Most people think the War on Drugs was launched as a response to the crack cocaine crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, but Reagan actually announced it before crack became a media issue. The formerly incarcerated are “relegated to a racially segregated and subordinated existence” (4). After she left though, she was convinced it was more than that. She did not see a new racial caste system, and when she started her job at the ACLU she recognized that there was racial bias in the criminal justice system but that was the extent of it. She was elated with Obama’s election and saw Jim Crow as something of the past. They are subject to discrimination in many ways – housing, employment, voting, food stamps, jury service – which brings us to a situation very much like the old Jim Crow.Īlexander explains how she came to write this book. America saw disenfranchising black men as essential to the original union today many are still not able to vote because of their status as a felon. Cotton cannot vote either because he has been disenfranchised as a felon. Jarvis Cotton’s great-grandfather, grandfather, and father could not vote due to Klan violence and poll taxes.

The crow 1 and 2