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.

Discrimination in public benefits is also perfectly legal. Under federal law, people convicted of drug felonies are deemed ineligible even for food stamps.

What defenders of the system typically fail to acknowledge is that the reason violent offenders comprise a fairly large percentage of the state prison population is because they typically receive longer sentences than non-violent offenders.

Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs

I think first we have to begin by telling the truth, which I think has actually been a big stumbling block. We can look at Donald Trump and see how he lies, but I think we also have to look at some of the lies we've told ourselves and the lies we've accepted and internalized ourselves.

Mass incarceration has become normalized in the United States. Poor folks of color are shuttled from decrepit, underfunded schools to brand new, high tech prisons and then relegated to a permanent undercaste - stigmatized as undeserving of any moral care or concern.

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