Michelle Alexander: Drug War Racism

The U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary means of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. Alexander provocative book challenges the civil rights community—and all of us—to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in the US. 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.