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Ricardo Diaz - Latino/A Mass Incarceration In Relation To The “War On Drugs”, Ricardo Diaz
Ricardo Diaz - Latino/A Mass Incarceration In Relation To The “War On Drugs”, Ricardo Diaz
Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program 2013
Michelle Alexander, in The New Jim Crow, argues that the American legal system is a racial caste system maintained by unequal drug laws, what she terms, “The New Jim Crow” laws. This essay explores the limits of her thesis in relation to Latino/a population in the United States. Specific attention is paid to the Latino/a population in Wisconsin where racial disparities in the penal system are the greatest in America. Analysis of government data suggests that Alexander’s research reproduces the tendency of the American legal system to define race in binary terms: black and white. In effect this leaves …