Lindsey > Lindsey's Quotes

“The separation of families is now widely understood as a human rights crisis at the border, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the destruction of black families in the era of mass incarceration.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“When men are locked up, the women who love them are sentenced too—to social isolation, depression, grief, shame, costly legal fees, far-away prison visits (often with children in tow), and the staggering challenges of helping children overcome the trauma of parental incarceration.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“When I sat down to write The New Jim Crow, I wanted to expose the literal war that has been waged against our communities, a drug war in which millions were taken prisoner and tens of millions were criminalized, placed on probation or parole, and then released into a permanent second-class status often for simple possession of marijuana or some other drug for personal use.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“I also believed—and I still believe—that the prevailing view that mass incarceration has been driven by arrests and convictions for violent crime is simply wrong. It is a lie that has been invoked to excuse and rationalize the intentional infliction of suffering on millions of people.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“In fact, our system is primarily concerned with the perpetual control and marginalization of the dispossessed; it is not designed to respond meaningfully to the harms of violence”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“it is the “prison label, not the prison time” that matters most if we are to understand the true scope and impact of mass incarceration.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“If we want to reduce violence in our communities, we need to hold people accountable in ways that aim to repair and prevent harm rather than simply inflicting more harm and trauma and calling it justice.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“Violence in struggling black communities is deeply rooted in conditions beyond the direct control of the individuals who live there, including the profound inequalities and indignities created by the legacies of slavery, segregation, ghet-toization, and widespread legal discrimination and stigmatization in the era of mass incarceration.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The safest communities are not the ones with the most police, prisons, or electronic monitors, but the ones with quality schools, health care, housing, plentiful jobs, and strong social networks that allow families not merely to survive but to thrive.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“The opposite of “racist” isn’t “not racist.” It is “antiracist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘You are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“There may be no more consequential White privilege than life itself. White lives matter to the tune of 3.5 additional years over Black lives in the United States, which is just the most glaring of a host of health disparities, starting from infancy, where Black infants die at twice the rate of White infants.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Racist” and “antiracist” are like peelable name tags that are placed and replaced based on what someone is doing or not doing, supporting or expressing in each moment. These are not permanent tattoos. No one becomes a racist or antiracist. We can only strive to be one or the other. We can unknowingly strive to be a racist. We can knowingly strive to be an antiracist.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist