The Issue Of The War

The prompt is based on our class textbook THE NEW JIM CROW by Michelle Alexander makes several well-supported and researched claims about the prison industrial complex. Her analysis demonstrates the many factors, which contributed to this epidemic. The prompts below will require you to focus on one of the many factors that created the prison industrial complex.

The minimum requirements:
A complete 7-9 page essay
A minimum of 6-8 academic sources.
Use different modes of argumentation.
Must have a works cited page.
MLA format
Essay format
MUST present a counter-argument
Draw your own conclusion

Inquiry Questions chosen is:
Michelle Alexander argues there is powerin representation. How has culture supported the criminalization of Black and Brown communities?

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Here are some highlights from the novel that can give you direction:

The drug war is largely responsible for the prison boom and the creation of the new undercaste, and there is no path to liberation for communities of color that includes this ongoing war. So long as people off color in ghetto communities are betting rounded up by the thousands for drug offenses, carted off to prison, and then released into a permanent undercaste, mass incarceration as a system of control will continue to function well.

Racially targeted drug-law enforcement practices taken together with laws that specifically discriminate against drug offenders in employment, housing, and public benefits haven relegated the majority of black men in urban areas across the United States to a permanent second-class status.

All of the financial incentives granted to law enforcement to arrest poor black and brown people must be revoked. Federal grant money for drug enforcement must end; drug forfeiture laws must be stripped from the books; racial profiling must be eradicated; the concentration of drug busts in poor communities of color must cease; and the transfer of military equipment and aid to local law enforcement agencies washing the drug war must come to a screeching halt