“[The young black males are] shuttled into prisons, branded as criminals and felons, and then when they’re released, they’re relegated to a permanent second-class status, stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement — like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to be free of legal discrimination and employment, and access to education and public benefits. Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again, once you’ve been branded a felon.”
—

In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, legal scholar Michelle Alexander writes that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of black Americans in the war on drugs. (via nprfreshair)

Thanks to Juan Crow, you don’t even need to go to jail if you’re Hispanic/ Latin@/ Chican@ to experience discrimination on par with that of the Jim Crow era. Also I’d be interested to read what ending the drug war (completely walking away akin to Ron Paul’s idea) does to countries like El Salvador (which receives $200 million from the USA to ameliorate the problems caused by gangs.) Confused? Watch this Al Jazeera video about life in San Salvador. 

Related: Alabama’s racist new immigration law: From Jim Crow to Juan Crow

(via nprfreshair)

Jan. 16 2012
Via NPR
#jim crow #michelle alexander #race #politics #prison
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