Cannonball Read 15

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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness by Michelle Alexander

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I feel like I’m the last person in my circle to have not read Michelle Alexander’s landmark work The New Jim Crow. It’s one of those books I’d always meant to get to but never had the chance. I borrowed it from someone in my family over a year ago and since I’m going to see them this weekend, I figured there’s no better excuse than that to finally read it. I’ve heard a lot of arguments adjacent to it in favor of ending the drug war […]

“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.”

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

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I wouldn’t make this your first anti-racism read, but it’s a must-read after you have some basis of the history of Black people and anti-Black racism in America. Two books I read previous to this one were particularly helpful: Stamped from the Beginning, a comprehensive history of anti-Black racism in America (and, by extension, Black history), and Locking Up Our Own, which has an interesting perspective on the War on Drugs, the justice system, and the history of mandatory minimum sentencing. If you just want […]

Going in, I expected truth. Coming out the other side, I think I just found a conspiracy theory.

Dark Alliance by Gary Webb

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I came into this book, after having read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and a few other things that I can’t immediately recall, thinking that the basic premise of this book was an historical fact agreed upon by all knowledgeable people. The CIA helped funnel cocaine into American cities as a way of helping to fund the Contra’s in the 1980s. Whether this was all a concerted effort on the part of the white establishment to intentionally suppress African American agency is an issue […]

A Bit Late to the Party on This One, But Still Relevant

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

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I have had this book on my iPad forever! Seriously, I think I downloaded it before 13th, the Netflix documentary, was even a development idea. I watched 13th last year, and yet it didn’t spur me to pick this up, but after reading The Hate U Give, this felt like a fitting follow up. I remember being very impressed by 13th, but the nice thing about reading this, is that it really gave me the chance to absorb and contemplate everything, rather than being hit […]

Two books so close as to be indistinguishable

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide; and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness by Carol Anderson and Michelle Alexander

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You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell […]



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