Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole. –From ‘The New Jim Crow’.

This from the cover of former Stanford Law School Associate Professor, Michelle Alexander’s new book, “The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it.  In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt.  So we don’t.  Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.  To it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans.  Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination–employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service–are suddenly legal.  As a criminal you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.  We have not ended racial caste in America.  we have merely redesigned it.

RestoreFairness has a more in depth review of the book.  The organization is working to restore due process and fairness to our immigration system.

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