Michelle Alexander Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• A new race-neutral language was developed for appealing to old racist sentiments, a language accompanied by a political movement that succeeded in putting the vast majority of backs back in their place. Proponents of racial hierarchy found they could install a new racial caste system without violating the law or the new limits of acceptable political discourse, by demanding 'law and order' rather than 'segregation forever'.

  Michelle Alexander

  Race, Order, Law

• 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

  War, Unique, Opportunity

  Michelle Alexander (2013). “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”, p.54, The New Press

• What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don't. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color "criminals" and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.

  Michelle Alexander

  Race, Color, Practice

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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