Lauconn > Lauconn's Quotes

“A successful lie is not fueled by the liar; it is fueled by the willingness of the listener to believe. You can't expose a lie without first shattering the will to believe it. That is why leading people to truth is so much more effective than merely telling them.”
― Neal Shusterman, The Toll

“But Baba used to say you should pray the most when you can't see the good in the world. And I know I should say a prayer because, after all, God is God, and today is a day we should thank him. So I try to remember the prayers Baba used to whisper in our old apartment, and the prayers Mama said when she took me to Mass, and then I add my own because I know that God listens, even if you don't get the words exactly right.”
― Zeyn Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars

“How many Polaroids are there of places that no longer exist?”
― Zeyn Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars

“I know God heard them both the same at the end, that he loved them both equally even though their prayers were different.”
― Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar, The Map of Salt and Stars

“Some people claim that money is the root of all evil. Could be. Others say that money can't buy you happiness. That may be true. But if you handle it right, money buys you freedom and time, and those are a lot more tangible than happiness”
― Harlan Coben, Don't Let Go

“what kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance?”
― Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease

“racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference, as Martin Luther King Jr. warned more than forty-five years ago.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Any candid observer of American racial history must acknowledge that racism is highly adaptable. The rules and reasons the political system employs to enforce status relations of any kind, including racial hierarchy, evolve and change as they are challenged.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Time and again, the most ardent proponents of racial hierarchy have succeeded in creating new caste systems by triggering a collapse of resistance across the political spectrum. This feat has been achieved largely by appealing to the racism and vulnerability of lower-class whites, a group of people who are understandably eager to ensure that they never find themselves trapped at the bottom of the American totem pole. This pattern, dating back to slavery, has birthed yet another racial caste system in the US: mass incarceration.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Poor whites suddenly had a direct, personal stake in the existence of a race-based system of slavery. Their own plight had not improved by much, but at least they were not slaves. Once the planter elite split the labor force, poor whites responded to the logic of their situation and sought ways to expand their racially privileged position.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Federalism--the division of power between the state's and the federal government--was the device employed to protect the institution of slavery and the political power of slaveholding states.”
― Michelle alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The history of racial caste in the United States would end with the Civil War if the idea of race and racial difference had died when the institution of slavery was put to rest. But during the four centuries in which slavery flourished, the idea of race flourished as well. Indeed, the notion of racial difference—specifically the notion of white supremacy—proved far more durable than the institution that gave birth to it.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Tom Watson, a prominent Populist leader, in a speech advocating a union between black and white farmers: “You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism that enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate effort to drive a wedge between poor whites and African Americans. These discriminatory barriers were designed to encourage lower-class whites to retain a sense of superiority over blacks, making it far less likely that they would sustain interracial political alliances aimed at toppling the white elite. The laws were, in effect, another racial bribe. As William Julius Wilson has noted, 'As long as poor whites directed their hatred and frustration against the black competitor, the planters were relieved of class hostility directed against them.' Indeed, in order to overcome the well-founded suspicions of poor and illiterate whites that they, as well as blacks, were in danger of losing the right to vote, the leaders of the movement pursued an aggressive campaign of white supremacy in every state prior to black disenfranchisement.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Civil rights activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand. “If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality,” argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Black support for harsh responses to urban crime - support born of desperation and legitimate concern over the unraveling of basic security in inner-city communities - helped provide political cover for conservative politicians who saw an opening to turn back the clock on racial progress in the US. Conservatives could point to black support for highly punitive approaches to dealing with the problems of the urban poor as 'proof' that race had nothing to do with their 'law and order' agenda.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Some conservative political strategists admitted that appealing to racial fears and antagonisms was central to this strategy, though it had to be done surreptitiously. H.R. Haldeman, one of Nixon's key advisers, recalls that Nixon himself deliverately pursued a Southern, racial strategy: 'He [President Nixon] emphasized that ou have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.' Similarly, John Erlichman, special counsel to the president, explained the Nixon administration's campaign strategy of 1968 in this way: 'We'll go after the racists.' In Erlichman's view, 'that subliminal appeal to the anti-black voter was always present in Nixon's statements and speeches.' Republican strategist Kevin Phillips is often credited for offering the most influential argument in favor of a race-based strategy for Republican political dominance in the South. He argued in The Emerging Republican Majority, published in 1969, that Nixon's successful presidential election campaign could point the way toward long-term political realignment and the building of a new Republican majority, if Republicans continued to campaign primarily on the basis of racial issues, using coded antiblack rhetoric.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“In the 1968 election, race eclipsed class as the organizing principle of American politics, and by 1972, attitudes on racial issues rather than socioeconomic status were the primary determinant of voters' political self-identification. The late 1960s and early 1970s marked the dramatic erosion in the belief among working-class whites that the condition of the poor, or those who fail to prosper, was the result of a faulty economic system that needed to be challenged.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“To great effect, Reagan echoed white frustration in race-neutral terms through implicit racial appeals. His 'color-blind' rhetoric on crime, welfare, taxes, and states' rights was clearly understood by white (and black) voters as having a racial dimension, though claims to that effect were impossible to prove. The absence of explicitly racist rhetoric afforded the racial nature of his coded appeals a certain plausible deniability. For example, when Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign at the annual Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi - the town where three civil rights activists were murdered in 1964 - he assured the crowd 'I believe in states' rights,' and promised to restore to states and local governments the power that properly belonged to them. His critics promptly alleged that he was signaling a racial message to his audience, suggesting allegiance with those who resisted desegregation, but Reagan firmly denied it, forcing liberals into a position that would soon become familiar - arguing that something is racist but finding it impossible to prove in the absence of explicitly racist language.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“This surge of public concern did not correspond to a dramatic shift in illegal drug activity, but instead was the product of a carefully orchestrated political campaign. The level of public concern about crime and drugs was only weakly correlated with actual crime rates, but highly correlated with political initiatives, campaigns, and partisan appeals.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Generally, the financial incentives offered to local law enforcement to pump up their drug arrests have not been well publicized, leading the average person to conclude reasonably (but mistakenly) that when their local police departments report that drug arrests have doubled or tripled in a short period of time, the arrests reflect a surge in illegal drug activity, rather than an infusion of money and an intensified enforcement effort.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The extraordinary increase in prison admissions due to parole and probation violations is due almost entirely to the War on Drugs. With respect to parole, in 1980, only 1 percent of all prison admissions were parole violators. Twenty years later, more than one third (35 percent) of prison admissions resulted from parole violations. To put the matter more starkly: About as many people were returned to prison for parole violations in 2000 as were admitted to prison in 1980 for all reasons. Of all parole violators returned to prison in 2000, only one-third were returned for a new conviction; two-thirds were returned for a technical violation such as missing appointments with a parole officer, failing to maintain employment, or failing a drug test. In this system of control, failing to cope well with one's exile status is treated like a crime. If you fail, after being released from prison with a criminal record - your personal badge of inferiority - to remain drug free, or if you fail to get a job against all the odds, or if you get depressed and miss an appointment with your parole officer (or if you cannot afford the bus fare to take you there), you can sent right back to prison - where society apparently thinks millions of Americans belong.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The problem with this abbreviated analysis is that violent crime is not responsible for mass incarceration. As numerous researchers have shown, violent crime rates have fluctuated over the years and bear little relationship to incarceration rates—which have soared during the past three decades regardless of whether violent crime was going up or down.23 Today violent crime rates are at historically low levels, yet incarceration rates continue to climb.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“As we shall see, despite the colorblind rhetoric and fanfare of recent years, the design of the drug war effectively guarantees that those who are swept into the nation's new undercaste are largely black and brown.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Viewed as a whole, the relevant research by cognitive and social psychologists to date suggests that racial bias in the drug war was inevitable, once a public consensus was constructed by political and media elites that drug crime is black and brown.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“[N]o one has more power in the criminal justice system that prosecutors. Few rules constrain the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. The prosecutor is free to dismiss a case for any reason or no reason at all, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The prosecutor is also free to file more charges against the defendepant the can realistically be proven in court, so long as probable cause arguable exists. Whether a good plea deal is offered to a defendant is entirely up to the prosecutor. And if the mood strikes, the prosecutor can transfer drug defendants to the federal system, where penalties are far more severe. Juveniles, for their part, cam be transferred to adult court, where they can be sent to adult prison.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The enduring racial isolation of the ghetto poor has made them uniquely vulnerable in the War on Drugs. What happens to them does not directly affect - and is scarcely noticed by - the privileged beyond the ghetto's invisible walls.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Subjecting people to stops and searches because they live in "high crime" ghettos cannot be said to be truly race-neutral, given that the ghetto itself was constricted to contain and control groups of people defined by race”
― Michelle alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Although whites were more likely to be guilty of carrying drugs, they were far less likely to be viewed as suspicious, resulting in relatively few stops, searches and arrests of whites. The former New Jersey attorney general dubbed this phenomenon the 'circular illogic of racial profiling.' Law enforcement officials, he explained, often point to the racial composition of our prisons and jails as a justification for targeting racial minorities, but the empirical evidence actually suggested the opposite conclusion was warranted. The disproportionate imprisonment of people of color was, in part, a product of racial profiling - not a justification for it.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“If you make $9 per hour, but spend $20 or more getting to and from work every day, how do you manage to pay rent, buy food, and help to support yourself and a growing family.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness