And despite the unprecedented levels of incarceration in…

“Far from fading away, it appears that prisons are here to stay. And despite the unprecedented levels of incarceration in the African American community,…

— Michelle Alexander

Eventually [black men] are arrested, whether they've committed any serious crime or not, and branded criminals or felons for life. Upon release, they're ushered…

— Michelle Alexander

“Human Rights Watch reported in 2000 that, in seven states, African Americans constitute 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison.…

— Michelle Alexander

“One in three young African American men is currently under the control of the criminal justice system—in prison, in jail, on probation, or on…

— michelle alexander

“They were outside. It was oddly quiet, with just a muffled roar from behind the closed door, as if the ocean were contained on…

— Eloisa James

“Even Puck, who could usually be counted on to fart during dinner, was oddly quiet.”

— Michael Buckley

“As historian Gerald McKnight observes, “King was proposing nothing less than a radical transformation of the Civil Rights Movement into a populist crusade calling…

— Michelle Alexander

“In his campaign for the presidency, Reagan mastered the "excision of the language of race from conservative public discourse"… For example, when Reagan kicked…

— Michelle Alexander

“While the Reconstruction Era was fraught with corruption and arguably doomed by the lack of land reform, the sweeping economic and political developments in…

— Michelle Alexander

Felons are typically stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement, including the right to vote, the right to serve…

— Michelle Alexander

“A new civil rights movement cannot be organized around the relics of the earlier system of control if it is to address meaningfully the…

— Michelle Alexander

“Civil rights protests were frequently depicted as criminal rather than political in nature, and federal courts were accused of excessive “lenience” toward lawlessness, thereby…

— Michelle Alexander

If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for…

— Michelle Alexander

The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the…

— Michelle Alexander

If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of…

— Michelle Alexander