It's A Whitewing Conspiracy

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.

Crow theory sampler: The white backlash against Black success in tearing down Jim Crow led to a new form of racial domination: mass Black incarceration. "A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments." The "war on drugs" was central to the new system of control. "Before 1988, one year was the maximum prison sentence for possession of any amount of drug." Bill Clinton was to become the president most responsible for creating "the current racial undercaste."

Oh my, Billy Jeff Clinton, the "first Black president," was most responsible for the current domination of a racial undercaste? Note: The US prison and jail population as of 2008 was 33.44% White, 40.21% Black, 20.29% Hispanic, and 6.06% Other. The reason there is 7% more Blacks than Whites is because many poor white grandmamas will get little Bubba a slicker attorney than the public defender, even if she has to take out a second mortgage on her dilapidated house.

I'm sure The New Jim Crow is an interesting read and I would mentally argue with a great deal of it. Alexander's book, to paraphrase Van Jones' review, "shows that mass incarceration of Black America is the American gulag ... that the prison industry is to the 21st Century what Jim Crow was to the 20th" ... etc.

Yep, jailing colored folks is just the latest way whitey has devised to control Black America. I wonder, does Ms. Alexander know the little details that shape most black convicts? Like feral childhoods without a daddy and/or a sometime mama? Like running the street from the time the kid is old enough to walk? Or thinking the world owe you something just because you're here (sing it Pops ). Carrying a chip on the shoulder that nothing and no one is big enough to knock off. And thinking work, sacrifice, and education are for fools, 'specially white fools.

Does the author know that the baggy pants thugwear began in prison? Not because of any "gay" thing behind bars but simply because inmates were issued poorly fitting pants without belts, and hip hop artists adopted the style to further their tough guy image. Although I fail to see how showing a butt crack enhances one's masculinity. And you think clothes don't make the man? How can ya be a man with your pants on the ground.

Does anyone but the most addicted kool-aid drinkers, and/or blame whitey profiteers, believe that Black incarceration is a grand planned white conspiracy that supposedly somehow ensures white superiority?

Don't you think the prison industry would be just as fat and happy locking up their own race - the trailer trash, the meth heads, and crackerbillies dealing? You really think the white ruling class conspired to jail black men so the dregs of their society won't feel inferior?

There is no "new Jim Crow" or "white backlash" against Black success.

There are only authors, publishers, and brother-hoods who strongly and profitably encourage the black "undercaste" to "sputano nel piatto che mangiano da," or more bluntly, to shit where they eat. And then blame someone else for the mess on their plate.