Race-ing Justice, Disenfranchising Lives:African Americans, Criminal Justice and the New Racial Domain by Manning Marable
The racialized criminal justice system of America, with its two million prisoners, with four million others who are either on probation, parole or awaiting trial today, represents the greatest political and moral challenge to the survival of democracy today. Abraham Lincoln once declared nearly 150 years ago, that this nation could not endure being "half slave and half free."
The "new" slavery, the "color-blind racism" of the twenty-first century, has divided this nation by a new form of racialized inequality. The criminal justice system, and what many scholars now describe as the "Prison Industrial Complex," are responsible for condemning tens of millions of American citizens to disenfranchised lives, shattered aspirations for their children, and alienation from civil society and public life.
