I have known for a long time that the criminal justice system in America was bad. I also knew that the system was racist. I knew this because I can look at statistics and see that the numbers are clearly off, and I knew it because smart people told me it was broken and racist. Yet, I don’t think I could have really explained how the system worked and I wouldn’t have told you it was intentional. I would have probably just defaulted to the simple idea that putting people in jail for non-violent drug offenses was a waste of money and bad policy. Both are true, but “The New Jim Crow” make it clear that while I might have been marginally on the right side, I did not know what was really going on, and neither do many of the people who are actively trying to improve the system.

The author Michelle Alexander even admits early in the book that if you had told her ten years ago(Twenty now since I read the ten-year anniversary release) that the war on drugs was “The New Jim Crow” she wouldn’t have believed it. Since she is a civil rights lawyer, I feel better about my ignorance. But, like her, I am not willing to stay ignorant. I’m not willing to just accept what the government tells me. And as I read this book, I realized that what I saw as bad was barely even near the surface of what was actually happening.

The book both dispels a few myths and expands dramatically the understanding of the real cost of criminal arrest. The myths are ones that most of us already understand, but there is one central myth that is vital to understanding that book. That is the myth that being color blind is a valuable thing. Her point throughout the book is that color blind policies can easily be turned into racist policies without ever being made explicitly racist. In the case of the drug war, it’s easy to see. The laws that allow the police to break into people’s houses and search for drugs are color blind. But almost every time the law is used, it is against people of color. Stop and frisk laws are officially colorblind, but I’ve never had a cop stop and ask to frisk me and if he did, I would feel safe to say know because it’s less likely he would believe a wallet was a gun and shoot me. “The New Jim Crow” goes deep into that. Alone that wouldn’t create a system the same as Jim Crow. Simply arresting and locking up a massive number of black people would be bad, but it alone wouldn’t be the same as Jim Crow.

That is where the part of the book that really surprised me came in. The understanding that even in the case of people who never go to prison a felony changes their life forever. We know about some of these. A felon loses several important rights. The most well known and universal of those is the right to vote. This is important because it means that the government can round up large percentages of the black male community and without even the cost of putting them in prison take away their rights to have any say in their government and even in those states where you can get the right to vote back they often implement large costs to doing so. There is simply nothing else to call that but a poll tax.

They also have a much harder time getting a job. They are specifically barred from getting many jobs even after being released from prison, having paid their debt to society, and the jobs that they can get are much harder because they are required on virtually every job application to admit to having committed a felony. This problem is compounded by the other services that are taken away like public housing, food stamps and other systems designed to help keep the poor from having to do things like turning to crime in order to survive.

Again, the book goes into much more detail. It points out that all of us commit crimes, often just as dangerous or more so than the people we put into prison. Perhaps the most jarring of this was the reminder that speeding is more likely to harm someone else than sitting in your basement smoking pot. And of course she is right. But if someone were to be sent to jail for years for speeding, we would clearly be outraged.

The major weakness of this book is its age. Sadly, almost everything it says in the book is still happening, though the awareness of it and the movement to stop it has clearly grown. But there is a considerable amount of focus on what it means that we have a black president and the danger that believing that has solved the problem could bring. Luckily for us the last four years has clearly erased the idea that we are in a colorblind society from any of us willing to listen, but Michelle Alexander didn’t have the advantage of four years of the previous administration to make the case that our society is anything but colorblind. That said, virtually everything she said about President Obama’s administration was true. People assumed that because someone as exceptional as Barack Obama could become president that we could relax, so while more thought on our current situation would be useful, it doesn’t take away the value of the book.

I can not do justice to this book or how angry it made me. I was angry at the system for existing, angry at the country for creating it and angry at myself for not doing more to speak out against it. I still can’t understand what it’s like to have large parts of my community in prison and even larger percentages without the basic rights the rest of us need. I can’t understand the shame it feels to be told that it’s your fault when the system throws you in jail. But I can empathize and admit that it’s not just society’s fault but my own. This is a book that I not only recommend but want to buy copies of to give to people because it’s hard to imagine anyone reading this and not seeing that something has to change at a far deeper level than simply adjusting a few basic rules.