By Adele Appiah, Senior Program Analyst, NACCHO
Each month, NACCHO will bring you a new public health book, read and reviewed by NACCHO staff. We hope to provide a well-rounded reading list that you will find enjoyable as well as informative.
Recent protests and killings of unarmed Black people at the hands of the systems that are intended to protect us, is proof that racism is built in many U.S. systems. “The New Jim Crow” does an impeccable job at highlighting the systematic racism in the criminal justice system. Professor Alexander centers the war on drugs as a racist tool that disproportionately incarcerates Black people.
This book’s biggest takeaway is the notion that the caste system (Jim Crow) has now been replaced by the criminal justice system (incarceration, detention, and parole) and continues to keep Black people economically inferior due to their disproportional higher rates of criminal involvement in the criminal system—involvement that is often a result of discrimination, racial, and implicit bias.
There is no better time than now to center books such as this one. There is a nationwide call and shared responsibility for everyone to center anti-racism and advocate for equity. This book is great place to start.
Continue the discussion or suggest a book of your own on NACCHO’s Virtual Communities.
