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More Black Men Now In Prison System Than Were Enslaved Before the Civil War Began

Posted by BananaFamine on April 2, 2011

LA Progressive reports on law professor Michelle Alexander’s stunning claims:

“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, the first of many jarring points she made in a riveting presentation.

Alexander, currently a law professor at Ohio State, had been brought in to discuss her year-old bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Interest ran so high beforehand that the organizers had to move the event to a location that could accommodate the eager attendees. That evening, more than 200 people braved the pouring rain and inevitable traffic jams to crowd into the library’s main room, with dozens more shuffled into an overflow room, and even more latecomers turned away altogether. Alexander and her topic had struck a nerve.

Growing crime rates over the past 30 years don’t explain the skyrocketing numbers of black — and increasingly brown — men caught in America’s prison system, according to Alexander, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun after attending Stanford Law…

For more information, see original article.

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  • Trefus

    Believe it or not, some can even spell correctly.

  • Andrew

    You mean “you’re.”

  • DeepCough

    Okay, you’re technically right: yes, the War On Drugs is pure class warfare, has been since it started, but you’re also wrong about the “racial component” being a red herring, because the War On Drugs didn’t start with the Reagan or Nixon administration, it really started with the 18th Amendment on alcohol, which later evolved into the Marihuana Tax Stamp of 1937. And all those laws against “marihuana” were passed because reefer was associated with jazz musicians, who were predominantly black, and you can find similar justification for criminalizing cocaine as it was used by negro dock workers to keep them working through the night.

  • DeepCough

    Okay, you’re technically right: yes, the War On Drugs is pure class warfare, has been since it started, but you’re also wrong about the “racial component” being a red herring, because the War On Drugs didn’t start with the Reagan or Nixon administration, it really started with the 18th Amendment on alcohol, which later evolved into the Marihuana Tax Stamp of 1937. And all those laws against “marihuana” were passed because reefer was associated with jazz musicians, who were predominantly black, and you can find similar justification for criminalizing cocaine as it was used by negro dock workers to keep them working through the night.

  • Fuckandy

    Fuck you andy, and your stupid smartass attitude.

  • Billary

    Anti white propaganda. Its not about race, racist.

  • Mary Mcg.

    “Instead of War on Poverty, they got a War on Drugs so the police can bother me.” —Tupac Shakur

  • Ystrawman

    So, you were arrested because of profiling etc, etc. But you admit that you beat the system and were guilty of possession. Your comments are full of judgments about what’s just and what’s unjust, when your main beef appears to be that you think drugs should be legal. But you don’t say that. It isn’t an argument to talk about lawyers and trials and searches. 
    You don’t make a very good case that druggies should be able to drive unmolested, work in a job next to others and vote. You sound like a case study for irresponsibility, who has learned nothing from your experience.

  • strawman

    Or the treasury secretary who didn’t pay his taxes gets to spend every two weeks as much of your tax money as Bernie Madoff stole, and gets no prison time at all!

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