The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age Of Colorblindness Quotes
"The criminal justice system was strategically employed to force African Americans back into a system of extreme repression and control."
"The new racial order, known as Jim Crow, was regarded as the 'final settlement,' the 'return to sanity,' and 'the permanent system.'"
"The systematic enslavement of Africans, and the rearing of their children under bondage, emerged with all deliberate speed."
"The superlative nature of individual black achievement today in formerly white domains is a good indicator that Jim Crow is dead, but it does not necessarily mean the end of racial caste."
"History seemed to repeat itself. Just as the white elite had successfully driven a wedge between poor whites and blacks following Bacon's Rebellion by creating the institution of black slavery, another racial caste system was emerging nearly two centuries later."
"It may be impossible to overstate the significance of race in defining the basic structure of American society."
"The agricultural depression, taken together with a series of failed reforms and broken political promises, had pyramided to a climax of social tensions."
"The notion of white supremacy rationalized the enslavement of Africans, even as whites endeavored to form a new nation based on the ideals of equality, liberty, and justice for all."
"For more than one hundred years, scholars have written about the illusory nature of the Emancipation Proclamation."
"Poor whites suddenly had a direct, personal stake in the existence of a race-based system of slavery."
"Police blast into people’s homes, throwing grenades, shouting, and pointing guns at anyone inside, often including young children."
"Alberta Spruill, a fifty-seven-year-old, died after police mistakenly stormed her apartment on a no-knock warrant."
"Those who survive SWAT raids are generally traumatized by the event."
"In Dodge County, police shot unarmed Scott Bryant during a raid, killing him in front of his eight-year-old son."
"Public high schools have been invaded by SWAT teams in search of drugs."
"Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton increased the transfer of military equipment to local law enforcement for drug enforcement."
"Drug arrests skyrocketed as local law enforcement prioritized drug-law enforcement due to financial incentives."
"Local police departments received nearly a hundred thousand pieces of military equipment in the 1990s."
"Law enforcement gained a pecuniary interest not only in forfeited property but in the profitability of the drug market itself."
"Modern drug forfeiture laws allow seizure of property based on mere suspicion of illegal drug activity."
"If sentencing were the only stage of the criminal justice process in which racial biases were allowed to flourish, it would be a tragedy of gargantuan proportions."
"No one has more power in the criminal justice system than prosecutors."
"The prosecutor is free to dismiss a case for any reason or no reason at all, regardless of the strength of the evidence."
"The most remarkable feature of these important, sometimes life-and-death decisions is that they are totally discretionary and virtually unreviewable."
"The likelihood that any person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor."
"A criminal record today authorizes precisely the forms of discrimination we supposedly left behind."
"In 'colorblind' America, criminals are the new whipping boys."
"Nearly one-third of young black men in the United States today are out of work."
"The churning of African Americans in and out of prisons today is hardly surprising, given the strong message that is sent to them that they are not wanted in mainstream society."
"Like society kicked me out. They're like, 'Okay, the criminal element, We don't want them in society, we're going to put them in prisons.'"
"Two-thirds of people detained in jails report annual incomes under $12,000 prior to arrest."
"Federal law provides that a child-support enforcement officer can garnish up to 65 percent of an individual’s wages for child support."
"A former inmate living at or below the poverty level can be required to surrender 100 percent of his or her earnings."
"People caught in this impossible predicament are less likely to seek regular employment, making them even more susceptible to criminal relapse."
"One study of probation revocations found that 12 percent were due at least in part to a failure of probationers to pay their debts."
"Prisoners are typically released with only the clothes on their backs and a pittance in gate money."
"The Temporary Assistance for Needy Family Program imposes a five-year lifetime limit on benefits."
"States permanently bar individuals with drug-related felony convictions from receiving federally funded public assistance."
"Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia prohibit inmates from voting while incarcerated for a felony offense."
"No other country in the world disenfranchises people who are released from prison in a manner even remotely resembling the United States."
"Young black men today may be just as likely to suffer discrimination in employment, housing, public benefits, and jury service as a black man in the Jim Crow era."
"More African Americans are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850."
"The criminal justice system was marginal to communities of color until the mid-1980s."
"About 90 percent of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense in Illinois are African American."
"The young men who go to prison rather than college face a lifetime of closed doors, discrimination, and ostracism."
"The War on Drugs has given birth to a system of mass incarceration that governs not just a small fraction of a racial or ethnic minority but entire communities of color."
"Mass incarceration locks them in cages, a form of apartheid unlike any the world has ever seen."
"The majority of prisoners returning home to 'core counties'—those counties that contain the inner city of a metropolitan area—tripled."
"Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side are ex-offenders."
"In New York City, 70 percent of the city’s poor black and Latino residents live in high-poverty neighborhoods."
"Mass incarceration perpetuates and deepens pre-existing patterns of racial segregation and isolation."
"The racially segregated, poverty-stricken ghettos would not exist today but for racially biased government policies."
"A primary function of any racial caste system is to define the meaning of race in its time."
"Today mass incarceration defines the meaning of blackness in America: black people, especially black men, are criminals."
"Mass incarceration is no exception. Racial stigma is produced by defining negatively what it means to be black."
"In the era of mass incarceration, what it means to be a criminal in our collective consciousness has become conflated with what it means to be black."
"Saying that one does not care about race is offered as an exculpatory virtue, when in fact it can be a form of cruelty."
"It is precisely because we, as a nation, have not cared much about African Americans that we have allowed our criminal justice system to create a new racial undercaste."
"The fact that so many black and brown men are rounded up for drug crimes that go largely ignored when committed by whites is unseen."
"Our commitment to colorblindness extends beyond individuals to institutions and social arrangements."
"More than forty-five years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. warned of this danger."
"Blindness and indifference to racial groups is actually more important than racial hostility to the creation and maintenance of racialized systems of control."
"Those who supported slavery and Jim Crow were not bad or evil people; they were just blind."
"This tragic blindness is also found in racial segregation, the not-too-distant cousin of slavery."
"Some of the most vigorous defenders of segregation are sincere in their beliefs and earnest in their motives."
"Millions of Negroes have been crucified by conscientious blindness."
"People of good will have been unwilling to see black and brown men, in their humanness, as entitled to the same care, compassion, and concern that would be extended to one’s friends, neighbors, or loved ones."
"Racial indifference and blindness—far more than racial hostility—form the sturdy foundation for all racial caste systems."
"For example, advocates are frequently asked, When will we (finally) become a colorblind society?"
"The pursuit of colorblindness makes people impatient."
"With courage, we should respond: Hopefully never."
"Affirmative action policies conflict with King’s dream that we might one day be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin."
"King himself would have almost certainly endorsed affirmative action as a remedy, at least under some circumstances."
"The empirical evidence strongly supports the conclusion that declining wages, downsizing, deindustrialization, globalization, and cutbacks in government services represent much greater threats to the position of white men than so-called reverse discrimination."
"The argument made here is a less familiar one. It is not widely debated in the mainstream media or, for that matter, in civil rights organizations."
"The claim is that racial justice advocates should reconsider the traditional approach to affirmative action."
"The idea of colorblindness is extremely appealing to all Americans who abhor racial discrimination and believe in equal opportunity."
"Laws were passed in virtually every state to disenfranchise blacks and to ensure that they would never again be able to play a significant role in American public life."
"No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities as the United States."
"People are swept into the criminal justice system—particularly in poor communities of color—not because of what they do, but primarily because of who they are."
"As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow."
"We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it."
"More African American adults are under correctional control today...than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began."
"The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed."
"Arguably the most important parallel between mass incarceration and Jim Crow is that both have served to define the meaning and significance of race in America."
"African Americans are not significantly more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they are made criminals at drastically higher rates for the same conduct."