"We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." (2)
"Any candid observer of American racial history must acknowledge that racism is highly adaptable." (21)
"Members of Congress who voted against civil rights measures proactively designed crime legislation and actively fought for their proposals." (43)
"The act also expanded use of the death penalty for serious drug-related offenses and imposed new mandatory minimums for drug offenses, including a five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession of cocaine base—with no evidence of intent to sell. Remarkably, the penalty would apply to first-time offenders. The severity of this punishment was unprecedented in the federal system." (53-54)
"The level of public concern about crime and drugs was only weakly correlated with actual crime rates, but highly correlated with political initiatives, campaigns, and partisan appeals." (55)
"During Clinton's tenure, Washington slashed funding for public housing by $17 billion (a reduction of 61 percent) and boosted corrections by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), 'effectively making the constructions of prisons the nation's main housing program for the urban poor.' " (57)
"Despite all of the new procedural rules and formal protections, the law does not address the single most serious problem associated with drug-war forfeiture laws: the profit motive in drug-law enforcement. Under the new law, drug busts motivated by the desire to seize cash, cars, homes, and other property are still perfectly legal." (83)
"This caste system extends far beyond prison walls and governs millions of people who are on probation and parole, primarily for nonviolent offenses." (101-102)
"Drug use, once considered a private, public-health matter, was reframed through political rhetoric and media imagery as a grave threat to the national order." (105)
"Decades of cognitive bias research demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions, even when an individual does not want to discriminate." (106)
"In other words, the [Supreme] Court barred any victim of race discrimination by the police from even alleging a claim of racial bias under the Fourth Amendment." (109)
"Once you have that felony stamp, your hope for employment, for any kind of integration into society, it begins to fade out. Today’s lynching is a felony charge. Today’s lynching is incarceration. Today’s lynch mobs are professionals. They have a badge; they have a law degree. A felony is a modern way of saying, ‘I’m going to hang you up and burn you.’ Once you get that F, you’re on fire." (164)
"The unfortunate reality we must face is that racism manifests itself not only in individual attitudes and stereotypes, but also in the basic structure of society." (184)
"[African-American men] will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives—denied employment, housing, education, and public benefi ts. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then be released again, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality." (186)
"The Supreme Court’s famous proclamation in 1857—“[the black man] has no rights which the white man is bound to respect”—remains true to a significant degree today, so long as the black man has been labeled a felon." (194)
"It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the United States from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by marginalization (mass incarceration). While marginalization may sound far preferable to exploitation, it may prove to be even more dangerous . . .'It’s actually better to be exploited than marginalized, in some respects, because if you’re exploited presumably you’re still needed.' " (219)