New Jim Crow Drugs

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America is a nation who basis principles includes freedom, liberty, and equality to its citizens. However through the history of American and this present time, there are issues of racism, discrimination, inequality, and unjustness that are continually inflicted on American citizens, particular people who are of colored. In the novel “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, author Michelle Alexander argues that the use system use to control and depressed people of color in the Jim Crow era has been replaced by the American’s prison legal system. Alexander claims that the American government used the political tactics of the War on Drugs as grounds to go after people of color and poor communities. Because of the …show more content…
Most people convict of drugs are non violent. The War on Drugs was really a political plot set up by the Regan’s administration to win over white voters. When Republican President Ronald Regan announced the War on Drugs in the early eighties, there was no public concern on the issue. What is more the usage and selling of dangerous drugs was low. Still, the Regan’s administration used his staff to falsely bring public attention of dangerous drugs inside the United States. The drug in focused was crack cocaine. Even though the majority of people using crack cocaine were white, the news media aired images of black males in the ghettos being arrested for selling and using the drug. The media also talked about black female’s prostitutes, black mothers and their new born babies addicted to crack. Crack cocaine was seen as the poor black people’s drug. Suddenly, black males in poor neighborhoods started to be viewed as the ideal drug dealer and the arrested rate of black male rose (Alexander, …show more content…
Any business or organization can legally use a person’s felony record as excuses to discriminate against that person. This means that person can be denied employment, work licensee, renting an apartment and government benefits and housing. Every time a person has to tell a decision maker or check on an application that they have been convicted of a felon, they are higher at risk of being treated differently. What is more, convicts are giving strict rules that they must complete after prison and if they want to avoid prison such as find a job, meeting their probation officer, staying off of drugs, paying child support, and court cost. Nonetheless, because of legal discrimination many people cannot complete the requirements and some will develop depression, commit or turn back to crime and land right back in prison (Alexander,
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