Law and Race Commons^™

The Influence Of Past Racism On Criminal Injustice: A Review Of The New Jim Crow And The Condemnation Of Blackness, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

There are books that, on their own, are informative and moving. But, oftentimes, reading books together—one right after the other—compounds each works’ transformative power. Michelle Alexander’s much-needed report (calling it simply a book hardly does it justice), The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, can certainly stand on its own as an important statement about the current use of mass incarceration to maintain a racial caste system in the United States. The same strength can be found in The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, Khalil Gibran …