The News should be praised for publishing Leonard Pitts' article about Michelle Alexander's book, "The New Jim Crow" ("'New Jim Crow' surfaces in U.S. justice," Other Views, Monday). It is undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S.

Over the past 20 or so years, we have seen a huge jump in the imprisonment of black men in the U.S., using the "war on drugs" as an excuse to establish a caste system here, with an effect not unlike Jim Crow. Police statistics show black men use no more drugs than white men, yet blacks are being rounded up in droves, through checkpoints and stop-and-search rules, while police avoid using the same tactics for white men.

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