The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The United States does have the highest rate of incarceration in the world dwarfing the rates of even highly repressive regimes like… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Mass incarceration has become normalized in the United States. Poor folks of color are shuttled from decrepit, underfunded schools to brand new,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Most criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
There is a tremendous amount of confusion and denial that exists about mass incarceration today, and that is the biggest barrier to… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
When young black men reach a certain age - whether or not there is incarceration in their families - they themselves are… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Our system of mass incarceration is better understood as a system of racial and social control than a system of crime prevention… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Racial violence has been rationalized, legitimated, and channeled through our criminal justice system; it is expressed as police brutality, solitary confinement, and… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Incarceration rates - especially black incarceration rates - have soared regardless of whether crime has been going up or down in any… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The notion that a vast gulf exists between "criminals" and those of us who have never served time in prison is a… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Just providing information about how bad things are, or the statistics and data on incarceration by themselves, does lead to more depression… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
I think it's critically important for people to understand that this system of mass incarceration governs not just those who find themselves… — 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
