Michelle Alexander on The New Jim Crow: On Prison and Criminal Injustice Systems and White Male Supremacist Power

A new contact, with sort of my name, "Juliano", contacted me about posting the above video.

My "real" name comes from my grandfather. Giuliano Reali. Yes, there are/were Italian Jews: if you haven't read his work, please read the writings of Primo Levi. Anglophilic family members, or possibly Ellis Island, altered the course of the name, as happened so much back in the day when not-yet-white people came here and became white. What is meaningful to me is the name means something like "soft beard" which has been interpreted to mean "a male youth" but I've taken it to mean a man who isn't into being, pardon the pun, "a real man". I also like that the first syllable, no matter the spelling, is pronounced "Jew".

But, anyway, Juliano, who has a blog *here*, sent me the link and asked for it to be made available to people, so please also post the video if you wish, with relevant information such as that below. I'm very pleased to present it here, to you. It's about time I posted and supported the work of Michelle Alexander. (Thanks, Juliano!)

This is the blurb that accompanies it on YouTube:

joefriendly — February 19, 2010 — Litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, argues that we have not ended racial caste in America, we have simply redesigned it: 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. Her provocative new 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 America. 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. Event at Demos February 18, 2010. Camera, edit Joe Friendly.