A conversation with Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander discusses her groundbreaking book with the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance project and explains the importance of today’s young people learning about racial bias in the criminal justice system.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is widely regarded as one of the most important books of the decade addressing the subject of racial justice.
The SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance project recently had a conversation with the author, Michelle Alexander, about mass incarceration in America and how teachers can address this difficult topic in their classrooms.
In the book, Alexander traces racial bias in today’s criminal justice system to a “law-and-order” and “get-tough” movement that originated with former segregationists in the wake of the civil rights movement.
Today, America has both the largest prisoner population and highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world, with seven times the number of prisoners in 1972. The National Academy of Sciences recently concluded that this expansion of the prisoner population is unprecedented in world history.
Teaching Tolerance will release a teacher’s guide based on excerpts from The New Jim Crow this fall.
Today’s students, Alexander says, “have the power to change the system. It’s easy to imagine that a system like mass incarceration can’t be dismantled. The same was said about slavery, the same was said about Jim Crow. And yet a powerful movement, led in large part by courageous, young people who were unwilling to accept the status quo, who were bold and brave and who were truth-tellers, helped to bring that Jim Crow system to its knees.”
Alexander’s insights are not just for teachers and students. They’re for everyone concerned about justice and equality.
And register here for an online webcast with Alexander at 7 p.m. (Eastern) Tuesday, Sept. 23.
