Sojourners Magazine: February 2011
For most of the century following the Civil War, "Jim Crow" laws enforced the segregation of blacks and whites in this country, a caste system of legalized racial discrimination that lasted into the mid-1960s. Today, as author Michelle Alexander explains, it's no longer socially acceptable to use race to justify discrimination -- but the discrimination continues in another guise. Millions of African Americans, especially men and boys, are under the control of the U.S. criminal justice system, a significant percentage of them for nonviolent offenses.
Read the feature article, Cruel and Unequal, and see videos of Michelle Alexander speaking on the new Jim Crow.
Read Logan Mehl-Laituri on his decision to become a conscientious objector to the Iraq War, and find resources on selective conscientious objection.