Slavery and the Jim Crow laws are parts of our country’s history that many Americans, regardless of whether they’re black or white, aren’t too proud of. I know I don’t only speak for myself when I say that learning and reading more about them only makes me wish I could somehow go back and erase the past. Since this is not possible, all we can do is use the past to create a better future. One would think that with the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama, and the success of many African Americans in all areas (Alexander mentions Oprah Winfrey, for example), our great nation is making progress. However, what I got from the introduction and Chapter 1 of this book is that this is definitely not the case.

According to Alexander, mass incarceration is the “New Jim Crow.” It is a legal way for African Americans to have basic freedoms denied and be discriminated against. Prior to reading, I would not have gone so far as to compare this situation to a caste system because the only knowledge I have of the caste system is what I learned about in high school. As far as I know, members of Indian society were born into their caste and could not move up the social ladder; there was no social mobility. In the case of the U.S. today, I’d like to believe that we all have a chance to create success for ourselves and move up in society, and that we do not have some kind of caste system. I am still somewhat skeptical, and am looking forward to reading more. Who knows, maybe she’ll convince me with the next couple of chapters.

I also just wanted to briefly reflect on the fact that she stated her race on the second page of the book (“As an African American woman…”). Did that affect the way you read and understood the book? Do you think you would feel differently about the book and the opinions presented in it if she had not given her race? It certainly changed the way I viewed the book because as I read, I couldn’t help but wonder if the writing was biased. I found it harder to believe some of the things that she wrote because again, I kept thinking that her feelings were further intensified because of the simple fact that she is an African American. I don’t know if she would still be trying to preserve affirmative action and end mass incarceration if she was white, and I guess we never will know.