Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow

There are more African Americans under correctional control today--in prison or jail, on probation or parole--than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste, not class, caste--a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits--much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.--Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow