We have not ended racial caste in America, we have merely redesigned it.

In response to the advocacy of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, most states adopted tougher laws to punish drunk driving. Numerous states now have some type of mandatory sentencing for this offense - typically two days in jail for a first offense and two to ten days for a second offense. Possession of a tiny amount of crack cocaine, on the other hand, was given a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison.

If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't get that either. But what we have learned, is that the one thing that poor folks of color can ask for and get are Police & Prisons.

If we continue to tell ourselves the popular myths about racial progress or, worse yet, if we say to ourselves that the problem of mass incarceration is just too big, too daunting for us to do anything about and that we should instead direct our energies to battles that might be more easily won, history will judge us harshly. A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch.

In fact, in some countries there are actually voting drives conducted in prison! But here in the U.S., we seem to take the idea of democracy a bit less seriously and people are denied the right to vote not only when they are in prison, but also upon release in many states.

The wave of punitiveness that washed over the United States with the rise of the drug war and the get tough movement really flooded our schools. Schools, caught up in this maelstrom, began viewing children as criminals or suspects, rather than as young people with an enormous amount of potential struggling in their own ways and their own difficult context to make it and hopefully thrive. We began viewing the youth in schools as potential violators rather than as children needing our guidance.

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