Tompkins County Public Library

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Library to Explore “New Jim Crow” With Discussion and Workshop

The Tompkins County Public Library will explore Michelle Alexander’s much-talked about book, “The New Jim Crow:  Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” with a community conversation and workshop this month.

Eric Kofi Acree, director of Cornell University’s John Henrik Clarke Africana Library, will lead a community book discussion on Alexander’s controversial work, which challenges that while Jim Crow laws were abolished decades ago, there remains an extraordinary percentage of African Americans tied up the American judicial system, July 19 at 6 p.m. in the BorgWarner Community Room East.

Acree’s discussion will include a videotaped message from Alexander, as well as a spirited conversation about the issues raised in the book, including:  the alarming numbers of African Americans in prison, on parole or with criminal records, whether or not Jim Crow laws have been replaced with other tools for racial discrimination and what communities can do to encourage change.

The conversation will continue at 6 p.m. July 26 when Paula Ioanide, assistant professor at the Center for the Study of Culture, Race & Ethnicity, Ithaca College, offers  the workshop “Prison Expansion and Profits: How Mass Incarceration Undermines U.S. Society.”

Ioanide’s workshop—also being held in the BorgWarner Community Room-- will focus on the unprecedented expansion of prisons and incarceration in the United States since the 1970s, explore common myths and misperceptions about crime and criminality and examine the ways these myths help perpetuate new forms of institutional racism. The workshop will also address how the rise of mass incarceration disproportionately targets and negatively affects people of color, particularly Black and Latino men and how the increased allocation of public resources toward surveillance, containment and incarceration ultimately helps undermine society.

Both programs are free and open to the public.  For more information, contact Carrie Wheeler-Carmenatty at (607) 272-4557 extension 248 or cwheeler@tcpl.org.


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