New Jim Crow Quotes

“The issue, perhaps, boils down to one of how perceptions or misperceptions of racial difference impact various individuals’, or groups of individuals’, experience of freedom in America. Some would argue that it goes beyond hampering their 'pursuit of happiness' to outright obliterating it.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“What is key to America’s understanding of class is the persistent belief — despite all evidence to the contrary — that anyone, with the proper discipline and drive, can move from a lower class to a higher class. We recognize that mobility may be difficult, but the key to our collective self-image is the assumption that mobility is always possible, so failure to move up reflects on one’s character. By extension, the failure of a race or ethnic group to move up reflects very poorly on the group as a whole.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“For more than a decade--from the mid-195ps until the late 1960s--conservatoves systematically and strategically linked opposition to civil rights legislation to calls for law and order, arguing that Martin Luther King Jr's philosophy of civil disobedience was a leading cause of crime,”
― Michelle alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“7.3 million people currently under correctional control, only 1.6 million are in prison. This case system extends far beyond prison walls and governs millions of people who are on probation and parole, primarily for nonviolent offenses. They have been swept into the system, branded criminals or felons, and ushered into a permanent second class status- acquiring records that will follow them for life.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness