This is the concluding segment in a five-part series.  Earlier posts can be found here, here, here, and here.

Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart, Jena District Attorney Reed Walters and Mississippi prosecutor Doug Evans were raised in a culture that wore its racism like a badge of honor. As young children, Stewart, Walters and Evans were exposed to ideas, attitudes and experiences that left them deeply scarred. There is no sense condemning such men as if their adult behavior was exceptional or uncharacteristic of the larger society; it was not. Stewart, Walters and Evans were grown men with fully formed opinions when, suddenly and without warning, the racial rules changed. By 1991, the year all three men ascended to positions of power, public officials were officially colorblind. Now, two decades later, only those who use the n-word and publicly and embrace the principle of white supremacy are deemed worthy of the epithet “racist”.

Welcome to the colorblind world of the new Jim Crow, where nobody, black or white, Democrat or Republican can “see color”. The policy of mass incarceration is now too firmly entrenched to be questioned inside the American mainstream. Seven million Americans are “in the system” (prison, jail, probation and parole) another seven million Americans benefit, directly or indirectly, from the mass incarceration of American citizens.

If other western democracies are anything to go by, America should be incarcerating just over 380,000 people; but we’re locking up six times that number. Either we have a lot more criminals than other countries, or something sinister is afoot.

Tragically, the criminal justice reform movement is splintered into hundreds of single-issue advocacy groups pressing for piecemeal and incremental “best practice” reforms. Some of us focus on juvenile justice, mandatory minimum sentences, the war on drugs, the death penalty or a dozen other worthy issues.

We have won a few isolated battles, but we are losing the war. Until we understand and expose the dynamics of the new Jim Crow, positive change is impossible. Our challenge is to change the way American thinks about race, crime and justice. With a goal that daunting, only a unified movement with a clear message can prevail.

The mass incarceration of poor people of color is strictly hush-hush. You will rarely hear it mentioned on the evening news or by hip comedians like Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. But this isn’t somebody else’s nightmare; it belongs to you, and it belongs to me. Mass incarceration must end, brothers and sisters; the new Jim Crow has got to go.