I do believe that something akin to a racial caste system is alive and well in America.

The bigger picture is that over the last 30 years, we have spent $1 trillion waging a drug war that has failed in any meaningful way to reduce drug addiction or abuse, and yet has siphoned an enormous amount of resources away from other public services, especially education.

We are in a social and political context in which the norm is to punish poor folks of color rather than to educate and empower them with economic opportunity.

One of those lies is that all we need to do is elect more Democrats. No. That actually isn't going to get us to the Promised Land.

For African American children, in particular, the odds are extremely high that they will have a parent or loved one, a relative, who has either spent time behind bars or who has acquired a criminal record and thus is part of the under-caste - the group of people who can be legally discriminated against for the rest of their lives. For many African American children, their fathers, and increasingly their mothers, are behind bars. It is very difficult for them to visit. Many people are held hundreds or even thousands of miles away from home.

My great crime wasn't refusing to represent an innocent man; my great crime was imagining that there was some path to racial justice that did not include those we view as 'guilty'.

About 70% of those released from prison return within a few years, and the majority of those who return in some states do so in a matter of months because the challenges associated with mere survival on the outside are so immense.