Michelle Alexander, the author of the ground-breaking book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness," will lead a public forum 6pm, February 23, Park Hill United Methodist Church, 5209 Montview Blvd.
The event is free and open to the public.
Sponsored by the Veterans of Hope, the Iliff School of Theology, the ACLU of Colorado and others.
From Publishers Weekly
Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama's political success and Oprah Winfrey's financial success,legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that [w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control (More African Americans are under correctional control today... than were enslaved in 1850). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the war on drugs. She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits.
Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice:
most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarceration—but her carefully researched, deeply engaging, and
thoroughly readable book should change that.
