A Quote by Michelle Alexander

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.

Michelle Alexander

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Afford Age Bars Begins Behind Born Cage Cannot Certainly Class Class Status Color Communities Community Could Early Early Age Either Find Ghetto Guarantee Laws Life Lives Locked Opportunities Otherwise Parents Particularly Permanent Policies Remain Rules Second Second-Class Status Structures Them Themselves Those Trapped Very Very Early Age Virtually Which Will Youth

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Michelle Alexander
American - Writer
Born: October 7, 1967

Public housing officials are free to discriminate against you on the basis of criminal records, including arrest records. And so, you know, what you find is that even for these extremely minor offenses, people find themselves trapped in a permanent second-class status and struggling to survive.

Michelle Alexander

For reasons that have stunningly little to do with crime or crime rates, we, as a nation, have chosen to lock up more than two million people behind bars. Millions more are on probation or parole, or branded felons for life and thus locked into a permanent second-class status.

Michelle Alexander

I particularly love where I work because I was born, raised, and still live in the Bronx. I work in a Bronx location, so it's very fulfilling to me to be working in my home borough, and working with kids that are a lot like me and who can see themselves in me. My own teaching philosophy is to expose them to books that they might not otherwise read, particularly authors of color, authors whose stories are based in New York City.

Sofia Quintero

People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be-both in their youth and in adulthood-intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience.

Alice Miller

One study conducted in Washington, D.C. indicated that 3 out of 4 black men, and nearly all those living in the poorest neighborhoods could expect to find themselves behind bars at some point in their life.

Michelle Alexander

I should never conclude were I to speak to you of all the misfortunes which have their origin in the faulty carriage of the body. All these defects, mortifying for those who have contracted them, cannot be remedied except in their early stages. A habit born in childhood is strengthened in youth, becomes deeply rooted in adulthood and is incurable in old age.

Jean-Georges Noverre

One can see the results of those policies in hundreds of communities around my State. As one might expect, our largest communities - places like Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay - lost thousands of jobs as a result of those trade policies, most notably NAFTA and permanent most-favored-nation status for China.

Russ Feingold

Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.

Thomas Jefferson

It is paltry philosophy if in the old-fashioned way one lays down rules and principles in total disregard of moral values . As soon as these appear one regards them as exceptions, which gives them a certain scientific status, and thus makes them into rules. Or again one may appeal to genius , which is above all rules; which amounts to admitting that rules are not only made for idiots , but are idiotic in themselves.

Carl von Clausewitz

When we see the many grave-stones which have fallen in, which have been defaced by the footsteps of the congregation, which lie buried under the ruins of the churches, that have themselves crumbled together over them; we may fancy the life after death to be as a second life, into which man enters in the figure, or the picture or the inscription, and lives longer there than when he was really alive. But this figure also, this second existence, dies out too, sooner or later. Time will not allow himself to be cheated of his rights with the monuments of men or with themselves.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When young black men reach a certain age - whether or not there is incarceration in their families - they themselves are the target of police stops, interrogations, frisks, often for no reason other than their race. And, of course, this level of harassment sends a message to them, often at an early age: No matter who you are or what you do, you're going to find yourself behind bars one way or the other. This reinforces the sense that prison is part of their destiny, rather than a choice one makes.

Michelle Alexander

Prison has a universal fascination. It's a real-life horror story because, given the right set of circumstances, anyone could find themselves behind bars.

Wentworth Miller

For all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.

Johann Hari

In Holland, Moroccans automatically also have the Moroccan nationality even if they're born in the Netherlands, because the Moroccan law says that if one of the parents is Moroccan the children wherever they are born in the world are Moroccan as well.The Moroccan youth in the Netherlands between the age of 14 and 23, two-thirds of them have been arrested by the police at least once in their life.

Geert Wilders

I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would be better still.

Miles Franklin

Poverty is not something people impose on themselves for want of effort and community organisation. It is constructed by divisive and discriminatory laws, inflexible organisations, acquisitive ideologies of wealth, a deeply rooted class system and policies which serve privilege in the short term and destroy society in the long term.

Pete Townshend

A Quote by Michelle Alexander

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