Yance Ford Quotes

Our criminal justice system affirmatively depends on inequality.

I think our criminal justice system has two problems. We have systematic problems and we have people problems. So if the hearts of people are not about justice than any system you have won't work.

Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.

I have never understood the liberal assumption that if there were justice in the world, there would be fewer rather than more prisoners.

The criminal justice system is not working and people want something that works.

I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It's not academic for me.

God blessed us with all this money, so why not take the money and put it into my brother's case? Talk about social and racial injustice in our country, and mass incarceration in our country?

I try not to get too political. But coming from South Africa, where apartheid was a huge problem, and there was lots of inequality, has shaped me in terms of how I view certain issues.

Can we first take care of our 'brown lives matter' in India and then worry about the U.S.? I find it bizarre that racism that is done so far away from home it is creating such an uproar. Look at the kind of racism people who are dark skinned in our country have to face.

Years now, decades, of visiting my parents behind bars taught me hard lessons about how broken the criminal justice system is - about how devoid of compassion it is. It's not healing the harm that victims experience. It's not rehabilitating people. And in many ways, it's making us less safe.

Black Lives Matter is really an affirmation for our people. It's a love note for our people, but it's also a demand. We know that the system was not designed for justice for us.

Johnnie Cochran was such a heroic figure for getting the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, and the acquittal was such a historical event because it was the first time that I'd seen somebody who looked like me have the criminal justice system work in their favor rather than against.

The criminal justice system in the United States is designed to do two things really well: to railroad black and brown bodies into prison, and to keep police officers out of it.

For those of you that don't know, the reason I named my album 'Free TC' is because my lil' brother is named TC. He's locked up for something that he didn't do, and what I'm trying to do is just raise awareness around the whole mass incarceration thing going on in our country, especially with our people.

The whole reason behind my album 'Free TC' is seeing all that police brutality, injustice, mass incarceration.

The Bureau of Justice reports that one in three black male babies born this century will go to jail or prison - that is an absolutely astonishing statistic. And it ought to be terrorizing to not just to people of color, but to all of us.

Racism is a way to gain economic advantage at the expense of others. Slavery and plantations may be gone, but racism still allows us to regard those who may keep us from financial gain as less than equals.

A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.

It is apparent, if you go back through our history, that the grand juries of the criminal justice system do not value black lives.

Dr. King said, 'We are all tied together in a garment of mutual destiny.' Which says to me no matter how well I may be doing in Hollywood, if a young brother or sister in Louisiana, the South Bronx, the South Side of Chicago, South Central Los Angeles - is not doing well, then I'm not doing very well.

I'm a prison abolitionist because the prison system as it is set up is just not working. It's horrible.

There's a black man inside of me just trying to make bail.

I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justice has been corrupted by racism and classism. I think it's difficult for 'poor people' - poor white people, brown people - to be treated fairly before the law in the same way that upper-class people are.

The stark reality is that crime happens in communities of color.

Not that I regret saying what I believed to be the truth, but I regret anything that I might have written or spoken that could have been used in a way to help to foster that atmosphere out of which came the loss of life of Brother Malcolm.