The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Alexander discusses the specific ways that race factors into the architecture of the criminal justice system. She cites a series of statistics that reveal the stunning racial disparities of mass incarceration. In seven states, African Americans comprise 80% to 90% of individuals who serve time in prison on drug charges. Across 15 states, the rate at which Black Americans are sent to prison is anywhere between 20 and 57 times that of whites. Granted, whites are also sent to prison at higher rates since the drug war began; their incarceration rate was eight times higher in 2000 than in 1983. Yet in that same period, Latinx incarceration rates rose by a factor of 22, and rates among African Americans rose by a factor of 26. In 2006, one in 14 Black men were in prison, while only one in 106 white men were.

How can a system devoid of explicit racial discrimination result in such racially imbalanced outcomes? To Alexander, the only explanation that doesn’t account for underlying biases in the system would be that Black men are simply more criminal. Yet this conclusion is as verifiably false as it is racist. Particularly when it comes to the use and sale of drugs, the criminal behavior of white and Black Americans is remarkably similar.