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“reality,” not racial animus, and that African Americans would be better off not challenging the Jim Crow system but should focus instead on improving themselves within it. Throughout our history, there have been African Americans who, for a variety of reasons, have defended or been complicit with the prevailing system of control.
    Chapter 6 reflects on what acknowledging the presence of the New Jim Crow means for the future of civil rights advocacy. I argue that nothing short of a major social movement can successfully dismantle the new caste system. Meaningful reforms can be achieved without such a movement, but unless the public consensus supporting the current system is completely overturned, the basic structure of the new caste system will remain intact. Building a broad-based social movement, however, is not enough. It is not nearly enough to persuade mainstream voters that we have relied too heavily on incarceration or that drug abuse is a public health problem, not a crime. If the movement that emerges to challenge mass incarceration fails to confront squarely the critical role of race in the basic structure of our society, and if it fails to cultivate an ethic of genuine care, compassion, and concern for every human being—of every class, race, and nationality—within our
nation’s borders (including poor whites, who are often pitted against poor people of color), the collapse of mass incarceration will not mean the death of racial caste in America. Inevitably a new system of racialized social control will emerge—one that we cannot foresee, just as the current system of mass incarceration was not predicted by anyone thirty years ago. No task is more urgent for racial justice advocates today than ensuring that America’s current racial caste system is its last.

Index

    affirmative action; and black exceptionalism; and colorblindness; and minority police officers/police chiefs; and poor and working-class whites
    Alexander v. Sandoval
    All of Us or None
    American Apartheid (Massey and Denton)
    American Bar Association (ABA)
    American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): class action lawsuit against California Highway Patrol; Drug Law Reform Project; Racial Justice Project
    American Correctional Association
    The American Dilemma (Myrdal)
    The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Loury)
    Angelos, Weldon
    Anti-Drug Abuse Act (1986/1988)
    Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (Davis)
    Armstrong, Christopher Lee
    Armstrong v. United States
    Atwater v. City of Lago Vista
    The Audacity of Hope (Obama)

    Bacon’s Rebellion
    Baldus, David, and Baldus study
    Baldwin, James
    Ball, Johnny Lee
    Ban the Box campaigns
    Banks, Tyra
    Bascuas, Ricardo
    Batson v. Kentucky
    Beckett, Katherine
    Bell, Derrick
    Bennett, Lerone, Jr.
    bias, racial: implicit/explicit (conscious/ unconscious); and plea bargaining; and prosecutors
    Biden, Joe
    â€œbirdcage” metaphor and structural racism
    black churches
    black codes and vagrancy laws
    black exceptionalism
    Blackmon, Douglas
    blaxploitation
    Blumenson, Eric
    Boggs Act (1951)
    Bostick, Terrance
    Boyd, Marcus
    Braman, Donald
    Brennan, Justice William
    British Society for the Abolition of Slavery
    Brown, James
    Brown v. Board of Education
    Bryant, Scott
    Burton, Susan
    Bush, George H.W.
    Bush, George W.

    Byrd, Robert
    Byrne grant program

    Cahill, Clyde
    California Highway Patrol (CHP)
    California v. Acevedo
    California’s Proposition
    California’s Proposition
    Campbell, Richard
    Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
    Carroll, David
    Carrollton bus disaster (1988)
    Cato Institute
    Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
    Chain Reaction (Edsall and Edsall)
    Chemerinsky, Erwin
    Cheney, Dick
    Chicago, Illinois: ex-offenders; police presence in ghetto communities; re-entry programs
    child-support debts
    chokeholds, lethal
    Chunn, Gwendolyn
    Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (2000)
    Civil Rights Act (1866)
    Civil Rights Act (1964); Title VI
    civil rights