The New Jim Crow

I had read excerpts of The New Jim Crow before, but this was my first time reading the book in full.

The New Jim Crow is a seminal text. If you have people in your life (including yourself) struggling to understand racism as structural, this is a good place to start. Prepare to be bombarded with facts that will make you incoherently angry.

Alexander compels the reader to understand not just how certain cultural assumptions result in systemic institutional violence, but also that those assumptions are anomalous. Society doesn't have to function the way ours does now, and in fact, we are the cruel outliers.

If you're looking for in-depth research about modern iterations of white supremacy in the United States, read this book.