The New Jim Crow

Civil rights litigator and legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that the United States did not end racial caste but redesigned it through mass incarceration. She traces how the war on drugs, which she says the Reagan administration escalated in 1982, became the main tool of a criminal justice system that formally claims to be colorblind while targeting black men. Once people are labeled felons, she shows, discrimination in housing, jobs, voting, jury service and public benefits becomes legal. One case she uses is Jarvious Cotton, whose ancestors were kept from voting by slavery, the Klan and poll taxes, and who cannot vote today because of his felony record. A later edition adds a preface on the Trump presidency and immigration.

Mark Zuckerberg said that after reading it he was convinced that jailing more people will not produce a just society and that the current system is not working.