I think this mythology - that we're all beyond race, of course our police officers aren't racist, of course our politicians don't mean any harm to people of color - this idea that we're beyond all that (so it must be something else) makes it difficult for young people as well as the grown-ups to be able to see clearly and honestly the truth of what's going on. It makes it difficult to see that the backlash against the Civil Rights Movement manifested itself in the form of mass incarceration, in the form of defunding and devaluing schools serving kids of color and all the rest.

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.

Plenty of drug dealing does happen in the 'hood, but it happens everywhere else in America as well. In fact, some studies suggest that where significant differences in the data can be found, white youth are more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth.

The prison-industrial complex employs millions of people directly and indirectly. Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison guards, construction companies that build prisons, police, probation officers, court clerks, the list goes on and on. Many predominately white rural communities have come to believe that their local economies depend on prisons for jobs.

Most criminologists today will acknowledge that crime rates and incarceration rates in the United States have had relatively little to do with each other.

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

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.