It was a war – not on drugs – but on black people. In quiet yet forceful writing Alexander, a legal scholar, outlines how the Reagan government exploited 1980s hysteria over crack cocaine to demonise the black population so that “black” and “crime” became interchangeable. A decade ago in Chicago, for instance, 55% of the adult black male population had a felony record. The law is supposedly colour-blind but narratives around crimes are framed according to those deemed worthy of pity If Jim Crow was an effective means of controlling the black population, then modern mass incarceration, Alexander argues, is its successor. Under the laws, black people also, increasingly, found themselves “relegated to convict leasing camps that were, in many ways, worse than slavery”. In the years following the civil war southern legislators designed “ Jim Crow” laws to thwart the newly emancipated black population, notably curbing voting rights.
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