The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Paperback)
March 2010 Indie Next List
“In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander tirelessly researches both the legal history of America's Jim Crow past and the current legal policies that contribute to the mass incarceration of black people. The text adds significantly to scholarship that contextualizes rates of incarceration among blacks and critiques of social and economic inequality.”
— Bruce Smith, Colorado State University Bookstore, Fort Collins, CO
Staff Reviews
What an eye-opening book! Alexander has written a powerful book that makes the undeniable connections between race, "race-blind" legislation and criminal enforcement, and the rise in mass incarceration. She argues that post-Jim Crow legislation and enforcement pattern led to a different type of racial caste system. This one is not written in black & white, like Jim Crow, but the effects are just the same - the isolation and oppression of minorities. Powerful, moving argument delivered with honesty. -- Wintaye's Pick
A MUST READ! "The New Jim Crow" is essential reading for US History, racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, and any real understanding of our country. Learn the critical history of how slavery morphed into segregation, which morphed into mass incarceration. If we have any hope of building racial equity in the US, we must face the reality Michelle Alexander reveals in this text.
— From AmberNamed one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly' Slate' Chronicle of Higher Education' Literary Hub, Book Riot' and Zora
A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--one of the most influential books of the past 20 years, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author
It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system.
--Adam Shatz, London Review of Books
Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S.
Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.