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The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.

Michelle Alexander

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Michelle Alexander
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: October 7
Author
Human Rights Activist
Lawyer
Professor
University Teacher
the United States of America
Progress
Opposed
Whites
Race
Drugs
Neutral
Opportunity
Racism
Blacks
Language
Reform
Hostility
War
Express
Racial
Black
Drug
Offered
Without
Unique
Charge
Toward
Exposed
Cloaked

More quotes by Michelle Alexander

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Discrimination in public benefits is also perfectly legal. Under federal law, people convicted of drug felonies are deemed ineligible even for food stamps.
Michelle Alexander
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For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated.
Michelle Alexander
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In fact, in some countries there are actually voting drives conducted in prison! But here in the U.S., we seem to take the idea of democracy a bit less seriously and people are denied the right to vote not only when they are in prison, but also upon release in many states.
Michelle Alexander
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Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons.
Michelle Alexander
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The fact that people of all colors have been ensnared by the drug war helps to preserve the system as a whole from serious critique, as it creates the impression - at a glance - that the war is being waged in an unbiased manner, even when nothing could be further from the truth.
Michelle Alexander
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In many large urban areas, the majority of working age African American men now have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. It is viewed as normal in ghetto communities to go to prison or jail.
Michelle Alexander
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The fate of millions of people—indeed the future of the black community itself—may depend on the willingness of those who care about racial justice to re-examine their basic assumptions about the role of the criminal justice system in our society.
Michelle Alexander
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I do believe that something akin to a racial caste system is alive and well in America.
Michelle Alexander
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Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns.
Michelle Alexander
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I think it's critically important that the people who have been most harmed by mass incarceration, by mass deportation, by neoliberalism, by all of it, not only have a voice in crafting these platforms but emerge and are supported as real leaders in these movements.
Michelle Alexander
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The bigger picture is that over the last 30 years, we have spent $1 trillion waging a drug war that has failed in any meaningful way to reduce drug addiction or abuse, and yet has siphoned an enormous amount of resources away from other public services, especially education.
Michelle Alexander
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For those interested in learning more about corporations and private individuals profiting from the caging of human beings, I highly recommend the book Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration.
Michelle Alexander
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What does this system seem designed to do? As I see it, it seems designed to send people right back to prison, which is what happens about 70% of the time.
Michelle Alexander
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No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid
Michelle Alexander
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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 into a parallel social universe in which the civil and human rights supposedly won during the Civil Rights Movement no longer apply to them.
Michelle Alexander
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Prison guard unions have become the powerful political forces in some states, particularly California.
Michelle Alexander
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Defenders of the system will counter by saying this drug war has been aimed at violent crime. But that is not the case. The overwhelming majority of people arrested in the drug war have been arrested for relatively minor, non-violent drug offenses.
Michelle Alexander
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Middle-class white children, children of privilege, are afforded the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes and still go on to college, still dream big dreams. But for kids who are born in the ghetto in the era of mass incarceration, the system is designed in such a way that it traps them, often for life.
Michelle Alexander
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We must build a movement for education, not incarceration. A movement for jobs, not jails. A movement that will end all forms of discrimination against people released from prison - discrimination that denies them basic human rights to work, shelter and food.
Michelle Alexander
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The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.
Michelle Alexander