The New Jim Crow

In this edition of the Bedrosian Book Club Podcast, we’re neck deep in one of the most important issues of the day: mass incarceration. The US has used the War on drugs to create a racial caste system: a successor to the Jim Crow days we thought we left behind. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is one of the most important American books in the last decade. Alexander systematically explores the policy changes from the days of Nixon through the present – exploring how each decision has created and allowed a system which criminalizes blackness, brownness, otherness in way that both creates new racial biases and confirms them by incarcerating millions of young black and brown men (and to a lesser extent, black and brown women). It’s been five years since this book was released. Finally we’re seeing some of us wake up … but the facts remain that US prisons hold an astonishing 25% of the worlds prisoners. Many prisoners are victims of the War on Drugs which, even though drug use stats are consistent regardless of race and class, imprisons disproportionally more black, brown, and poor young men and women. The victims of the War on Drugs are not often the kingpins, rather small time infractions are the backbone of this Prison Industrial Complex. And rather than making the problem better, we’ve only succeeded in making it worse and, in the process, destroyed communities across America. Our discussion focuses on the relevance today and looking forward. Read this book. Listen to our discussion and share your thoughts with us. For links to some of the things we discussed, go to http://bedrosian.usc.edu/blog/podcast/the-new-jim-crow/

Sponsored by the USC Bedrosian Center
http://bedrosian.usc.edu/ 

Recorded at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy
http://priceschool.usc.edu