Cornel West said that under President Barack Obama there has been an increase in what he called the "new Jim Crow" and claimed his presidency has thus been a failure. Appearing in a Monday interview on Al Jazeera America's Talk to Al Jazeera with David Shuster, West said 2.5 million new prisoners have been incarcerated while Obama has been in office mostly "because of soft drugs" and the disparity in "crack cocaine versus regular cocaine" users. West referred to this phenomenon as the "new Jim Crow" because he said minority communities and the poor are disproportionately impacted.