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Post #5 - Argument Analysis, Final Thoughts

By Anonymous -
Nick Miller  Ms. LaClair  The New Jim Crow  Final Post (#5) At this point, I have now finished reading The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness , by Michelle Alexander. Having now read the entire book and consequently gained a new understanding of Alexander's points and overall argument, I'm going to structure this post as a continued analysis and qualification of her argument.  However, I'm also going to frame the post in the context of the question, "what’s next?" Throughout the book, a central claim has been the general idea that there is a system of control in place that impacts African Americans in all walks of life - but especially in the criminal justice system - and therefore, we need a grassroots transformation of our institutions to address the imbalances.   My response to the causes of present imbalances:   Put shortly, I disagree with the first part of Alexander's claim, but I agree with the secon...
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By Anonymous -
Nick Miller  Post #4  Argument Analysis  The New Jim Crow  Nick M Post 4  Argument Analysis The New Jim Crow  In this section of The New Jim Crow , author Michelle Alexander discusses some new issues but also reiterates some of her previous talking points. Unsurprisingly, then, there were some significant points of contention between her views and my own. I want to focus on one of those for this post.   If Alexander's assertions about a racist drug war, discrimination in drug sentencing, and other indicators of "racism" in our criminal justice system persist today, it is logical that current statistics would demonstrate continuity with the claims she made about the early 2000s, for example.   On page 201, Alexander claims that the Drug War continues to be racist because it is "Waged in African American and minority communities." However, especially of late, this is no longer true. In 1990, the Opioid epidemic...
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Argument and Relevance

By Anonymous -
Nick M Blog Post #3 Arguments and Current Events PART ONE In this section of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,  I felt that Alexander depended heavily on logical reasoning and specific or statistical information, continuing a trend that I appreciated from the previous section of the book. I know that I have been critical of Alexander's arguments in the past, so for this post I have chosen to analyze and focus on common ground where she and I agree.  The first piece begins at the very start of the section, where Alexander begins to discuss the intrinsic problems with our criminal justice system. She begins by providing evidence that black men are severely disadvantaged when leaving prison, and provides a specific citation which states that "Black men convicted of felonies are the least likely to receive job offers of any demographic group, and suburban employers are the most unwilling to hire them" (Alexander 151). To me, this s...
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Rhetorical Strategies and Argument Analysis

By Anonymous -
Nick Miller POST #2 Rhetorical Strategies and Argument Analysis Michelle Alexander's argument in The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is relatively simple; racial discrimination throughout America's criminal justice system is rampant, and the system is built to target African Americans to maintain the racial caste system that was pervasive before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Overall, I thought that Alexander did much better concerning her inclusion of specific evidence to support her arguments in this section of the book. I may not have agreed with everything she wrote, which I will get to later in this post. As someone who is generally skeptical of the notion that America's criminal justice system is racist, though, I appreciated Alexander's inclusion of tangible statements that I could break down and analyze.   Concerning Alexander's rhetorical strategies, I felt that this broadened the scope of people she co...
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