“In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminal’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.” (Alexander, 2)

The New Jim Crow (@thenewjimcrow) by Michelle Alexander  lifts the veil of “color-blindness” to expose the comprehensive, deeply routed, and tacitly disguised racialized criminal justice system that functions very similarly to Jim Crow. The authors calls upon the reader to become informed, and to take action. The foreword by Cornel West (@CornelWest) goes so far as to call the book the “secular bible for a new social movement,” and “a grand wake-up call in the midst of a long slumber of indifference to the poor and vulnerable.”

This book is especially relevant to the many clinicians working with disadvantaged and underrepresented minorities, as well as others within the EM social justice and advocacy community.

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