Sign in with Facebook
78,074 books
—
291,128 voters
Arson
https://www.goodreads.com/arsonisreading
“Look, this boy's been kicked around all his life. You know-living in a slum, his mother dead since he was nine. He spent a year and a half in an orphanage while his father served a jail term for forgery. That's not a very good head start. He's had a pretty terrible sixteen years. I think maybe we owe him a few words. That's all.”
― Twelve Angry Men
― Twelve Angry Men
“Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America. Indeed, a primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time. Slavery defined what it meant to be black (a slave), and Jim Crow defined what it meant to be black (a second-class citizen). Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals. That is what it means to be black.”
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.”
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
“Parents and schoolteachers counsel black children that, if they ever hope to escape this system and avoid prison time, they must be on their best behavior, raise their arms and spread their legs for the police without complaint, stay in failing schools, pull up their pants, and refuse all forms of illegal work and moneymaking activity, even if jobs in the legal economy are impossible to find. Girls are told not to have children until they are married to a "good" black man who can help provide for a family with a legal job. They are told to wait and wait for Mr. Right even if that means, in a jobless ghetto, never having children at all.”
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
“Those of us who hope to be their allies should not be surprised, if and when this day comes, that when those who have been locked up and locked out finally have to chance to speak and truly be heard, what we hear is rage. The rage may frighten us; it may remind us of riots, uprisings and buildings aflame. We may be tempted to control it or douse it with buckets of doubt, dismay or disbelief. But we should do no such thing. Instead, when a young man who was born in the ghetto and who knows little of life beyond the walls of his prison cell and the invisible cage that has become his life, turns to us in bewilderment and rage, we should do nothing more than look him in the eye and tell him the truth.”
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
― The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Arson’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Arson’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Arson hasn't connected with their friends on Goodreads, yet.
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Arson
Lists liked by Arson
