The New Jim Crow: More Blacks in Correctional System Now Than Were Enslaved in 1850

Tom Dispatch:

From Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste — a larger percentage of blacks can’t vote today under felon disenfranchisement than the year the 15th Amendment passed; more black children were raised in two-parent homes during slavery than today.

And:

If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a 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 were during the Jim Crow era.

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