalist NAACP Wrote “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all it’s Phases” Traveled to US north and Europe to talk about lynching Advocated self-defense and northern migration

 CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

 POOR PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT