-
The New Jim Crow
- Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniversary Edition
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $31.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
White Fragility
- Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
- By: Dr. Robin DiAngelo, Michael Eric Dyson - foreword
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people'" (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent meaningful cross-racial dialogue.
-
-
Word salad
- By Eric on 03-10-20
By: Dr. Robin DiAngelo, and others
-
The Color of Law
- A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- By: Richard Rothstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
-
-
Better suited to print than audio
- By ProfGolf on 02-04-18
-
The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
-
-
History demands the official story be corrected
- By David C. on 12-05-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
-
How to Be an Antiracist
- By: Ibram X. Kendi
- Narrated by: Ibram X. Kendi
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes listeners through a widening circle of antiracist ideas - from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilites - that will help listeners see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
-
-
80% of the useful content is in the first 1-2 chapters
- By Anonymous User on 03-09-20
By: Ibram X. Kendi
-
Slavery by Another Name
- The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- By: Douglas A. Blackmon
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an Age of Neoslavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.
-
-
Whew
- By matthew on 11-28-18
-
The Fire Next Time
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Jesse L. Martin
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.
-
-
My Brother Man
- By J.B. on 03-24-18
By: James Baldwin
-
White Fragility
- Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
- By: Dr. Robin DiAngelo, Michael Eric Dyson - foreword
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people'" (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent meaningful cross-racial dialogue.
-
-
Word salad
- By Eric on 03-10-20
By: Dr. Robin DiAngelo, and others
-
The Color of Law
- A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
- By: Richard Rothstein
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
-
-
Better suited to print than audio
- By ProfGolf on 02-04-18
-
The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
-
-
History demands the official story be corrected
- By David C. on 12-05-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
-
How to Be an Antiracist
- By: Ibram X. Kendi
- Narrated by: Ibram X. Kendi
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes listeners through a widening circle of antiracist ideas - from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilites - that will help listeners see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
-
-
80% of the useful content is in the first 1-2 chapters
- By Anonymous User on 03-09-20
By: Ibram X. Kendi
-
Slavery by Another Name
- The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
- By: Douglas A. Blackmon
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an Age of Neoslavery that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II.
-
-
Whew
- By matthew on 11-28-18
-
The Fire Next Time
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Jesse L. Martin
- Length: 2 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.
-
-
My Brother Man
- By J.B. on 03-24-18
By: James Baldwin
-
Between the World and Me
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
-
-
A Heartfelt Self-aware Literary Masterpiece
- By T Spencer on 07-30-15
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
The Color of Money
- Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
- By: Mehrsa Baradaran
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States' total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money pursues the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. The catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty.
-
-
Both a Bridge and a Battle Cry
- By Darwin8u on 09-26-17
By: Mehrsa Baradaran
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
WOW! Thank you....
- By bryan on 05-21-13
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- As Told to Alex Haley
- By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
-
-
Audible Masterpiece
- By Phoenician on 09-10-20
By: Malcolm X, and others
-
Destruction of Black Civilization
- Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.
- By: Chancellor Williams
- Narrated by: Joseph Kent
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Destruction of Black Civilization is revelatory and revolutionary because it offers a new approach to the research, teaching, and study of African history by shifting the main focus from the history of Arabs and Europeans in Africa to the Africans themselves. The book, thus, offers "a history of blacks that is a history of blacks".
-
-
Great & fascinating history & manifesto for change
- By Katie D. on 05-18-20
-
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
- And Other Conversations About Race
- By: Beverly Daniel Tatum
- Narrated by: Beverly Daniel Tatum
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The classic, New York Times best-selling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America. Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to discuss racial issues? This fully revised edition is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand dynamics of race and racial inequality in America.
-
-
A magnificent tool for life.
- By Amazon Customer on 12-01-17
-
A People's History of the United States
- By: Howard Zinn
- Narrated by: Jeff Zinn
- Length: 34 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For much of his life, historian Howard Zinn chronicled American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version taught in schools - with its emphasis on great men in high places - to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of - and in the words of - America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers.
-
-
Why is everything a bummer?
- By B. Austin on 10-17-19
By: Howard Zinn
-
Nice Racism
- How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm
- By: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
- Narrated by: Dr. Robin DiAngelo
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo explained how racism is a system into which all White people are socialized and challenged the belief that racism is a simple matter of good people versus bad. DiAngelo also made a provocative claim: White progressives cause the most daily harm to people of color. In Nice Racism, her follow-up work, she explains how they do so. Drawing on her background as a sociologist and over 25 years working as an anti-racist educator, she picks up where White Fragility left off and moves the conversation forward.
-
-
I just got a honest intelligent session on racism.
- By Cal on 06-29-21
-
Just Mercy (Movie Tie-In Edition)
- A Story of Justice and Redemption
- By: Bryan Stevenson
- Narrated by: Bryan Stevenson
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit.
-
-
Made me question justice, peers and myself.
- By Kristy VL on 04-17-15
By: Bryan Stevenson
-
Usual Cruelty
- The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System
- By: Alec Karakatsanis
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 4 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alec Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings - an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.
-
-
Excellent narrator, life-changing material.
- By Molly on 09-17-20
-
White Trash
- The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
- By: Nancy Isenberg
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early 19th century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.
-
-
Snarky and condescending
- By G.W. on 12-12-17
By: Nancy Isenberg
-
Dark Money
- The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
- By: Jane Mayer
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 16 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why is America living in an age of profound economic inequality? Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again? Why have protections for employees been decimated? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against "big government" led to the rise of a broad-based conservative movement.
-
-
Hated this book!
- By CharlieSeymourJr on 03-19-16
By: Jane Mayer
Publisher's Summary
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 best seller 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, 10 years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a 10th-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.
Featured Article: The Best Black Audiobook Narrators to Listen to Right Now
A skilled performer has the ability to take the written word to new heights, infusing an author’s work with empathy, warmth, and excitement. And representation matters just as much for audio as it does for any visual medium: listeners should feel and hear themselves in art driven by powerful performers and authentic deliveries. We’ve gathered a few of the best Black audiobook narrators in the business and their can't-miss performances.

Editor's Pick
Shedding light on a mass injustice
"I’m known as a bit of a true crime junkie around the office, and I can talk your ear off about how ethically executed content is the future of the genre. But there are bigger fish to fry than just salacious stories about serial killers and cults—like how the US criminal justice system has come to replace segregation as a large-scale tool of racial oppression. Civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander’s extensively researched, groundbreaking work on mass incarceration is a must-listen for anyone interested in the hot topic of criminal justice reform, and the myriad racial and ethical issues surrounding it."
— Kat J., Audible Editor
More from the same
What listeners say about The New Jim Crow
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sam Motes
- 09-24-14
Justice denied
The author builds the case that the mass incarceration of people is no mistake as the system has been made as the next evolution of the old Jim Crow laws in the south. She focuses on a broken war on drugs that have lead to a normalcy in the poor communities of everyone having a criminal back ground and how that background becomes a scarlet letter keeping them out of society and severely limiting their life choices.
70 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jeremy
- 04-28-12
An essential read. A horrifying reality.
The New Jim Crow has been reopening my eyes to the modern system of enslavement that still exists in our drug war culture. It’s a mechanized system of mass incarceration that ingests people and spits out corpses with the brandished label of a “criminal.”
Too often we can create tunnel vision excuses for panoramic systems of injustice because we only analyze a problem based on the top 10% of the iceberg that’s in our face, meanwhile a behemoth lurks beneath the surface unnoticed. Michelle Alexander’s work in this book helps complete the picture. She dives down to get beneath the superficial anecdotes. She relays the history, identifies tipping points along the way and uses broad strokes and individual stories to make the message clear: Slavery may have ended, civil rights may be written into law, but there is a still a purposeful and intentional modern Jim Crow war against communities of color, and African Americans in particular, that can’t be denied.
I strongly suggest if you’re a person of justice or seeking understanding, that you pick up The New Jim Crow.
146 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David A. Jurado
- 06-25-15
An eye opener
This is the first book I read about this subject matter. It is a good introduction to what happened between the civil rights movement in the 1950s and today in the U.S. in how segregation has evolved from a visible to an invisible most dangerous hand that manipulates the politics of encarceration within a legal frame and power control by restricting voting rights and access to public assistance to felons to perpetuate a cycle that locks out "the black and brown undesirable" from the economic and political arena.
I am a younger Latino so I was not aware of half the things I learned here. The book will teach you about the current social struggle of black and brown communities in the U.S.
While I am fortunate to be bilingual and read the book in English, I wish it were available in Spanish to extend awareness to monolingual Latinos in the U.S. who would deeply benefit from this reading.
92 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Rob
- 01-20-17
Repetitive and in need of some supporting data
The thought-provoking thesis of this book is compelling and persuasive. Unfortunately, the author's repetition lengthens the book without adding much value. Moreover, several statements are made repeatedly that seem plausible (for example about unemployment statistics, missing fathers, etc.) but would have benefited from analytic support or data.
Overall, I learned a lot and felt persuaded. I just would have preferred pithier, shorter argument supported by a few more facts and a bit more data.
77 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 06-12-20
REDUNDANT
The content and discussion of the racial underpinnings of the war on drugs and the shameful mass incarceration of people of color is spot on and well documented. My chief criticism is that the author uses the same discussion points chapter after chapter - often repeating wholesale the same phrases or sentences over and over and over again. This would be a great 5 hour listen, but the redundancy is both distracting and frustrating.
31 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Virgil
- 10-06-16
On behalf of humanity, thank you Michelle.
As young human living in the Bay Area, I intuitively knew the deck was stacked against me and all those who looked like me. Thank you Michelle Alexander for Illuminating the very nature of our nations parasitic and perverted system of justice.
To think in my juvenile rebellion against this system I unwittingly played their game. I, like the others in my hood, acted out the roles displayed on TV and the movies eventually landing me in jail. While in jail I realized my juvenile rebellion, subsequent jail time, and fines were feeding the very parasites I was rebelling against. Unbeknownst to me these same parasites are feeding on poor whites as well, and pitting us against each other.
73 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joshua
- 09-17-14
An extremely well constructed argument
I heard Michelle Alexander speaking about this book, and immediately her premise intrigued me. I'd always known that our criminal justice system was biased, but the scope of it was shocking... and thinking about it as a system as detrimental as Jim Crow had never even occurred to me.
Her exploration of the topic in the book is fascinating. I'm halfway through and I'm already amazed, frustrated and enraged. I've always been concerned about social justice and civil rights. I went to law school because of my passion for these issues. But I didn't realize until this book, just how oppressive and racist our supreme court has been. I'd seen all the cases she wrote about, and had been independently outraged at each of them... but I didn't realize how they all worked in concert to leave no judicial remedy to systematic racism.
As a white man, I find that other white men will occasionally make racist comments or jokes around me. I believe that most of these people feel comfortable doing so only because they believe that real institutional racism is a thing of the past, and so that their own bias is benign. "We have a black president, so racism is over". This book is arming me with a fantastic rebuttal to those people.
This book should be read by every employer, landlord, politician, judge, and prosecutor in the US. Actually it should be read be read by every American, period.
I've often wondered how so many white people could have stayed silent and complacent in the face of Jim Crow. Now I realize that I am guilty of doing the same under a regime that is just as harmful.
This book has changed the way I look at the world. Hopefully it will spark serious reform in this country.
82 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bradley Justice
- 07-28-20
Good points, one-sided
I went into this trying to be as open minded as possible and learn from a different perspective. Full discourse: I come from the center-right.
Overall, there are some excellent points that have altered my perspective. The author does herself a great disservice by having large logical gaps at times. Namely, mixing up correlation and causation.
Also, it is very difficult to win over someone with an opposing view with such accusatory language. Even if you are 100% right, very few from the opposing camp are won over with such evocative terms.
The book could have been half as long to come to the same point.
Lastly, I repeatedly thought to myself throughout the book: excellent point—now what is your recommended solution? She states that solutions are not the point to the book. Fair (I guess). But then really, what are the solutions to such a complex problem? There will pros and cons to each potential answer that will have many unintended consequences. Hence, it would seem to be easier to simply point out the problem.
Overall, I felt like my view was altered in the direction of the author. I learned and, I think, grew from it.
17 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tim
- 10-06-14
Shocking, Important and Brilliant
As a white Londoner now living in SoCal I witnessed the ‘war on drugs’ and the resulting boom in prison growth with a combination of disinterest and perhaps mild confusion. Many things confuse me about the US; like why poor working class white people vote against their own best interests so often, and why do people with so much economically in common not get along better. I experienced the phenomena of racism in America at a distant third hand. It did occur to me on occasion that the entire weird situation of race, colorblindness and the massive growth in the prison population could be seen as a massive socio political “Pelican Brief” style conspiracy… it couldn't be could it? Well, if this book is even only a fraction true that is precisely what this is.
This book proposes that what we have seen in the last few decades is exactly that. A conspiracy between right wing political elites to control a section of our society which had formerly been controlled by slavery then by Jim Crow. It’s an excellent example of evil flourishing when good people do nothing. If you are a member of the hard right this book will make your blood boil. It makes an excellent case against your core views and beliefs with extensive and detailed evidence for the case, which will likely send you running back to Fox News to get your reality reinforced. If you lean even slightly liberal or are just a busy middle of the road kind of person who has scratched your head about “those people” getting sent to jail in such large numbers this book will rock your world. Either way you should read this. I defy you not to have at least one “aha!” moment per chapter….this book will haunt you…it may even make you cry.
If you want to attempt to come to terms with what ‘the war on drugs’ unfair policing, mandatory minimums and the impact that so many people getting felony convictions for such minor crimes has had on our society this book will take you by the hand and lead you through the last hundred or so years of our history and open your eyes. The conclusion is as startling as it is depressing, every thinking person in our society should read this book…and perhaps we can then start to solve the problem it so disturbingly describes.
123 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tom Schafer
- 06-28-20
Opinion instead of facts
Very few facts were pointed to that would bolster her opinion. Much of what was attempted to be past on as fact were simply opinions of others eg Dubois.
9 people found this helpful