The vastly different sentences afforded drunk drivers and drug offenders tells us who is viewed as disposable - someone to be purged from the body politic - and who is not. Drunk drivers are predominately white and male.

Black men in ghetto communities (and many who live in middle class communities) are targeted by the police at early ages, often before they're old enough to vote. They're routinely stopped, frisked, and searched without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

We must muster the courage, we must find the will, we must do what is necessary to build a truly transformative movement that will end the history and cycle of caste in America.

In my view, the critical questions in this era of mass incarceration are: What disturbs us? What seems contrary to expectation? Who do we really care about?

For many, whether they go to prison or not is far less about the choices they make and far more about what kind of cage they're born into.

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.

What does this system seem designed to do? As I see it, it seems designed to send people right back to prison, which is what happens about 70% of the time.