College of Law Presents Professor Michelle Alexander as the 2011 William J. Butler Human Rights Lecturer

Professor Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer turned legal scholar, will discuss current issues from her book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”  This event will be held on Thursday, October 6 at 4:00 p.m. in Room 114 of the law school.

Noted Alexander in her book,

      "As the United States celebrates the nation’s ‘triumph over race’ with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or labeled felons for life. Jim Crow laws were wiped off the books decades ago, but today an astounding percentage of the African American community is warehoused in prisons or trapped in a permanent, second-class status—much like their grandparents before them, who lived under an explicit system of control."

    She argues that we have not ended the racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it. Alexander shows that by targeting African Americans through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control. In the current era, it is no longer permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt. Yet it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. The old forms of discrimination—discrimination in employment, housing, education, and public benefits; denial of the right to vote; and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal once you’re labeled a felon. Alexander challenges the civil rights community, and all of us to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

This event is sponsored by the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights and the Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice.

For more information: visit the web page or Nancy Ent mailto:513-556-0068/nancy.ent@uc.edu 

About the Butler Human Rights Lecture
WILLIAM J. BUTLER, ESQ., President of the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists, is a distinguished member of the New York Bar and renowned civil rights lawyer. Among his many accomplishments, Mr. Butler argued and won two landmark civil rights cases before the United States Supreme Court: Engel v. Vitale (1962), “the school prayer case,” and Kent v. Dulles (1958), “the passport case.” As Counsel of Record for the International Commission of Jurists and the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists, Mr. Butler submitted an Amicus Curiae Brief, Supporting Petitioners, in Rasul v. Bush (2004) and Boumediene v. Bush (2008). Mr. Butler is Chairman Emeritus International Commission of Jurists (1975-1990) and an Honorary Member 1990. The College of Law Library is honored to house the papers of William J. Butler.