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.
After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.
We adults, our policies, our ways of governance, are responsible for poverty, not the children.
Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years in moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.
All freed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.
Hypocrite reader my fellow my brother!
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