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Of course it would make far more sense to invest in education and job creation in poor communities of color, rather than spend billions of dollars caging them and monitoring them upon release.

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
Sense
Courses
Invest
Make
Course
Communities
Would
Education
Billions
Community
Release
Poor
Dollars
Rather
Spend
Upon
Creation
Jobs
Color
Monitoring

More quotes by Michelle Alexander

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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.
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For reasons that have stunningly little to do with crime or crime rates, we, as a nation, have chosen to lock up more than two million people behind bars. Millions more are on probation or parole, or branded felons for life and thus locked into a permanent second-class status.
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Public housing projects as well as private landlords are free to deny housing to people with criminal records. In fact, you don't even have to be convicted. You can be denied housing - or your family evicted - just based on an arrest.
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Nationwide, 1 in 3 black men can expect to serve time behind bars, but the rates are far higher in segregated and impoverished black communities.
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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 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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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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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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The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.
Michelle Alexander
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In the 1990s - the period of the greatest escalation of the drug war - nearly 80 percent of the increase in drug arrests was for marijuana possession, a drug less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and at least, if not more, prevalent in middle class white neighborhoods and college campuses as it is in the 'hood.
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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There are more African Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850 a decade before the civil war began.
Michelle Alexander
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We're living in a time when so many of the civil rights and social justice organizations are run by lawyers and policy people who are often very disconnected from the communities they claim to represent.
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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Most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime, but the enemy in this war has been racially defined. Not by accident, the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, even though studies have consistently shown - for decades - the people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites.
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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We have avoided in recent years talking openly and honestly about race out of fear that it will alienate and polarize. In my own view, it’s our refusal to deal openly and honestly with race that leads us to keep repeating these cycles of exclusion and division, and rebirthing a caste-like system that we claim we’ve left behind
Michelle Alexander
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Incarceration rates - especially black incarceration rates - have soared regardless of whether crime has been going up or down in any given community or the nation as a whole.
Michelle Alexander
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We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.
Michelle Alexander
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One of those lies is that all we need to do is elect more Democrats. No. That actually isn't going to get us to the Promised Land.
Michelle Alexander