The House I Live By Eugene Jarecki s The New Jim Crow

Many Americans live with the idea that the days of racism are far behind us; however, the film The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki s, and the book The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, state otherwise. Although the United States holds five percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for a fourth of the world’s prisoners. More than the majority of these prisoners are of color. (Jarecki 2012; Alexander 2012, 189) Therefore, the statistics contradict the U.S.’s long-held ideal of freedom and equality. This large prisoner population has been a consequence of the War on Drugs—a war that has not only locked up millions of African Americans but also given them a permanent second-class status. Both the video and the book†¦show more content†¦He mentions that during his childhood, his family moved to the north so that his father could get a better paying job. As a result, Jarecki’s mother offered Nannie a raise if she migrate d with the family. Out of a need to give her family a better future, Nannie left her children without a maternal figure and took the job. Nannie, who is interviewed in the film, expands on this, and talks about the consequences her family dealt with after she took the job. With no guidance at home, Nannie’s own son lost his life to drugs. Eugene, the privileged boy, talks about not having any knowledge of this, he just remembers Nannie always being there and working for the family. (Jarecki 2012) History: Alexander summarizes her interpretation of the period when a number of black individuals were elected into government offices with the phrase â€Å"black faces in high places.† By this she means that although black individuals were elected, this development actually obscured the problem rather than remedied it. Alexander writes that in 1974, 64 percent of new federal employees came from minority backgrounds. These changes helped a relatively small group of African American households, and left the rest behind. On account of these changes, the idea that hard work was the way blacks could overcome institutional challenges was born. By masking the government’s responsibility to help all African American households, colorblindness led the public to believe the country