My pick for My Therapist’s Book Club this month is The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I’ve read quite a few books on racial issues over the last few years and this is definitely my favorite. This book paints a very clear picture of systemic racism.
If you feel like you don’t really understand what systemic racism means, this book does a great job of explaining how the systems in place in America disproportionately search, arrest, prosecute, and sentence black men for minor crimes like drug possession. This disproportionality has far reaching and long term consequences for black communities who then have larger proportions of incarcerated men and fathers which leads to more poverty which causes perpetual disadvantages repeat through generations.
The potential solutions to the problem become so obvious it feels shocking that we haven’t done more as a country to change policies already.
These systemic issues contribute to mental health problems in large and small ways from chronic stress to the trauma of family separations and more.
If you’re going to read just one book to increase your awareness of racial social justice issues, make it this one.
