Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindess, is a New York Times bestseller in which she examines how the mass incarceration of African American men, primarily through the war on drugs, has created a new racial under caste, a group of people defined largely by race that is subject to legalized discrimination, scorn and social exclusion. She challenges the conventional wisdom that with the election of Barack Obama as President, our nation has "triumphed over race." She says we should place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice.

Alexander has served on the faculty of Stanford Law School and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Currently, she is a professor at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.