Shelley

“W.E.B. Du Bois famously asked back in 1897: “Between me and the other world, there is ever an unasked question: How does it feel to be a problem?” White people are generally allowed to have problems, and they’ve historically been granted the power to define and respond to them. But people of color—in this “land of the free” forged through slavery and genocide—are regularly viewed and treated as the problem. This distinction has made all the difference. Once human beings are defined as the problem in the public consciousness, their elimination through deportation, incarceration, or even genocide becomes nearly inevitable. White nationalism, at its core, reflects a belief that our nation’s problems would be solved if only people of color could somehow be gotten rid of, or at least better controlled.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness