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That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies and increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated.

Prisons are like the concentration camps of our time. So many go in and never come out, and primarily they're black and Latino.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

There's great disparity between who goes to college and who goes to jail. Who lives long and who dies prematurely, is the defining issue of our time. And I submit to you, there's a significant race dimension, it is basically class-driven.

The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.

Most go to prison not on account of their irreducible uniqueness as people but because they are part of a marginalized sector of the population who never had a chance, who were slated for it early on.

Prisons are fascinating places, especially when the inmates are educated white-collar types.

Students of color who attended integrated schools in the decades immediately following Brown were more likely to graduate high school, go to college, earn higher wages, live healthier lifestyles, and not have a criminal record than their peers in segregated schools.

Well, the terrible thing right now, and I don't know the statistics, but there's a growing concern in some communities about how rapidly people are sent from school to jail, how quickly they're put into the criminal justice system. And of course the rapidly growing number of brown people, both men and women, in prison. And this is terrible.

Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.