Tag: Slavery
Reading as a Mirror: Banning the New Jim Crow in New Jersey Prisons
On January 10th, the New Jersey prisons reversed a ban on Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, after a letter from the New Jersey ACLU challenged the ban. With a little reflection, it isn’t hard to see the bitter irony of banning prisoners from reading a book like The New Jim Crow, a book that argues that mass incarceration targets African-Americans in order to keep them in an inferior position both socially and economically. These men and women are made “socially dead,” to borrow a phrase from famed sociologist Orlando Patterson.
Intellectual Freedom News
January 29, 2016 – A free biweekly compilation of news by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom including: current book challenges in libraries and schools; articles about privacy, internet filtering and censorship; ALA activities, conferences and institutes, products, online learning opportunities, awards and grants, international exchanges; and how to get involved and make the most of what ALA offers.