Closing Thoughts

Unfortunately my book, The New Jim Crow, has come to an end. My last assigned section was to read from page 221 until the final page on 261. Throughout this book, I had learned a tremendous amount, not only on mass incarceration but perspectives that differ from mine. Both incredibly important to see what is going on in the real world. While at some points in this book had me convinced, other times I found myself unable to agree with Alexanders' claims that the justice system is racist. There was a large amount of bias, which in some cases were just simply through personal experience, but other times I found bias in her statistics. I can not one hundred percent agree with Alexanders' claim that the justice system is racist due to the misleading nature to some of her information. This raises a question as to if the justice system is racist, or if people are just misinformed.

If you had not read my previous blog post about relevance, I included a survey from page 106.  In the survey people were asked to close their eyes and picture a drug user. Alexander reports that ninety-five percent of the contestants answered that they pictured an African American drug user, while only five percent answered a different ethnic group.  She states the year in which the survey was conducted, being 1995, and at that time only fifteen percent of drug related crimes were from African Americans. My first thought when reading that statistic was how information would differ in a polar way if the survey was taken in our town. That is when I realized that crucial information was missing. She fails to inform us where this survey was taken and who (what age group) was answering the question. In this case, those who do not realize this error will be outraged by the overwhelming statistic, but those who pick up on the lack of precision will see this to work against her favor. I conducted a survey in our town in 2020 to high school students. 70% of people answered with white being the race of their imagined drug user and only 10% answered African American. As you can see, it is an enormous difference, and proves it really does matter where information is coming from in order for people to be informed correctly.

On page 216 Alexander states, 'As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime.... Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste.' While it is important to note that most Americans will violate drug crimes in their lifetime, it is equally important to note what kind of drug was used during the violation. Looking deeper into this, I found that crack cocaine in the crystal form to be the drug of choice for 41% of blacks while crystalized crack cocaine was only the drug of choice for 26% of whites (Rosenberg). So while Alexander does say most people do try drugs, a larger amount of African Americans choose a substance with a higher likely hood of jail time than any other race. This could have a contributing factor of where people live, what friends are doing, or what is available around you. Unfortunately, it makes sense that many African Americans are serving time for a substance that is considered a second degree felony offense.

This brings me to my next point; jail time due to drug type. During class, we visited a scenario in which an African American was incarcerated for the possession of crack cocaine as a caucasian was incarcerated for the possession of powdered cocaine. Although these drugs seem to be similar, it turns out they hold a different sentence due to the form in which it is used. It turned out that the African American was in possession of the crack form and the caucasian was in possession of the powder. In certain context, it would seem to be a racist flaw in the judicial system, but that is not the case The offender was not prosecuted by race, but by the substance they were in possession of. It is important to be informed of the differences between these cases in order to not be misguided. 'THE DRUG WAR IS THE NEW JIM CROW (Alexander 3)' refers to the Jim Crow Laws being the laws on drug crimes to be unfairly prosecuted. 

Overall this book was filled with a lot of great information. Some I could stand by while others I could not. I am very happy knowing I am more educated on a topic I was not entirely familiar with so I am glad this came to be an assignment. Alexander does an excellent job of mixing her own experiences with statistics as she argued her point to us. As for the justice system, I think it is more so the misinterpretation and/or lack of information people have to label it racist. Hopefully my post argues that efficiently enough for you to understand why I think it is more so a misrepresentation of why some people are receiving higher sentences than others. 

Citations: 

Rosenberg, Alana, et al. “Comparing Black and White Drug Offenders: Implications for Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice and Reentry Policy and Programming.” Journal of Drug Issues, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2017, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614457/.