The central issue facing civil rights activists today is mass incarceration, said Associate Professor Michelle Alexander of Moritz College of Law, during a speech Tuesday.
"Through the war on drugs, racial incarceration is increasingly problematic," she said. "And for many, this may sound old-fashioned, but the racial caste system is alive and well in America."
With more than 75 people in the audience, Alexander spoke at the African American and African Studies Extension Center, located at 905 Mt. Vernon Ave., as part of the lecture series, "Race, Drugs and the New Jim Crow."
She supports the notion that the criminal justice system has "racialized social control" that is strikingly similar to the Jim Crow laws enacted between the 1870s and 1960s.
She said the comparison is valid because African Americans are treated like second-class citizens, except in a more extreme form of segregation than before, she said.
When they are released from prison, she said, they are "dumped back into the community from where they came."
"When released, they are given the prison label for life," she said. "They are legally excluded from mainstream society for the rest of their life."
Alexander also said that ex-convicts suffer from political disenfranchisement because their voting rights are stripped from them. In some states, they must pay fees to reinstate their voting power and cover court costs themselves. This ultimately leads to lower voter turnout because no one would ever do that, she said.
Not only do black men suffer, but also black women. Alexander said that felons are denied welfare benefits, including food stamps, for life. This proves to be troubling for women especially, she said, because many of them have children to look after.
"It is no surprise that these felons return to prison," she said.
She also compared plantation labor, where slaves received little to no pay, to prison labor, where felons are used for cheap labor.
"I am not arguing that mass incarceration is the same as the Jim Crow laws," she said. "The point is, each is a primary cause for maintaining and creating a racial hierarchy."
Alexander said that blacks are always viewed as criminals.
"African Americans are subject to this form of control by ways they cannot control themselves," she said. "The image of black criminals in media is an example."
She said that black men have a virtual sign over their heads that says "criminal," and that no one will hire a convicted felon, even if it is for something as minor as a first time drug offense.
Alexander said it is difficult to find a young, black man that has not had a humiliating experience with the police before. Racial profiling, she said, makes blacks subject to control, even if they haven't committed any crimes at all.
Her solution garnered much applause and laughter from the audience.
"It is a no brainer to legalize marijuana," she said.
Forty percent of drug convictions come from marijuana possession, she said.
"If you get convicted, a felony is a felony," she said. "Some people from the '70s and '80s are in jail for life for a first time marijuana possession."
She said that members of the African American community should implore elected officials to help improve education and develop housing assistance.
"If we set our minds to it, we can come up with a safe, humane policy," she said.
Prior to joining the OSU faculty, Alexander was an associate professor of law at Stanford University Law School and served as the director of Civil Rights Clinics. She has also served as the director of the Racial Justice Project for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, where she spearheaded a national campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement.
She said that to implement change in mass incarceration, campaigns must begin at grassroots and local levels.
"Elected officials do not fight hard enough," she said. "We can't trust politicians to do the right thing."
Mariam Khan can be reached at khan.197@osu.edu.
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