Michelle Alexander Quotes

The international community cannot accept that whole communities are marginalized because of the color of their skin. People of African descent are among those most affected by racism. Too often, they face denial of basic rights such as access to quality health services and education. Such fundamental wrongs have a long and terrible history.

We recriminalized black life. Incarceration rates since the 1908s have gone through the roof, overwhelmingly black males, women and Hispanics to some extent. Essentially re-doing what happened under Reconstruction. That's the history of African Americans - so how can any one say there's no problem. Sure, racism is serious, but it's worse than that.

People of color, particularly African Americans, feel the stigma more keenly. In a race-conscious society, some don't want to be perceived as having yet another deficit.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws.

Telling me that I’m obsessed with talking about racism in America is like telling me I’m obsessed with swimming when I’m drowning.

Here's the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.

When one in three Black men are in prison, those larger systemic injustices become a part of what it means to love our neighbor as ourself. We care about dismantling institutional racism. That begins in relationships when you see injustice happen.

This is the United States of America and unfortunately, race still matters to a lot of people. The evil head of racism doesn't hide, it sticks its head up.

Being black only helps them. Many times they get sponsors because they are black. And they have had a lot of advantages because they can always say, 'It's racism.' They can always come back and say, 'Because we are this color, things happen.'

If you are the normal white American, truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.

It's the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again.

It's almost impossible to separate the actions, or it's also, it's almost impossible to separate the oppression and exploitation, criminal oppression and criminal exploitation of the American negro from the color of the skin of the person who is the oppressor or the exploiter.

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

Young black men in America have an identity ascribed to them that is a direct legacy of slavery.

I don’t believe it is possible to transcend race in this country. Race is a factor in this society. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery has not gone away. It is not an accident that African-Americans experience high crime rates, are poor, and have less wealth. It is a direct result of our racial history.

He wants to do you in cause the color of your skin.

If we want to think about racism and how it might play out in drug policy, we have to think about the trial of George Zimmerman. We think about the prosecution, when they said "race is not a factor." It's so dishonest.

We've got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.

For those who say that the war on drugs and the system of mass incarceration really isn't about race, I say there is no way we would allow the majority of young white men to be swept into the criminal justice system for minor drug offenses, branded criminals and felons, and then stripped of their basis civil and human rights while young black men who are engaged in the same activity trot off to college. That would never be accepted as the norm.

Under the color-blind ideology of the new racism, Blackness must be SEEN as evidence for the alleged color blindness that seemingly characterizes contemporary economic opportunity.

Race prejudice is the devil unchained.