Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

March 25, 2012 Best of TomDispatch: Michelle Alexander, The Age of Obama as a Racial Nightmare [Note for TomDispatch Readers: Tom Engelhardt is away for several more days.  He may not be answering emails until week’s end.  But TomDispatch marches on with an updated TD classic, along with a new introduction by Tom. Nick Turse] In March 2010, when TomDispatch first published a piece by Michelle Alexander, her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, had just been published. As I wrote then, it focused in startling ways on “a growing racial divide, one which includes the formation of a new undercaste in America that loses its normal rights at the prison gates and often never recovers them.” Her piece offered nothing short of a new way to look at racial oppression in this country in the twenty-first century -- and in hardcover it would sell a mere 3,000 copies. But Alexander was a superb writer, had a compelling personal story (check it out on Timothy MacBain’s riveting 2010 TomDispatch audio interview with her), and something new to tell the world -- and somehow (never discount miracles!), it broke through. Now, the paperback of the book is a bestseller with 175,000 copies in print and Alexander has the stamp of approval of the New York Times, which recently led the front page of its culture section with a piece on her and her book (“ Drug Policy as Race Policy: Best Seller Galvanizes the Debate”).  TomDispatch is proud to have been there at the beginning and to have played a very small part in Alexander’s well-deserved success.  Unfortunately, her piece, now two years old, couldn’t feel more up to date (and just to ensure its absolute up-to-dateness, Alexander has gone over it and made a few additions).  It’s great to have her work in our periodic “ best of TomDispatch” series. Tom The New Jim Crow How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste By Michelle Alexander Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.”  Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America. Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality.  There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you.  If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you.  Trust us.  Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars.  You, too, can get to the promised land. Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand.  Racial caste is alive and well in America. Click here to read more of this dispatch.