1. M. Alexander claims that the main explanation of why so many people are sent to jail in the U.S. today is deeply wrong. Explain her argument by referring to the various examples she mentions to backup her point. (see p. 1-2)

M. Alexander claims that the main explanation of why so many people are sent to jail in the U.S. today is deeply wrong, due to the reason that the U.S. currently has the incarceration rate in the world, and most of them are colored people, especially Blacks. At the push of the media campaign, people started to form a stereotype that Blacks are related to cracks. Alexander claimed that “the crack crisis might be the U.S. government’s plan to rigged Blacks.”

2. Why is it that racial disparities in the rates of incarceration “cannot be explained by rates of drug crimes”?

The racial disparities in the rates of incarceration can’t be explained by rates of drug crimes, because the government were mainly focused on Blacks or colored people, if Whites committed crime, they would be punished way less than the Blacks. Alexander wrote that “In some states, black men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of white men.”

3. How do you understand the phrase: “the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control unparalleled in world history.”?

I think it’s a satire, American government used its penal system to wipe out races they don’t like, this action is the first-ever compared to other countries.