Rigorous Reasoning Anonymous 12th Grade

In a time when a black man lives in the White House, most Americans believe their nation has moved past racial oppression. Police Shootings may still grab headlines, but adherents to colorblindness view them largely as an isolated problem. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander vigorously challenges this public consensus. By understanding the intensely surprising nature of her argument, then buttressing it with copious evidence and effective counterarguments, Alexander establishes that mass incarceration amounts to a racial caste system nearly as unfair as Jim Crow or slavery.

Since Alexander understands her claim runs against the conventional wisdom of a post-racial society, she constructs her argument to appeal to an immediately skeptical audience. Among her strongest devices for relating to her reader’s potential incredulity towards her argument is a personal anecdote. Alexander remembers considering a sign that claimed the War on Drugs is a reincarnation of Jim Crow as “an absurd comparison” just a few years before writing a book that made essentially the same claim (Alexander 3). This example underscores that even racially conscious people who happen to be uninvolved in the criminal justice system tend not to see the...