Mass Incarceration Quotes - Page 2

• 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

  Dream, Children, Mistake

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• In my view, the critical questions in this era of mass incarceration are: What disturbs us? What seems contrary to expectation? Who do we really care about?

  Michelle Alexander

  Views, Expectations, Care

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.

  Michelle Alexander

  Rights, Judging, Progress

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.15, The New Press

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• Think of the question of mass incarceration. Think of the coding that the Republican Party has used for years, whether they're talking about Obama or blacks or Willie Horton.

  Henry Giroux

  Party, Thinking, Talking

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The war on drugs has been the engine of mass incarceration. Drug convictions alone constituted about two-thirds of the increase in the federal prison population and more than half of the increase in the state prison population between 1985 and 2000, the period of our prison system's most dramatic expansion.

  Michelle Alexander

  War, Prison Population, Two

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were Black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate.

  Michelle Alexander

  Race, Color, Racism

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.58, The New Press

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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

  Book, Corporations, Making Money

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• If we want to do more than just end mass incarceration—if we want to put an end to the history of racial caste in America—we must lay down our racial bribes, join hands with people of all colors who are not content to wait for change to trickle down, and say to those who would stand in our way: Accept all of us or none.

  Michelle Alexander

  Hands, Color, America

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.258, The New Press

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• In other words, in the same way that mass incarceration surged because of a real thing, it's finally starting to ebb because of a real thing: the actual, concrete decline in violent crime that started in the early 90s and which appears to be permanent. America is simply a safer place than it used to be, and looks set to stay that way.

  Kevin Drum

  Real, America, Looks

  "Our Obsession With Mass Incarceration May Finally Be Ebbing" by Kevin Drum, www.motherjones.com. January 2, 2015.

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• We can’t talk about mass incarceration at this point without talking about women.

  dream hampton

  Talking, Mass, Incarceration

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• Our criminal justice system has swallowed up too many people I love. I am proud to join the ACLU in the fight to make mass incarceration a thing of the past.

  Michael K. Williams

  Fighting, Past, People

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• All of this in [Donald] Trump now has become so overt that it's difficult when we talk about repression not to talk about white supremacy, not to talk about its legacy, from slavery to lynching to mass incarceration, and what it has developed into.

  Henry Giroux

  Lynching, White, Legacy

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I know she [Hillary Clinton] comes out of a legacy with her husband in which the Democratic Party did more, it seems to me, to subjugate blacks to the dynamics of oppression, poverty. The mass incarceration state.

  Henry Giroux

  Husband, Party, Legacy

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We are the in midst of a bipartisan moment as it relates to criminal justice reform and dealing with mass incarceration in America which disproportionately impacts the African-American community.

  Hakeem Jeffries

  Impact, America, Justice

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• I really think we were charting a course to having a more sane response to mass incarceration, to drug use, and to understanding that the war on drugs has resulted only in the empowerment of vast criminal enterprises and the destruction of democracies around the world. And all that is coming to a miserable, horrific halt.

  Ayelet Waldman

  War, Thinking, Drug Use

  Source: m.motherjones.com

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• The legalization of drugs, a proliferation of a public health approach to drug use and drug addition, a compassionate mental health system. And can we just say gender equality and the end of mass incarceration and the final shedding of the vestiges of a slave-based nation? Can we have that, too? Can I have it all?

  Ayelet Waldman

  Drug Use, Finals, Mental Health

  Source: m.motherjones.com

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• Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs

  Michelle Alexander

  War, Color, People

  "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". Book by Michelle Alexander, January 5, 2010.

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• I think this mythology - that we're all beyond race, of course our police officers aren't racist, of course our politicians don't mean any harm to people of color - this idea that we're beyond all that (so it must be something else) makes it difficult for young people as well as the grown-ups to be able to see clearly and honestly the truth of what's going on. It makes it difficult to see that the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement manifested itself in the form of mass incarceration, in the form of defunding and devaluing schools serving kids of color and all the rest.

  Michelle Alexander

  School, Mean, Kids

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Dunbar-Ortiz strips us of our forged innocence, shocks us into new awareness, and draws a straight line from the sins of our fathers-settler-colonialism, the doctrine of discovery, the myth of manifest destiny, white supremacy, theft and systematic killing-to the contemporary condition of permanent war, invasion and occupation, mass incarceration, and the constant use and threat of state violence.

  Bill Ayers

  Father, War, Destiny

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• I think it's critically important for people to understand that this system of mass incarceration governs not just those who find themselves in prison on any given day, but also all those who are in jail, on probation or parole, as well as all those who are just months away from being locked up again because they are unable to find work or housing due to their criminal record.

  Michelle Alexander

  Thinking, Jail, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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