Anarchist & Radical Book Club discussion

Our next group read is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

This is a fairly recent book so I doubt we'll find online copies, but I did find extra info for those reading and some pretty complete summaries for those without access to the book itself:

- reviews that discuss the content and thesis: Mother Jones || New York Times || NPR (audio & text)
- Bringing Down the New Jim Crow, a 3 part radio documentary
- Excerpt from the introduction

Discuss, ask, question, debate!

There's a podcast of the book at Another World is Possible (scroll down).

The friend of mine who handed me his copy did so along with this quote:
When the system of mass incarceration collapses (and if history is any guide, it will), historians will undoubtedly look back and marvel that such an extraordinarily comprehensive system of racialized social control existed in the United States. How fascinating, they will likely say, that a drug war was waged almost exclusively against poor people of color-- people already trapped in ghettos that lacked jobs and decent schools. They were rounded up by the millions, packed away in prisons, and when released, they were stigmatized for life, denied the right to vote, and ushered into a world of discrimination. Legally barred from employment, housing, and welfare benefits-- and saddled with thousands of dollars of debt-- these people were shamed and condemned for failing to hold together their families. They were chastised for succumbing to depression and anger, and blamed for landing back in prison. Historians will likely wonder how we could describe the new caste system as a system of crime control, when it is difficult to imagine a system better designed to create--rather than prevent-- crime.

As a society, our decision to heap shame and contempt upon those who struggle and fail in a system designed to keep them locked up and locked out says far more about ourselves than it does about them.

Is anyone else reading this? I'm still early on, but I'll be devoting myself to it when I finish the book I'm currently on. I'd love to discuss.

I read it quite some time ago, but it is an important book and I'd enjoy discussing it. The communities from which these prisoners come don't see them as convicts and criminals, but as sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, neighbors and friends--as human beings like ourselves. Unless those more privileged can also recognize their humanity, the prison-industrial complex will continue to replace slavery and Jim Crow with an equally cruel but more efficient system of subjugation.

I ordered this from the library ages ago and it's still not arrived. That's a combination of either the popularity of the book or the run-down nature of the libraries.

I read and liked this book in 2010, before it was cool :)

Finally landed yesterday and presently 50 pages in...

She talks about succumbing to the reality of high incarcerations, the explosion of prison numbers since the 80's, that the US imprisons more than repressive regimes (including apartheid South Africa!) and that no other country imprisons more of its ethnic minorities.

She then traces the history of slavery and Jim Crow in a context of a racial casting, draws a little from white privilege theory and talks about Bacons Rebllion and the Populist Part as early multi racial alliances that threatened the power structure, and led to a further supremacist backlash. Within this cycle she argues that prevailing supremacy simply finds new and sophisticated ways to assert itself to the point where it now isn't visible through the same language and restoring of the past.

"Barred by law from invoking race explicitly, those committed to racial hierarchy were forced to search for new means of achieving their goals according to the new rules of American democracy."

I hadn't really considered that the Civil Rights Movement was an organisation moving into the arena of black and white alliances based on shred interests, I also think she does a good job of showing that there is set of rigid beliefs in the background that simply have a way of getting the results they require. The prevailing problem that she needs to address is the role of black elites in this. At present she talks about Obama, but she needs to sketch out their role within this, and state what cultural views are at stake that keep getting reassertion to the detriment of blacks.

After finishing this, really impressed about the insights on prison industrial complex, prison rights, structural racism against blacks etc. Covers also a good critique of the legal and moralistic nature of the civil rights movement. Did think it could have said more about racism as a tangible cultural phenomenon (ie where does it come from? how do we challenge it?) and also worked this into an understanding on neoliberalism and globalisation. Also, migrant issues?

Anyone interested in reading other similar books? White privilege theory, bell hooks, anti-colonailist theory, prison abolition?

Finished on the bus yesterday. Loved it. I wouldn't say it was brand new information, but so artfully organized and untangled: a comprehensive systemic analysis. I agree I would have liked more about immigration, and how the whole PIC feeds the larger neoliberal imperialist project, but I don't know if that would have diluted the play-by-play of this book. I feel like this plus the Shock Doctrine or this plus some other global-focused but similarly "deconstructing a complex system" would be a good pairing.

Christian Parenti, for what it's worth, made his start writing about the US PIC with Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis and recently branched out into capitalism and climate change with Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, which also focuses a chapter on militarized borders and climate refugees. He's not as thorough a documenter as Michelle Alexander but perhaps an easier, les intimidating read because of it.

I'm going to start regularly writing a penpal in prison (I'm always sending the one-offs to political prisoners but this book really drove home the need to connect, care, reach out), and looking into other local projects. I haven't felt quite so driven to concrete action from a book in a long time. This made connections between theory and forms of activism that I've been grasping for, especially the chapter on using reform work as a method of movement building.

I'd love to keep reading on this and related themes. I found some recommendation lists here and here.