Nationwide about 1 in 7 black men are temporarily or permanently disenfranchised due to felon disenfranchisement laws. — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Discrimination in public benefits is also perfectly legal. Under federal law, people convicted of drug felonies are deemed ineligible even for food… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The same kinds of stereotypes and hunches that George Zimmerman used when deciding that, you know, Trayvon Martin seemed like a threat… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime, but the enemy in this war has been racially defined. Not by accident, the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as "mischief" and "insulting gestures" as crimes were enforced vigorously against blacks. The aggressive… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
I have spent years representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In response to the advocacy of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, most states adopted tougher laws to punish drunk driving. Numerous… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
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
People have a false understanding of what our legal system is like - how it works/operates - from shows like 'Law and… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Many people don't realize that financial incentives have been built into the drug war that guarantee that law enforcement will continue to… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
It's important to teach students about the reality of the system, that it is in fact the case that they are being… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
To make matters worse, federal drug forfeiture laws allow state and local law enforcement agencies to keep, for their own use, up… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“By the turn of the twentieth century, every state in the South had laws on the books that disenfranchised blacks and discriminated… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Yet far from putting any meaningful constraints on law enforcement in this war, the U.S. Supreme Court has given the police license… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In the war on drugs, state and state law enforcement agencies have been rewarded in cash by the federal government - through… — 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
Voting rights expert and legal scholar Pam Karlan reports that as of 2004, there were more black men disenfranchised than in 1870,… — 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
![“[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 For” quote by Michelle Alexander](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/fdb/michelle-alexander-750_time_t-he-slave-went-free-stood-a-brief-momen_96485.jpg)