If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Merely reducing prison terms does not have a major impact on the majority of people in the system. It is the badge… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Certainly youth of color, particularly those in ghetto communities, find themselves born into the cage. They are born into a community in… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“As historian Lerone Bennett Jr. eloquently reminds us, 'A nation is a choice.' We could choose to be a nation that extends… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Once you've acquired a criminal record, you can be discriminated against legally in employment, housing, and access to education and public benefits.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“We could choose to be a nation that extends care, compassion, and concern to those who are locked up and locked out… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
For reasons that have stunningly little to do with crime or crime rates, we, as a nation, have chosen to lock up… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Public housing officials are free to discriminate against you on the basis of criminal records, including arrest records. And so, you know,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Once a person is labeled a felon, he or she is ushered into a parallel universe in which discrimination, stigma, and exclusion… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In this country, we force millions of people - who are largely black and brown - into a permanent second-class status simply… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Merely reducing sentence length, by itself, does not disturb the basic architecture of the New Jim Crow. So long as large numbers… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“of the nearly 7.3 million people currently under correctional control, only 1.6 million are in prison.27 This caste system extends far beyond… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't get that… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The uncomfortable reality we must face is that California, like the nation as a whole, has treated generations of African Americans and Latinos as… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem. The fact that the meaning of race… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Since the nations founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die but then… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Felon disenfranchisement laws have been more effective in eliminating black voters in the age of mass incarceration than they were under Jim Crow…These figures… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“That was King’s dream—a society that is capable of seeing each of us, as we are, with love. That is a goal worth fighting… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Activists take the risks, while advocates are professional tinkerers with the system. What's necessary is for those who are advocates to support those who… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
We cannot 'fix' the police without a revolution of values and radical change to the basic structure of our society. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“[T]he slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery. —W.E.B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
