The New Jim Crow And The Article On The Myth Os Mass...

After reading both The New Jim Crow and the article on the myth os mass incarceration, I was surprised to see how different they really were. The book is suggesting that mass incarceration is in fact the new Jim Crow, while the very title of the article infers that mass incarceration is a â€Å"myth† and is something that is not actually happening. That being said, I believe there are many ways in which Michelle Alexander would respond to this article in order to defend the topic of mass incarceration, and the fact that it is African-Americans in particular who are suffering from these disparities. To begin, I would like to point out a statement at the very beginning of the article regarding the myth of mass incarceration: â€Å"Violent crime, not drugs, has driven imprisonment. And drug offenses usually are for dealing, not using† (Latzer). While this may be what the statistics show, I believe that Alexander would argue that this does not necessarily disprove that mass incarceration is not an issue in the United States. I think she would show that the is sue of mass incarceration is not explicitly based upon the drug war alone. She would probably argue something along the lines of ‘who was actually being accused of, and charged for, these violent crimes?’. She would probably conclude that it would, more often than not, be people from the colored populations who are being placed in prison for these violent crimes, at least far more frequently than those from the white