Helen

“there is no inconsistency whatsoever between the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land and the existence of a racial caste system in the era of colorblindness. The current system of control depends on black exceptionalism; it is not disproved or undermined by it.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“At the time the drug war was declared, illegal drug use and abuse was not a pressing concern in most communities. The announcement of a War on Drugs was therefore met with some confusion and resistance within law enforcement, as well as among some conservative commentators.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“In The Tombs of Atuan, the Old Powers, the Nameless Ones, appear as mysterious, ominous, and yet inactive. Arha/Tenar is their priestess, the greatest of all priestesses, whom the Godking himself is supposed to obey: But what is her realm? A prison in the desert. Women guarded by eunuchs. Ancient tombstones, a half-ruined temple, an empty throne. A fearful underground labyrinth where prisoners are left to die of starvation and thirst, where only she can walk the maze, where light must never come. She rules a dark, empty, useless realm. Her power imprisons her. This isn’t the rosy reassurance many novels at the time offered adolescents. It’s a very bleak picture of what a girl may expect. Arha’s life is dreary, unchanging, with almost no experience of kindness except from Manan the eunuch. The third chapter may be the cruelest, most hopeless passage in all the Earthsea books. By consenting to the death of “her” prisoners, Arha locks the prison door upon herself. Her whole life will be lived in a trap.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“We should ask ourselves whether efforts to achieve "cosmetic" racial diversity- that is, reform efforts that make institutions look good on the surface without the needed structural changes- have actually helped to facilitate the emergence of mass incarceration and interfered with the development of a more compassionate race consciousness.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness