Michelle Alexander Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• For many, whether they go to prison or not is far less about the choices they make and far more about what kind of cage they're born into.

  Michelle Alexander

  Choices, Cages, Kind

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Prison guard unions have become the powerful political forces in some states, particularly California.

  Michelle Alexander

  Powerful, Prison Guards, California

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• People charged with drug offenses, though, are typically poor people of color. They are routinely charged with felonies and sent to prison.

  Michelle Alexander

  Color, People, Drug

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• For African American children, in particular, the odds are extremely high that they will have a parent or loved one, a relative, who has either spent time behind bars or who has acquired a criminal record and thus is part of the under-caste - the group of people who can be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives. For many African American children, their fathers, and increasingly their mothers, are behind bars. It is very difficult for them to visit. Many people are held hundreds or even thousands of miles away from home.

  Michelle Alexander

  Mother, Children, Father

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I was inspired by what students have done in some schools organizing walkouts protesting the lack of funding and that sort of thing. There are opportunities for students to engage in those types of protests - taking to the streets - but there is also writing poetry, writing music, beginning to express themselves, holding forums, educating each other, the whole range.

  Michelle Alexander

  Writing, School, Opportunity

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  7 Copy quote

• The United States does have the highest rate of incarceration in the world dwarfing the rates of even highly repressive regimes like Russia, China or Iran. This reflects a radical shift in criminal justice policy, a stunning development that virtually no one - not even the best criminologists - predicted forty years ago.

  Michelle Alexander

  Russia, Iran, Years

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• We are in a social and political context in which the norm is to punish poor folks of color rather than to educate and empower them with economic opportunity.

  Michelle Alexander

  Opportunity, Color, Empowering

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Plenty of drug dealing does happen in the 'hood, but it happens everywhere else in America as well. In fact, some studies suggest that where significant differences in the data can be found, white youth are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth.

  Michelle Alexander

  Black Youth, Data, White

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• There is a tremendous amount of confusion and denial that exists about mass incarceration today, and that is the biggest barrier to movement building. As long as we remain in denial about this system, movement building will be impossible. Exposing youth in classrooms to the truth about this system and developing their critical capacities will, I believe, open the door to meaningful engagement and collective, inspired action.

  Michelle Alexander

  Meaningful, Believe, Doors

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  6 Copy quote

• Most criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with each other.

  Michelle Alexander

  United States, Littles, Today

  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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• The mass criminalization of white men would disturb us to the core.

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, White Man, Mass

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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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

  Meaningful, War, Years

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Private prison companies are now listed on the New York Stock exchange and are doing quite well in a time of economic recession (and depression in some communities). But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

  Michelle Alexander

  New York, Community, Economic Recession

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Most people seem to assume that this dramatic surge in imprisonment was due to a corresponding surge in crime, particularly violent crime.

  Michelle Alexander

  People, Assuming, Dramatic

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Black men in ghetto communities (and many who live in middle class communities) are targeted by the police at early ages, often before they're old enough to vote. They're routinely stopped, frisked, and searched without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

  Michelle Alexander

  Ghetto, Men, Class

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Our system of mass incarceration is better understood as a system of racial and social control than a system of crime prevention or control.

  Michelle Alexander

  Prevention, Crime, Social

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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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

  Men, Rights, Black

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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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.

  Michelle Alexander

  Men, Community, Black

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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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

  Ghetto, Men, Jail

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I think first we have to begin by telling the truth, which I think has actually been a big stumbling block. We can look at Donald Trump and see how he lies, but I think we also have to look at some of the lies we've told ourselves and the lies we've accepted and internalized ourselves.

  Michelle Alexander

  Block, Lying, Thinking

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

  Michelle Alexander

  America, Castes, Havens

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• My own view - and I'm very open to hearing other perspectives - is that this movement-building needs to begin at home, in local communities. It isn't about trying to launch a brand new national party overnight. It's about people in communities coming together across lines of difference, bringing with them their movements, their families, and coming together and saying, "How can we together build a movement of movements here at home? What would that look like? What do we want to do right here in our communities?"

  Michelle Alexander

  Party, Home, People

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I think that we need to begin talking about what does it mean to create these safe spaces in our communities, to begin welcoming one another into our homes and into our communities when they're returning home from prison, people who are on the streets. We need to begin doing the work in our own communities of creating the kind of democracy that we would like to see on a larger scale.

  Michelle Alexander

  Home, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I hope that we will also take seriously the necessity of building alternative parties, and do that work in our communities of organizing movements of movements, creating safe spaces and sanctuary, coming into dialogue, figuring out what a common platform might be for all of us, and building on the work that is happening elsewhere around the community. Even as we resist Donald Trump, doing so with an eye toward building a truly transformational, even revolutionary movement that can become a meaningful alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties.

  Michelle Alexander

  Meaningful, Party, Eye

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

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