Michelle Alexander's brave and bold new book paints a haunting picture in which dreary felon garb, post-prison joblessness, and loss of voting rights now do the stigmatizing work once done by colored-only water fountains and legally segregated schools. With dazzling candor, Alexander argues that we all pay the cost of the new Jim Crow.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the modern-day consequences of systemic racism and social stigma faced by former felons.
In the quote by Lani Guinier, Michelle Alexander's work is illustrated as a profound commentary on the contemporary repercussions of systemic racism. It compares current societal practices, like the discrimination against formerly incarcerated individuals, to historical injustices such as segregation. The phrase 'the new Jim Crow' encapsulates the argument that society continues to impose severe penalties on individuals based on race and past mistakes, suggesting that addressing these issues benefits everyone, not just those directly affected.
In practice
During a speech about civil rights, one might use this quote to illustrate ongoing struggles against systemic oppression.
No free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.
Ask most people who live in a home and have a mortgage on it whether they own their own home and the answer is almost guaranteed to be a resounding 'yes'. Yet it's the wrong answer. Technically speaking, until they have paid the mortgage off, they don't own it. Herein lies the difference between reality and illusion, between ownership and control. This confusion lies not only at the individual level, but also at the heart of government thinking.
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.
What looked safe was not safe. What looked hard and unsafe was probably safer. Anyway, safe was somewhere else in the world.
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