Why Some Like the New Jim Crow So Much
A critique of Michelle Alexander's widely praised book on the prison-industrial system in the United States.
Afro-Blue Notes: The Death of Afro-pessimism (2.0)?
This article examines Wilderson and Sexton’s trending reiteration of an old Euro-imperial pessimism—a perverse “Afro-pessimism (2.0)” in which Africa disappears altogether along with most of the Black diaspora. Its fatalist representation of “slavery” is interrogated for its “Americanism” and Occi-dentalism besides its canonical erasure of Black resistance and Pan-African revolt for white settler state historiographies.
Against prison studies without capitalism: "The strange career of The New Jim Crow" - Joseph D. Osel
In this analysis Osel provides a devastating and radical analysis of The New Jim Crow discourse. He asks social justice advocates to take a stand against prison studies that do not include an analysis of capitalism and reflects on the significance of the "counterrevolutionary protest" in social justice work, describing how social justice advocates "sustain societal problems even while challenging them." His essay challenges anti-prison activists and others to observe and analyze "their own complicity with and legitimization of the structures that they seek to dismantle."
