The New Jim Crow reading was incredibly interesting and enlightening. It also calls for a drastic perspective change that is becoming increasingly pertinent to our society. However, many American’s are too trusting in the legal system since it was, after all, designed to protect us, right? This is the story the media has portrayed for far too many decades, and the American public has fallen for the ploy over and over again. However, what if what is designed to protect us IS obviously segmenting and destroying huge percentages of our population. As is the case with the African American male population in large cities. They are becoming quick targets for police searches (with the implementation of stop and frisk) and are paying the consequences after release from the legal system by being completely marginalized from many pivotal rights as an American citizen. So I completely agree with the conjecture that the legal system in this country is a newer and far more well hidden form of slavery. This fact is disturbing, yet the ignorance to the fact is even more disturbing. It’s time more articles and books come out addressing this fact.
Jim Crow Response
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While a new form of slavery isn’t exactly what I thought while reading this , I did notice a definite sense of segregation and racism from the statistics of who the police “stopped and frisked” most often. Just to play the devil’s advocate here, police were technically allowed to stop and frisk people of all racial backgrounds, so this isn’t AS bad as the Jim Crow laws of way back when. While the effects of past racial segregation are still clearly visible today, I still wouldn’t say that today’s laws are actively trying to keep people impoverished and uneducated, which could be considered the modern day equivalent of a slave due to the living conditions of that class of people, but instead are actively trying to help alleviate past effects of slavery on generations today. While positively discrimination bases on race, like affirmative action laws, is just as bad as negatively discriminating, to some extent, hopefully the government will soon be able to disregard race altogether as soon as the damage from previous generations of discrimination has been erased. Or maybe I’m just one of the people have successfully been fooled by the government and media… That’s also very possible.