Mandated Failures Anonymous 12th Grade

In a society where the purity of fact is venerated largely by the vilification of bias, and subsequently defended by the equation of bias with fiction and fiction with falsehood, the attention of an audience is held only through a taxing balance of entertainment with impartial fact. In considering this precarious situation for authors and speakers, Michelle Alexander’s comprehensive treatise on the current system of mass incarceration in the United States becomes only more impressive. In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander conducts an ominous fanfare for the abominable state of the United States criminal justice system, seamlessly weaving together ethnographic and criminal research literature, anecdote, and social commentary from experts in a variety of fields to reveal a wretched landscape of discrimination spurred by “racial indifference” (203). The text is an overwhelming success, and undoubtedly convinces readers of the dire state of racial bias in the criminal justice system. Yet tragically, the triumphs of Alexander’s argumentation are in contrast with the way in which the text relates its implications to its title, and the realities of mass incarceration to the alias of “The New...