I'm not very familiar with Michelle Alexander and haven't read her book The New Jim Crow. But I saw a speech she gave on BookTV on C-Span 2 and I don't agree with everything she said but her. Basic point is good that in the United States thats suppose to be a Liberal-Democracy. We have the highest poverty rate in the developed world at least amongst large countries and economies. Where roughly fifty million Americans in the country even though they are legally and technically free. Don't have the freedom that the rest of the country has because they are confined to living in poverty. Without much help of getting out they are essentially in prisoned in poverty without an opportunity to get out of it. Sorta like someone whose still fairly young lets say twenties or thirties but looking at a 40-life prison sentence. Even they aren't technically serving live in prison and there's a chance of them getting out of prison. One day they are basically looking at serving the rest of their productive years in prison just like someone in poverty. Unless they are able to get a good education and skills are looking at a life sentence living in poverty.
This post is mostly about the American prison system and I only mention poverty because they both relate. We have so many inmates in this country that came from poverty and saw crime as their only shot at making it in life. Because they were stuck going to schools that gave them no hope of making a good life for themselves. So we have two problems that I see it to the fact of why America a country I love, from and currently live in. Is not as Liberal as a Democracy that it could be where most if not the entire country lives in freedom. Where the country essentially works for everyone and where we don't lead the free and developed world in. Poverty and incarceration and these two things have to do with poverty and incarceration. Poverty is a big fuel of why we have so many people in prison in this country and if we solve both of them. Or only one of them, we would solve the other problem where we have a true Liberal-Democracy where al Americans live in freedom.
We are never going to wipeout poverty and incarceration in America. Every country in the World free and Authoritarian have those issues to deal with. But we don't have to have as much of it as we do and frankly can no longer afford to have as much as we do. If we want to be a true Liberal-Democracy with a Liberal amount of freedom and Liberalization. Where all Americans are free to live their own lives and chart their own course in life. And that starts with a better public education system that doesn't leave as many people out of from having the shot at. Living in freedom in this country, a public assistance system that empower people to get themselves out of poverty. And a true corrections system that empowers inmates to become productive people in prison but also productive citizens once they are out of prison.
