Q&A With New Jim Crow Author Michelle Alexander

JJIE and Youth Today Washington, D.C. correspondent Kaukab Jhumra Smith is in Cincinnati this week covering a conference sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund. Among the more than 3,000 people in attendance is legal scholar Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Smith managed to catch up with her to ask a few questions. JJIE: What do you think is the civil rights issue of our day? Alexander: I think the disposal of people who are viewed as “other,” defined along lines of race and class is a civil rights issue of the day.