Our adult religious education class will meet on Sunday (18 October 2015) at 9:15 AM with a book study / discussion group — The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color-Blindness by Michelle Alexander.
A brutal tangle of draconian sentencing laws, selective prosecutions, unbalanced jury selection, and a prison-for-profit system fueled by a drug war resulting in far more casualties than victories has resulted in what Michelle Alexander calls ” … a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to [the pre-Civil Rights-era system of segregation known as] Jim Crow.”
This Week’s Class — “The Rebirth of Caste” — We explore the history of “how we got here,” starting with the beginning of slavery, moving through Reconstruction and its backlash, into Jim Crow, the Civil Rights era and its backlash, up to the present trend of mass incarceration.
For more information, please read this introduction to this book discussion group.