post 8

The New Jim Crow

Why did I select this book?

I have selected this book because it talks about racism in America.

The author name is Michelle Alexander.

What is the title?

“The new Jim Crow”

The new Press, New York, 2012, published this book in the United State. Distributed by Perseus Distribution.

The New Jim Crow

This book talks about how during the Jim Crow era, African Americans were unable to vote due to laws that were made up to prevent them from doing so. These laws and regulations included literacy test, taxes on the polls, and felon disenfranchisement laws. There was also a grandfather clause that allowed whites who did not fit all of the criteria to vote because their ancestors had been able to do so before them. After the fall of the Jim Crow, most of these means of eliminating blacks from voting disappeared through various new laws and changes to old ones. Some courts however, still have allowed for these laws to be allowed and this causes many difficulties for African Americans to be able to vote, especially since the black population is “disproportionately charges with felonies” (pg. 192).Another aspect that was mentioned in the reading is that due to the fact that blacks are more likely to be prosecuted and placed in prison, there are prisons build in rural white communities. Since this happens, these communities are able to have more representatives (that are white) from their community and less in more urban areas because the black “felons” are sent to the prisons in rural areas.