THE NEW JIM CROW Online documentary

The New Jim Crow is a name given to a category of race-related social and political phenomena in the United States and the name of a best selling book published by The New Press and written by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. Alexander deals in the book primarily with the issue of the current mass levels of incarceration (the United States, with 5% of the world's population, has 25% of the world's prisoners) and other means of societal suppression of African-American men (Latino men to a lesser degree), and the social consequences of the policies described, for the "people of color" and for the country as a whole.
According to Alexander, the majority of young black men in large American cities are "warehoused in prisons" (their labor no longer needed in the globalized economy) or, after having criminal records and labeled as "felons", are permanently trapped in a second-class status. The conventional point of view holds that discrimination has mostly ended with the Civil rights movement reforms of the 1960s. However, the U.S. criminal justice system uses the “War on Drugs” as its primary tool in the continuation of many of the traditional and new forms of discrimination.
In an article addressing the status of contemporary African Americans, Alexander said, "The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though scarcely anyone seems to notice. All eyes are fixed on people like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey who have defied the odds and achieved great power, wealth and fame". Alexander sees the masses of ordinary African Americans as being relegated to the status of a "racial caste", even though the official approach to dealing with the minorities has been redesigned, to avoid explicit use of racial attributes. According to Alexander, the forms of "racial control" evolve as required by changing political circumstances and contemporary standards, with the current "criminal justice" activities replacing the Jim Crow laws, which in turn had replaced slavery. Michelle Alexander aims to mobilize the civil rights community to move the incarceration issue to the forefront of its agenda and to provide factual information, data, arguments and reference for those interested in pursuing the issue. Her broader goal is the revamping of the prevailing mentality regarding human rights, equality and equal opportunities in America, to prevent future cyclical recurrence of racial control under changing disguise.

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Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.
--FROM THE NEW JIM CROW
As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status--much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community--and all of us--to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.