The New Jim Crow?

I'm a little late to the party here, but I recently heard a repeated episode of a show that originally aired last year with Michelle Alexander talking about her then-new book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.  Michelle Alexander's ideas engage me and make me think about things either more deeply or differently, so I am very interested in this book.  She has appeared on CNN and MSNBC and other news shows frequently addressing issues in a way that I think challenges the status quo while offering reasonable ways of addressing systemic injustice.  I'm also interested because I am inclined to believe that institutional racism is ubiquitous, and I do see that mass incarceration is one way in which white privilege operates in our society, so I'd like to learn more about how that works in detail.

Even as I write these statements, I realize that for many people, using language like "institutional racism" and "white privilege" is taboo and/or seems extreme.  I am always thinking of how powerful rhetoric is in school, but I often also wonder how this affects our most intimate conversations and how it threatens our ability to talk candidly about important issues, like mass incarceration and contemporary racism, precisely because we don't have adequate words to share our views without them being enveloped in the politics that is ingrained in language. 

The book is ranked #275 in the Amazon bestsellers list, which certainly indicates it is being read by loads of people.  However, it does make me wonder how many people come to this book to explore a new way of understanding the social dynamics of American society and how many come to be confirmed in the ideas that they bring in favor of or against this study.  Before reading it, this book already has me thinking a lot from the title alone!  I look forward to adding this to my post-graduation May 2012 reading list.