Sample Concession Thesis Statements That Address the Analogy Between Jim Crow 1.0 and Jim Crow 2.0:
While the New Jim Crow comparison to the Old is not a perfect analogy, there are compelling similarities evidenced by ______________, _______________, _______________, and _______________________.
While I concede there are some disturbing parallels between Jim Crow 1.0 and what Michelle Alexander calls the New Jim Crow, the comparison ultimately collapses when we examine _____________, ______________, _______________, and _______________________.
"Broken Windows Policing Kills People"
"The Case for Reparations" from The Atlantic
Sample MLA Research Paper 1
Sample MLA Research Paper 2
Sample MLA Research Papers (various) 3
Sample MLA Research Paper 5
Use Present Verb Tense for Argument Research Paper and Textual Analysis
Sample MLA Research Paper Uses Present Tense
Common Problem: Comma Splices and Sentence Fragments
I’m in a constant struggle to lose weight. I exercise like a fitness demon, that’s not the problem. My problem is that I eat like a crazed survivor of a famine whose every meal must compensate for the deprivation I’ve suffered in some cosmic universe that doesn’t exist. Except in my gluttonous imagination.
I embraced the six meals a day philosophy a long time ago. The premise is that you should eat several small meals, each one should be no bigger than the palm of your hand. Rather than eat three large meals and thereby overburden your digestive system. The problem is that my six meals aren’t palm sized, they’re more the size of a watermelon even then I’m still hungry. Now that you mention it, I don’t even eat six meals a day, I eat ten. And not small snacks either we’re talking substantial heaping cartloads of food. Enough food to feed a herd of elephants.
Did I tell you I can’t stop eating after one plate? I like to take seconds and thirds. Sometimes fourths. And then there’s my daughters’ leftovers, Panini grilled cheese pesto sandwiches, popcorn, tortilla chips, pancakes, waffles, French toast. As I clean the table, I snort up all the stray foodstuffs like an anteater.
Have we discussed chocolate cake? I need two large slices, about twice a week, to fend off the existential vacuum. I’ll take red velvet in a pinch or even caramel pecan butter cake with some vanilla gelato glopped over it. Though those alternative desserts can't penetrate my craving sensors as deeply as the chocolate.
My wife is currently baking coffee cinnamon swirl chocolate chip cake because she likes to bake a dessert before we watch our favorite show Game of Thrones.
I told her I didn’t want any coffee cake as I’m trying to trim my waistline, however she reminded me that I already ate over half of it. I don’t even remember what I’m eating, I think I’m in trouble.
Using Parallel Structure for Mapping Components of Your Thesis Statement
Faulty and Corrected Parallelism Link
Parallelism in Different Parts of Speech
The theater eaters were hoggish, avaricious, relentless, and made lots of disgusting smacking sounds.
A diet that consists of locally grown vegetables, organic animal proteins, organic dairy, and fish that swim wildly in the open seas promotes strong health.
The diners at HomeTown Buffet smacked their lips and were sweating.
The HomeTown Buffet diners were pleased about the unlimited salad bar and that everyone got five extra slices of chocolate cake.
Corrected: The HomeTown Buffet diners were pleased that they had access to the unlimited salad bar and that they could have five extra slices of chocolate cake.
When it comes to losing weight, it's better to change one's lifestyle than dieting in a manic and compulsive panic.
Corrected: When it comes to losing weight, it's better to change one's lifestyle than to rely on manic, compulsive crash dieting.
Most Common Error Last Essay: Pronoun Shifts and Agreement
We suffer learned helplessness when you feel like everything you do is a failure. A person suffering from helplessness will often have delusions that destroy all their efforts. When one feels helpless, we must exercise the Third Eye so you can see your problems from an objective distance. When a person has the Third Eye, they are able to develop strategies to transcend their sense of recurring futility.
Faulty Pronoun Error Reference
Different Types of Pronoun Errors
Study Questions for Chapter 3, 97-139
One. Describe the injustice imposed upon Erma Faye Stewart on page 97. Did she ever get justice? How are millions of the poor vulnerable to this injustice?
We find that African Americans were put into prison just 3 years after the Drug War in the 1980s at a rate of 400% or a quadrupling (98). By 2000 the rate of African American imprisonment was up 26 times or 2,600 percent.
Are black people "2,600 percent more criminal inside," as opponents of Alexander claim. Ridiculous.
It seems reasonable to call this Jim Crow 2.0.
We read on page 98, that although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses are black or Latino.
On page 118 we read that African Americans are six times as likely as whites to be sentenced to prison for identical crimes. Sounds like Jim Crow to me.
African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of all juvenile arrests, 35% of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58% of youth admitted to state adult prison.
Hypersegregation of the black poor in ghetto communities has made the roundup, police arresting people with no just cause, easy. Rappers call this situation “The Occupation.”
We read on page 128 that Adolph Lyons was stopped for a burned-out taillight and beaten into a loss of consciousness, urinated and defecated on himself, and suffered permanent damage to his larynx. This was the LAPD. Lyons sued but lost. Deadly chokeholds are still a legal practice even though sixteen people have been killed by it.
In New Jersey, we read on page 133, racial minority drivers are 15% but 42% of all stops and 73% of all arrests happen to minorities (New Jersey Turnpike).
Seventy-seven % of all consent searches happen to minorities.
In Maryland, African Americans are 17% of drivers yet 70% are stopped and searched.
In both studies, we see that whites were more likely to be carrying drugs. That’s twice as likely as black people and five times as likely as Latinos.
This racial isolation doesn’t affect white communities and the suburbs and the result is indifference toward those who are unfairly imprisoned, what’s called an “I don’t give a damn” mentality (124).
Two. How does white drug use differ from black drug use?
We read on page 99, that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students. Equal percentages use marijuana.
White drug dealers do their dealing, not on street corners like the poor, but in more discreet settings (100).
Crack cocaine, the major drug in black offenses, creates sentences that bring punishment with one hundred times more severity than offenses involving powder cocaine (the white drug) as we see on page 112. Crack law is unfair since plain cocaine results in far fewer sentences, a ratio of 100:1. Fair sentencing act may change this.
In Jim Crow 2.0, racial language is not used; there is a code that includes the type of drugs that will result in strong convictions. These strong convictions will be exacted on poor people of color, not white people with economic resources.
Three. What is the circular illogic of racial profiling?
On page 134, we read that cops say, “Our prisons are full of blacks; blacks must be doing all the crime; therefore, we must stop and search blacks.”
In Denver, a 1992 investigation showed that 8 out of 10 people of color in the entire city were on a list of suspected criminals.
Clearly, the studies show that racial minorities are the main targets of stop-and-frisk. This humiliating ritual of dominance and submission recalls Jim Crow (136). And these searches are the gateway to a lifelong spent in the prison system.
Alexander's Major Claims and Arguments (you should address in your essay's mapping components)
One. The NJC is based on race-neutral language to exert racist control and to make a rich prison empire on the backs of poor black men.
Two. Prisons don't reduce crime. They increase it.
Three. NJC was created by elite whites to appease poor whites.
Four. NJC is a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement merging with the Poor People's Movement (threatening to take more pie from the white elite who needed to break the alliance).
Six. War on Drugs threw away the Fourth Amendment for people of color.
Seven. Poor people don't get legal representation.
Eight. U.S. legal system accommodates white crimes (alcohol, drunk driving (80% of drunk drivers are white men) powder cocaine, marijuana) but prosecutes to the full extent black crimes.
Counterarguments
Here is a legitimate critique from Yale.
Counterargument and rebuttal (in reader comments) of the claim that mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow.
Comments