Jacob

“This discrepancy between evolutionary success and individual suffering is perhaps the most important lesson we can draw from the Agricultural Revolution”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The most ardent proponents of racial hierarchy have consistently succeeded in implementing new racial 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 hierarchy. The emergence of each new system of control may seem sudden, but history shows that the seeds are planted long before each new institution begins to grow.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“the prison, the reformatory and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Between 1960 and 1990, for example, official crime rates in Finland, Germany, and the United States were close to identical. Yet the U.S. incarceration rate quadrupled, the Finnish rate fell by 60 percent, and the German rate was stable in that period.15 Despite similar crime rates, each government chose to impose different levels of punishment.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness