Dan

“The myth of the crack baby was widely accepted as gospel, it seems, because it mapped so well onto existing ideas of Black biological inferiority and cultural pathology, and it stoked anxieties regarding violent crime and the cost of America’s social safety net. Indeed, in the form of the crack baby, America was delivered a perfect symbol for its animosity toward Black America—a ticking time bomb of violence and expense created because Black mothers cared too little about themselves and their offspring.”
― Donovan X. Ramsey, When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era

“When people are telling the truth, they don’t feel doubted, so they don’t feel the need for additional support in the form of details. When people lie, however, even if what they say sounds credible to you, it doesn’t sound credible to them, so they keep talking.”
― Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

“We have about eighty thousand people in solitary confinement in this country, more than anywhere in the world. In California’s Pelican Bay state prison alone, more than five hundred prisoners had spent at least a decade in the hole. Eighty-nine had been there for at least twenty years. One had been in solitary for forty-two years.”
― Shane Bauer, American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

“Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy