#BookReview: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Fundamentally Flawed, But With Some Good Points And Multitudinous Evidence. Overall, Alexander’s work has some good points – mostly when it concerns examining the United States’ mass incarceration system as a whole. Its fundamental fatal flaw however its its central tenet- that this mass incarceration system is a system of *racial*, rather than class, control. But at least Alexander documents her case well, even when only citing evidence from a particular strain of thought that happens to agree with her own. Worth reading – highly recommended even – for the examination of the mass incarceration system and its effects as a whole , but severely hampered in its attempts to portray the system as “just another way to keep the black man down”. In that central tenet, it does its greatest disservice to showing the full monstrosity that is the US mass incarceration system.

This review of The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander was originally published on February 18, 2018.