“I think we've become blind in this country to the ways in which we've managed to reinvent a caste-like system here in the United States, one that functions in a manner that is as oppressive, in many respects, as the one that existed in South Africa under apartheid and that existed under Jim Crow here in the United States.”

American writer, attorney, and civil rights activist

Michelle Alexander is an American writer, attorney, and civil rights activist, best known for her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Her work centers on race, criminal justice, and the lasting effects of mass incarceration in the United States. Since 2018, she has also written as an opinion columnist for The New York Times, extending that critique into public commentary and debate.