[quotes] The New Jim Crow - Michelle Alexander 2010

 

"Sociologists have frequently observed that governments use punishment primarily as a tool of social control, and thus the extent or severity of punishment is often unrelated to actual crime patterns."

"The colorblind public consensus that prevails in America today - i.e., the widespread belief that race no longer matters - has blinded us to the realities of race in our society and facilitated the emergence of a new caste system."

"Following the collapse of each system of control, there has been a period of confusion - transition - in which those who are most committed to racial hierarchy search for new means to achieve their goals within the rules of the game as currently defined."

"Competing images of the poor as 'deserving' and 'undeserving' became central components of the debate. Ultimately, the racialized nature of this imagery became a crucial resource for conservatives, who succeeded in using law and order rhetoric in their effort to mobilize the resentment of white working-class voters, many of whom felt threatened by the sudden progress of African Americans."

"Condemning 'welfare queens' and criminal 'predators,' he rode into office with the strong support of disaffected whites - poor and working-class whites who felt betrayed by the Democratic Party's embrace of the civil rights agenda."

"... the president signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 into law. Among other harsh penalties, the legislation included mandatory minimum sentences for the distribution of cocaine, including far more severe punishment for distribution for crack - associated with blacks - than powder cocaine, associated with whites."

"The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism."

"Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. The New Jim Crow was born."

"Relatively little organized opposition to the drug war currently exists, and any dramatic effort to scale back the war may be publicly condemned as 'soft' on crime. The war has become institutionalized. It is no longer a special program or politicized project; it is simply the way things are done."

"Racial discrimination, the Court seemed to suggest, was something that simply must be tolerated in the criminal justice system, provided no one admits to racial bias."

"... the impact of the biased treatment is magnified with each additional step into the criminal justice system. African American youth account for 16 percent of all youth, 28 percent of all juvenile arrests, 35 percent of the youth waived to adult criminal court, and 58 percent of youth admitted to state adult prison. A major reason for these disparities is unconscious and conscious racial biases infecting decision making."

"A hundreds years ago, our nation put those considered less than human in shackles; less than one hundred years ago, we relegated them to the other side of town; today we put them in cages. Once released, they find that a heavy and cruel hand has been laid upon them."

"They don't have to call you a nigger anymore. They just say you're a felon."

"The notion that ghetto families do not, in fact, want those things, and instead are perfectly content to live in crime-ridden communities, feeling no shame or regret about the fate of their young men is, quite simply, racist. It is impossible to imagine that we would believe such a thing about whites."

"If we had actually learned to show love, care, compassion, and concern across racial lines during the Civil Rights Movement - rather than go colorblind - mass incarceration would not exist today."

"The widespread and mistaken belief that racial animus is necessary for the creation and maintenance of racialized systems of social control is the most important reason that we, as a nation, have remained in deep denial."

"Under the usual-residence rule, the Census Bureau counts imprisoned individuals as residents of the jurisdiction in which they are incarcerated. Because most new prison construction occurs in predominately white, rural areas, white communities benefit from inflated population totals at the expense of the urban, overwhelmingly minority communities from which the prisoners come."

"... white ex-offenders may actually have an easier time gaining employment than African Americans without a criminal record. To be a black man is to be thought of as a criminal, and to be a black criminal is to be despicable - a social pariah."

"At its core, then, mass incarceration, like Jim Crow, is a 'race-making institution.' It serves to define the meaning and significance of race in America."

"Laws that said nothing about race operated to discriminate because those charged with enforcement were granted tremendous discretion, and they exercised that discretion in a highly discriminatory manner."

"This system of control depends far more on racial indifference (defined as a lack of compassion and caring about race and racial groups) than racial hostility - a feature it actually shares with its predecessors."

"It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the United States from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by marginalization (mass incarceration)."

"The colorblindness ideal is premised on the notion that we, as a society, can never be trusted to see race and treat each other fairly or with genuine compassion. A commitment to color consciousness, by contrast, places faith in our capacity as humans to show care and concern for others, even as we are fully cognizant of race and possible racial differences."

"We should hope not for a colorblind society but instead for a world in which we can see each other fully, learn from each other, and do what we can to respond to each other with love. That was King's dream - a society that is capable of seeing each of us, as we are, with love. That is a goal worth fighting for."

"Black success stories tend to credence to the notion that anyone, no matter how poor or how black you may be, can make it to the top, if only you try hard enough. These stories 'prove' that race is no longer relevant. Whereas black success stories undermine the logic of Jim Crow, they actually reinforce the system of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration depends for its legitimacy on the widespread belief that all those who appear trapped at the bottom actually chose their fate."

"People of color, because of the history of racial subjugation and exclusion, often experience success and failure vicariously through the few who achieve positions of power, fame, and fortune."

"Perhaps the time has come to give up the racial bribes and begin an honest conversation about race in America. The topic of the conversation should be how us can include all of us."

[quotes] Naked Statistics - Charles Wheelan 2013

 

"It's easy to lie with statistics, but it's hard to tell the truth without them."

"The real problem is that the average income in America is not equal to the income of the average American."

"The Democrats, who engineered this tax increase, pointed out (correctly) that the state income tax rate was increased by 2 percentage points (from 3 percent to 5 percent). The Republicans pointed out (also correctly) that the state income tax had been raised by 67 percent."

"The key lesson is to pay attention to the unit of analysis. Who or what is being described, and is that different from the 'who' or 'what' being described by someone else?"

"Nominal figures are not adjusted for inflation. A comparison of the nominal cost of a government program in 1970 to the nominal cost of the same program in 2011 merely compares the size of the checks that the Treasury wrote in those two years - without any recognition that a dollar in 1970 bought more stuff than a dollar in 2011."

"There is a common business aphorism: 'You can't manage what you can't measure.' True But you had better be darn sure that what you are measuring is really what you are trying to manage."

"But you had better be darn certain that the folks being evaluated can't make themselves look better (statistically) in ways that are not consistent with the goal at hand."

"When you solicit public opinion, the phrasing of the question and the choice of language can matter enormously."

"According to this research, it is not the stress associated with major responsibilities that will kill you; it is the stress associated with being told what to do while having little say in how or when it gets done."

"The problem is that the mechanics of regression analysis are not the hard part; the hard part is determining which variables ought to be considered in the analysis and how that can best be done. Regression analysis is like one of those fancy power tools. It is relatively easy to use, but hard to use well - and potentially dangerous when used improperly."

"An association between two variables is like a fingerprint at the scene of the crime. It points us in the right direction, but it's rarely enough to convict. (And sometimes a fingerprint at the scene of a crime doesn't belong to the perpetrator.) Any regression analysis needs a theoretical underpinning. Why are the explanatory variables in the equation? What phenomena from other disciplines can explain the observed results?"

"In the case of a randomized, controlled experiment, the control group is the counterfactual. In cases where a controlled experiment is impractical or immoral, we need to find some other way of approximating the counterfactual. Our understanding of the world depends on finding clever ways to do that."

[quotes] The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu 2006 (trans. Ken Liu 2014)

 

"The abbot shook his head and said, 'No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.'"

"Does it represent the yearning for order, or the surrender to chaos?"

"We can have no sea birds, but we can't be without oil. Can you imagine life without oil?"

"These are the rules of the game of civilization: The first priority is to guarantee the existence of the human race and their comfortable life. Everything else is secondary."

"'I don't care if this is meaningless. I can't stop. If I stop I'll fall apart.' Evans cut down a crooked branch with a practiced swing."

"A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards."

[quotes] The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood 1986

 

"But there's a literary form I haven't mentioned yet: the literature of witness. Offred records her story as best she can; then she hides it, trusting that it may be discovered later, by someone who is free to understand it and share it. This is an arc of hope: every recorded story implies a future reader."

"I avoid looking down at my body, not so much because it's shameful or immodest but because I don't want to see it. I don't want to look at something that determines me so completely."

"Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing."

"Even though some of them no more than fourteen - Start them soon is the policy, there's not a moment to be lost - still they'll remember. And the ones after them will, for three or four or five years; but after that they won't. They'll always have been in white, in groups of girls; they'll always have been silent."

"Falling in love, I said. Falling into it, we all did then, one way or another.... It was the central thing; it was the way you understood yourself; if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space. Everyone knew that."

[quotes] Nudge - Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein 2008

  

"The clear lesson here is that consistent and unwavering people, in the private or public sector, can move groups and practices in their preferred direction."

"Small interventions and even coincidences, at a key stage, can produce large variations in the outcome."

"It turns out that if you ask people, the day before the election, whether they intend to vote, you can increase the probability of their voting by as much as 25 percent!"

"One way to start thinking about incentives is to ask four questions about a particular choice architecture:
Who uses?
Who chooses?
Who pays?
Who profits?"

"One solution to the political problem of getting such bills passed may be to use some mental accounting. For example, the revenues from a carbon tax might be paired with a cut in personal tax rates, the funding for Social Security and Medicare, or the provision of universal health insurance. Similarly, the "rights" to pollute in a cap-and-trade system can be auctioned off, and the revenues used in the same way. This linking of costs and benefits might help the pill go down more easily."

"People who want to signal their green credentials are much happier in a Prius than a hybrid Camry because no one will know that the Camry is a hybrid unless she carefully examines some labeling on the car."

"So put it simply, forcing people to choose is not always wise, and remaining neutral is not always possible."

"It is not possible to avoid choice architecture, and in that sense it is not possible to avoid influencing people."

[quotes] Weapons of Math Destruction - Cathy O'Neil 2016

 

"if the people being evaluated are kept in the dark, the thinking goes, they'll be less likely to attempt to game the system. Instead, they'll simply have to work hard, follow the rules, and pray that the model registers and appreciates their efforts."

"So thanks to a highly questionable model, a poor school lost a good teacher, and a rich school, which didn't fire people on the basis of their students' scores, gained one."

"That's how trustworthy models operate. They maintain a constant back-and-forth with whatever in the world they're trying to understand or predict. Conditions change, and so must the model."

"Our own values and desires influence our choices, from the data we choose to collect to the questions we ask. Models are opinions embedded in mathematics."

"... sentencing models that profile a person by his of her circumstances help to create the environment that justifies their assumptions. This destructive model loop goes round and round, and in the process the model becomes more and more unfair."

"A young suburbanite with every advantage - the prep school education, the exhaustive coaching for college admissions tests, the overseas semester in Paris or Shanghai - still flatters himself that it is his skill, hard work, and prodigious problem-solving abilities that have lifted him into a world of privilege. Money vindicates all doubts."

"The top 20 percent of the population controls 89 percent of the wealth in the country, and the bottom 40 percent controls none of it. Their assets are negative: the average household in this enormous and struggling underclass has a net debt of $14,800."

"So even if our model is color blind, the result is anything but. In our largely segregated cities, geography is a highly effective proxy for race."

"The result is that we criminalize poverty, believing all the while that our tools are not only scientific but fair."

"...we've seen time and again that mathematical models can sift through data to locate people who are likely to face great challenges, whether from crime, poverty, or education. It's up to society whether to use that intelligence to reject and punish them - or to reach out to them with the resources they need. We can use the efficiency that make WMDs so pernicious in order to help people."

"... Simpson's Paradox: when a whole body of data displays one trend, yet when broken into subgroups, the opposite trend comes into view for each of those subgroups."

"While that campaign launched into public view, hundreds of others continue to hover below the surface, addressing individual voters."

"As this happens, it will become harder to access the political message our neighbors are seeing - and as result, to understand why they believe what they do, often passionately."

"As is often the case with WMDs, the very same models that inflict damage could be used to humanity's benefit. Instead of targeting people in order to manipulate them, it could line them up for help."

"Many of these models, like some of the WMDs we've discussed, will arrive with the best intentions. But they must also deliver transparency, disclosing the input data they're using as well as the results of their targeting. And they must be open to audits."

[quotes] Dirty Thirty - Asa Akira 2016

 

"There's something about walking around a foreign country by yourself...it's the most anonymous, magical feeling. I feel the most empowered when I do this."

[poems] Pillow Thoughts - Courtney Peppernell 2017

 

this is the first poetry book I've read. here are some of my favorites.

I know what it feels like
for my heart to ache
and my soul to cry.
I know what it feels like
for things to be so hard
it takes everything to get by.
I know what it feels like
when nothing seems steady
and for things to derail.
I know what it feels like
to have person after person
cause your heart to fail.
But one day I hope you see
the love you give yourself
heals all parts eventually.
Until finally she walks in
and sets your heart free
and reminds you why
everyone else
wasn't meant to be.


But life is not about half doing. You cannot half love, or half
accept, or half live. It's about giving everything you have.
When you are old and worn, do you really want to look back
and say you gave the bare minimum? You owe yourself more
than that.

Some things will never be fair for everyone. This is the saddest
realization that the universe can teach. So if they are fair for
you, remember to be grateful.

Even on bad days and cold nights where it feels it has all but
gone. You still have purpose. It has been inside you since the
day you were born. A tiny little firefly born from the light of
the universe. There is a world of reason inside you, an entire
library of thoughts and emotions. For all the moments that
steal your hope, just remember the universe intended for you
to happen. You have purpose.

[quotes] Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz 2012

 

"I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone's hand."

"The summer sun was not meant for boys like me. Boys like me belonged to the rain."

"Dante who loved kissing dogs, who loved kissing his parents, who loved kissing boys, who even loved kissing girls. Maybe kissing was part of the human condition. Maybe I wasn't human."

"I tried to bring my thoughts back to the kitchen. Where I was. Where I lived. I hated the thing of living in my head."

"To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing."

"High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you - but when you graduated, you got to write yourself. At graduation you got to collect your teacher's pens and your parents' pens and you got your own pen. And you could do all the writing."

"'Because I can't stand watching all that loneliness that lives inside you. Because I love you, Ari."

[quotes] Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett 1954

 

"We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist?"