“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
“The liberal philosophy of race relations emphasized the stigma of segregation and the hypocrisy of a government that celebrates freedom and equality… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The Supreme Court has now closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the criminal justice process,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In many large urban areas, the majority of working age African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“We should ask ourselves whether efforts to achieve "cosmetic" racial diversity- that is, reform efforts that make institutions look good on the… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
It is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
In a sense, mass incarceration has emerged as a far more extreme form of physical and residential segregation than Jim Crow segregation.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to… — 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… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“As historian Gerald McKnight observes, “King was proposing nothing less than a radical transformation of the Civil Rights Movement into a populist… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
For the rest of their lives, [black men] can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated… — 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
“The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, holding that when a pattern of race-based strikes has been identified by the defense, the prosecutor need… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“More than 2 million people found themselves behind bars at the turn of the twenty-first century, and millions more were relegated to… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between poor whites and African Americans. These discriminatory… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The War on Drugs proved popular among key white voters, particularly whites who remained resentful of black progress, civil rights enforcement, and… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“A new civil rights movement cannot be organized around the relics of the earlier system of control if it is to address… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“When we think of racism we think of Governor Wallace of Alabama blocking the schoolhouse door; we think of water hoses, lynchings,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“In a nation still stuck in an old Jim Crow mind-set - which equates racism with white bigotry and views racial diversity… — 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
People return home from prison and face legal discrimination in virtually all areas of social and economic and political life. They are… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“The fact that some African Americans have experienced great success in recent years does not mean that something akin to a racial… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The sprinkling of people of color through elite institutions in the United States, due to affirmative action policies and the limited progress… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward… — 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
“Seeing race is not the problem. Refusing to care for the people we see is the problem. The fact that the meaning… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“History reveals that the seeds of the new system of control were planted well before the end of the Civil Rights Movement.… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“As the rules of acceptable discourse changed, however, segregationists distanced themselves from an explicitly racist agenda. they developed instead the racially sanitized… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between poor whites and African Americans. These discriminatory… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
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 process occurs in two stages. The first step is to grant law enforcement officials extraordinary discretion regarding whom to stop, search,… — Michelle Alexander Copy Share Image
“In order to make this point, we need to talk about race openly and honestly. We must stop debating crime policy as… — 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
![“For the rest of their lives, [black men] can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. So many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim…” quote by Michelle Alexander](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/e0f/michelle-alexander-750_access_for-the-rest-of-their-lives-black-men-ca_1846583.jpg)
![“[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)