New Jim Crow Exam

Please select ONE question from EACH set below (total of 3 questions) and answer those questions in a separate word document. Please stay close to the text and cite the text as appropriate in your responses. Responses for each question should be around 500 words. Please upload the document here before our next class on 3/20.

Set One:

1. What role do mandatory minimum sentences play in the new Jim Crow?

2 .Why does Alexander say that prison sentences are only a small part of the problem? What’s the rest of the problem with the new Jim Crow?

3. What is the role of bureaucratic discretion in the new Jim Crow? Consider both the tremendous discretion of police officers and prosecutors and the relative lack of discretion of judges. Does this suggest anything about what fairer laws might look like?

Set Two:

1. What does Alexander mean when (quoting Reva Siegel) she calls slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration “preservation through transformation”? (p. 21)

2. Consider Alexander’s argument about the origin of the War on Drugs, and tell an analogous story about the origins of the War on Terror. Is the analogy, or are limits to the analogy, revealing? Is this line of analysis fruitful at all?

3. Was the new Jim Crow inevitable? What would have had to be different to have prevented it?

Set Three:

1. Why has there been so little challenge to the new Jim Crow?

2. Why does Alexander say that the Jena 6 struggle could not have given rise to a broader civil rights struggle? Following this logic, what might a campaign that could spark such struggle look like? If it had focal individuals (like the six teenagers in Jena), what kind of people in what kind of circumstances might they be?

3. What is Alexander’s critique of affirmative action? Is this just a critique of the relatively exclusive focus of civil rights organization on affirmative action, or is it a critique of affirmative action programs themselves? Do you agree with her critique?