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Michelle Alexander Biography

Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander (born October 7, 1967) is a writer, civil rights advocate, and visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary (New York City). She is best known for her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

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Michelle Alexander Quotes

Our system of mass incarceration is better understood as a system of racial and social control than a system of crime prevention or control.

Crime, Prevention, Social, System, Understood

We're living in a time when so many of the civil rights and social justice organizations are run by lawyers and policy people who are often very disconnected from the communities they claim to represent.

Communities, Justice, People, Represent, Running

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.

Black, Four, Height, Men, Nations, Time

Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs

Color, Contributed, Mass, People, War

Mass incarceration is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time.

Issues, Justice, Mass Incarceration, Pressing, Racial, Time

All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.

Criminals, Law, Marijuana, Mistake, Serving, Ten

The fact that more than half of the young black men in any large American city are currently under the control of the criminal justice system (or saddled with criminal records) is not - as many argue - just a symptom of poverty or poor choices, but rather evidence of a new racial caste system at work.

American, Cities, Criminal, Justice, Men, Poor

In a growing number of states, you're actually expected to pay back the costs of your imprisonment. Paying back all these fees, fines, and costs may be a condition of your probation or parole. To make matters worse, if you're one of the lucky few who actually manages to get a job following release from prison, up to 100% of your wages can be garnished to pay back all those fees, fines and court costs. One hundred percent.

Expected, Hundred, Jobs, May, Numbers, Paying

Many people don't realize that financial incentives have been built into the drug war that guarantee that law enforcement will continue to arrest extraordinary numbers of people, particularly in poor communities of color, for minor drug offenses that get ignored on the other side of town.

Color, Extraordinary, Incentives, Numbers, Town, War

Most people seem to assume that this dramatic surge in imprisonment was due to a corresponding surge in crime, particularly violent crime.

Assume, Assuming, Dramatic, Particularly, People, Surge

My own view - and I'm very open to hearing other perspectives - is that this movement-building needs to begin at home, in local communities. It isn't about trying to launch a brand new national party overnight. It's about people in communities coming together across lines of difference, bringing with them their movements, their families, and coming together and saying, "How can we together build a movement of movements here at home? What would that look like? What do we want to do right here in our communities?"

Begin, Brand, Home, Like, Party, People

We can't just assume that this resistance is going to produce the kinds of candidates or the kinds of parties that will truly honor people of all colors, all backgrounds, all ethnicities, from every nation and every faith and every gender, unless we do the work in our own communities of organizing and being in deep dialogue with one another across all forms of difference. It's my hope that we'll seize this opportunity and not let the moment pass.

Candidates, Communities, Opportunity, Party, People

Most criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with each other.

Crime, Littles, States, Today, United States

I think it's critically important for people to understand that this system of mass incarceration governs not just those who find themselves in prison on any given day, but also all those who are in jail, on probation or parole, as well as all those who are just months away from being locked up again because they are unable to find work or housing due to their criminal record.

Jail, People, System, Think, Thinking, Unable

The mass incarceration of poor people of color, particularly black men, has emerged as a new caste system, one specifically designed to address the social, economic, and political challenges of our time.

Color, Designed, Men, People, System

I think that we need to begin talking about what does it mean to create these safe spaces in our communities, to begin welcoming one another into our homes and into our communities when they're returning home from prison, people who are on the streets. We need to begin doing the work in our own communities of creating the kind of democracy that we would like to see on a larger scale.

Begin, Home, Homes, Mean, Thinking

Millions of people are unable to vote due to felony convictions with the highest rates among black men. People in prison are denied the right to vote in 48 states, and while we accept that as normal in the United States, in other western democracies people in prison do have the right to vote.

Accept, Black, Men, People, States, Unable

There can be many bars, wires that keep a person trapped. All of them don't have to have been created for the purpose of harming or caging the bird, but they still serve that function.

Bars, Bird, Keep, Purpose, Trapped, Wire

Our prison population quintupled in a thirty year period of time. Not doubled or tripled - quintupled. We went from a prison and jail population of about 300,000 to now more than 2 million.

Jail, Population, Prison Population, Thirty, Time, Years

Certainly youth of color, particularly those in ghetto communities, find themselves born into the cage. They are born into a community in which the rules, laws, policies, structures of their lives virtually guarantee that they will remain trapped for life. It begins at a very early age when their parents themselves are either behind bars or locked in a permanent second-class status and cannot afford them the opportunities they otherwise could.

Color, Community, Ghetto, Opportunities, Opportunity, Youth

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