In 2004, there were more black men disenfranchised than in 1870 - the year the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that deny the right to vote exclusively on the basis of race.
Michelle AlexanderRead
Once you've acquired a criminal record, you can be discriminated against legally in employment, housing, and access to education and public benefits. You're relegated to a permanent second-class status, forever a 'criminal.' Inflicting this amount of unnecessary pain and suffering is not cheap.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Having a criminal record can permanently affect an individual's life opportunities and social standing.
This quote highlights the profound and lasting consequences of having a criminal record, emphasizing how it leads to discrimination in critical life areas such as employment, housing, and education. The author argues that this system of discrimination perpetuates a cycle of suffering and marginalization, establishing a hierarchy where those with criminal records are unjustly relegated to a lower status in society.
Themes
Criminal RecordDiscriminationJusticeEmploymentHousingEducation
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on criminal justice reform.
More from Michelle Alexander
All quotes →My experience and research has led me to the regrettable conclusion that our system of mass incarceration functions more like a caste system than a system of crime prevention or control.
Michelle AlexanderRead
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 nation’s capitol, it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison.
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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 refusal to deal openly and honestly with race that leads us to keep repeating these cycles of exclusion and division, and rebirthing a caste-like system that we claim we’ve left behind
Michelle AlexanderRead
No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid
Michelle AlexanderRead
There has been an outpouring of anger and concern because of the actions of George Zimmerman, a private citizen who profiled a young boy and pursued him and tried to confront him, perhaps. But what George Zimmerman did is no different than what police officers do every day as a matter of standard operating procedure.
Michelle AlexanderRead
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