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Mapping the Parallels
Michelle Alexander follows through this section by discussing the parallels of how mass incarceration has many similarities to the Jim Crow. This section has topics of discrimination, racial caste, and incarceration that were discussed previously in other chapters but then she adds depth to the information that makes it concise. She gives insight on the new caste system and how it is being played out in the social, political, and economic setting of African Americans.

Historical Parallels
Michelle Alexander emphasizes that White elites exploit the working class whites for political and economic gain. She says that they shifted the anger of working class whites towards African Americans by using segregation laws. Working class and poor whites are willing to reform the economy by letting harsher drug laws to be passed which makes African Americans highly likely to be incarcerated.

Legalized Discrimination
According to Alexander, Black history month is celebrated for ending discrimination; but discrimination is still present today. She determines that legalized discrimination is still present by saying once age twenty one is reached most black men are labeled felons and are subjected to discrimination in social, political, and economic lives.

Political disenfranchisement
Alexander gives insight on the past of African Americans denied the right to vote by poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and felony during the Jim Crow era. Then she follows into the felon disenfranchisement laws today that make African Americans unable to vote. Her example emphasizes that felons have to pay for voting rights which are the new poll taxes. This gives way for African Americans having a loss in representation when voting because they are not involved as whites.

Exclusion from juries
In this section she says that African Americas are kept out from becoming jurors. She says that they are excluded because of silly reasons or due to felony. She ends the sub-section with a stigma of Black defendants that are always faced with a white jury.

Closing the courthouse doors
She goes into depth with The Supreme Court that first protects a black case then breaks the system of control in African American court cases by reverting back into the new racial caste that makes them inferior in winning cases. Her examples to how cases are not fair include Dred Scott v. Sanford, African Americans not citizens. Plessy v. Ferguson, separate but equal. She is concerned while saying that today white men do not have to respect black men who are labeled felons.

Racial segregation
Alexander highlights that African Americans were and are primarily in segregated communities from whites, where whites would never see the poverty enriched neighborhoods that Blacks lived in. This says she signifies that Whites denied and ignored their suffering. She goes on to say that prisons are resembled in a similar way in which Blacks are kept locked out of mainstream society. "Rural counties contain only 20 percent of the U.S. population, however 60 percent of new prison construction occurs there". Prisoners are sent back to "ghetto" communities after release where many of other prisoners are released as well. Alexander says that poor whites are not in or released in poor communities as often as African Americans in which Africans American felons across an ongoing circle of prison to ghetto that is continuous today.

Symbolic production of race
Alexander deduces from past research that slavery was to be black, Jim crow was to be a black second class citizen,and that today incarceration is to be a black criminal. This is verified by the War on Drugs that has made blacks prone to becoming criminals but she argues that whites who may have more drug related activity are not suspected due to them being white. "White seems to qualify the term criminal—as if to say, "he's a criminal but not that kind of criminal." Or, he's not a real criminal—i.e., not what we mean by criminal today." White crime she says lacks social meaning and can be brushed aside from real crime that is committed primarily by African Americans. She says that blacks are always potential suspects for police due to their prevalent connection with felony that whites think most African Americans are affiliated with felony." Whiteness mitigates crime, whereas blackness defines the criminal." She says that racial stigma is prevalent within society due to incarceration and African Americans being branded as felons for simply the color of their skin.

Robert Taylor Homes
Many prisoners returning have a partner, child, and mental illnesses that prevent them from relocating to another residency. In the Robert Taylor homes a survey was conducted and showed that the majority of residents either had a family member in prison or excepted one to return from prison within two years from prison. This gives concern when residents are trying to relocate in which case they cannot.

North Lawndale
Citizens with criminal records in North Lawndale are exceeding 70 percent that make up the young adults through elderly living in a highly black neighborhood that involves them to be in a life of felony. As prisoners come back from prison they are often secluded from mainstream society and are kept in a disadvantaged minority communities in which they have no means of escape from the ongoing circle of felony to prison.