Here we go again. I had so much fun doing the last chapter-by-chapter review on How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi that I am doing another one. Everything was true about that last statement except for the ‘fun’ part. But it is important to keep learning about this relatively new movement towards a fixed economy and power consolidation that disguises itself under the name of racial justice and/or social justice. People who study these ideas honestly quickly find out it has nothing to do with those things, but unfortunately, the people who invest their time studying these things do not tend to be honest. Who knows, maybe I am wrong with this book.

The new subject of my chapter-by-chapter review, per the demand as a result of a community poll, is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. I will admit, I did not know much about this book before I had a request to review it. I have heard of it before, but never really thought much of it, which is why books like this have so much power. It was a New York Times bestseller in 2010, has been extremely influential in law and academia, but has not received as much public attention as books like How To Be An Antiracist and White Fragility. I think this works to the author’s advantage in some ways. She can now act as source material for the actual movement while people like Kendi and DiAngelo take the public scrutiny. And by doing the little bit of reading I have done so far into this book, it is very clear that Michelle Alexander has a lot more horsepower underneath the hood – if you know what I mean.

Michelle Alexander graduated from Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University before clerking for a US Supreme Court Justice. She later taught at Stanford Law, but not before she served as director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California. I think it is important to point all of this out because, unlike many race hustler and social justice warrior (SJW) types, she has a degree in law and has applied that degree very successfully. She is what we could consider dangerous – in the non-violent sense – because she has the credentials and mental ability to push very influential ideas, at least more so than the people with the [enter whatever useless adjective here] studies/theory degree. Now, I am not saying she should not be allowed to push her own ideas or that all her ideas are bad. I found some common ground on just reading the new preface of the 10th Anniversary Edition of the book where she looks back on what changed since first publishing the book. And I have not read the entire book yet, so maybe this is not going to be a complete dumpster fire like the last book I reviewed. I try my best to keep an open mind, but if there is any surface level indication that I may not enjoy or like this book, it would be that – according to her own self-published bio – she won and was supported by the Soros Justice Fellowship while writing this book. Yes, the same George Soros of the Open Society Foundation advocating for a world government who has the power to fix everyone’s lives.

My approach to this chapter-by-chapter review might be a little different than the last one. This book seems to be denser and lengthier than Kendi’s book, but it also only has 6 chapters – 7 if you include the Introduction. In addition to the main chapters, there are 2 prefaces and a forward, which I will cover here. But because of the length of each chapter, I may have to break each review down into multiple parts per chapter. If you are familiar with my previous chapter-by-chapter reviews, I try to give several important direct quotes from each chapter and give my own commentary so the reader can fully understand the central points of each chapter. I will breakdown each chapter when necessary so you all still get a good idea of the full content of the book.

So, like I said in the previous paragraph, I am going to cover the prefaces and forward right now. The forward, written by Cornel West, was short and did not have much for content. The original preface to the book also did not have much content, but the new preface written for the 10th Anniversary Edition of the book was long and had a ton of content. It was a reflection of the success of the book since its original release and how some of the ideas in the book changed. I will start with my first quote from the book here.

“I wanted Barack Obama to win. And I feared it. I worried that, if a black man were elected president of the United States, our nation would sink further into denial, and no one would listen to the message that I felt desperate to convey: We are not free of our racial history. To the contrary, a new caste system has been born again in America, a system of mass incarceration unlike anything the world has ever seen. We are not saved. I was right to worry.”

I am going to say this without knowing Alexander’s intentions – because I have not gotten to the meat of the book yet – but this is a common theme for the Critical Race Theory (CRT) types: Advocate for progress until that progress is attained, and then turnaround and claim that progress is going to hurt the overall cause. The secret about a lot of advocacy groups is they are not longer needed when what they claim to advocate for is accomplished, especially for a cause as lucrative as social justice. This gives them an incentive to claim more injustices are being instigated no matter how far justice has progressed. Another important detail in this quote that builds the main thesis for the book – per Michelle Alexander and Cornel West’s own words – the new caste system in America is what has replaced Jim Crow.

For those of you who do not know what a caste system is, it is a social class hierarchy developed in India thousands of years ago. This hierarchy was tiered into 5 main groups based on occupation and duty. These groups only allowed marriage and social interaction within each group, making social mobility nearly impossible. The caste system was not always enshrined in law but was often enforced culturally through most of India’s history. Alexander and West imply – or really, explicitly call out – racial discrimination moved for being enshrined in law during the time of Jim Crow to being mandated culturally through systemic discrimination.

“The safest communities are not the ones with the most police, prisons, or electronic monitors, but the ones with quality schools, health care, housing, plentiful jobs, and strong social networks that allow families not merely to survive, but to thrive.”

There is nothing incorrect about this statement. Alexander and I agree here, but one of us is using this as a starting condition, and the other uses it as an end condition. Alexander, using the starting condition, claims we must pump money, health care, housing, jobs, and social programs into crime ridden or poor communities via government. She believes this will end in a decrease in crime and a safer community. There are two problems with this: (1) a larger and more powerful government is the solution to the problem, and (2) more money and resources will result in permanent behavioral change. The first problem is something that will turn off the more conservative leaning people who do not want to see government grow because trading in freedom for government sponsored security does not end well for the governed. And the second problem implies material conditions are a stronger influence on behavior than something like culture, but then you have to explain why people who win the lottery are more likely to file for bankruptcy within 3-5 years than the average American (according to CNBC). It is because culture is a stronger influence on behavior than money. If you use the quote above as the end condition, as I do, you must ask yourself “what must I do to get there?” A safe community with a healthy culture will lead to a prosperous community. Private business will want to invest in a growing community instead of the government injecting money into it, building a reliance on the government. Health care, housing, jobs, and private social programs will come after private business and individuals want to invest. Viewing this quote as a starting condition is a power-hungry politician’s dream, and viewing it as an end condition is the American dream.

“White people are generally allowed to have problems, and they’ve historically been granted the power to define and respond to them. But people of color – in this “land of the free” forged through slavery and genocide – are regularly viewed and treated as the problem.”

This is the final quote I will give because this introduction to the book has been long enough. I highlight this quote because this is the kind of nonsense that makes an accomplished lawyer from Stanford look like the typical ignorant leftist you can find at your local grocery co-op – or Whole Foods for the more privileged leftists. We all have problems, and the ability to define and respond to those problems is not dictated by anyone but you. You might be viewed and treated as the problem if you show no sign of solving or attempting to solve your own problems. This is like when I hear people say, “I always date bad people” or “I always end up in toxic relationships.” That is because that person is the problem, and they need to solve it. In cases where this is not true is when discrimination is built into the system, like Jim Crow, but that is not what we have now – which is why Alexander refers to it as the ‘new’ Jim Crow. This does not mean there are not circumstances outside of your control, but you are accountable for your own success. And I am willing to grant Alexander the position that she is trying to break down barriers of discrimination to allow for individual flourishing, but then she drops the dishonest “land of the free forged by slavery and genocide” line. America has some regrettable parts in its history, something shared by all nations, but that does not mean it was forged by those parts of history. America was forged by imperfect people with brilliant ideas and strong faith. Many of them fell way short of the standards and vision they put forth, but it is not about where you are, it is about where you are going.

America has always trended toward freedom. This does not mean there has not been extreme failures along the way, and it does not mean we should stop improving. What it does mean is we should keep the trend going, not abandon ship and condemn everyone who came before us. Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University, was an imperfect man who said extremely racist things about Chinese immigrants while serving as Governor of California, yet he still built the university that gave Alexander her top-tier education, law degree, and job. Keep confidence in the founding principles of individual liberty, self-government, strong faith, and rights granted by God – not government. Abandoning these things for a false sense of justice is not going to create a better world.

If you made it this far into my introduction of this new series of reviews, I want to thank you for coming along with me on this exercise in mental fortitude. Maybe I am giving myself too much credit, but these reviews take a lot. A lot of time. A lot of energy. A lot of alcohol. A lot of long days fully immersing myself into material that pulls me away from reality, and stressful nights pulling myself back to reality. I do it all in the hopes of saving you time, energy, liver failure, and time spent in leftist-land.

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