Certainly youth of color, particularly those in ghetto communities, find themselves born into the cage. They are born into a community in which the r… - Michelle Alexander

For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated…

The political strategy of divide, demonize and conquer has worked for centuries in the United States — since the days of slavery — to keep poor and working people angry at (and fearful of) one another rather than uniting to challenge unjust political and economic systems.

I think it is precisely the existence of a relative few wealthy, successful African Americans like Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Colin Powell, and even Herman Cain, that creates this mirage of great racial progress even as a system like mass incarceration exists in which millions of poor folks of color are trapped in a permanent undercaste. I think that the existence of Black folks who can be offered as proof that “if you just try hard enough you can make it,” really creates, helps to immunize a system of mass incarceration from serious critique. The appearance that if you try hard enough you can make it, makes it difficult even for many Black folks to view our nation as one that would readily create and sustain a caste-like system again…