It doesn't matter if that felony happened three weeks ago or thirty-five years ago - for the rest of your life, you've got to check that box, knowing full well the odds are sky-high your application is going straight to the trash. Michelle Alexander More Quotes by Michelle Alexander More Quotes From Michelle Alexander 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 cages choices kind Prison guard unions have become the powerful political forces in some states, particularly California. Michelle Alexander prison-guards california powerful For the rest of their lives, [black men] can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. So many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again once you've been branded a felon. Michelle Alexander crow black men 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 father children 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 opportunity school 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 iran russia years 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 class men 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 I do believe that something akin to a racial caste system is alive and well in America. Michelle Alexander caste-system believe america One study conducted in Washington, D.C. indicated that 3 out of 4 black men, and nearly all those living in the poorest neighborhoods could expect to find themselves behind bars at some point in their life. Michelle Alexander bars black men Most people seem to assume that this dramatic surge in imprisonment was due to a corresponding surge in crime, particularly violent crime. Michelle Alexander dramatic assuming people 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 black community men 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 jail men Our prison population quintupled in a thirty year period of time. Not doubled or tripled - quintupled. We went from a prison and jail population of about 300,000 to now more than 2 million. Michelle Alexander prison-population jail years I say we haven't ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Michelle Alexander castes havens america The mythology around colorblindness leads people to imagine that if poor kids of color are failing or getting locked up in large numbers, it must be something wrong with them. It leads young kids of color to look around and say: "There must be something wrong with me, there must be something wrong with us. Is there something inherent, something different about me, about us as a people, that leads us to fail so often, that leads us to live in these miserable conditions, that leads us to go in and out of prison?" Michelle Alexander color numbers kids 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 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 empowering color opportunity 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 black rights men Of course, no one should be trapped in bad schools or bad neighborhoods. No one. But I think we need to be asking a larger question: How do we change the norm, the larger context that people seem to accept as a given? Are we so thoroughly resigned to what "is" that we cannot even begin a serious conversation about how to create what ought to be? Michelle Alexander people school thinking
