William Lacy Clay Jr. Quotes

I think the O.J. Simpson trial was a revelation about the ongoing patterns of racial difference in American society.

The war on drugs is a war on Americans…. We criminalize what Black people do and medicalize what white people do … The money that used to be paid to college professors now goes to prison guards.

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.

In this country, we force millions of people - who are largely black and brown - into a permanent second-class status simply because they once committed a crime.

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.

Too many Black lives have been lost to injustice and brutality in this country.

All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.

When I worked as a prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia in the 1990s, that city, like so much of America, was experiencing horrific levels of violent crime. But to describe it that way obscures an important truth: for the most part, white people weren't dying; black people were dying. Most white people could drive around the problem.

Listen, we've got one little ol' black president, and white folks are upset, but they've had 43.

Most of today's black convicts have come to understand that they are the most abused victims of an unrighteous order.

I am appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass in this country that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States.

We have too many Black men in jail waiting for justice and too many Black women in church waiting for Jesus.

Too many whites are getting away with drug use...Too many whites are getting away with drug sales...The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.

Prisons are a growth industry in a country that has stopped building schools because we would rather not pay our property taxes. And we seem remarkably comfortable with a criminal-justice system that locks up and "disappears" people we fear or hold in contempt — with prisons as closets to hide our unmentionables and as factories for processing spare human parts until there is nothing left but waste.

There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.

When 10 Blacks die in this country, Whites don't care. It is as if flies had died.

If you had the Klu Klux Klan killing 200 Black kids in a community, we would have a problem and pay attention to it. If Black kids killed 200 white kids, we would pay attention to that. But when 200 Black kids kill 200 Black kids, we pay that less attention.

One third of African American males are destined to be in prison sometime in their lifetime.

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder

Some people resented the fact I was trying to break a white man's record.

We need to rethink a system that has targeted young people, particularly young people of color, for nonviolent crimes.

It saddens me that African Americans - when they express their pain, when they protest about police violence, when they question inequality, when they raise issues of bondage and discrimination - African Americans are seen as not patriotic.

The fact that our legal system has become so tolerant of police lying indicates how corrupted our criminal justice system has become by declarations of war, 'get tough' mantras, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for locking up and locking out the poorest and darkest among us.

Before being a mom, I remember going on a Twitter rant during the whole George Zimmerman trial in Florida about my younger brothers and how one day I'll be the mom of a black son.

Black and brown communities are significantly and disproportionately impacted by deficiencies in our criminal justice system.