Middle-class white children, children of privilege, are afforded the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes and still go on to college, still dream bi…

- Michelle Alexander

We have avoided in recent years talking openly and honestly about race out of fear that it will alienate and polarize. In my own view, it’s our refus…

- Michelle Alexander

Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race …

- Michelle Alexander

If we want to do more than just end mass incarceration—if we want to put an end to the history of racial caste in America—we must lay down our racial…

- Michelle Alexander

We must build a movement for education, not incarceration. A movement for jobs, not jails. A movement that will end all forms of discrimination again…

- Michelle Alexander

The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather wi…

- Michelle Alexander

There are more African Americans under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole, than were enslaved in 1850 a decade before th…

- Michelle Alexander

Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inn…

- Michelle Alexander

The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., our na…

- Michelle Alexander