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Gangsta Love
Alexander explains that many young black men embrace their stigmas by acting like criminals. She argues that poor people of color want safe and peaceful neighborhoods, just like everyone else. She believes that it is racist to think that colored families are content with living in these dangerous neighborhoods. She thinks we should be concerned about the crimes that happen in ghettos and find ways to help young men stay out of crimes. Instead, people should embrace their stigmas with loving sayings. For example, to counter the discrimination of the new Jim Crow, saying "black is beautiful," or using "gangsta love" for the mass incarceration of people of color. Alexander believes that if everyone accepted their stigmas, they would gain more self esteem and learn to love themselves more.

The Minstrel Show
Alexander writes that today's display of black people on television is generally for white entertainment, similar to the Jim Crow days when the black image was exaggerated in minstrel shows. She questions why many people choose to hate these minstrel shows and the people of color who were subject to them. Alexander explains that even though the men in the minstrel shows entertained white audiences with their exaggerated racist portrayal and stereotypes, he may be doing it to support himself and his family and might even be treated as a celebrity. She uses VH1's Flavor of Love as an example. Flavor of Love had its best rating during its first season because it was largely popularized by white audiences. She also uses rap music as an example. Rap music attracts mostly white teenagers. After the War on Drugs began, rap music changed. It went from rapping about the day's events to rapping about crimes. Alexander explains that while rap music changed, so did black communities. African American men became the victims of the War on Drugs and began to listen to rap music and other forms of black entertainment in a way to embrace their stigmas.

The Antidote
Alexander believes that we must embrace black prisoners' humanness rather than their criminality. She explains that it is amazing how many men that are released from prison survive, stay out of trouble, get married, raise families and completely turn their lives around. Alexander believes that when the mass incarceration of poor people of color collapses, historians will look back and find it surprising that the government targeted them just to gain a system of crime control. She concludes this section with the saying: "You gotta hate the crime, but love the criminal."

Influences on society
Readers of Alexander's book, like Dennis Moore, can relate to the events that take place in The New Jim Crow. Moore's son is one of the many young African American men who was sent to prison. Moore recalls that seeing his son in chains inside the courtroom reminded him of when blacks were first forced over to America from their homeland.

Moore is not the only one to speak out about the mass incarceration of young black men. An article from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA's website provides an essay written by a 14-year-old girl who has never spent time with her father because he has been in prison her entire life. She describes the incarceration of young African American men as "a judge locking away your freedom and throwing away the key."

Many of Alexander's readers have expressed their opinions and ideas of her book on discussion pages. One reader, a reporter named Michelle, shared her experience in the comments section of an article by The Atlantic. She noticed the mass amounts of African American men that were being brought into a criminal courthouse because they were caught carrying small amounts of marijuana with them. She explains that she knew there was something wrong with this image and reading Alexander's book helped her to better understand her view on the subject of African American mass incarceration.

Racial bias
According to Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow, in 1986, many stories of the crack crisis broke out in the media. In these stories, African Americans were featured as "crack whores." The deaths of NBA player Len Bias and NFL player Don Rogers due to cocaine overdose only added to the media frenzy. Michelle Alexander claims in her book: "Between October 1988 and October 1989, the Washington Post alone ran 1,565 stories about the 'drug scourge.'"

One example of this double standard is the comparison of the deaths of Michael Brown and Dillon Taylor. On August 9, 2014, news broke out that a young, unarmed African American man, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by a white policeman. This story spread throughout news media, explaining that the incident had to do with race. Only two days later, another young, unarmed man, Dillon Taylor, was shot and killed by a policeman. This story, however, did not get as highly publicized as Brown's. However unlike Brown's case, Taylor was white and Hispanic, while the police officer is black.

LGBT employment discrimination
According to Crosby Burns and Jeff Krehely: "Studies show that anywhere from 15 percent to 43 percent of gay people have experienced some form of discrimination and harassment at the workplace. Moreover, a staggering 90 percent of transgender workers report some form of harassment or mistreatment on the job." Many people in the LGBT community have lost their job, including Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgender woman who claims that her boss told her that her presence may make other people feel uncomfortable.

Almost half of the United States has laws banning the discrimination of LGBT people in both public and private workplaces. A few more states ban LGBT discrimination in only public workplaces. Some opponents of these laws believe that it would intrude on religious liberty, even though these laws are focused more on discriminatory actions, not beliefs. Courts have also identified that these laws do not infringe free speech or religious liberty.