“we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” – Michelle Alexander
Through this quote Michelle Alexander is trying to convey that even though times have changed and the Jim Crow era is long gone, the racial caste system still exists but takes on a different shape. The “New Jim Crow” involves and affects the African American male community of the United States. That is because they make up a majority of the mass incarceration in the country’s criminal justice system. As a result, they are revoked of some of their most basic rights, and without their most basic rights, Michelle argues, the African American male community loses its power in contributing to the nation’s politics and society. Michelle defends her claim by reciting her experiences while working as a lawyer and using evidence such as “people of all colors use and sell illegal drugs at remarkably similar rates’ – to prove her point on the racial discrimination involved in the criminal justice system which in turn disempowers the African American male community.
I agree with your analysis of the quote. I agree with how you said the racial caste system takes on a different shape due to the mass incarceration of the African American community in the country’s criminal justice system. It is true that this system is set up to have African Americans lose their say in the basic principles of democracy like voting.
If your post, you mentioned that the Jim Crow era is long gone. I think that the Jim Crow era still exists in society today, it just appears differently. That is why Michelle Alexander wrote that it has been “redesigned”. Since many basic rights are stripped away from those who are incarcerated, it is similar to the rights Blacks did not have during segregation or the Jim Crow era.