Chapter Three Summary Essay

In chapter three of this book, Alexander starts with incidences of African Americans stuck in the system. She talks of the drug war race as being the definition of an enemy. In this war on drugs, African Americans are subjected to tactics and practices eliciting public outrage if they happen in white middle-class neighborhoods. Most of the drug users and dealers are white, but three-fourths of those imprisoned for a drug offense are black or Latino. African Americans constitute 80-90 percent of those imprisoned for drug offending in seven states. According to statistics, people of all races sell and use drugs similarly. Still, the media has misled the public by creating imagery of believing the reverse is true and having a disproportionate minority in prisons. Drug trafficking in America happens everywhere and not just in inner-city ghettos.

The racial biases of war on drugs do not display this because although one in 14 black men are imprisoned for drug cries but whites only one in 106 men, this makes people think that black men are more prone to more violent crimes and that the reason for them being locked a thing that has profoundly supported the colorblind norms. Alexander claims that mass incarceration is not response of crime as research reveals that violent crime rates have little connection to the incarceration rate. This can be proven by how crime rates are low compared to the rising number of incarcerations.

In this chapter, Alexander has addressed the fact of many disputing the claim of race playing a large role in a drug arrest and incarceration of mass by highlighting how the "new system" is set in the way of defending itself on "non-racial grounds." This gives her a way of investigating how a formally colorblind system can produce a racially discriminatory result. All this happens since law enforcement holds a great deal of the power of searching, stopping, arresting, and charging anyone for a drug offense.