Michelle Alexander: A Public Intellectual

The term ‘public intellectual’ isn’t a term widely known across the general population, however, it is an extremely integral part of society. The population is filled with intellectuals who continue to gain knowledge and share that knowledge with others, but a public intellectual is someone who does so on a grander scale. Whether it’s through writing a book, sharing stories online, or speaking in front of crowds, public intellectuals spread their ideas to society. From these public declarations, they may gain a following of people who share similar values and/or ideas and likely people who disagree as well. By gaining these two distinct groups, the community starts a conversation around their ideas which, in turn, increases their popularity (whether good or bad) and they can continue as a contributor to public discourse. Philosophers and writers tend to make up the majority of public intellectuals but anyone who has an intellectual contribution to public conversation can be considered as one. 

Now, you may be thinking “Who cares?” or “Why should we care?”. As discussed in “The ‘Decline’ of Public Intellectuals”, they play an important role in the functioning of society, which is to act as a critic. They challenge the knowledge that the public is fed by government officials, corporations, institutions, etc. who can skew information for their personal gain. Though public intellectuals could also provide misinformation, they often choose to criticize and challenge others and speak their Truth to the public. If they want to be taken seriously, they must do their own research to back up their claims which usually results in these intellectuals putting their best knowledge and insight forward. Michelle Alexander took on this role of critic by challenging the justice system and society’s supposed end of racism by claiming the presence of a racial caste system seen through mass incarceration, the war on drugs, and the legal system within the United States. She used her knowledge acquired through extensive education, employment in the justice department, stories from clients, and her own personal experience as a person of color to support her claims and pave the way for influence in public discourse, making her a prime example of a public intellectual.

Michelle Alexander was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1967, the daughter of an interracial couple. At the age of 10, her family moved to San Francisco, California then to Oregon where she attended high school. Michelle Alexander spent her undergraduate years at Vanderbilt University and completed law school at Stanford Law. From there, she became an acclaimed civil rights lawyer and advocate for clients targeted by government officials on the basis of race. She worked for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as one of the directors of the Racial Justice Project when she got the idea for her soon-to-be critically acclaimed and award-winning book “The New Jim Crow”. Additionally, she directed the Stanford Law Civil Rights Clinic and served as a law clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court. As a law firm associate, she specialized in class-action lawsuits surrounding gender and racial discrimination. She has also taught at various universities over the years and is currently an opinion writer for the New York Times. Her extensive history of civil rights activism and education, along with her firsthand experience with the justice system, gave her more than enough resources to write her book with substantial evidence to support her claims.

“The New Jim Crow” is her most acclaimed piece of work and launched her into the public intellectual realm. It is a nonfiction book calling out society for operating under a racial caste system, exchanging the Jim Crow era for new laws that function eerily similar. She says that the new caste system is difficult for the general population to realize because it is hidden under the guise of ‘social justice’ while disproportionately targeting people of color, specifically black men, and transforming them into criminals in the eyes of the public using government funding for policing. This allows for the government and communities to condone this inhumane treatment by labeling it as justice. Alexander calls attention to the social justice system along with the war on drugs and mass incarceration for functioning as racially discriminatory institutions, allowing for the caste system to take root and thrive in society. Throughout the book, she goes into great detail about all the evidence supporting her claim by dedicating time and care to each area she mentions. She starts off by giving a history of racial castes in the US which serves as a baseline and general reference point for the remainder of the book. She then delves into the police system's abuse of the reinterpretation of the 4th amendment by the Court, followed by how the war on drugs is targeting the black population. This leads to her discussion of mass incarceration and the long-term effects it has that, again, disproportionately affect black people. She uses her endless research on each of these concepts to prove that a racial caste system still exists despite others claiming the end of racism. In the final chapter of her book, she offers a start to the resolution of this racial caste, beginning with care and respect for all people despite their backgrounds and the practical applications of this mindset. 

Her idea of an ever-so-present racial caste system came from years of education in the law and civil rights fields, the experiences and encounters that came from that education, and her personal experience as a black person in America. In an interview, Alexander says that there was a specific encounter with a young black man that led her to write this book. At the time, she was gathering evidence to file a lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department for racial profiling and had asked for victims of profiling to come forward with evidence to support their suit. This man had immense evidence of racial profiling over the years, but she was unable to use him as a plaintiff because he was a felon. Because of this, he was automatically ruled out to speak up for himself, even though the felony was an extremely minor drug charge that was likely racial profiling in itself. This encounter served as a turning point for Alexander because she was able to see firsthand how the justice system was acting as a system of racial control rather than crime control and prevention. This story, mixed with the countless others she has witnessed and defended as a civil rights lawyer, led her to write “The New Jim Crow” and expose the caste system that plagues society. 

This book paved Alexander’s way as a public intellectual because she effectively challenged the United States government and all those who believed that racism was over by providing more than enough evidence of each category of offense against people of color. The book was published in 2010, just two years after the election of President Obama and the supposed ‘end of racism’ that came with that election. At the time of its release, the book was relatively unpopular. It wasn’t until two years later that it gained popularity and became the center of conversation surrounding criminal justice and reformation. Alexander attributes her book's success to ‘right timing’ because it was around the time of the uprisings against police brutality following Michael Brown’s brutal murder in Ferguson, Missouri, and the killing of several other young black people that led the community to start questioning the system. Their questioning lined up perfectly with Alexander’s answers and led to her work as the subject of conversation surrounding civil rights. 

Even today, Alexander is receiving letters from people in prison or those who have a criminal record for reasons relevant to her ideas thanking her for challenging the justice system and starting a dialogue. In addition to opening this discourse and starting a national debate on racial and criminal justice, Alexander’s book has become a resource for judicial decisions, even being cited to sway judicial outcomes. In decisions such as Utah v. Strieff and United States v. Nesbeth, “The New Jim Crow” has been cited to support claims of racial prejudice in suspicionless stops and unfair consequences suffered by those convicted of drug crimes. The book’s relevance to recurring court cases, even 10 years later, shows the importance of her ideas and the impact they have on society. 

Now, Michelle Alexander is an opinion writer for the New York Times as well as a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary. Her pieces for NYT usually surround activism and continue her contribution to the discourse around civil rights. However, she has since focused on collaborating with the religious community and the moral aspect of justice issues. She finds that diving deep into moral questions about the meaning of justice is the best way to start reforming the system. She states that in order to fully recognize justice and how to apply it, we must focus on the moral perspective along with the legal and political ones. She is currently working on new books and a podcast that are in line with her new perspective and will in turn reach an even broader audience. 

Michelle Alexander’s contribution to discourse surrounding racial prejudice in the United States justice system paired with her continuing participation paints her as the perfect example of a public intellectual. Her book, supported by endless evidence and resources, sparked national debate and continues to hold up in major decisions within court despite coming to fame over 10 years ago. She effectively challenged an extremely large institution, providing the community with more information surrounding civil rights and calling out the racial caste. Circling back to our definition of a public intellectual, we can see that Alexander embodies that label and proves the importance of public intellectuals to society due to their lasting impact on public discourse.